The Mystery of Creation: Chapter 6: Limited Wills: The Chess Master

The Chess Master

                You see, the reason why people have a hard time understanding this is that they do not look at it from the right perspective.  If everything I have said above does not work for you, then think of it from the perspective of a chess game.  The best chess players are those who predict their opponent’s moves way before they even make them.  The best chess players are able to stay ten or more steps ahead of their opponent.  They know that if they move their knight to a certain place that their opponent will move their pawn.  They know that this will then free up their rook to move to put the king of their opponent in check.  They know that their opponent will then move their queen in front of the king to protect him.  They then know that if they move their rook to kill their opponent’s queen that the opponent will move their king to kill the rook.  This will then make it so that if they move their bishop to just the right spot they will put their opponent’s king in checkmate.

                This is how God truly works.  This is how God created all things and put it all in order.  He knows every single person so well that He knew that if He put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with a Tree of Knowledge that they would eat fruit from that tree and set in motion all things as they have played out throughout history until now.  He knew that if He created them with the genetics that He created them with that those genetics would come together at just the right time to create Cain and Abel.  He saw down the timeline, far into the future, predicting ALL of the actions and reactions that each person would take so that the family line of Jesus would be established.  He predicted with 100% accuracy that Mary, mother of Jesus, would be born at the time she was born.  He planned for it, and then at just the right moment He sent His angel to approach her. 

                And He knows everything and everyone so well that with perfect precision, He has planned it all out, and He alone knows exactly when to act at exactly what moment to continue to keep His plans on course to receive His expected ending; the final checkmate…which is Jesus’ triumphant reign over all things.  We’ll get into that later, but the point is that just like a Master Chess Player, God does not force His “opponent” to do anything.  He simply plans His strategy around what He knows His “opponent” is going to do.

                You see, most look at it from the perspective that God created us and planned out our destinies and so it is set in stone and we cannot deviate from that course.  Therefore, we are all forced to follow our own destinies.  We have no choice.  If we are destined for Hell then we will go to Hell and there is nothing we can do about it. 

                The truth, however, is more like the chess match, not a set-in-stone destiny.  God is just so smart and so good and so clever and so perfect that He is a gazillion steps ahead of all people who exist, even Satan and all his demons.  God knows how each piece in this Universal Chess Game will move and when.  He knows how each piece’s moves will affect another and so on and so forth.  He sees the full chain of events all the way to the end with perfect accuracy, and He knows how it will all end.

                You see?  God didn’t make Satan take all of those moves.  He didn’t make Satan act in the way that Satan acted.  He simply knew Satan would move the way He did because He knows Satan so well.  He knows what is influencing Satan right now.  He knows what is driving Him to do whatever it is that He is doing.  He knew about it long before time began.  It isn’t that He makes anyone do anything.  They simply do exactly as He is expecting them to act.

                And so, before time began, God worked out every possible pathway that would exist throughout time to determine which would lead Him most efficiently and effectively to His ultimate goal.  Then He backtracked through all of the moves that needed to be made in life and worked out all possibilities all the way back to the beginning.  Then He set everything in motion and let it all play out exactly as He knew it all would.

                So God is not like a little kid playing with His toys.  He isn’t making the figures move about and shoot one another.  He isn’t controlling them and making them do bad things to one another.  He simply set everything in motion and He is watching it all play out, interacting when and where He needs to in order to keep everything on track with the Master Plan that He has made so that all things arrive at their expected ends.

                Remember how we talked about the lying spirit?  God spoke to a spirit who had no problem lying and He convinced the spirit to go and lie so that God could destroy His enemies.  The lying spirit didn’t HAVE to go and lie.  The lying spirit did it because he wanted to.  God, however, asked Him to do it because He, like a master chess player, knew that by doing this He would fulfill His ultimate plan.  He used an enemy that He knew would do what He wanted to go destroy an enemy that He wanted destroyed.  God didn’t actually go and lie.  God didn’t commit a sin Himself.  He simply made His move and watched as the lying spirit carried out what God knew he would do. 

                This is a master strategist, not a manipulator.  This is a King who knows how to play the field so that whoever is with God wins the war.  This is a King who doesn’t soil His own good name by doing dastardly deeds.  He isn’t a weasel who craftily twists words and manipulates emotions.  All He did in that passage was show up and ask a question.  “Who will go and lie?”  That was His question.  He knew that by asking this simple question that the lying, evil spirit would volunteer and go and lie so that His enemies would be destroyed.  He didn’t coerce the evil spirit.  He didn’t force Him against His will.  He just knew that all He’d have to do was show up to a place where that evil spirit was, hanging out with his friends, and He knew that if He asked them if any of them would go and lie to His enemy that the evil spirit that did do it would choose to do it of his own volition.  In this way, He never actually committed any crime.  He never went against His word.  He just looked at the pieces on the chess board and made His move.