God doesn't "see the future". He calls his shots. Then he hits them. (But only when he feels like shooting.) At least, that's how I see it. There is no future. There is only the physical realm, the spiritual realm, and the now.
God's also really good at predicting trends, because he sees 100% of all existing data in streaming real time awareness, including human nature and individual character. Aside from that, if God predicted something that even threatened to begin to go a bit off course, he could put it right back on again through any number of direct interventions. Hello? (Duh.) He's GOD.
When Gabriel spoke to Daniel, Persia had already taken Babylon, Macedonia needed another 150 years to build an effective mastery over its vast resources, and social-darwinism had been working on the robust migrants to Italy's peninsula for over two centuries. The inevitable political evolution and expansion must have been - to God's vantage point - largely as predictable as the strategic geography and gene pools involved. Plus, he could nudge it.
What we see in history as hindsight, I believe God simply foresaw in megatrends. So he knowingly looked around and said I can finish my plan in 490 years. Then Gabriel told Daniel some things to look for. And then God made sure it did happen.
Whatever predictions He's made, fulfilling them must be an active process. But guys who act like certain future events are already set in stone don't make any sense. It seems to me that God actually does play dice with the universe, except that he often "cheats".
Full disclosure: I've never studied Calvinism and Armenism (sp?) except the night I wrote my college paper on Paradise Lost. Personally, I've always preferred Hamlet's certain providence. "If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all." So maybe all I'm doing here is proving how ignorant I am of theology and prophecy. Or maybe that's precisely the reason I'm really writing this post! ;)
As I was reminded yesterday, subjective interpretation of prophecy can be one cause of bad religious chronology.
Bill Heroman, Amateur Academic