Out of curiosity than do you think that Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians who believe that God still talks to his people prophetically today be in a paradox if they believe in free will? Can we entertain that question as a "What if" without going into whether Prophecy today is true or not?
Is this a bit like asking "ah, but what
really happens when you find the town where the barber shaves everyone who don't shave themselves? Who really does shave the barber?"
I'm afraid I know next to nothing about Pentecostal or Charismatic Christians and their particular flavour of belief. If we had an omniscient being who interacted with humans and told them stuff like "I know that you're about to freely choose A out of choices A,B or C in the next ten seconds or so", then yes, I do think this pretty much dispels any notion of free-will in my limited understanding of the word.
Like you say though, not many faiths have God acting like that, all the prophecies I know of tend to be along along the lines of "and ye this great happening shall come to pass and there will be much smiting..." which doesn't really affect free-will at all, as far as I can see, so I agree with you there.
Having said all that, I don't have a very firm grasp of whatever free will is, which is why I'm loathe to attempt to define it. I mean, how far down the food chain does free-will stop (I assume plants don't have free will but, say, cattle do)? Do ants have free will? And what of the effects of advertising and propaganda on our free will? Does it affect free will at all? And what about the
recent experiments which show a surge in brain activity
before a conscious free-will decision is made - who or what is making the surge in brain activity happen?
I don't know the answers to these questions but they lead me to think that free will is one of those concepts like "time", "life" or "consciousness", which seem trivial to use (in everyday terms) but are in fact, incredibly slippery to define. I do know that any definition of free will that makes sense to me, also allows for an omniscient being (as long as they never tell you what you're about to choose).
PE