S4 E12: The Omnis

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Season 4 of Spirit-Led Hope covers the Doctrine of God, or theology, from a Spirit-led perspective. In this episode, Glenn looks at the three omnis...God's omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Glenn discusses each one and how a firm grasp of them can lead to increased faith and love for God.

This episode has a transcript. If your podcast player does not support transcripts, please go to the Transcripts section of https://spiritledhope.com/ . These transcripts have been edited for accuracy and are typically of higher quality than those produced automatically by many podcast apps.

Season 4 is part of a long term goal to study systematic theology from a Spirit-led perspective. If you want to know more about systematic theology, or expand your study, Glenn is using the following text as a helpful framework to make sure the main topics are covered:  Foundations of Pentecostal Theology, by Guy P. Duffield and Nathaniel M. Van Cleave.  The book is published by Foursquare Media and Glenn is using the Second Edition published in 2016.           

Transcript

S4 E12 TRANSCRIPT 

THE OMNIS     

INTRODUCTION

Hello everyone and welcome to Spirit-Led Hope. My name is Glenn Erichsen, and in this episode, we are looking at:

     THE OMNIS

If you and I were to do some on-the-street interviews and ask people to describe the traits of God, there are three words that will often come up…omnipotence, omniscience, and    omnipresence. Or, instead of hearing these words, the person might describe what they mean by saying something like:

God is all powerful, God is all knowing, or God is everywhere.

Omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence are the omnis that we are looking at in this episode. In these three words, “omni” is the Latin prefix for “all” and that prefix is simply attached to words that mean “potent,” “knowledge,” and “presence.” 

In this episode, we are going to give an overview of these three traits of God.

OMNIPOTENCE

Let us start with omnipotence. When we say that God is omnipotent, we are saying that he is all powerful, and that he can accomplish whatever he sets out to do. Just think about the power it took to create the universe. Jeremiah thought about this, and his conclusion was: 

“Oh, Lord GOD! You yourself made the heavens and earth by your great power and with your outstretched arm. Nothing is too difficult for you!

Jeremiah 32:17 CSB

God has infinite power…he never runs out of it, and everything is affected by it. Paul said this about Jesus:

For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities —all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.

Colossians 1:16-17 CSB

Everything in the universe depends on the sustaining power of God.

God has so much power that he can give it away and not be diminished one single bit. If you move in Pentecostal circles, you will often hear an emphasis on Acts 1:8 where Jesus says:

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Acts 1:8 CSB

And note here that this is not power for power’s sake…you know, to receive power just to be powerful and bring attention to us. This is power for the Church and to bring God glory. In writing to the Ephesians, Paul said:

I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us ​— ​to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Ephesians 3:16-21 CSB

That is a beautiful prayer. God’s power strengthens us on the inside and helps us to comprehend his love and greatness. It is power to help us grow in faith and love as we are filled with the Holy Spirit.  And it is power to serve God and others in a way that gives God glory. 

So, if God has infinite power that must mean that he can do anything, right? Well no. God can on only do those things that are aligned with his character. 

Remember in Episode 5 we said that all of God’s attributes are in effect all the time. So, for example, God is good all the time. It does not matter how much power God has; he cannot do something that is not good. 

Or let us take something like lying. Scripture tells us that God never lies. It does not matter how much power God has, lying would violate his character so he cannot do it. Another thing God cannot due is violate some logical definition. For example, God cannot create a square circle because that is a logical impossibility. 

But God’s inability to do these things are not indicators that God is powerless or does not have infinite power. God will always be true to who he is and always, always, act in accordance with his character.

OMNISCIENCE

Now let us look at omniscience. Omniscience means that God knows everything. And this is important because without all knowledge, God would be unable to be all-wise or always do the things that are good. 

There is nothing hidden from God. To be candid, this is one of those things that bothers me a bit. Why? Because I do not always want God to know what I am doing or thinking when I am doing something wrong. His omniscience makes it impossible for me to be anything but transparent. I am only kidding myself if I think I can hide something from God. And you are in the same situation.

But the benefits of this all-knowing are tremendous. Think about Romans 8:28.

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28 CSB

That verse could never be true if God did not know everything. It also could not be true if God did not have all power to accomplish his purpose. Here again, is another example where we see that all of God’s attributes are required all the time.

In a few days after this episode drops, I am attending an apologetics conference on Theology and Technology. One of the discussions will be about the moral implications of artificial intelligence. When you look at how large language models, like Chat GPT are made, you realize they require vast sums of data. They also take huge amounts of energy to process the information. And yet, if we took every bit of data used to make something like Chat GPT, that knowledge is a tiny amount compared to what God knows. As we read in Psalm 147:5…

Our Lord is great, vast in power; his understanding is infinite.

