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Bible Dictionaries
Foreknowledge
People's Dictionary of the Bible
or Foreknowledge. The foreknowledge of God is repeatedly spoken of in Scripture. Acts 2:23; Romans 8:29; Romans 11:2; 1 Peter 1:2. There are curious and intricate questions in reference to his foreknowledge, which it would be quite foreign to the character of this work to attempt to discuss. It must be sufficient to say that the Scripture attributes the most perfect prescience to the Deity. It is one of those high attributes which place him immeasurably above all pretended gods. Isaiah 41:22-23; Isaiah 42:9; Isaiah 44:6-8. God does not gather knowledge as we do: before his eye all things past, present, or to come, are spread with equal clearness: he sees all possibilities, those events which may happen as well as those which will happen. 1 Samuel 23:9-13; Jeremiah 38:17-23; Jeremiah 42:9-22; Matthew 11:21; Matthew 11:23; Acts 27:24; Acts 27:31. Yet this divine foreknowledge does not compel men; it fetters not their free action; it does not deliver them from the responsibility of their own deeds. Genesis 50:20; Isaiah 10:6-7. And, if we are unable exactly to comprehend this, we may well remember that God's judgments are unsearchable, Romans 11:33, his ways higher than our ways, his thoughts than our thoughts. Isaiah 60:9.
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Rice, Edwin Wilbur, DD. Entry for 'Foreknowledge'. People's Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/rpd/f/foreknowledge.html. 1893.
