in the opposite direction. If the ship did not drop anchor and stay still, it
would be carried off to its doom. It would be like a human being with
two wills that disagreed with each other. When one of them acted, the
other would have to be still. Otherwise, if both acted at once, a dizzying
madness would assault the mind.
If, as the modern-day belief goes, God’s omnipotence was as absolute 58
for doing evil as it is for doing good, surely it would be possible, even
easy, for God to lift the whole of hell to heaven. He could turn devils and
satans into angels. In a moment he could take all the ungodly people on
earth, purify them from sin, make them new, holy, and reborn, and jus-
tify them, turning them from children of wrath into children of grace
[Ephesians 2 : 3 – 8 ] solely by assigning and attributing to them the justice
of his Son.
God cannot do this with his omnipotence. It is against the laws of his
design for the universe. It is also against the laws of his design for human
beings, which dictate that the individual and God have to form a mutual
partnership. (From later sections in this book [§§ 89 , 99 , 100 , 110 : 4 – 6 ,
368 – 372 ] you will see that this is the case.)
The ridiculous modern-day belief about God’s omnipotence would
mean that God could turn all goat people into sheep people and move
them at will from his left side to his right [Matthew 25 : 31 – 46 ]. He could
transform the dragon’s spirits into Michael’s angels [Revelation 12 : 7 ]. He
could give the sight of an eagle to someone with an intellect like a mole.
In a word, he could make a dove person out of an owl person.
God cannot do these things, because doing so is against the laws of
his design, although he never stops wanting to or trying. If he could have
done things like this he would not have let Adam listen to the serpent,
pluck a piece of fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
and bring it to his mouth. If God could have avoided it, he would not
have let Cain kill his brother. He would not have let David take a census
of the people; he would not have let Solomon build shrines for idols, or
let the kings of Judah and Israel desecrate the Temple, which they did a
number of times. Indeed if he could have, he would have saved the whole
human race without exception through his Son’s redemption and would
have uprooted hell in its entirety.
Ancient gentiles ascribed this kind of omnipotence to their gods and
goddesses, as you can see from their myths. For example, in the story of
Deucalion and Pyrrha, the stones they throw behind their backs become
§58 god the creator & creation 81