Elder Linder

Part 1 of “Divine Foreknowledge and Free Will: Understanding God’s Chess Game”

In chess, there are more possible game variations than there are atoms in the observable universe. After just three moves each, players can create over 9 million different board positions. This mind-boggling complexity emerging from simple rules reveals a beautiful truth about how God works with human agency.

When I first learned this fact about chess, it transformed how I understood divine foreknowledge. Traditional Christianity often portrays God’s omniscience as a fixed knowledge of a single, predetermined future. But what if, like a divine chess master, God sees not just one future, but all possible futures—every variation, every choice, every potential outcome?

The loss of the 116 pages of the Book of Mormon manuscript provides a perfect example of this divine foreknowledge in action. When Martin Harris lost these precious pages, the Lord revealed He had prepared for this possibility centuries earlier, commanding Nephi to create a second record covering the same time period (D&C 10:38-45). This wasn’t just a backup plan—it was evidence of how God works with human agency while accomplishing His purposes.

Think about what this means: God didn’t predetermine that Martin Harris would lose the manuscript. Instead, He saw this possibility—this potential “opening move” in the great game of mortality—and prepared a path that would both preserve agency and accomplish His purposes. Just as a chess master might prepare for thousands of possible opening variations, God prepared for the countless possibilities that could arise from human choice.

The beauty of this understanding is that it preserves both God’s omniscience and our genuine agency. Like a grandmaster who can see countless moves ahead while still allowing their opponent to choose freely, God can know all possibilities without determining which ones we’ll choose. He doesn’t just know one future—He knows every possible future and has prepared for each.

This view of divine foreknowledge, sometimes called “open theism,” aligns beautifully with restored truth about God’s nature and our agency. It helps us understand how God can declare “the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10) while still maintaining that agency is essential to His plan.

Just as each chess game begins with infinite possibilities that gradually narrow through player choices, our lives consist of countless decision points where our choices shape our path. God, in His perfect wisdom, sees every possible variation and has prepared ways for His purposes to be accomplished through any sequence of choices we might make.

I testify that understanding this aspect of God’s nature deepens our appreciation for both His perfect foreknowledge and His respect for our moral freedom. Like a master chess player, He can accomplish His purposes while honoring our ability to choose, preparing paths for every possibility while allowing us to determine which path we’ll take.

In our next post, we’ll explore how God works with these choices once they’re made, adapting His divine strategy while maintaining His ultimate objectives.