He Knoweth All Things

O how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it. (2 Ne 9:20)

If there is one attribute of God I have always found fascinated and of which I have pondered the most, it is His omniscience. Particularly of interest is His omniscience in relation to our freedom to make choices and how those changes affect our lives.

It has always amazed me that given the ability we have to choose and how those choices can alter our lives that God still knows all things.

For example, say I am in a grocery store with no money. Say there is a chocolate bar that looks and reads so deliciously. I want this chocolate bar so bad that I am faced with the decision to steal it, ask someone else to buy it for me, leave and buy it another time, or many other situations. If God knows all things, then He knows what will happen in each of these instances.

Now, let’s say I stole the chocolate bar. Several things could happen. I can make it out of the store uncaught. I can get caught and told to get out of the store. I can get caught and held until the authorities arrive. And so forth. Again, if God knows all things, then He knows what will happen in each of these situations.

If I make it out of the store uncaught, then again several situations could happen. I could be tempted to steal again, perhaps something more valuable. I could feel guilty and decide to bring it back. I could eat it and feel guilty and bring some money another time, and so forth. Again, if God knows all things, then He knows what will happen in each of these situations.

So, given this one choice, He can know all the possible decisions I could make. As well, He can know all the outcomes of those decisions and the snowball effect the additional outcomes on these outcomes will have.

To top it all off, if He knows all things, He can see this near-infinite, multi-branch future of billions of people every day.

That is mind boggling.