We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

What is the significance of Exodus 13:17?
The Lord didn’t lead Israel along the shortest route to Canaan because Israel would have had to fight the Philistines. The Lord wanted to avoid this, “Lest the people change their minds when they see war, and they return to Egypt.” [NIV: “If they face war they might change their minds and return to Egypt”].
A God who faced an exhaustively settled future could not genuinely think in terms of what people might do. He would be eternally certain of exactly what everyone would do. The fact that the Bible records God thinking and speaking using terms like “if,” “perhaps” and “maybe” is evidence that God faces a partly open future. It should be noted that verses such as this one are impossible to explain as “phenomenological” or as “anthropomorphic,” for the author is reporting something we never would have known had he not told us—viz. God’s thought process.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Exodus 13
Related Reading

Open Theism and the Nature of the Future
In this philosophical essay Alan Rhoda, Tom Belt and I argue that the future cannot be exhaustively described in terms of what will and will not happen, but must also be described in terms of what may and may not happen. The future, in other words, is partly open. The thesis is defended against a…

What is the significance of Jeremiah 36:1-6
The Lord has Jeremiah write his prophecy on a scroll, telling him, “Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I plan to inflict on them, they will each turn from their wicked ways; then I will forgive their wickedness and their sin” (Jer. 36:3). Jeremiah then tells his scribe to take the…

What’s your view of the tribulation period and the rapture?
I along with most other evangelicals believe Jesus is going to return one day and establish his Kingdom. Jesus himself promised his return (Matt. 24:30; 26:64; John 14:3). At Jesus’ ascension, two angels proclaimed, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into…

What does the Bible mean when it says God “sent an evil spirit” on certain people?
Question: In Judges 9:23, I Samuel 16:15ff and 18:10 it is said that God sends evil spirits on people. Doesn’t this support the idea that everything Satan and demons do is under God’s sovereign control? Answer: I’ll make six points in response to this question. 1) If everything Satan and demons do is under “God’s…

What is the significance of Jeremiah 3:19–20?
“I thought how I would set you among my children…And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me. Instead, as a faithless wife…you have been faithless to me…” If the future is eternally and exhaustively settled, and if God therefore knows it as such, he could not have…

Summer Q&A!
Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy recently hosted a Summer Q&A for all three services at Woodland Hills Church. If you’ve ever wanted to sit and listen to these guys talk about a wide range of topics off the top of their heads, this is your chance! Good stuff folks! Our friend Jesse Ward was kind…