It is a good point, but what if we look at it as free will & providence (as opposed to determination) co exist, so that the free will is intact and the sovereignty can also play out. I’m thinking that determined may look different than providential. Just a thought. 
Chad
What is the difference between providence and determinism?
There are some who have stated both freewill and providence/determinism are true, according to the Scriptures. They acknowledge that they appear to be contradictory, which they are, but in their view they call it a biblical mystery & leave it at that.
For example, the teachings of a Witness Lee of the Local Church movement in the USA & abroad, of which i am intimately familiar with. Witness Lee was an associate of Watchman Nee.
Eusebious, An opinion is " a belief or idea that is held but not substantiated by direct proof or knowledge." I have never seen a man literally turned into an animal with claws like a bird and hair like the feathers of a vulture. Neither has anyone else. However, I have seen a people who have lost their minds and live like animals because they insist on doing what they will to do. For example, drug addicts and alcoholics who refuse to give up their addictions end up living in the streets, scrounging out of dumpsters, paying no attention to hygiene whatsoever etc. This is a fact.
Jeff, you say "Just because some people can’t understand what is beyond their comprehension does not make what God determines “meaningless’. Now we see through a glass darkly and know in part.”
I would say that Jesus came to give us light so we no longer “see through a glass darkly.” In Him was the fullness of God. So yes, I would say that we are able to comprehend who God is. What has been previously said in the Bible about God should be measured up in the light of Christ.
It may be possible that determinism is what God absolutely will have you do, and providence may well be what He has in store for us while allowing our free will.
P.S. As it says in Genesis 2:9 “And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.” Obviously, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was NOT GOOD for food since God warned Adam and Eve that if they ate of it they would die.
Those of us who are, are degrading the character of God, and blaspheming God who is the essence of LOVE, in whom is “no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5).
That’s nice, but it was i who said what you quoted not “Jeff” (and WhoTF is Jeff, anyway).
And it was the apostle Paul, who was not less than the highest of all apostles, who said we now see through a glass darkly & know in part.
It was also given to him to “complete the word of God” (Col.1:25). Do you see more clearly than he?
So Christ forgave everyone at the cross, did He? Does that imply that all evil people, having been forgiven, can just continue to do evil with impunity? They’ll all go to heaven anyway, since they have been forgiven?
It is mind-numbingly simple AND OBVIOUS… man has freewill up to the point it does not contravene the divine purposes of God; from that point forward God’s freewill prevails and man’s submits.
A “determinist” (of which according to the understanding being used here I am not) might well answer that way, BUT Paul and Co were fully involved with Christ in the outworking of salvation to and ON BEHALF OF that end-time generation, as per…
That said… from my perspective there is NO postmortem “hell” to be rescued from, be that a supposed fiery ECT or correction. The ONLY “hell” Jesus spoke of was the prophetic “gehenna” of Israel’s AD70 conflagration.
I am Jeff. They accidentally misquoted. What does ‘WhoTF’ mean and is that appropriate in this or any discussion?
Exactly, believer and unbeliever already totally and completely forgiven forever at the cross, but not unpunished. Numbers 14:18.
Paidon, my most dearly precious beloved elder most wise brother in the CHRIST, to whom the most respect is due, this is the second time you have called decided determinists such as poster Eusebius, Gary Amirault, Matt Slick, Albert Knoch, etc, and and all other multitudes of Christian determinists of the past 2000 years a “blasphemer”, only because they advocate biblical determinism. Of course Matt Slick (the Calvinist & creator of CARM) is in error, but because he advocates ECT, not necessarily determinism.
BTW, let us note that Jesus said ALL blasphemies, except one, shall be forgiven men. Determinism was not the unpardonable blasphemy. Neither did Jesus mention freewill as an unpardonable blasphemy.
Surely there is no “darkness” (or sin) in God the determinist when He out of pure absolute 100% nothing but Love causes, directly or indirectly, sin or evil for a moment, for nothing but the absolute good of all for all eternity, and suffers incredibly beyond what you could ever imagine (e.g. in Christ), for the same goal.
To be in the “dark” is to be confused or in error. God is never in either, even if He amazingly, beyond your finite comprehension, brings such things to pass, lasting for a moment of eternity, to effect an eternity of good, joy, peace, love, salvation, & reconciliation of every being that ever lived.
However most men do not - yet - see the “big picture”.
Someone mischievously once quipped… “You have no freewill; you are just a projection of MY dominant thoughts.” 
Then in that view there is no future “hell”, all are already saved, so freewill or determinism doesn’t matter at all?
Why are you, then, even bothering with this discussion?
BTW the scripture passages you referred to are, again, what i have referred to as the relative view of scripture, not the absolute. No one has refuted this viewpoint/theory.
Did God not bring evil upon Noah’s generation in the flood?
Did God not bring evil upon righteous Job?
Did God not burn to death wicked Sodom?
