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GALACTIC NEWS FROM THREE ANGELS #5

INSTANT VERDICTS FROM THE INTERNET

Here’s a Friday question for all of us to think about. How long would it take for God to learn, or to know, everything there is to know about you? We’re familiar with the New Testament promise by Jesus Himself — you’ll find it in Matthew 10:30 — that God the Father actually has numbered every hair on your head. I get a kick out of how, in the popular Christian group, the Gaither Vocal Band, Mark Lowry likes to always tease Bill Gaither about how much hair he has . . . or doesn’t have. And Bill, being the set-up man for Mark’s humor, quotes the verse about God counting every hair. And Mark comes right back: “Yeah, Bill, and God wants to thank you for not taking up too much of His time!”

But wouldn’t you agree with me that God knows instantly everything there is to know about me, and about you? He knows our names; the Word of God tells us that. He knew us before we were born; the Bible says that too. He knows everything we do, every thought we think.

We were reading not too long ago about computer speeds on the Internet. And of course, the way the computer industry is changing, anything I say here on the radio can make me into a laughingstock just in the few weeks it takes to get this out of the studio and onto the air. But I understand that college kids, in recent months, have become kind of addicted to what they call the “ethernet.” Don’t ask me to explain the why’s and wherefore’s about it all, but apparently many college campuses are wired up with such high-speed modems that the students have instant access to whatever they need. If they log into a web site . . . Bam! It’s on the screen. Do they want to download a thousand-page book? Bam! In about four seconds, the whole book is in their dorm room. Do they want to get the latest pop song by the Cranberries, in MP3 format, downloaded? Bam! They’re listening to the entire album in about two nanoseconds. Whole movies? Bam! They’ve got it. There’s no waiting around, like the rest of the hackers in the world, while that hourglass thing sits there next to your arrow icon, while the computer thinks . . . and thinks . . . and thinks. On the “ethernet,” everything you want, any tidbit of knowledge, any piece of trivia, is just a hundredth of a second away. Ka-BLAM! You’ve got it.

They say — and again, this comes under the heading of “way old news,” that this was one of the huge reasons why AOL and Time Warner recently wanted to merge. Two words: “Swifter connections.” America Online’s Steve Case wanted those huge cable networks and systems owned by Time Warner, so that instead of just college kids enjoying the immediacy, the Bam!, of instant downloading, all of us could start paying AOL for lightning-quick knowledge too.

Well, friend, here’s why I bring up the issue of instant knowledge. We’ve been studying these very interesting verses in Revelation 14, which describe the “Three Angels’ Messages.” And here in verse 7, the first angel tells us:
“Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come.”

And you know, when the Bible talks about the judgment of God, every citizen on planet earth gets very interested. Or ought to get very interested. Because first of all, if God is the judge, there’s not going to be anything that slips by Him. Agreed? Secondly, if God is the judge, He’s very capable of handing out great rewards, or extremely severe punishments. If He gives you a long sentence, there’s not anyplace I know of above Him where you can appeal to get your jail time shortened.

It’s going to stretch over to next week, but we want to study together some details about the judgment of God. What’s involved? Are we on the witness seat? Are we on trial? When does it all happen? Etc.

We’ve mentioned on other radio programs that verse in Revelation 20, just six chapters over from where we’re studying, where it says this about judgment:

“And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; AND THE BOOKS WERE OPENED.”

The book of Psalms talks about these same books in chapter 69, in referring to those who reject God:

“Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.”

And maybe some of us, even in the Christian faith, have had a picture of God, or of Jesus working with God, carefully and laboriously going through this incredible, huge book . . . a book with six billion people’s records in it. In fact, way more than six billion names, because the Bible clearly teaches here that even the dead, anybody who has lived and then died in all the years of earth’s history, has a record in heaven’s “books.”

Now let me ask a question, and I do so seriously. Can we imagine, you and I, a scenario where God wants to make a decision about whether I should be saved or lost? So He has to look in this huge, huge book: past the A’s, and the B’s, and the C’s, through the H’s, and the L’s, and finally to the M’s. And then down, down, looking, through the fine print, until He gets to my name. “Melashenko, E. Lonnie.” And then, maybe with glasses on, He begins to review 53 years of my deeds: good and bad, loving and selfish. Feeding the widows and orphans, or not feeding them. Reflecting the character of Jesus, or not reflecting it. Obeying Him, or not obeying Him. And He looks and studies, and sifts through evidence, and weighs all the factors. “What should I do with Lonnie Melashenko?” Maybe it’s a close call: 51% to 49%. What should He do? Which way should He let the scales tip?

And of course, to study 53 years of a man’s behavior patterns might take pretty close to 53 years, if you review the entire record. Multiply that by six billion trial cases, and we can see why it might be a rather long court session.

Well, friend, I think the evidence is clear, on the other hand, that the incredible mind of God is somewhat like that “ethernet.” How well does He know me? Perfectly! And how long would it take for Him to “download” every pertinent detail about my entire life? It would be instantaneous, wouldn’t it? It would be ludicrous to think that with God there would be that waiting time, like when your computer kind of gurgles and makes that rumbly sound while the program you want slowly, slowly, slowly boots up.

There’s a wonderful old book entitled The Knowledge of the Holy by the late A. W. Tozer. He’s talking about our knowledge of God, but there’s a chapter included about His knowledge. “The Divine Omniscience” is the title, and let me share a few sentences. Keep in mind what all this would imply about how long it would take, or how hard it would be, for God to be the Judge of all the earth.

“To say that God is omniscient is to say that He possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn,” he writes. “But it is more: it is to say that God has never learned and cannot learn.”

In other words, God will never once say: “Oh, my, I didn’t know that.” Or, “Oh dear, I don’t remember that; I’m going to have to look it up in some book. I’m going to have to log onto AOL and check out that fact, because I don’t remember.” That’s not going to happen. Tozer continues:

“The Scriptures teach that God has never learned from anyone. ‘Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being His counsellor hath taught Him?’”

That’s from Isaiah 40, a marvelous chapter. But let me just up the ante a bit more, still quoting from this book by Pastor Tozer:

“He knows all that can be known. And this He knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist in the centuries or ages yet unborn. God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter and all matters, all mind and every mind, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being. . . . He knows no thing better than any other thing, but all things equally well. He never discovers anything. He is never surprised, never amazed. He never wonders about anything nor (except when drawing men out for their own good) does He seek information or ask questions.”

Friend, I think it’s time to take a deep breath! You talk about the “ethernet”; this is the God-Net! Instantly . . . every fact. Every detail. Every thought, every nuance, every piece of information or feeling or emotion or hurt or joy.

You know, this kind of turns on its head the entire question of the judgment. If God is looking into books in heaven, I can tell you this: He’s not looking in those books to find out something. This isn’t research to Him; He’s not looking for an answer He hasn’t already got.

And if not — if in the Judgment He doesn’t need to study our case, or think about or ponder our case . . . then He must be doing all of this for some other reasons. Or for some other people.

And if you stay with us next week, we’ll be begin to think about who those people might be.