On Foretelling Things to Come

Men, it would seem, have in common an urgent desire to know more about the future⎯a desire which demonstrates itself in many ways, and for many reasons. In some respects and to some extent the future may and should be known. For example, a science has grown up to help us forecast weather conditions, which is of much value to all of us. To know something concerning the future of private wants and needs, helps the manufacturer and the merchant to avoid some of the hazards of chance⎯and to this end we have business forecasts. The broad lines of the future, so far as the plan and purpose of life are concerned, as well as specific forthcoming events, have often been foretold by the prophets. But the desire to know the future may become an inordinate desire⎯so much so that there are some who feel they cannot rest unless they can know the unknowable and see the unseeable, and who, to this end, place their confidence in those who profess, for a price, to tell what the fates have decreed. But in the wisdom of God it has not been given to us to pry the lid off the future at our indiscriminate discretion. It has been so ordered that in many things we shall live by faith, and meet the events of life as they come. If the stars were fixed and the pattern of our lives were fixed with them, if the future were already set in its mold, then the next logical conclusion would be that it doesn’t matter how we live or what we do with our lives⎯the result would be the same anyway. But such philosophy is false. This is a world of cause and effect, in which free will operates, and in which men may expect with certainty to realize the effects of the causes they set it motion. And if there are things in our lives that ought to be changed, it is for us to change them. If there are pitfalls that should be avoided, it is our responsibility to do our best to avoid them. A fatalistic attitude toward the future is a destroyer of initiative, a breeder of despondency, an enslaver of men, a false premise of life. “There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven…, upon which all blessings are predicated,” and our future will be modified by what we do, according to our conduct and within the limits of law, and not because the stars are fixed, or the cards are cut.