"When the plan of salvation had been formed, and Christ had elected to give his life for the redemption of men, he was then, already, in the intent and purpose of that plan, the offered victim, and is spoken of as the "Lamb slain" - "slain from the foundation of the world" (kosmos), or from the time when the redemptive economy was established. Rev.13:8. It will be noticed that he is not said to have been slain before the
foundation of the world, implying that the fall of man and redemption by the death of Christ, were events fixed and foreordained before the world was formed, and man created. This would place too powerful a weapon against the divine government, in the hands of the skeptic.

But the disbeliever asks with an air of expected victory, Did not God foreknow that man would sin? Was it not therefore a settled fact that he would sin? And did not God, therefore, when he made man with that certainty before him, become responsible for the entrance of sin into this world? - So it might look from that point of view, and with that method of reasoning. But as the Scriptures do not so express it, it is not necessary to formulate it to such a conclusion. God made man, as he must make all intelligences who are to serve him, a free moral agent, that such service may not be mechanical and constrained, but voluntary and free. As such, he could obey or disobey; could maintain his rectitude or fall into sin. His course was to be determined by his own choice. God did not force him to sin, nor did he intend that he should sin. On the other hand, he made every possible inducement (short of constraining his free will) to keep him in the path of obedience. Being free, of course God knew that he might sin; but this would be a very different thing from saying that he know that he would sin.

And is not this as far as it is necessary to go? To God's omniscience, every possible course that Adam might take as a free spirit, with a free choice, and every possible contingency that might arise from his uncoerced action, was open and plain. So, also, every step necessary to meet that contingency would be provided for should it occur. But, it will be asked, does not Peter (1Pet.1:20) say that Christ was foreordained to his work before the foundation of the world? - No; not "foreordained," as in the common version, but foreknown (prognomenou). Christ could be foreknown, in God's plan, as a redeemer, to meet a possible contingency of that nature that might arise, without being foreordained to meet a known necessity already in existence. Man chose to sin; then that One foreknown in the counsels of eternity, to meet such a contingency should it arise, entered upon his work, and in the fullness of time was, as Peter says, manifested to the world.

This view of the subject does not restrict the attribute of God's
foreknowledge, but greatly enhances it; it leaves man a free moral agent, as he was; and it leaves the skeptic without a case.

If God foreknows things, that thing necessarily happens. That is to say, there is no such thing as free choice. (The Bondage of the Will)

"The Lord has presented to us that the enemy is still seeking with all his power to center the work the work in Battle Creek, contrary to the word of God. A movement to erect more buildings there, and to gather in more people, will bring results for evil that are not now foreseen.

"Not all the institutions now at Battle Creek should have been there. Our people have found excuse after excuse for establishing new enterprises and erecting more buildings."—"Bulletin," 1899, p. 131.