Psalm 147:5 CSB

OMNIPRESENCe

We have now talked briefly about God’s omnipotence and God’s omniscience. And I think these two attributes are somewhat easy for us to talk about, because we can relate to them somewhat. We can imagine ourselves as having more power, or more knowledge.

But now we are talking about omnipresence, and that is beyond our normal experience. When we say God is omnipresent, we mean that God is present everywhere. And this messes with us a bit, because we are limited to one physical location at one moment of time.  But omnipresence implies that God is present everywhere, and because he is eternal, he is present at all times. Nothing in our experience can relate to that. Only God has this attribute.

King David understood this and wrote about it in Psalm 139. The whole Psalm is beautiful to read but I am going to extract one part of it. When I read this, you will hear the word “Sheol.” The King James bible uses the word “hell” instead. But most modern translations just use Sheol. In the Old Testament, Sheol was the destination of people who died.

Here is what David wrote about God:

Where can I go to escape your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I fly on the wings of the dawn and settle down on the western horizon, even there your hand will lead me; your right hand will hold on to me.

Psalm 139:7-10 CSB

David recognized there is no limit to God’s Presence. 

Often when studying the omnipresence of God, you will hear the terms “transcendence” and “immanence.”

Transcendence has to do with the fact that God is above, or beyond, his Creation. In other words, God is independent of what he created. Immanence means that God is still involved with his Creation. Because of God’s immanence, Creation depends upon God, but Creation is not God. We do not worship the universe, even though God is present everywhere. Worship of the Creation itself as divine is something you would do if you believed in pantheism.

The omnipresence of God can be difficult to understand because God is not bound by dimensions. We are so used to defining the physical location of items, that our brains try to apply that to God. So, when we say that God is everywhere, we feel like we should be able to point to a physical spot. But that just doesn’t work because God is not bound by space and time like we are. God is spirit.

The reality is that no space can contain God. When Solomon dedicated the temple, he prayed:

But will God indeed live on earth? Even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain you, much less this temple I have built.

1 Kings 8:27 CSB

When reading this, it is easy to begin imagining that God is simply bigger than the world, or the universe. In other words, we just take the size of Creation, make it bigger, and say that is God. But even if we say that God stretches out infinitely in every direction, that is still applying physical dimensions to God. 

Think about it, God existed before Creation. He was present before space and time were made. We need to recognize and accept that God exists without size or physical dimensions.

What is equally hard to grasp, is that when we say God is everywhere, we mean God is totally present everywhere. It is not like we see one part of God here and one part of God there. When we talk about being in God’s Presence wherever we are, we mean God himself is at that place.

It is wild and crazy when you think about it.

SPIRIT-LED IMPLICATIONS

The three omnis…omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence are important aspects of a Spirit-led life. I think King David had a solid understanding of these three attributes of God. As a personal exercise, next time you read the Psalms, notice how David is captivated by the magnitude of the heavens, which reflect God’s power and knowledge. You can see that in Psalm 19. You can also see how David understood that God is everywhere. We read one example of that earlier in Psalm 139.

David is described as a man after God’s heart. And I believe part of the reason why is because he embraced the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of God.

When we grasp these three things, and lean into them, our faith and confidence in God grows. When we wake up in the morning, we know that God is with us and that nothing during the day can remove us from his Presence. He is with us through the good and the bad. Nothing can happen to us during the day (or night) that God does not know about. He knows everything and is with us. And he is not just with us in real-time. He is before us in time and has the power to make whatever is happening work for good on our behalf. 

Our response to this is one of ongoing worship and praise. Our response is also one of obedience and a desire to please God…not out of obligation, but out of love. God is worthy of our love and adoration. It is one of the ways we show that we are after God’s own heart.

CLOSING

As we end this episode, I am realizing that there is a very important aspect of God’s omnipresence we did not talk about. And it is this…that even though God is present everywhere, he may choose to manifest his Presence differently in certain situations and physical locations. This can have significant personal implications.

In our next episode we are going to continue looking at the omnipresence of God, and we might even try to tackle the question, “If God is everywhere, why can he seem so far away?

As always, you can send me comments, suggestions, or questions, by email at glenn@spiritledhope.com, or simply use the Contact Form at spiritledhope.com. That is spiritLEDhope.com. You can also send me a one-way text message by going to the episode show notes and clicking on the link with your smart phone. This is one of the ways you can encourage me.

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As you reflect upon the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of God…

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope, by the power of the Holy Spirit.  

Until the next episode, take care.

Copyright 2025 Spirit-Led Hope