God knows what will come to pass and He ordains what will come to pass.
God created time
When God created the heavens and the earth, He did so “in the beginning.” The beginning came to pass because God made the beginning just as He made all of creation. The measurement of days and nights is also captured in the creation account in Genesis 1. In essence, God created time. His creation of time makes it impossible for Him to be limited by time. God is outside of time and therefore knows the future.
God’s omniscience
The Bible speaks about God’s omniscience in several places and for us to understand that God knows the future, we first must understand that God knows all things. The selected verses below indicate God’s infinite knowledge:
- 1 John 3:20: For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.
- Job 28:24: For he looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens.
- Job 37:16: Do you know the balancing of the clouds, the wondrous works of him who is perfect in knowledge.
- Psalm 139:1-3: O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.
- Psalm 147:5: Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.
- Isaiah 55:8-9: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
- Matthew 10:29-30: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.
- Romans 11:33-34: Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?
- Hebrews 4:13: And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Nothing that happens takes God by surprise
In the Old Testament, God worked through the prophets (hundreds of years before Christ) to prophesy about the life, death, and ascension of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:10-12). Jesus predicted many things that would come to pass, such His as death and resurrection (Matthew 16:21; Matthew 17:22-23). He promised His Holy Spirit (see John 14-17), and His Holy Spirit was given to His church (Joel 2:28; Acts 1:8; Acts 2:1-13). The end of days when Christ returns and God judges the earth is not known by us, or by Christ, but only by the Father (Matthew 24:36-44).
God knows what will happen
God knows what will happen in all our lives and the call of God is for us to turn to Him. “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man He has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31).