“And now if Christ had not come into the world, speaking of things to come as though they had already come …”—notice the use of past tense verbs, which are actually the future perfect tense.
The grammatical and prophetic use of the past tense in place of the future occurs when an action is “not yet completed but so viewed by the speaker. Hence he speaks as though it were already completed. A perfect certainty even though not yet done in time.” 35 This usage is frequent in the poetic discourse of prophets (compare Numbers 24:17; Isaiah 5:13; especially Isaiah 9:1–6; also Genesis 15:15; and Judges 15:3).
“This is put when the speaker views the action as being as good as done. This is very common in the Divine prophetic utterances: where, though the sense is literally future, it is regarded and spoken of as though it were already accomplished.” 36
Such use of the prophetic tense shows the absolute certainty of things spoken. “The great Jehovah contemplated the whole of the events connected with the earth, pertaining to the plan of salvation, before it rolled into existence … ; the past, the present, and the future were and are, with Him, one eternal ‘now’.” 37 The implications of this fact are staggering and must cause some of us to readjust our thinking. If God the Father knew of the certainty of the Savior’s atoning act millennia before it physically occurred—and he did—it means that one aspect of the concept of predestination is true. All those who will be saved can be saved only through the atonement of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:5). There is no other way.