Think about this: if God foreknows something will occur, can it not occur? Well, no. If God knows that something will occur, then it must occur. Otherwise, God is wrong. So, nothing can change what God has foreknown.

How does God foreknow? Does He have a crystal ball that He gazes into and watches the future the way we might watch television? Of course not! If something can be foreknown, then it must have been predetermined. Who predetermined it, then? Who plotted the course of all the events of time? Who declares the end from the beginning? Well, God, of course.

Isaiah says:

If God foreknows, He predestines. If He predestines, He foreknows. He declares the end from the beginning, and He will accomplish all His purpose. The past, the present, and the future are fixed by virtue of being foreknown of God. If God chooses to neglect the foreknowledge of some acts of men, so as to allow them some concept of freedom, then He is no longer omniscient, is He? If He neglects any area of knowledge, then He cannot be omniscient. So, there is no uncertainty with God!

So God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He did to us, and made no distinction between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.

Acts 15:8-9

Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.

Hebrews 4:11-13

As David said, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me." Its hard to fathom. Past, present, future are all now to God.


How could God base any decision of His will on any action on our part, if His plan was declared before ever He created, we did not then exist, and any event, which could then only be future, had to be predestined by Him for Him to have foreknowledge of it?
Robert Lewis Dabney not only wrote Stonewall Jackson's biography, but also was a theologian and Confederate Army chaplain. (While I would reject his views on slavery, his theology was very good):

Nature and Revelation concur to teach us that God is a Being of infinite intelligence, and of will. The eternal object of His cognition, as we saw, when investigating His omniscience, is nothing less than the whole of the possible; for the wisdom and selection displayed in the creation of the actual, show that there was more before the Divine Mind, than what was effectuated. But when we inquire for the ground of the difference between God’s natural and His voluntary knowledge, we find no other than His volition. That is, the only way in which any object can by any possibility have passed from God’s vision of the possible into His foreknowledge of the actual, is by His purposing to effectuate it Himself, or intentionally and purposely to permit its effectuation by some other agent whom He expressly purposed to bring into existence. This is clear from this fact. An effect conceived in posse only rises into actuality by virtue of an efficient cause or causes. When God was looking forward from the point of view of His original infinite prescience, there was but one cause, Himself. If any other cause or agent is ever to arise, it must be by God’s agency. If effects are embraced in God’s infinite prescience, which these other agents are to produce, still, in willing these other agents into existence, with infinite prescience, God did virtually will into existence, or purpose, all the effects of which they were to be efficients. That this prescience is all-embracing, the Scriptures assert in too many places (Acts 15:18; Isa. 42:9; 46:10; Ps. 147:5; John 21:17). Therefore, His purpose must extend to all that is, or is to be effectuated.

Dabney, Systematic Theology

The Baptist theologian Dr. A. B. Strong wrote:

In eternity there could have been no cause of the future existence of the universe, outside of God Himself, since no being existed but God Himself. In eternity God foresaw that the creation of the world and the Institution of its laws would make certain its actual history even to the most insignificant details. But God decreed to create and to institute these laws. In so decreeing He necessarily decreed all that was to come. In fine, God foresaw the future events of the universe as certain, because He had decreed to create; but this determination to create involved also a determination of all the actual results of that creation; or, in other words, God decreed those results.

Strong, Systematic Theology

God is omniscient. He knows your destiny, and has known it from eternity. Whether you love Him or hate Him, you are fulfilling His plan for you. After all, He didn't have to create you. Your destiny is fixed and settled according to God's purpose.