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Chapter 9 of “Bible Teach”—”Are We Living in ‘the Last Days’?”—leads us into six main topics:

1. God’s knowledge of future events
2. Christ’s “presence” and “the conclusion of this system of things”
3. The teaching that Jesus is Michael the archangel
4. Proof texts that we are in “the last days”
5. Significance of and praise for the work Jehovah’s Witnesses are doing
6. The urgency for you to become an active and faithful Jehovah’s Witness

Today, we’ll discuss the first of these six subjects.

Topic #1: God’s knowledge of future events

Paragraph 1 (p. 86) begins Chapter 9 by saying, “Tragic things happen so suddenly and unexpectedly that no human can predict what tomorrow will bring. However, Jehovah knows what the future holds.”

Christians would agree with the statement that God knows what the future holds. The problem is that the Watchtower doesn’t really believe that.

In fact, that statement brought to my mind an article on the Watchtower’s website entitled, “Did God Know That Adam and Eve Would Sin?”

Its answer was no, that Jehovah in his wisdom did not create the first humans as automatons programmed for a fixed course, so he voluntarily chose not to make use of his divine ability of foreknowledge.

That article goes on to say that if Jehovah had known that Adam and Eve would disobey him, he “would seem to be unloving, unjust, and insincere. Some might label it cruel to expose the first humans to something that was foreknown to end badly. God might seem responsible for—or at least an accomplice to—all the badness and suffering that followed throughout history. To some, our Creator would even appear foolish.”

But wouldn’t the same problem arise if God used his foreknowledge of anything humans or angels would do in the future? Did they really have free will? Did God set them up for failure?

But the Bible shows that God does know what people will do. To give just a couple examples, he knew that Pharaoh wouldn’t listen to Moses (Exodus 7:4). He also knew that Jesus would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver and that Judas would be the betrayer (Zechariah 11:12-13; John 13:21-26)

Does that mean that Pharaoh and Judas were automatons or that God was “responsible for—or at least an accomplice to”—their sinful actions?

More to the first point of this chapter, if Jehovah voluntarily chooses not to exercise divine foreknowledge and doesn’t know what choices angels or human beings will make, then how can paragraph 1 assure us that “Jehovah knows the future” so we can also know what is about to happen in these “last days”?