Did God not turn King Neb into an animal for 7 years?
Dod God not let Jonah be swallowed by a creature in the sea for 3 days?
Shall i add another 50 scripture passages to the above?
Could God, Love Almighty the Omnipotent, love beyond what we can imagine or think, whose love never fails, love beyond even faith and hope, who loves even HIs enemies, not stop all of the most (100 thousands of) wicked acts of history you can imagine if He desired? Why didn’t He?
More importantly, if you accept UR, do any of these momentary sufferings matter compared to/relative to endless eons of bliss for eternity?
Plesae answer that, or, most respectfully beloved brethren in Jesus, stifle thyself (and quit posting cartoon pictures, LOL x2) ;
Please - we’re throwing around the word ‘evil’ and not discriminating between a moral evil (profoundly immoral and malevolent.
“his evil deeds”) synonyms: wicked, bad, wrong, immoral, sinful, foul, vile, dishonorable, corrupt, iniquitous, depraved, reprobate, villainous, nefarious, vicious, malicious) and those things we call ‘evils’ which are punishments or corrections that God brings.
If we call punishments that are corrective in nature ‘evils’, then we must differentiate that usage from the moral usage.
I cannot think that even the ‘big picture guys’ could lay vileness or corruption or depraved and immoral acts at God’s feet and say : You caused this.
As for ‘allowing’ evil - obvious, isn’t it, that we have been given a freedom and a responsibility, and WE have turned each one our own way, and WE have been reaping what we have sown since, almost, the beginning of things.
We have to lay the blame where it belongs - we are sinners. We were given stewardship and responsibility and instead we have made hell on earth.
God did not make moral evil. We did and we do. And still we (the human race) will not acknowledge our sins, assume our stewardship, and grow into Christ.
Once we lay the charge of immorality at the Creator’s feet, well, read this from Christ Triumphant by Thomas Allin:
I am merely expressing the deepest and most mature, though often unspoken, convictions of millions of earnest Christian men and women, when I assert, that to reconcile the popular creed, or any similar belief in endless evil and pain, with the most elementary ideas of justice, equity, and goodness (not even to mention mercy), is wholly and absolutely impossible.
Thus this belief destroys the only ground on which it is possible to erect any religion at all, for it sets aside the primary convictions of the moral sense; and thus paralyses that by which alone we are capable of religion. If human reason be incompetent to decide positively that certain acts assigned to God are evil and cruel, then it is equally incompetent to decide that certain acts of His are just and merciful. Therefore if God be not good, just, and true, in the human acceptation of these terms, then the whole basis of revelation vanishes. For if God be not good in our human sense of the word, I have no guarantee that He is true in our sense of truth. If that which the Bible calls goodness in God should prove to be that which we call badness in man, then how can I be assured that, what is called truth in God, may not really be that which in man is called falsehood? Thus no valid communication - no revelation - from God to man is possible; for no reliance can, on this view, be placed on His veracity.
For let me repeat that if goodness in becoming infinite turns into evil - if infinite love may be consistent with what we call cruelty - then, for all we know, truth may turn into falsehood, justice into flagrant wrong, light into darkness.
BOTH freewill or determinism have their place in scripture, but HOW that is is so often misconstrued… some of your “viewpoint/theory” being a case in point, IMO.
WHAT?… just because I have an understanding on these things other than the one you dictate you think you can question my participation! 
By all means you are welcome to replace those “scripture passages” with your “viewpoint/theory” – I know which I find more inspiring and trustworthy.
And you think you are proving what? Clearly as I’ve stated previously God’s freewill triumphs over man’s freewill WHENEVER He so chooses, and He does as he wills. Again, your point?
Based on your view expressed earlier… you maybe shouldn’t go there. 
“stifle thyself” 
I grew up in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and went to grade school there through eight grade.
They practice closed communion.
That’s where I probably got ingrained, with this “free will stuff”, rather than embracing the “puppet on a string” viewpoint. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. But to be fair, this same determinism view is shared by Islam - which has over 1 billion worldwide followers. That’s why I’m trying to get on board and help spread the deterministic word - from a Christian perspective. 
I don’t think that philosophers and Christian theologians will put this “free will stuff” vs “puppet on a string” perspectives to bed - anytime soon. It probably needs a final revelation, from the creator.
And hypothetically, if you put a Full Preterist, Die Hard Christian Determinist, and a Christian Scientist, in a room together - guess what? They would argue to eternity, regarding their perspective viewpoints, from Biblical exegesis .
I am no expert in the determinist viewpoint, but will share an opinion which the more learned may correct.
What is it that dictates a man’s actions if he has no freewill? It is his will that is not free, but makes choices that are in bondage to his own individual nature as created by such things as birth, heredity, environment, etc.
Likwise, what was it that made a dog to bark? HIs free will? Or his nature?
What was it that made a cat to meow? HIs nature.
What made the cow to moo? His nature.
