The Omniscience of God

BOOK: All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience

CHAPTER 2: The Omniscience of an Omnipotent and Omniloving God

BY: Neal A. Maxwell

Few doctrines, save those pertaining to the reality of the existence of God, are more basic than the truth that God is omniscient. "O how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it." (2 Nephi. 9:20.) Unfortunately, this truth is sometimes only passively assented to by individuals who avoid exploring it and coming to understand its implications. Later on, such believers sometimes have difficulty with the implications of this core doctrine—which connects with other powerful doctrines such as the foreknowledge of God, foreordination, and foreassignment. The all-loving God who shapes our individual growing and sanctifying experiences—and then sees us through them—could not do so if He were not omniscient.

The word omniscient has, at times, been used carelessly, unnecessarily blurring our understanding of this very fundamental attribute of God. We read in the Prophet Joseph Smith's Lectures on Faith that God is perfect in the attributes of divinity, and one of these is knowledge: ". . . seeing that without the knowledge of all things, God would not be able to save any portion of his creatures; for it is by reason of the knowledge which he has of all things, from the beginning to the end, that enables him to give that understanding to his creatures by which they are made partakers of eternal life; and if it were not for the idea existing in the minds of men that God had all knowledge it would be impossible for them to exercise faith in him." (Lecture 4, paragraph 11.)

Joseph Smith also declared, "God is the only supreme governor and independent being in whom all fullness and perfection dwell; who is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient." (Lecture 2, paragraph 2.)

God, who knows the beginning from the end, knows, therefore, all that is in between. He could not safely see us through our individual allotments of "all these things" that shall give us experience if He did not first know "all things."

Below the scripture that declares that God knows "all things" there is no footnote reading "except that God is a little weak in geophysics"! We do not worship a God who simply forecasts a generally greater frequency of earthquakes in the last days before the second coming of His Son; He knows precisely when and where all these will occur. God has even prophesied that the Mount of Olives will cleave in twain at a precise latter-day time as Israel is besieged. (Zechariah 14:4.)

There are no qualifiers, only flat and absolute assertions of the omniscience of God such as these: "The Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all." (1 Chronicles 28:9.) The psalmist said that the Lord's "understanding is infinite." (Psalm 147:5.) "Now we are sure that thou knowest all things." (John 16:30.) "The Lord knoweth all things which are to come." (Words of Mormon 1:7.)

Mortals should not aspire to teach God that He is not omniscient by adding qualifiers that He has never used in the scriptures. Job rightly asked, "Shall any teach God knowledge?" (Job 21:22.)

The Lord could not know all things that are to come if He did not know all things that are past as well as all things that are present. Alma described God's "foreknowledge" of all things and said also that God "comprehendeth all things." (Alma 13:3; 26:35.) Indicating that omniscience is a hallmark of divinity, Helaman wrote, "Except he was a God he could not know of all things." (Helaman 9:41.)

The Lord Himself said that He "knoweth all things, for all things are present" before Him. (D&C 38:2.) We read, too, that "all things are present with me, for I know them all." (Moses 1:6.)

Therefore, God's omniscience is not solely a function of prolonged and discerning familiarity with us—but of the stunning reality that the past and present and future are part of an "eternal now" with God! (Joseph Smith, History of the Church 4:597.)

Most, if not all of us, have been momentarily wrenched by the sound of a train whistle spilling into the night air—and we have been inexplicably subdued by the mix of memories and feelings it evokes. Perhaps, too, we have been beckoned by a lighted cottage across a snow-covered meadow at dusk. Or we have heard the distant but drawing soft laughter of children at play. Or we have been tugged at by the strains of singing from a nearby church. In such moments we have felt a deep yearning, as if we were outside something to which we belonged and of which we so much wanted again to be a part. The impact has been brief, to be sure—but real!

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