Is it possible to accurately predict the future?
Do some people have the power to see what lies ahead?
From time to time, I make ‘predictions’ about the property market and what might happen to house prices. But they’re not really predictions so much as educated guesses about what the market might do based on my knowledge of the industry and the evidence in front of me. I’m not alone in this, of course – there are many commentators and organisations who make all manner of predictions about what the future might bring – covering topics as diverse as the economy, social trends, weather forecasts, demographic trends, and market fluctuations.
But while most of these people aren’t claiming to have any special insight into future events and most of them caution their audience not to treat their musings as ‘gospel’ – there are others who ‘do’ hold themselves up as having ‘special powers’ to see beyond the veil or know the future in detail.
These people, variously known as psychics, clairvoyants, astrologers, and readers claim to use a variety of techniques to ‘tap in’ to an unseen realm which is not generally accessible to we mere mortals, in order to pass on messages from a dead granny, reassure us about the good fortune which lies just ahead, or give us a grand vision of what the future will bring.
Of course, most of them can quickly and easily be seen for the charlatans and quacks that they are. If you doubt this, I’d encourage you to watch a few of the online videos from English Illusionist, Derren Brown, who exposes the techniques of some well known ‘TV psychics’ by using the same methods that they use to reveal extraordinary information about his subjects, but without the aid of psychic powers.
But surely there are some psychics and clairvoyants who defy even this level of scrutiny?
For example, older readers might remember American Jeane Dixon (1904 – 1997) – one of the most famous psychics of the 20th century who shared her many visions through her syndicated newspaper astrology column and a bestselling biography.
Dixon is best known for her prediction that a Democrat would win the 1960 US election and that he would be assassinated while in office – a claim that was fulfilled with chilling accuracy a few years later with the election of Democrat John F Kennedy, and his subsequent assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald as his motorcade drove through Dealy Plaza in Dallas in November 1963.
Indeed, Dixons prediction, which was made in 1956, was regarded as so accurate that a legion of readers hung off her every word for the rest of her professional life.
What’s not so well known is that, prior to the 1960 election, Dixon actually recanted her prediction and predicted that Nixon would win instead. In fact, she made unequivocal predictions that JFK would lose – a fact which is forgotten in the hysteria surrounding her initial ‘accurate’ prediction because of a phenomenon, named after her, called ‘the Jeanne Dixon effect’ which describes the tendency of people to believe a handful of seemingly correct predictions while ignoring a much larger number of obviously wrong ones.
It’s the same phenomenon which is at play with the predictions of Nostradamus, the 16th century astrologer and physician who published a book, in 1555, which contained 942 poetic predictions, or ‘quatrains’ which claimed to predict future events. Unlike Dixon, who at least took a shot at a date, most of Nostradamus’s predictions are so general that they can be interpreted to mean whatever you want them to mean – and they often are. Indeed, many of his predictions are the subject of intense debate amongst his supporters, with warring camps of them each insisting that their particular interpretation is correct.
I could continue with a review of other ‘prophets’ and their prophecies including Edgar Cayce (‘the Sleeping Prophet’); Sai Baba; and Baba Vanga – but the result would be the same. A few apparent ‘hits’, but far more nonsense and spectacular fails.
Contrast this with the standard by which Prophets were measured in the Biblical Old Testament where Moses tells us, in the Book of Deuteronomy, that the penalty for getting a prediction wrong – any prediction – was to be put to death.
This seemingly harsh punishment is often misunderstood to mean that God was testing the accuracy of the Prophets – but that’s not what it means. In fact, He makes very clear, throughout the Old Testament, that the ‘prophets’ were simply the scribes of a message which came from Him – so if a prophecy was wrong it meant it hadn’t come from God and the threat of the death penalty was to ensure false prophecies didn’t corrupt His message.
That was important because many of those prophecies are about a period called ‘the time of the end’ and had to last, in some cases, for over three thousand years. That they have is a remarkable feat in itself and, arguably, a mark of their authenticity.
But how many of them have ‘come true’?
Too many to count.
For example, the Book of Isaiah contains a series of very specific predictions about a coming ‘Messiah’ which were fulfilled, in minute detail, in the person of Jesus Christ. Other Prophets correctly predict coming world leaders and empires, regional conflicts and the fate of nations over a long period of time. The stunning accuracy of much of this is lost on us because many of these events are so far in our past – but at the time these books were written these events were often hundreds of years into the future.
But here’s the thing – a huge amount of Biblical prophecy, possibly the majority of it, is yet to be fulfilled! Significant portions of Old Testament prophecy, and almost all of the prophecy in the New Testament – including the mysterious Book of Revelation – mostly refer to the aforementioned ‘time of the end’.
So why don’t we hear more about this? Ironically, this itself is the subject of a prophecy in that we live in a period that was predicted by Christ himself and is known as the ‘the Great Falling Away’ and ‘the Great Apostasy’. This prediction accurately foretold that, just before the time of the end, the nations of the west would move away from faith in God and would return to the practices of the time prior to Christ. This has been happening, on cue, since the 1950s and we’re now in the advanced stages of a ‘new paganism’ which I outline in my recent article about the causes of the decline of the west.
But Christianity, itself, is also partly to blame for the lack of knowledge of prophecy. Decades of focusing on ‘feel good’ sermons and the ‘gospel of prosperity’ and an aversion to talking about prophecy because it’s ‘too negative’ have all but eliminated one of the most important topics in scripture from the very palpets responsible for sharing it.
On top of that – even where prophecy is still taught – prophetic scriptures have been ‘captured’ by a variety of interpretations which have strayed far from what the text actually says and have made Gods words subservient to what different people ‘want’ the prophecies to mean.
As a result, we live in a time when many Christians are wedded to an interpretation of prophecy that anticipates a series of ‘end time’ events which – to be blunt – scripture does not predict. These interpretations are mostly the result of the cherry-picking of unrelated scriptures to create a false timeframe, or the mangling of the clear meaning of scripture to make it mean what it doesn’t actually say.
Yes, I understand that these are big claims – so I’m ‘putting my money where my mouth is’ and writing a book, dealing primarily with the prophecies in the Books of Daniel and Revelation, which I anticipate publishing in the first half of 2023.
I’m certainly not a prophet, and I don’t claim to have any new revelation – I’ve just taken a very different approach to the interpretation of these prophecies with some remarkable findings. My work is the result of 15 years of study and is based on the groundwork of another writer who died a few years ago.
If you’re interested in reading the book, you’ll have to wait a few more months – but, as a teaser, I can tell you that it will:
- Identify the point of all prophecy
- Explain the root of antisemitism
- Explain why we can’t know exactly when prophecies will happen, in advance
- Prove that the Prophets gave specific dates for fulfilled prophecy – including some very recent events
- Demolish some of our most cherished ideas about what’s just ahead
- Create a sense of urgency that you almost certainly didn’t know you needed
- Plus much much more
The countdown has started – so to make sure that you don’t miss out, feel free to add your name to my mailing list.
