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What is the significance of Acts 15:7?
At the Jerusalem council, “Peter stood up and said to them, ‘My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles should hear the message of the good news…’”
The tense of the verb that locates God’s “choice” in “the early days” strongly suggests that it wasn’t made in the eternal past as the classical view asserts. The God of the possible decides among possibilities as he moves along with us in time. After considering every variable, the Lord decided that choosing Peter rather than anyone else to initially bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles best fit his sovereign purpose.
If everything is settled from all eternity in the mind of God, however, there is nothing really left to decide in time. Everything in Scripture, as well as in our own experience, which suggests that God makes decisions or reverses previous decisions as he moves with us into the future must be judged as mistaken.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Acts 15
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