God’s Foreknowledge and Man’s Free Will

Two recommended articles by David Servant that address the issues of God’s foreknowledge and man’s free will.


God's Regrets
The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them" (Gen. 6:6-7).
I [the Lord] regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me and has not carried out My commands (1 Sam. 15:11).
I suppose it is comforting to know that even God has His bad days. But on a more serious level, we can't help but wonder why God would regret something that He himself did. We just read that God said He was sorry that He "made man on the earth." He wished He hadn't done it. But if God is all-knowing, and if He knows everything that is yet to happen, why didn't He decide not to create man on the earth before He got started, knowing that He would regret it otherwise?


Deception is an Election

Moses' warning about false prophets in Deuteronomy 13:1-4 raises a question. If God knows everything, then why did He say that a false spiritual leader could be a means for Him to "find out" if we love Him with all our hearts?
The simple answer to that question is that God didn't create us as pre-programmed robots. Our choices are exactly that—our choices. Loving God is something we choose to do or choose not to do. God must therefore test us to see what we will choose.
Certainly God foreknows what we will do, but His foreknowledge is based on the outcomes of our tests. If there were no outcomes, there would be nothing for God to foreknow.