When god Changes

One fascinating fact about many of the religions of the world is the unpredictable character of their gods.

New Agers believe that everything is god and god is everything. The source of authority or “truth,” they say, is what you experience. Shirley MacLaine, proponent of New Age religion, says, “My own out-of-body experience...served to validate the answers to many questions—the surest knowledge being derived from experience.”[i] In other words, you may believe one thing to be true today, but then an experience tomorrow will change that truth. And what you believe to be true will not be true for me. For New Agers, truth changes.

 For New Agers, truth changes.

But we learned that God’s truth never changes. It is the same today as it has always been.

Buddhists believe that salvation is in karma. Kenneth Latourette, a leading church historian, explains this Buddhist belief: “Karma may be described as the sum of an individual’s thoughts and actions in all his previous incarnations. In each incarnation, he modifies his karma for either good or bad...The ultimate aim is not only to improve one’s karma, but to do more, namely, to escape from the endless series of changes, the appalling eternal succession of births and rebirths. This would be salvation.”[ii]

How different this is from God’s simple, unchanging plan of salvation! With God’s plan, we know where we stand, what we must do, and the result—an eternal, unalterable place in the family of God.

 With God’s plan, we know where we stand

Animists and idol worshipers have developed their understanding of how their gods work from accumulated folklore. Their gods are so capricious that they must constantly be appeased with sacrifices and a variety of rituals so they will not change the rules of the game. But we can read God’s rules in His never-changing Word.

The God of the Bible is the only unchanging Supreme Being. He has never altered one bit of His character or His purpose. That is what I love about our wonderful and marvelous God. I have known Him personally since 1944, and today He is just the same in His holiness and love, His grace and mercy as He was when I first turned my life over to Him. Theologians call this consistency and dependability God’s immutability.

 The God of the Bible is the only unchanging Supreme Being.

When I get up in the morning to pray, His response will not be different from when I pray to Him at bedtime. When I confront a difficult situation, I have calmness of heart because I know His unchanging Holy Spirit is present to guide me.

Mormons believe God was once a man like us. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism said, “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man.” If Joseph Smith was right then not only has God changed radically, but he can never be eternal, infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing, or even perfectly just.

The Bible presents the God we worship as One who is the same from eternity to eternity. The writer of the Book of Hebrews compares the immutability of God to His changing creation:

“They will perish, but You remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed. But You remain the same, and Your years will never end” (Hebrews 1:11,12, NIV).

He never changes in His essential being, never varies how He reacts to sinful man, to man’s repentance, or to man’s worship. Sin and unbelief always displease Him; obedience and faith always warm His heart.

You can have confidence that God is the same yesterday, today and forever!

By Bill Bright

©2025 Copyright Bright Media Foundation

[i] Shirley MacLaine, Dancing in the Light, 35. As quoted in Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Deceivers: What Cults Believe, How They Lure Their Followers (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1992), 236.

[ii] Kenneth S. Latourette, Introducing Buddhism (New York: Friendship Press, 1956), 4. As quoted in Russell P. Spittler, Cults and Isms (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1962), 96.