Our Pondering:
To answer this, we have to start somewhere that seems completely off topic. We have to establish a few basic principles about God to understand His nature and therefore be able to understand the true nature of the question.
We know that the Bible says God is omniscient based off of these Bible verses, and more that are not listed:
-Psalm 147:5 Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.
-1 John 3:20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
-Job 37:16 Do you know how the clouds hang poised,
those wonders of him who has perfect knowledge?
The Bible also says
Jeremiah 7:31 And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind.
(Bolding is to show emphasis for the sake of this particular pondering and was added by us)
These verses seem to contradict because the first three verses talk about God being all knowing, but this last one seems to imply that God was surprised by something. This is God's reaction to a specific time the Israelite's sinned.
For us, the confusing word here is "mind." This makes us assume that a thought occurred to God that he hadn't had before as a result of their actions. This can't be, because God is omniscient. To understand this we searched into the concordance to find what the original Hebrew text said. The original word used is "leb" which means: inner man, mind, will, heart, and understanding. This SAME word used in the Bible meant "mind" 12 times, "understanding" 10 times, and "heart" 508 times. So the meaning of this word is heart with the connotation of mind and understanding rather than any other way, such as mind or heart on their own.
This seems like a huge rabbit trail, but this was the key to understanding the difference between God's desire and knowledge in situations where they appear to be the same. I think in this case, it is talking about God's heart or emotion not WANTING them to sin here, but him allowing them to for the sake of free will. This is an emotional reaction to their actions not a lapse in God's understanding. But also, just because they did this thing, and He knows they were going to do this, does not mean that He wanted it to happen. He knew what they were going to choose, but was still saddened by their choice,and their choice was separate from His commands.
God's desire and knowledge are separate both in the Israelite's decision to sin and in our eternal outcome. God is saddened by our decisions to reject him but allows us to because of free will. Yes, technically he KNEW we would make that decision but that doesn't mean he wanted us to, nor did he destine for that to happen. He controls how he reveals himself to us, but he doesn't control our heart.
The question implies that people who want to follow God and would otherwise be saved and go to heaven are robbed of that chance by "destiny" or "God's will" when in fact the opposite is true. If you truly have the desire to follow God, He will reveal himself to you, and in fact, he reveals himself to everyone. What we do with that is our choice.
-Grace and Katie
