How do you respond to Matthew 21:1–5?

Jesus commanded his disciples, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this: ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately” (vs. 1-4).

Though this verse is sometimes appealed to by defenders of the classical view, it does not support their view of an exhaustively settled future. For the Father to reveal this to Jesus he need only know all present circumstances: there’s a donkey and a colt tied up right now somewhere in Jerusalem. If the Lord needed to exercise some providential influence to get the owner of the animals to go along with Jesus’ request, that could be easily accomplished. The fact that Jesus speaks in conditional terms—“If anyone says anything to you”—shows that this is not an infallible preview of an unalterable future.