God is like thermodynamics - He lets you know WHAT will happen but not WHEN

Thermodynamics can tell you whether (under a set of physical conditions of temperature and pressure) a chemical reaction will proceed in the forward direction. But it's important to know that thermodynamics will not tell you anything about how quickly or slowly a reaction will happen, only whether or not it will happen. 

In a different field, the study of chemical kinetics examines the speed of reactions, but makes no statement about whether it's possible thermodynamically or not.

One example of a thermodynamically favorable reaction is the conversion of carbon in coal form to carbon in diamond form (again, under a specific set of temperatures and pressures). However, kinetically, it is a very slow reaction. It can take many, many years for this reaction to happen. Just because a reaction is thermodynamically favorable tells you nothing about how fast or slow it may be.

The Bible, and God, can be thought of as more akin to thermodynamics than kinetics. By reading the Bible and praying, you can learn more about WHAT will happen, but not necessarily WHEN. In today's world, timing is important and we want to know "when". However, the Bible shows that often, the "when" is not so important spiritually, while the "what" is the most important thing.

One concrete example of this is Abraham and Sarah. Sarah was childless for many years - at this point Abraham already had a child Ishmael with another woman - and then God promised them a son (see Genesis 17: 15-22). At the time of the promise, Abraham and Sarah were both quite old, well past childbearing years. Even some years after, still no child, although an angel came with a reminder of the promise (Genesis 18: 1-15). Some time after that, Abraham and Sarah finally had their child Isaac - the promise that God had made to them (Genesis 21: 1-7). So it was a long, long time afterward the promise that the event happened. But God kept his promise.

So it's really important to keep in mind when reading the Bible that the "what" is the important thing, not the "when". One example we can look at is the fall of Babylon - something which was predicted in the Old Testament but was unthinkable at the time. Yet, Babylon did fall much later. If you're interested in that, I've gone into a lot more into that in a separate post which includes the specific prophecy from the Bible and what turned out to happen: https://thinkingaboutthebigquestions.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-bible-tells-us-that-something-will.html 

We just saw 2 examples here, but you'll notice many more in the Bible. The take-home message is that just because we ourselves are interested in "when" things are going to happen, that does not mean the "when" is important. Instead, from God's point of view, the "what" is important.

 

 

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