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 Revelation 3:5?
“If you conquer, you will be clothed like them in white robes, and I will not blot your name out of the book of life…”
If God is only the God of certainties, it is not clear how he can honestly speak in conditional terms (“If you conquer…”) and it is not clear why he would have to blot anyone’s name out of the book of life. If he has always been certain who will and will not “conquer,” why record the names of those he knows from the start—from all eternity!—will not conquer in the first place (cf. Exod. 32:33)?
Other scriptures describe names being recorded in God’s book of life from the foundation of the world (cf. Rev. 13:8, 17:8; for further explanation of how verses such as these square with Open Theism, see here and here). But no passage states that the names were written at or before the foundation of the world—which is what one would expect if the classical view of the future as exhaustively settled is true.
This verse also exposes the general inadequacy of the classical explanation of verses which show change in God. It explains such verses by saying that they speak to us in terms of how things appear (“phenomenological anthropomorphisms”), not as they truly are. But (however literally or figuratively we take this), when has anyone ever been privy to God’s book of life? The reason why this and many other verses don’t easily square with the classical explanation is that their subject matter lies outside the human purview. They describe what God thinks, feels, intends, or writes in his “private journal,” as it were. If any verses describe God as he truly is and not just how he appears to us, they are these verses!
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: Revelation 3
Related Reading

Last Minute Preparations
We’re all busy here at ReKnew making last minute preparations for the Open2013 conference here in St. Paul, MN. It’s our first ever event of this kind and there’s a nervous energy and anticipation. I wonder if you’ll hold this up in prayer if you weren’t able to join us? We have a last minute…

How do you respond to Jeremiah 29:10–11?
The Lord says to Israel, “Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place [Jerusalem]. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says he Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give…

What’s the significance of Isaiah 63:8-10?
The Lord said (or “thought”) to himself, “Surely they are my people, chidren who will not deal falsely.” So, the text says, “He became their savior” (Isa. 63: 8). But “they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit.” So the Lord “became their enemy” (9-10). If the future is exhaustively settled from all eternity, how could…

Two Ancient (and Modern) Motivations for Ascribing Exhaustively Definite Foreknowledge to God
A historic overview and critical assessment Abstract: The traditional Christian view that God foreknows the future exclusively in terms of what will and will not come to pass is partially rooted in two ancient Hellenistic philosophical assumptions. Hellenistic philosophers universally assumed that propositions asserting’ x will occur’ contradict propositions asserting’ x will not occur’ and…

How do you respond to Acts 2:23 and 4:28?
Question: Acts 2:23 and 4:28 tell us that wicked people crucified Jesus just as God predestined them to do. If this wicked act could be predestined, why couldn’t every other wicked act be predestined? Doesn’t this refute your theory that human acts can’t be free if they are either predestined or foreknown? Answer: In Acts…

How do you respond to the book of Revelation?
“The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place…” (1:1). Because many modern evangelical readers consider almost everything in the book of Revelation to be a sort of “snap shot” about what shall occur at the end of history, it will prove more beneficial to deal…