“THE FUTURE IS PREDICTABLE”

Hugo McCord

“The future is predictable,” announced a gospel preacher from the pulpit. He did not mean that he believed in astrology,

the pseudo science which claims to foretell the future by studying the supposed influence of the relative positions of the moon, sun, and stars on human affairs (Webster).

He, along with Isaiah (47:13), would condemn “the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognosticators” who take people’s money for horoscopes and palm-reading.

What did he mean? Along with Solomon, he was saying that, in the natural world (“generations” coming and going, “sun” rising and setting, “wind” blowing “round and round,” rivers flowing “into the sea”),

... what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10, NIV).

Yes, from what we know of the past, the future is predictable. However, in a small Arkansas town many years ago some men were sitting on a bench outside the local grocery. One said, “The Bible says that the time will come when you can’t tell the seasons except by the budding of the leaves.” Another spoke up, “I do not believe that quotation is in the Bible.” The first said, “I do not know where it is in the Bible, but I know I have read it.”

As they looked down the street, they saw George DeHoff walking toward them. They stopped him, and asked where in the Bible they could find that statement. Immediately George responded, “Genesis 8:22,” and walked on down the street. When they obtained a Bible they read:

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease (KJV).

Bro. DeHoff had cited a Bible verse just the opposite in meaning from the man’s “chimney-corner” Scripture. Yes, what is past in nature is predictable.

In like manner, “while the earth remaineth,” these seven important facts are predictable:

(1). The battle between “the works of the flesh” and “the fruit of the Spirit” in every human being, young and old, will remain constant until “the Lord is revealed from heaven with the angels of his power in flaming fire” (Galatians 5:19-23; 2 Thessalonians 2:7-8). Then “[h]e will repay each one according to his works” (Romans 2:6).

(2). No new church or spiritual kingdom (Matthew 16:18-19; Colossians 1:13) will ever be established with heaven’s authority, for the one Jesus bought with his blood (Acts 20:28; Revelation 5:9-10), in which are all the saved (Acts 2:47; 5:11), “will never be destroyed” and so “will endure forever” (Daniel 2:44).

(3). No new plan of salvation will be issued from heaven, for the one Jesus set up, namely, “He who believes and is immersed shall be saved” (Mark 16:16, FHV), is to last to “the end of the world” (Matthew 28:18-20).

(4). No new revelation will come from heaven, for since the last person died, on whom an apostle had laid his hands, the means of a revelation, namely, the gift of prophecy, has forever ceased (Acts 8:18; 1 Corinthians 13:8).

(5). No new activities in worship except those left by the apostles (namely, singing, praying, Scripture reading, the Lord’s Supper, the contribution, Ephesians 5:19; Acts 2:42; 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:1-2; Colossians 4:16) will ever be authorized by the authority of heaven (2 John 9-11; 2 Timothy 4:1-5).

(6). No future reign of Christ on the earth can be, for when he comes it will be to stop reigning (1 Corinthians 15:24) and the earth will be burned (2 Peter 3:10-11).

(7). No change will occur in the old fact that most dead people will be remembered for only a few generations, and that “even the memory of them” will be “forgotten” (Ecclesiastes 9:5, NIV).

On April 14, 1912, the “unsinkable” Titanic, on her maiden voyage from Southhampton to New York, struck an iceberg, and sank, drowning 1595 people. Among those drowned were forty prominent citizens of Belfast in Ireland, the city in whose shipyards, the ship had been built. The city mourned. A brass plaque, with the forty names inscribed, was placed for a memorial on a downtown street.

In 1962, exactly fifty years later, Joe Nisbet, the gospel preacher working with the Eastside Church of Christ in Belfast, copied the names of the forty from the brass plaque. On Sunday at church he read the list of names, and asked if anybody recognized any of them. No one did. Then he referred to Solomon’s words that dead people will not be remembered, that “even the memory of them will be forgotten.” Yes, again, the future was predictable.

But also predictable is the certainty that among all the world’s dead “a righteous man will be remembered forever” (Psalm 112:6, NIV), not by his fellow humans, but by the Lord:

A book of remembrance was written before him of those who revered the LORD and thought on his name. They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, my special possession (NRSV, Malachi 3:16-17), my treasured possession (NIV), when I make up my jewels (KJV).

Furthermore, says the author of the book of Hebrews,

God is not unfair to forget your work and the love you have shown because of his name, as you served the saints, and whom you continue to serve (6:10, FHV).

Yes, with certainty the future is predictable!