Spiritual Wisdom:

QUESTION: "Does God have the power of foreknowledge, and if so, to what extent does He use this power?"
 
ANSWER: "God has certainly foreknowledge but not to the extent where the free will of the individual is concerned -- because He gave free will. If He knew beforehand what you may decide tomorrow, there would be no free will. Complete foreknowledge and free will of the individual cancel each other out. Certainly, God has foreknowledge to a very great degree, knowing His creation, His laws, their workings, the infinite possibilities of the free decisions of His children, and also knowing better than anyone the character and personality of all His children. His infinite wisdom coupled with all this knowledge enable Him to foresee to quite an extent and thus make His plans. Even a created being, even a human being, knowing someone else very well can assume, according to the given circumstances and his characteristics, he may act in a certain way in a certain situation. But it cannot be foretold with accuracy. God knows certainly that all His creatures must come back to Him at one time because of the perfection of His laws, but He does not know whether a person may, for instance, change his attitude today or tomorrow. By the same token, as I have explained in this lecture, God could not have known with absolute certainty whether some of His children would misuse the power He has given them or how many would do so. The possibility was there, yes, but He did not know with certainty that this abuse would occur. God will use His knowledge and power only insofar as it does not break His own laws. This is very important to realize, and it is understood by too few human beings. Often man says, 'Why does not God do such and such? All this misery would not be necessary,' and so on. Then God would go against His own laws, and since his laws are perfection, that would not be a perfect action. Whether or not a blind human being can comprehend that God's ways are the best does not matter. At some time, this blindness will disappear, and then the recognition will come that God and His laws are perfect and one's own perfection can only be reached by going through the self-inflicted misery. Is that clear?" (PL #20)

"Man often advances the idea that God should not have endowed His creatures with free will, for then the fall could never have happened. Or, at least, God should have interfered when it all started. But this is so shortsighted, so blind. Happiness can only exist for any created being to be in union with God. And to be in union with God, you must be of the same substance, endowed with the same aspects and qualities. Otherwise a union is impossible --even chemically this is so! Since God is freedom and freedom is one of the most important divine aspects, God's creatures must have this same freedom, otherwise they would be unlike God and thus incapable of being in union with Him. And this freedom, or free will and free choice, entails perforce the possibility to direct that free will contrary to divine law. In the right free choice and the abstaining from abuse of power lies divinity, lies love and wisdom and a number of further divine attributes. It is of utmost importance for all of you to grasp this idea, for then you will be able to answer many questions that you may not have understood so far." (PL #20)

"On this earth sphere, man has the possibility with his free will to develop and to decide what side to follow. In his own nature, there are of course both currents: the good current that once came from God in its own perfection, and the evil current that was accumulated, so to speak, during and after the fall. And between these two currents, the conscious self stands and has the possibility to decide to either take the line of least resistance, which is always man's lower nature, or to follow his higher self, which must be the difficult and narrow path." (PL #22)

"It is according to universal law that man himself has to make the first step in order to receive help from the world of God." (PL #21)