What made the Satan to be a liar & a murderer from his beginning/creation? His nature.
None of the above could do anything to be free from their nature they were born with anymore than a leopard can change its spots.
Hence they do not have free will.
Disclaimer: the above is an opinion of a theoretical determinist, not necessarily that of the author.
Any discussion about man’s will also needs to give thoughtful explanation to man’s sinful nature. Some opponents to God’s sovereignty and man’s crippled will misunderstand and think that man is a puppet, doesn’t make decisions, or cannot make decisions. This is an unfortunate misunderstanding and has resulted in a waste of argument over words. Of course human beings make decisions! However, just like any other being or even a material object, mankind cannot exercise a function or property that is outside of our nature. So advocates of God’s sovereignty over all are using the word ‘free’ (or not using it for that matter) in a very absolute and philosophical way. We are saying that man’s will is not ‘free’ in two very critical ways.
First since the nature of man is sinful, mankind cannot change his own nature. We are sinners by nature. We are not sinners because 100% of all human beings just ‘happened’ to sin or chose to sin by our supposed ‘free’ will. Instead we sin because we are sinners by nature. Love of sin, selfishness, and hatred of God is woven into the first born nature of every human being. Our will is not free, but bound to sin. Parenting is often a good exercise to make this observation. Mom and dad are so happy to have a beautiful healthy baby, but it is not long before they observe that the will of even this beautiful baby is bent and corrupted with a natural desire to sin and disobey. Ezekiel 16 highlights this observation.
Second the Scriptures teach that God is both the changer of hearts and the one whose loving influence prevails in every situation from the greatest to the lowliest. Man’s will is not free to prevail over God’s will, but instead his will prevails over our will and over all. Sadly some use words like ‘deterministic’ to describe God’s loving influence in the world. Seems to me like that those who would do so should be thanking God for his influence when they are maligning it. Anyway the happy news is that since God alone is the heart changer he can and does change hearts and so we see individuals becoming Christians and one day all mankind will worship Christ around his throne as he promised. Previous posts have objected saying that if this were the case then God himself is evil for allowing or causing or influencing evil acts in this world. Yet Acts 4:28 makes it clear that God has a good purpose even in these hard to understand things for there was no worse moral evil in the entire world than the crucifixion of Christ. Yet we read that, ‘They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.’ The most thoughtful explanation of God’s absolute sovereignty over all I have read was in Millard Erickson’s ‘Christian Theology’ for he takes numerous pages to thoughtfully describe God’s sovereign work as ‘sausive’ and lovingly artistic in His purpose.
Decades ago my roommate in college described to me a funny story about how his parents tried to educate his sisters about the birds and the bees. As we all know learning about procreation can be a shock for children and so special timing and settings are needed for this exercise. Yet as awkward as it is, it is a necessity in order to move children into adulthood. Anyway when my roommate’s sisters learned that fertilization of the egg happens through insertion of the man’s penis into the woman’s vagina, they freaked out saying ‘no man is going to stick that into me!’ I still laugh thinking about it. Little boys likewise have the same aversion to girls. However, we all know that hormonal changes happen that change all of our minds about our interest in sex. Seems to me that those who reject God’s loving sovereignty in salvation are having a similar reaction as my roommate’s sisters. They are saying ‘no God is going to stick his influence and change into my life and give me new birth. I am changed and born again by my own FREE WILL.’ Oh really? Even the very image of God designed into mankind teaches us that God is the initiator and we are the responder. Life flows from God to mankind, from Christ to the church, and as the metaphor of our own bodies illustrate, from husband to wife.
Friends, a romantic does not use the word ‘deterministic’ to describe sex. Why even my mechanical explanation above parts ways with romance, yet it is an accurate description of procreation, though inappropriate in most settings. However, if someone wants to discuss the physical details we could diagram it. There is much more here than can ever be said in this setting because we also read that Christ is in the Father and the Father in God, just as believers are in Christ and Christ is in the believer. A careful theologian will note the significance that the choreography of this dance always begins with the Father serving Christ first and Christ serving the church first. So everything from creation to romance demonstrates that the origin of all things is from God, just as the Scriptures teach. God alone has no antecedent. So Christian theology can diagram the details of God’s utter sovereignty over our personal salvation timeline and his sovereignty over all. A bold Christian can do that because they trust that God is loving, always! Though some may freak out like my friend’s sisters. So we should remind ourselves that in practice God is not mechanical at all, but instead a true romantic. He is a most loving courtier as he changes our hearts and handles this corrupt world. So praise God that we cannot change our own hearts or the hearts of others. How dangerous would that be! God is much better at bringing us to the ecstasy of knowing him!
Time to share a classical and historical poem today.
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-4161e9231033aa335aca697a3ef0c4e2?convert_to_webp=true
Yes there are blind men, but Christians are not blind. We are not touching elephants, but instead God has touched Christians opening our ears and eyes, so that we can now touch him, 1 John 1.