How can God preplan everything and still give people free will?
The sovereign God preplanned everything from eternity past, and nothing takes Him by surprise, yet He left man with a free will. God gives men and nations their free will, and they all meet at the end in His plan. This is hard to reconcile and cannot be fully explained, but it is true and seen happening constantly.
Les teaches that the sovereign God is in control of the whole thing, and that God's plan for the whole age of history was architecturally drawn up from eternity past. Nothing takes Him by surprise; everything is right. Yet Les acknowledges the difficulty: a sovereign God preplanned everything that has happened, and still left man with a free will. He says this is hard to reconcile—that God lays it out, gives men and nations their free will, and they all meet at the end. Les cannot explain it, but he believes it, and says you can see it happening constantly. In the same context, he notes the Antichrist will rule and reign for seven years, a satanically awful worldwide period compared to which the Nazi Holocaust would be a Sunday school picnic, showing God remains sovereign over all.