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.
How do you respond to John 21:18–19?
Jesus says to Peter, “‘[W]hen you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’”
For providential reasons (undoubtedly connected with the encouragement of martyrs in the early church) God determined that Peter would suffer the same sort of death Christ suffered. Now that Peter had been humbled and had learned how to love and serve as Jesus loved and served (see How do you respond to Matt. 26:36) Jesus was going to teach him to die as Jesus died.
This prophecy suggests that by this time the Lord was going to providentially ensure that Peter would not die in any other fashion. This would obviously be a small feat for the Lord of the universe. But it does not suggest that everything else about Peter’s future was settled, still less that everything about the future of the world is settled. We only need to resort to the “crystal ball” understanding of omniscience when we lose our confidence in the Father’s providential wisdom in history and his ability to creatively achieve his objectives while allowing creatures to be free.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism
Verse: John 21
Related Reading
Why is the Bible so strict on prohibiting pre-marital sex? What’s the big deal?
Today in western culture people tend to have a rather “recreational” view of sex. It’s just a pleasurable physical activity we engage in. Even people who don’t consciously believe this are influenced by it , since we’re bombarded with this message every day through movies, television shows, radio, magazines, etc. Because we’re influence by this…
Does Prayer Really Change Things?
Many people operate out of a blueprint model where God is viewed as absolutely unchanging, and all that occurs in the world is the unfolding of an eternal divine plan. If this is the case, then the purpose of prayer is to change us, not to change things. While prayer does change us, the Bible…
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…
Who Rules Governments? God or Satan? Part 2
In the previous post, I raised the question of how we reconcile the fact that the Bible depicts both God and Satan as the ruler of nations, and I discussed some classical ways this has been understood. In this post I want to offer a cross-centered approach to this classical conundrum that provides us with…
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…