THE FUTURE DOESN’T JUST HAPPEN 6 JUN 2014

THE FUTURE DOESN’T JUST HAPPEN: Insights on credibly forecasting the future. This post describes difficulties & solutions in knowing the future, as well mentioning some future events. Now we are told, follow these health steps & you will live long, but some unseen problem kills us. And using leaks from insiders can be fraught w/ danger as events don’t go as planned, or the so-called event was notional disinfo. In prayer today, I was impressed that it was not so critical to share specific events as for us to have character, conscience & convictions. Unfortunately, the Word (@ 2 TIM) says those are rare. When I have prayed & received accurate insight into the future, it was not received by others. When I tried to gain a reliable prediction by using the prophecy of others, when several were prophesying the same thing, it ended in disaster. A similar method is used by govt. remote viewing programs, which also are often wrong & limited in their accuracy. One can resort to charts of trends & make logical extrapolations. The problem with this is that often there are unseen factors that trash one’s calculated expectations. Clairvoyant means like dreams sometimes work, but in many cases, they just leave us with symbolic stories that beg for interpretation. It’s been calculated that clairvoyant means are wrong over 50%. Our spontaneous gut intuition is a good source of warning, if we can be careful not to cloud it with opinions from our rational mind. People try to enter prayerful meditative states to prevent overriding their spiritual hearing or intuition with the mind’s garbage. Long story short it is difficult to see & prepare for the future.

The FUTURE=CONTINUITY & CHANGE. When we see the infant pictures of a college student we see the obvious connection, hindsight makes things look like an obvious progression from its antecedents. So it is with the present. Changing conditions (like Ninevah’s repentance) revise the way the future unfolds. That is why I liked a Y2K book in ’99 that gave a spectrum of 10 possible scenarios from best to worst. The Sahara desert grows. For instance, Algeria loses 100,000 acres/yr. A 4,300 mile band of trees 9 miles wide called the Green Wall (aka Sahel Initiative) was adopted as a plan by the African Union in 2005. The cost would be $3 million & it would take 2 yrs. to plant the wall to stop the desert moving south. It would stretch all the way across Africa. I noticed in 2013 they were still talking about it. At least 37 African nations have agreed on the project, a worthy goal. Goals have a way of happening, even if a lot of yrs. have been wasted talking instead of building the Green Wall.

PAST LESSONS. Speaking of diminishing farm lands, Africa is not the only serious spot… central Asia (incl. west. China) is facing a dust bowl, as are parts of the U.S. China’s current methods of water use in that area are wasteful. Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” portrayed our 1930’s Dust Bowl tragedy. A few yrs. back, our govt. began a program where farmers are paid to plant fragile cropland. New no-till farming methods reduce soil erosion, water retention & much less carbon emissions. In 1990, we had 17 million acres of no-till crops, in 2009 it was 88 million. Some no-till farmers are ecstatic. No till is used for corn, soybeans & cotton. It means drilling (planting) the crop without plowing, tilling, disking, etc. In 1975, I wanted to farm. Since then, real prices that farmers get for beans, corn, rice & wheat have on the average dropped 3% yearly…while costs for seeds, fuel, fertilizer & machinery have gone up. Govt.s interested in preventing future starvation could pay farmers for their work in proper stewardship of their farm resources of soil, water & air. Food supplies are decreasing, and the problem begs to be addressed. Famine is one of the Apocalyptic plagues in the book of Revelation. One day the buzzards will circle.

APOCALYPTIC IMAGERY-THE THRONE, LAMB & DRAGON. Many people, religious or not, sense the end to the world is near. We need to bear in mind, contrary to popular belief, the Book of Revelations was not written exclusively for our generation. Prophecy’s main purpose is not to give a chronological blueprint of the future & to inspire vain conjectures; instead the verses are to bring to light patterns of life for applying the teachings of Christ. (I have written prior posts on applying Revelations spiritually to our lives.) Christ taught loving your enemy. So when Christians w/ an apocalyptic focus, like David Koresh, decide to shoot it out, they are focusing on the Dragon type images, without remembering that Christ is portrayed as a lamb without weapons. REV 14:4 talks about “follow the Lamb wherever he goes”. What did the Lamb of God teach??? God’s rule is not energized by our brute force. One of the central themes to this prophetic book is God’s throne…”You are worthy, our Lord & God, to receive glory & honor & power…Holy, Holy, Holy…” Rather than speculating on future chronologies by assembling a kaleidoscope of apocalyptic symbols into some speculative scheme, we need to seek after righteousness. Just like secular forecasting, hindsight on prophecy is better than foresight. Hosea 11:1 says, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, & called my son out of Egypt.” No one could have realized in Hosea’s day that this verse applied to Christ, but MT 2:19-21 teaches it does. The Spirit has been very flexible in interpreting prophecy—a lot more flexible than dogmatic Christian literalists who insist that their idea of prophecy is the only correct one. The Word of God disputes them, as many Bible prophecies have had two or multiple fulfillments even within Scripture. Let the Bible speak for itself, rather than twisting it to match preconceived assumptions & schemes.

THE DRAGON. Historically, the majority of people have been exploited and dominated by an self-centered elite ruling class. The image of a dragon explained their lives. Over the yrs. people have dealt with it differently. An Ethiopian proverb which means be quiet when you resist tyranny says, “Bow low, and fart silently.” The young generations are feeling hopeless as society is increasingly jobless. Outsourcing of jobs continues. Their ambitions are disappointed. The youth will get restless & unruly. When the govt. crackdowns on their unruliness, it will stimulate more rebellion. The Boston Massacre is an example of this from history. It started w/ a snowball. Putin’s govt. actively puts fun distractions on their Internet in hopes to keep their youth peaceful. For instance, they have the Russian version of YouTube which is Ru Tube (owned by the big gas monopoly Gazprom), and how to lose weight articles.

CALLING ALL FRIENDS. I have repeatedly written that friends are important during the foreseeable times of crisis, esp. now that young people are lacking in relationship skills relative to past generations. Allow me an example from the past: Early in WW 2, a Jewish doctor Arthur Arndt asked his old time gentile friend Max Gehre to help him find a place to hide. His friend took his entire family in (wife & 2 dau.) and before the war was over, more than 50 Berliners would risk their lives to hide the doctor & his family, who indeed survived the Nazis. Another group of people whose value will increase in the future are entrepreneurs, and handy-men.

NEW TECHNOLOGY, A BLESSING OR A CURSE? The Japanese Nitto Denko company makes a water electo-filtration machine that filters water by means of a silvernanowire fiber. A 20 or 24 volt power source zaps pathogens & bacteria making any water safe. The machine is called SWC6 MAX and is distributed thru Oceanside, CA at 760-901-2500. It was very spendy. If only technology like this could be mass produced cheaply! While something useful remains unavailable, 50 or more govts. are scrambling to get drone capabilities for their militaries. It has been a high priority for Red China these last few yrs.

FINAL THOUGHTS. This post in no way exhausts all the areas it touched on. It’s an overview of problems we have in trying to know the future, as well as some thoughts on the way the future is going plus some solutions to things we face. It encourages us to focus in the present on being a person of character, conscience & conviction.