God’s foreknowledge of things to come is a major key to understanding the words of Jesus. Throughout the Gospel of John, the Lord Jesus often fast-forwards to the future and speaks of things that he is yet to do as though they are already accomplished. Prophetic knowledge is a doorway.
These prophetic statements are glimpses by Jesus into the future. He then returns to the present and speaks plainly so that his disciples can understand him (John 16:29).
God sent forth His Son “in the fullness of time”, that is, at a certain point in history. Yet his “goings forth” had been “from old, from everlasting” (Micah 5:2). This verse refers not to his prophesied birthplace of Bethlehem but to the prophecies spoken of him from the beginning (cf. Genesis 3:15).
Jesus could say, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58) because Abraham had rejoiced to see his day, and was glad. Abraham had ‘seen’ the Lord’s day prophetically. The enemies of Jesus misunderstood his words to mean that he lived before Abraham!
In a prophetic sense, Jesus had always been “I am.” We understand this statement when we grasp the concept of God’s foreknowledge, and the fact that what God foreknew He foretold in Hebrew history through the prophets. Jesus was “slain from the foundation of the worldI” and the names of all those who believe were written in the Book of Life (Revelation 13:8; 17:8; Ephesians 1:4-5). In the mind of God, Messiah Jesus was ever-present and spoken of prophetically, before his timely birth in Bethlehem.
Jesus proved this so by expounding to the two disciples on the Emmaus Road “the things concerning himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27). In Jerusalem, a short time later, he again raised this subject (Luke 24:44-46).
We will benefit as we learn this subject better. If we could see our future as clearly as God does, we would speak of future events as present already.
When a woman whose husband was too old to father a child stood in the doorway of Elisha’s room, the prophet ‘saw’ her cuddling a newborn son. The doorway had become a prophetic entrance that enabled Elisha to see the woman a year ahead in time (2 Kings 4:15).
Few Christians speak from such a level of prophecy, but all can see the future in Bible Prophecy and speak of events as though present already. It is in this sense that the “soon” in “Behold, I am coming soon” is not just a future expectancy but an ever-present reality! Albert Einstein would have found it hard to get his head around this biblical concept, but it makes spiritual sense to those who think with “the mind of Christ”.