I think it goes even farther than that. If God were to catch you up to Heaven and then show you your life in toto, you would see thaat even your future decisions and choices are already known and accounted for, before you have even made them. He could show you something from 5, 10, 20 years in the future in your life, in minute detail, wrong choices and all, just as easily as He could show you details from your childhood that you don't even remember anymore. It is ALL Foreknown to Him, in minute detail.
As I pointed out before, When God considered creating His Creation, He was minutely and intimately aware of all possible choices and actions in all possible creations, and in creating this creation, the choices and decisions and actions of those who would inhabit it were decided and set at the time He created it. Each inhabitant fulfills the function they were predestined to fulfill. That in no way removes responsibility for those actions from the ones doing them, because the inhabitants do not know the end from the beginning, and therefore must actually DO those actions and choices and decisions that God has Foreseen and Foreordained by the very act of creating this specific creation.
Every decision, choice, and action you take or make is based on what has gone before, which presents certain choices and decisions that might not be the same, had what has gone before happened differently. And, every decision, choice and action you make or take affects that which comes after, by presenting certain choices, options, and ideas that are based on and flow from those actions, choices, and decisions. So actions, decisions, and choices are based in great measure on cause and effect, which is central to this creation. God could have created a world in which cause and effect did not reign, and it would be a very different creation indeed, with a much different history and destiny.
What usually happens, is that those who don't accept this will cry that we're saying that God "decrees" people to sin, as though he were in Heaven saying, "I've decided that John will be an adulterer, , and Mary will be a drug addict, and Bob will be a thief. So let it be written, so let it be done. I decree it to be as I have said." Nothing could be further from the truth! God knows that, given the circumstances that John will come into, he will act on the temptation to become an adulterer, that Mary will become a drug addict, that Bob will become a thief, because of the circumstances in their lives, which were shaped by the choices and decisions of the past, not only of themselves, but of others. Given that God has ordained their lives to start when they did, how they did, and where they did, and by whom they were conceived, it is inevitable, from God's perspective, that they will in fact become those things, do those things. It is from such as these that God chooses to save some of them, predestining them to salvation by His choice, and they are Elect unto salvation by God's choice, and not by John, Mary, or Bob's choice. Therefore, God's interventions into His creation are foreordained at the time of Creation, by the very fact that He chose to save some at the time He chose to create this creation. If God did not intervene, NO ONE would be saved.
The point I would make is in addition to something on which you were silent:
It is from such as these that God chooses to save some of them, predestining them to salvation by His choice, and they are Elect unto salvation by God's choice, and not by John, Mary, or Bob's choice. Therefore, God's interventions into His creation are foreordained at the time of Creation, by the very fact that He chose to save some at the time He chose to create this creation. If God did not intervene, NO ONE would be saved.Again, I agree with what has been stated.
But you stop with election, and did not address God's biblically commanded co-requisites for salvation.
Note that you also make a point with which I agree in a later post #447:
Not only that, but we are commanded to preach the Gospel to every living creature, which points back to my previous sentence.
We are likewise commanded to obey the Gospel (and the apostles teaching of it): namely to confess a belief and servitude unto Christ, believe in His resurrection, confess our sins and repent, and be baptized.
As you point out and I agree, God in His foreknowledge knows who will in fact make a sincere confession and give his life to Christ and presumably those people were predestined to received God's grace, mercy and be regenerated. I also agree that God is sovereign cause in this, not man.
We can argue about when regeneration happens but we can agree it does happen and minimally the confession, repentence, and baptism are the obedient fruit of that regeneration, and salvation is appropriated for the believer as God has commanded it be done.
The point being that irregardless of to whom and when regeneration happens, fullfilment of the correqusites for salvation is conditioned on man's willful obedience.
An obedience that God 'enables' in the regenerate, but a required free will obedience none the less.
The further point being that absent such obedience, salvation is not yet appropriated (it may or may not be pending), and the indvidual that assumes they are saved without having yet obeyed and approriated their salvation is 'testing God' and in grave danger. Because they do not know if they are ultimately 'elect' (or 'unelect' and never to appropriate salvation because they die in an accident going home from bible study) until they fulfll God's command regarding salvation as written.
God Himself has decreed that election is sovereign to Him alone, yet salvation is conditioned on man's acceptance.
Yes God has predestined election and salvation in such a way that the elect do in fact obey by their free will, and likewise the unelect disobedient are on their own, by their own free will (unregenerate as it is).
But none of us know and can be assured of our election until after the fact. After we (of the free will enabled and given us) appropriate our salvation and make certain by fulfilling what Christ has commanded of us to be saved.