Could We Change God's Mind?

We prayed for many years that God would heal a terminally ill friend. He continued to deteriorate despite our prayers. The doctors, finally, gave up hope. Then a few friends requested a famous faith-healer, who happened to be in the city, to visit and pray for our ailing friend. The preacher visited and prayed. Lo and behold, the terminally ill man was miraculously healed!

Did God change HIS mind when a more righteous or a spiritually gifted faith-healer prayed for this ailing person?

Can God change HIS mind?

There are two diametrically opposite answers to this question. Some Christians believe that God can change HIS mind, whereas others assert that God does not and cannot change HIS mind.

Let us briefly study their assertions.

God Changes HIS Mind

Some Christians think that God can change HIS mind, "...advocates of a theory called open theism have argued that God can and does change and that we can cause that change. They find their support for this in passages such as Genesis 18, where Abraham intercedes before the Lord for Sodom and Gomorrah, and God seemingly changes His mind. They claim further support from passages like Jeremiah 18:7–10, Jonah 3:10, and Genesis 6:6, which speak of God repenting or relenting or being sorry."1

These Christians, upon reading these verses, believe that God changes HIS mind:

"The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled." (Genesis 6:6, NIV, Emphasis Mine).

"And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people." (Exodus 32:14, RSV, Emphasis Mine).

"If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it." (Jeremiah 18: 7-10, NIV, Emphasis Mine).

"When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened." (Jonah 3:10, NIV, Emphasis Mine).

God Cannot Change HIS Mind

Pastor, theologian, and author, R.C Sproul, unpacks this dilemma from the vantage point of God's omniscience.2

There's one sense in which it seems God is changing his mind, and there's another sense in which the Bible says God never changes his mind because God is omniscient. He knows all things from the beginning, and he is immutable. He is unchanging. There's no shadow of turning within him. For example, He knows what Moses is going to say to him in Numbers 14 before Moses even opens his mouth to plead for the people. Then after Moses has actually said it, does God suddenly changes his mind? He doesn't have any more information than he had a moment before. Nothing has changed as far as God's knowledge or his appraisal of the situation.Is God confused, stumbling through all the different options—Should I do this? Should I not do that? And does he decide upon one course of action and then think, Well, maybe that's not such a good idea after all, and change his mind? Obviously God is omniscient; God is all wise. God is eternal in his perspective and in his full knowledge of everything. So we don't change God's mind. But prayer changes things. It changes us. And there are times in which God waits for us to ask for things because his plan is that we work with him in the glorious process of bringing his will to pass here on earth.