Predestination is God's way of humbling all of us.
It humbles us when we try to logica our way through it, and it humbles us when we realize our insignificance.
There is no free will that itself isn't previewed and certified by God.
Time might be a mental construct for this era/age/eon/dispensation...
Timing, however is eternal.. Predestination in that sense might be a "mirage"..
Previewed and certified??? Like a Porterhouse steak?
Are you sure we get the last word?
Here, as a Thanksgiving blessing, are B.B. Warfield's...
Our difficulties with Predestination arise from a, no doubt not unnatural, unwillingness to acknowledge ourselves to be wholly at the disposal of another. We wish to be at our own disposal. We wish "to belong to ourselves," and we resent belonging, especially belonging absolutely, to anybody else, even if that anybody else be God. We are in the mood of the singer of the hymn beginning, "I was a wandering sheep," when he declares of himself, "I would not be controlled." We will not be controlled. Or, rather, to speak more accurately, we will not admit that we are controlled. I say that it is more accurate to say that we will not admit that we are controlled. For we are controlled, whether we admit it or not. To imagine that we are not controlled is to imagine that there is no God. For when we say God, we say control. If a single creature which God has made has escaped beyond his control, at the moment that he has done so he has abolished God. A God who could or would make a creature whom he could not or would not control, is no God. The moment he should make such a creature he would, of course, abdicate his throne. The universe he had created would have ceased to be his universe; or rather it would cease to exist-for the universe is held together only by the control of God...""A great man of the last generation began the preface of a splendid little book he was writing on this subject, with the words: "Happy would it be for the church of Christ and for the world, if Christian ministers and Christian people could be content to be disciples-learners." He meant to intimate that if only we were all willing to sit simply at the feet of the inspired writers and take them at their word, we should have no difficulties with Predestination. The difficulties we feel with regard to Predestination are not derived from the Word. The Word is full of it, because it is full of God, and when we say God and mean God—God in all that God is—we have said Predestination.
The article continues in the link. I hope you are all predestined to a wonderful, loving Thanksgiving, filled with God's gracious bounty. 8~)
No Calvinist would make this statement. An Arminian makes this statement.
You have free will as primary here, with God "certifying" that free will choice as good or bad, after the fact.. That's why you believe in salvation by God "looking down the tunnel of time" and reacting to men's "free will" choice to believe or not. You have God beholden to men. You have God reacting to men. You have God waiting on men. You have God a respecter of men. You have God subservient to men.
A Calvinist knows nothing precedes God's decree for His creation, most especially not someone's clever choice to believe in Christ.
Trinitarian faith is given by God alone. It is a sign of redemption; not a requirement for it. Men can do nothing to earn God's grace; it is an unmerited, merciful gift.