Divine Omnipotence and Omniscience
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Perfect Knowledge and Power
If God is all-perfect, then He must be all perfect in knowledge and all perfect in power. The traditional words we use to describe these perfections are omniscience and omnipotence.
Omniscience means God knows everything. Omnipotence means God can do everything.
No one actually celebrates ignorance or weakness. Our society particularly, and properly, values knowledge. Our society values developing our skills and our abilities. We value having a great capacity to do good. In fact, the reason that we have the most elaborate educational system the world has ever seen is because we value knowledge and developing our capacity to do good. And the God we worship is a God of infinite knowledge and infinite capacity to do good.
There is nothing God doesn’t know and there is nothing God can’t do.
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Absurdity is not a Limitation on God’s knowledge or God’s power
Before going on, let me address something a lot of smart alecks like to bring up to challenge God’s perfection.
Sometimes people like to come up with absurdities, and then say that God couldn’t do them.
They’ll say something like, “Well, if God knows so much, then does He know the last possible number?” Or, “Well, if God can do whatever He wants, can He make a round square?” But of course, phrases like “the last possible number” or “a round square,” aren’t phrases that refer to actual things that God doesn’t know or can’t do. Those phrases are just absurd or meaningless word combinations, just like “sardilious” or “heydiddlediddle” are absurd or meaningless sound combinations.
They don’t refer to anything at all. And so they don’t refer to anything that God doesn’t know or that God can’t do.
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God is All-Powerful
Think, just for a moment, what it means to have an all-powerful God. It means that He can do anything, absolutely anything, if it would be for the best.
Think, for instance, of Hezekiah, King of Israel, when the Assyrian Army, which had decimated all the surrounding countries, stood just outside the walls, preparing to come in and blot out all memory of Jerusalem from the face of the Earth.
From a human standpoint, everything seemed absolutely hopeless. How could a little city defend itself from the most powerful army on the planet? But of course, it was nothing for an all-powerful God to handle.
The next morning, the tens of thousands of Assyrian soldiers simply didn’t wake up. Easy!
There’s nothing God can’t do and there’s nothing He can’t prevent from happening.
If something needs to happen for the good of His children, He’ll take care of it. If that something doesn’t happen, it’s only because God is doing something even more magnificent – something that will even more impressively show His power and His goodness
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God is All-Knowing
Now think for a moment of what it means to have an all-knowing God.
He knows everything, absolutely everything. You can’t ever pull a fast one on Him. You can’t catch Him off guard. All that is, or was, or ever will be, God knows it all.
How can you ever lose with a God like that on your team? Who can ever out-plan, out-think, out-maneuver the community led by an omniscient God?
How do you beat a chess player who knows every possible move, every possible variation of every possible game, and who knows what you’re going to move before you know yourself?
We spend so much time trying to figure everything out, trying to understand our lives, or the social trends, or what our kids’ futures will be like. But if we’ve entrusted ourselves to God, then for sure we don’t have to understand everything. We just need to try to do what He says, and trust that His infinite intelligence has it all figured out.
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The God We Worship
It’s very strange how easy it is for Christians to get discouraged when they look at the seeming trajectory of the world. The people in power, the people who really know what’s going on, who have access to all the information – these people are sometimes really scary. We start to feel like it’s too late. Like we’ve lost.
Let’s be very, very clear. WE CAN’T LOSE! We have OMNISCIENCE and OMNIPOTENCE fighting our battles for us!
Are we really afraid of human power? Are we afraid of the guys with nukes? Or with armies? Or with all the political power? Or with all the money?
But our God is omnipotent! He’s all-powerful! Whenever He wants to, He can make those nukes and armies disappear like a puff of smoke. He can take all the godless legislation passed by every godless committee in every country evaporate into thin air. He can take every dollar of every billionaire or mafia head and turn that bank account balance to exactly zero.
If He hasn’t done those things yet, it’s not because He can’t. It’s because He’s got an even better, more impressive plan for bringing justice to humanity.
And we know His plans are brilliant because He’s Omniscient! So how can we be afraid of the bad guys with computers?
Sure, governments or big business are constantly collecting as much information as they can. So what? They don’t know the future. They don’t even know all the present. Our God can wipe the bad guys’ data files instantly, but He doesn’t have to. It is His good pleasure to bring about His victory, and the victory of all His chosen ones, in a surprising, brilliant, totally unexpected way, one which will show the utter naivete of those who think they can outsmart God.
So just stay close to God, and be at peace. Because Our God is an awesome God, of unlimited power, knowledge, and goodness.
And those who are faithful to Him will be taken care of.