Does God have vision for humankind? In 1 Timothy 2:4, God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. So is it correct to think that God has a vision for us?
Since the Lord needs no encouragement in order to keep carrying on as God, we ought to be careful how we describe him. He doesn't need to be "pumped up" or patted on the back. Nor does he need to make a 5-year or 10-year plan.
Vision in the Bible is usually a prophetic glimpse of God or his truth, upon which a prophetic message is based. True, I often refer to Revelation 7:9, which is a grand vision of the great multitude of the redeemed. Yet is it John’s vision, or God’s? It certainly isn’t “vision” in the modern evangelical / individualistic sense (“That brother needs a vision for his life), but vision in the prophetic sense.
Now we might perhaps say that God has a "hope" -- that all will be saved. Hope seems a better word -- and yet it may imply that the Lord is lacking in knowledge. His will is that all be saved — and this will has different aspects (permissive will, moral will, sovereign will, and so forth). It is perhaps even simpler to say desire; we won’t be attributing to God a lack of knowledge, inspiration, or willpower. So I like the word desire.
Thus, in my opinion, we are on the firmest ground when we speak of God's will or desire. Hope doesn't quite do it. And vision -- unless we mean his penetrating insight into all the cosmos and every human heart -- is exactly the wrong word to use of the Deity.
