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Ezekiel 33:13-15
God changes His mind about death and life
"When I say to the righteous he will surely live, and he so trusts
in his righteousness that he commits iniquity, none of his righteous
deeds will be remembered; but in that same iniquity of his which he
has committed he will die. 14“But when I say to the
wicked, ‘You will surely die,’ and he turns from his sin and
practices justice and righteousness, 15if a wicked man
restores a pledge, pays back what he has taken by robbery, walks by
the statutes which ensure life without committing iniquity, he will
surely live; he shall not die. 16“None of his sins that
he has committed will be remembered against him. He has practiced
justice and righteousness; he will surely live," (Ezekiel 33:13-15).
When God states that "If you do this, then this will
happen; if you do that, that that will happen," it does not
mean that God is ignorant of the future. It means that God is
revealing the results of what will happen as a result of various
choices. This absolute knowledge of God is possible because God
knows all things, including the future and all its options. By
contrast, this is not possible with the god of open theism because
god doesn't know the choices that will be made so cannot tell with
certainly what will or will not happen.
In Ezekiel 33:13-15 God is simply laying
out the options of what will happen when someone turns from their sin.
Since God works in our time frame, and since we are creatures of choice,
the Lord speaks to us in ways that we can understand relevant to our
choices of repentance.
The open theist cannot claim that these verses mean
that God does not know the future because they are telling us what the
legitimate options are and they are expressing the reality of God's
desire that we repent from our sins. Therefore, God is not
changing His mind. He is revealing it.
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