Your Future Who Can Predict It?
ATTEMPTING to predict the future is easy. Being accurate is not. It becomes an exercise in futility when predictions boomerang, as the accompanying examples plainly indicate.
Since ancient times, man has tried to discover what the future holds. Even today, most of us share a desire to peer into tomorrow. This pursuit of knowledge about coming events has led man to try a profusion of methods. For example, the human body has been examined for clues in facial characteristics, contours on the skull, and lines on the palm of the hand. Man has studied animals—the movements of mice or snakes, the flight of birds, even the manner in which a rooster snaps up kernels of wheat placed on the ground. Some have used objects such as crystal balls, playing cards, dice, tea leaves, or coffee grounds. The techniques are as varied as the people, customs, and time periods, but the results are all the same: failure.
Yet, there is One who can accurately predict the future. Who? Jehovah God. Jehovah is unique because he is “the One telling from the beginning the finale.” Even though events have not yet run their full course, God can foretell what the climax will be. Yes, Jehovah can unfold the future before man’s eyes not just a few days in advance but centuries ahead of time!—Isaiah 46:10.
Therefore, the quest for knowledge of the future does not have to end in futility. God’s Word, the Bible, has outlined the most important aspects for us. Just what does it show to be in store for mankind?
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“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”—Lord Kelvin, British mathematician, physicist, and President of the British Royal Society, c. 1895.a
[Footnotes]
a These quotations are from the book The Experts Speak, by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky.
“If we are to begin to try and understand life as it will be in 1960, we must begin by realizing that food, clothing and shelter will cost as little as air.”—John Langdon-Davies, British journalist and Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1936.
“This is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. . . . The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.”—Admiral William Leahy, advising U.S. President Harry Truman on the U.S. atom-bomb project, 1945.
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U.S. National Archives