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I Don't Know
By Steve Higginbotham
January 13, 2005
 

When we are looking for an answer to a question, "I don’t know" doesn’t seem to be very helpful or satisfactory. However, for a people who are dedicated to "speaking where the Bible speaks and being silent where the Bible is silent," sometimes "I don’t know," is not only a good answer, but the Scriptural answer.

Friends, as we attempt to speak the oracles of God (1 Peter 4:11) we must understand that what we know about the workings of God is limited to the revelation that God has given us (Deuteronomy 29:29). Consequently, there may be many questions that I have, but because God has not revealed the answer, those questions must be answered with an "I don’t know."

Recently many have asked if God caused the recent tsunami that resulted in over 150,000 deaths. The Scriptural answer is, "I don’t know." I do know that God has, in the past, used nature to accomplish his purposes (Genesis 6-7). But the only way I know this is because God told us so. Could God use nature to accomplish his purpose today? Yes. Is that what he did with this tsunami? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else for that matter, because we have no revelation from God on the matter.

The point of this article is simply to remind you that "I don’t know" is not necessarily a bad or insufficient answer. In fact, "I don’t know" sometimes is the only truthful and Scriptural answer, and we need to be content with it. A biblical "I don’t know," is much preferred over an extra-biblical opinion.

 

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