“How does God answer all prayer at the same time?”

QUESTION: I am an atheist. A lot of people must pray to your God at the same time. How does He hear and answer all at the same time?

ANSWER: How thankful I am that I can call God my God! He is a great God, far above our understanding and beyond our power to explain Him. In His Word, the Bible, we read, “God is greater than man. Why do you contend with Him? For He does not give an account of any of His words” (Job 33:12-13). “He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name. Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite” (Ps. 147:4-5). He, the Creator-God who has created the universe, has not only made the many billions of stars, but has counted and named them. Man has devised a numbering system for stars and attempts to classify them, but every new and more powerful telescope that he builds reveals more stars than he saw before.

A closer look often reveals that what scientists have been considering a star is really a faraway galaxy of hundreds of millions of stars. God has made each one. He has determined the orbit for each one. From time to time astronomers see the explosion of a star as it flares up into tremendously greater brightness, becoming a nova or even a supernova. But God knows each star by name and keeps track of their changing numbers as well.

How can the many prayers that ascend to Him at any given moment be a problem to a God whose understanding is infinite, as the Bible portrays Him for us? Anyone who denies God’s existence is a foolish atheist – especially in light of the millions of believers down through the ages who have experienced how He graciously hears and answers their prayers.

What is important is not that we know how God can hear and answer all these prayers at the same time. Vital to our eternal happiness is that we accept the great salvation that this all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful, infinite God freely offers each one us! It should stagger our imagination to realize that God knows all about us, and yet loves us and wants us to enjoy fellowship with Him forever. He sent His only begotten Son into this world to save mankind – the highest creation of the creator-God – who had rebelled against Him and done their own thing, which the Bible calls sin.

He still offers this great salvation today to whosoever will accept it. Dear atheist questioner, give up your unreasonable, foolish fighting against God and receive His dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as your own Savior. Then you too can pray and joyfully experience how God will hear and answer your prayers – along with all the others he receives at the same time.

By Eugene P. Vedder, Jr.