Stafford Christadelphians

The Christadelphian ecclesia in Stafford, England

The Bible

What Christadelphians believe
Lesson 1
A God with Foreknowledge

In order to advance our understanding of the Bible, we simply have to take on board a foundation point from the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament:

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Hebrews 11:6

For anyone to succeed in doing that is a tremendous thing.

The Bible effectively says that we have to have faith to understand God and to approach Him. But the question that arises in our minds is ‘how can we have faith?’ We can view all the things in the world around us but these do not show us about God Himself and His purpose. In fact many people would say that they have come about from chance or evolution anyway.

What the Bible does, which is so thrilling to be able to explain to others, is that it offers a wonderful ‘hook’ to hang one's faith upon. It is hoped, as a result of these considerations that we will come as close as ever it will be possible, to have evidence and grounds for belief that there really is a living God.

If you don't know about belief in God now, then the desire of writing these words and explaining more about the Bible is that you will come closer to a belief in God than you have ever done before.

We are going to consider just what the Bible says – unvarnished truth, no gizmos, just the simple truth of what the Bible has been saying for thousands of years and a joy that there really is a personal God.

For our help God has selected a particular means, which we can call the ‘foreknowledge of God’, to give us evidence to help us.

In the book of Acts we read:

Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.

Acts 15:18

God knows what He is going to do before He gets there!
And in the book of Isaiah we read:

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.

Isaiah 46:10

This is an attribute of God, which only He possesses. As we go through life, we are amazed at the range of accomplishments that a variety of people are able to demonstrate. We have the example of a Mozart who can sit down at 15 years of age and produce a wonderful new piano work. We can find people who learn and recite the whole of one of the Books of the Bible or can learn fluently many languages. So many and varied attributes are displayed, which the Lord God when he created man, gave to a variety of people. There was one thing that God did NOT give to a single member of the family that He created. That is, the ability of Foreknowledge, to significantly tell unlikely future events accurately over long periods of time. Only the God of Israel, the Creator Himself, can foretell these events. As no human being can do these things, then if we find events are accurately portrayed, hundreds and maybe thousands of years beforehand, then these are demonstrable evidences. The Bible appeal to us is that these things are ‘the fingerprint of God’.

God not only performs these acts but also has caused them to be written down and recorded so His creatures can know that they have been said, as the prophet Amos records:

Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret to his servants the prophets.

Amos 3:7

This means that people can know what God’s purpose with the world really is.

The Bible demonstrates that God knows the end of all things from the beginning, and we can see that the foreknowledge of God is as it were the very fingerprint of God Himself.

In just the same way that each one of us has our own characteristic fingerprint, which nobody else has, so this divine foreknowledge is the stamp of the Almighty himself – His identification.

We can take the best brains in the world but only the Creator can reliably tell the knowledge of the future. The Creator, using His unique foreknowledge, has planned and has the power to accomplish His purpose.

So we conclude the ability of Foreknowledge is one of the unique features of the great Creator Himself, which He has not passed on to His creation. This means that any real evidence of detailed foreknowledge of events of perhaps a long time ahead, has not come from man’s origin. If it comes genuinely to pass, then we can confidently conclude that it has come from a single source only – God Himself. Therefore, true faith in God is not “blind faith” but comes from a reasoned consideration of clear written evidence, which the Bible provides and which we can check with the history of events.

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