Understanding God: He is NOT Omnipresent
Then the Lord appeared to him by the terebinth trees of Mamre, as he was sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day. So he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing by him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the ground… And the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” – Genesis 18:1-2,20-21
God is not omnipresent. That sounds heretical, doesn’t it? Particularly as it also challenges thousands of years of theology and the long-held beliefs of an innumerable number of people, both dead and alive.
Omnipresence is a myth, one of the fictional attributes we ascribe to God in awe and worship. And He indeed deserves our awe and worship because of His gargantuan stature and the indispensable role He plays in our lives and our universe. However, there is no passage in the Bible where God describes Himself as omnipresent. Now, we need to draw a line between what God Himself says He is in a direct address and what the various writers of the books in the Bible describe Him to be. If you draw this line, you will realize that all the biblical passages that are being used to justify the omnipresence of God are not His own direct account of Himself. They are more of what the scribes, the prophets, the apostles and other writers of the books attribute to Him.
For context, this writer has also held and described God as omnipresent all his life. And it was not until recently that his attention was drawn to the myth that humanity has held for Aeon about the omnipresence of God. This piece will also be followed by several series drawn from and supported by scripture, to demonstrate that omniscience is a myth and does not accurately represent God.
The idea of omnipresence also highlights our ignorance of the sheer magnitude of God’s creations. The realms and the works of the LORD are so vast and humongous that they beat the wildest imaginations. We primarily focus our attention on the earth and use it to aid our understanding of God. But then this earth, as huge as it is to us, with billions of people living on it, is indeed a very tiny entity among the creations and the realms of God.
The planet Earth is part of the Milky Way galaxy. Now, in terms of size, the Earth is incredibly tiny in that galaxy. The Earth’s size is so small compared to the Milky Way that if the Milky Way were the size of a football field, Earth would be smaller than a tiny grain of sand! Even though the Earth seems huge to us, it is super, super tiny in the vast galaxy we live in! To drive that home, Earth’s size is about 0.00000000013% (1.3 trillionths of the total size) of the Milky Way!
Now, let’s take a closer look at the Milky Way itself, where the Earth and its billions of people are just like a grain of sand. There are estimated to be 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in the universe. Some studies even suggest there might be more, possibly up to two trillion galaxies. The Milky Way is just one of these, and in terms of size, it is average-sized compared to the other galaxies in the universe of God’s creations. There are other galaxies, numbering in the billions, that are much larger than our Milky Way. Each galaxy has its own stars, its own planets (just like the Earth is one of the planets in the Milky Way), and its own structures. Let’s still not forget that the Earth, through which we understand and relate to God, is just like a tiny speck in its own parent galaxy.
Now, to our reference scripture today, the Bible tells us that God appeared to Abraham “by the terebinth trees of Mamre”. He was not there before that time. In fact, from Genesis 2, when God began relating to humans (we will still conduct a blow-by-blow analysis of biblical references from Genesis 3 onwards on the myth of omniscience), God was always either coming or appearing. He was not always present there either physically or spiritually.
Location-wise, God is in heaven (Psalm 11:4, Psalm 115:3, Ecclesiastes 5:2, Matthew 6:9, Matthew 7:11, Matthew 10:33, Matthew 16:17, Matthew 18:10, Matthew 18:14, Matthew 23:9). Positionally, He is seated on His throne in glory and majesty, and He is being fawned over and worshipped by an innumerable company of angels in the highest where He is (Isaiah 6, Revelation 4).
Inasmuch as God is not omnipresent or everywhere, He nonetheless has the ability to be wherever He wants to be at any time. He can also be in multiple places at the same time as He desires. But that does not mean that He is presently present everywhere at the same time as we have long believed Him to be. No, that is a myth.
God did not communicate Himself to us in this way. The only thing He claimed to be is the Almighty, or Omnipotent (Genesis 17:1). As for Him being omnipresent, that is a myth.
Selah!
Also read:
- Understanding God: He IS Omnipotent
- Collecting Moss
- The Benefits of Wisdom: Felicity and Excellent Speech
- Christian One Liners
- Fruit Of The Womb Is A Reward
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