God makes the rules, and He has provided for us to learn the rules.True, anyone can do whatever he wants. Thats why people who have seen UFOs or believe they are Napoleon Bonaparte arent thrown into institutions anymore...The underlined part could easily be missunderstood. Perhaps you want to specify what you mean by it.

Also, while this question isnt one of concern for you. That is not true for the great majority of people as can be seen in the long disagreement between Lutherans and Calvinists regarding predestination. To know wether God has choosen for me to be saved or lost or wether I choose that for myself is to me a quite profound question. But of course you do not have to share my questions.

Also, I do think that all ideas that are going to be presented has been so. Nothing new has surfaced in a while now, only new ways to repackage what was already said. And it is not likely that anyone posting is going to change position. I think this is perhaps ripe to RIP. (Or if it is supposed to move forward towards something, let it do so now.)

May the Holy Spirit teach.

Thomas

It’s completely different. Your question is flawed because it poses a contradiction between God’s attributes. God can’t create a rock He can’t lift exactly because there is nothing He can’t do and, therefore, no rock He can’t lift. So omnipotence can’t contradict omnipotence. It's the same as saying that God is not omnipotent if He can't be bad.

On the other hand, if God didn’t know the future, He wouldn’t be omniscient. Besides, the argument that God's foreknowledge and man's free will are incompatible is also completely flawed.
The fact that God knows the future doesn’t fix it. Someone gave a good example about this. Let's say I use a time-machine to travel forwards in time to next week. I write down all your actions on Thursday in a book, seal the book and travel back again. I present you with the sealed book and tell you not to open it until the end of Thursday. When you read it, you see that I had prior knowledge of all your actions. Did I remove your free will? No, because I simply observed. I did not set in motion all the events leading up to your actions.
In the same way, if you travel to the future, watch a horse race and then travel back, you know what the result of that horse race will be, but did you make that specific horse win the race?

Now, while you tried to answer my first argument, I saw no answer for the following two:

1) our character is affected by the Holy Spirit's action, therefore, for someone to know what kind of character I will develop, he will have to know how I will respond to the Holy Spirit's working in my life (which, of course, is determined by my choice).

2) If God knew the character a person would develop, the person's character would be fixed, according to your position, and so would be his salvation or perdition, which are determined by the character. While the same might not be said about your personality, your character is entirely determined by your free will. Is your character fixed by God’s foreknowledge?

Lets say I travel with the time machine to the future and check out the horse race. Upon arriving at home again, would I be able to do anything which would eliminate that winning horse from the race, such as breaking its legg? Or would me knowing the horse will win prevent me from doing such a thing (by other means than greed)?

Thomas,

Moses wrote Genesis, after these things had already happened. But God made this prophecy to Rebekah while the children were yet in her womb. How could God know beforehand that Jacob would follow Him but Esahu wouldn't?

I think in God's case He can and does sometimes intervene (sometimes warning the person, like in the case of Peter and Judas), as long as by that He doesn't violate anyone's free will.

If God knows something is going to happen, and then intervene and by this intervention cause something else to happen (by for instance the human heeding the warning, then Gods forknowledge wasnt the last word in the matter. Such is agreeable.

TE: I can feel someone saying, "Eve could have chosen not to eat of the fruit, but if that had been the case, God would have known that." But the problem is that Eve's eating of the fruit was determined *before* she made her choice, not after.

MM: Determined? What do you mean? Sister White said nothing about it being determined. Divine hindsight determines nothing. It simply reports the facts.

“From the beginning, God and Christ knew of the apostasy of Satan, and of the fall of man through the deceptive power of the apostate. God did not ordain that sin should exist, but He foresaw its existence, and made provision to meet the terrible emergency.” (DA 22)

TE: Regarding the question if God knows if we will be saved, He didn't even know if Christ would be saved!

MM: None of the quotes you posted agree with this idea. You are assuming it.

TE: God sees things the way they are.

MM: God also sees things the way they were before they are. He "calleth those things which be not as though they were." (Rom 4:17)

TE: God's understanding of the future is based upon His unlimited intelligence and knowledge.

MM: And yet you believe God does not know the future with certainty. Is God just a good guesser, or does He base of His knowledge of the future on hindsight?

TE: Christ, the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, is a statement regarding God's character, not the inevitability of sin. It was never God's plan, design, or intent that sin would arise. Sin was not inevitable (or even likely).

MM: How could Sister White have stated it more plainly? There is nothing ambiguous about it, nothing tentative. She plainly says God knew Lucifer and man would sin. Period! No doubt about it. God's knowledge of the future is based on hindsight - not guess work.

DA 22
From the beginning, God and Christ knew of the apostasy of Satan, and of the fall of man through the deceptive power of the apostate. God did not ordain that sin should exist, but He foresaw its existence, and made provision to meet the terrible emergency. (DA 22)

TV: If God knows something is going to happen, and then intervene and by this intervention cause something else to happen (by for instance the human heeding the warning, then Gods forknowledge wasnt the last word in the matter. Such is agreeable.

MM: His "interventions" are part of it, not an afterthought. When God watches the future like history He sees Himself interacting with FMAs. It's not like He goes back and does something different than He saw. That would be impossible.

Will, I suppose you may not read this if you are not participating in the thread anymore, but I didn't read your post past the point that said that you won't be participating in the thread anymore. I didn't see the point.

If you wish to post something with the goal of carrying on a conversation, I'll be happy to read and respond to anything you'd care to write.