FAQ: Does God Know in Advance If One Will Accept Christ as Savior?
We know for sure that, for a person to be a true Christian and to obtain salvation and eternal life, God the Father must call him: "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:44). Also, God wants every single human being to eventually have an opportunity for salvation: "For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth" (I Timothy 2:3-4, emphasis ours throughout). However, it is very obvious that many millions have not been called. Every day, many human beings—even innocent babies—die without having had the opportunity to know God or His way of life. So does this mean that God is cruel or capricious in His selectiveness? Are all of those millions are born merely to be "lost"—with no hope at all? Not at all. The answer is that, although God certainly is selective, His selectiveness is based upon time. He is calling some people now and will call some later. The apostle Paul uses the phrase: "every man in his own order":
Jesus Christ revealed the time sequence of multiple resurrections to the apostle John, which he recorded in the Revelation 20:4-6:
The author of Hebrews refers to "a better resurrection," probably referring to the first resurrection: "Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection" (Hebrews 11:35). Back to the original question: Does God know in advance whether we will accept His calling? Can He look into the future to see what our decision will be? From the example of Abraham, it appears that He does—or at least He can if He chooses to. We might think because after Abraham proved that he was even willing to obey God's command to sacrifice his son, God said, "Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me" (Genesis 22:12). But many years before this test, God was able to look into the future and to know the results of Abraham's obedience and many fine details of his life and those of his descendants. See Genesis 12:1-3, 7; 13:14-17; 15:1-21; 17:1-8, 15-21; 18:18-19. From this, it appears that God can accurately predict whether or not a person will enter His Kingdom, and further, God works diligently and powerfully to bring those He calls to salvation. However, ultimately, the individual chooses to accept or reject Jesus Christ as his personal Savior because God does not strip those He calls of their free will. As God commands in Deuteronomy 30:19, "I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live." |