Article September 17, 2012 Issue

Facing down false prophesies

Tanner Johnsrud

It is the year 2012. Throughout popular culture, and maybe in conversations with friends and neighbors, there are people talking (or perhaps joking) about the Mayan calendar and the belief some people have that it predicts the end of the world this year. Despite books, movies, and television shows on the subject of the Mayan calendar’s prediction, most of us expect to wake up the day after this supposed occurrence with our lives the same as the day before—just as we did after the Y2K nonevent.

We may not believe in cataclysmic predictions of the end of the world. But do we subtly accept other predictions of evil? How often do we take in dire economic predictions? Or do we accept severe weather reports? Or maybe we just wake up in the morning and think, “It’s going to be one of those days.” All of these thoughts are wrongly based predictions that accept the inevitability of evil. Do we have to accept evil as inevitable?

Mary Baker Eddy gives us important guidance on this subject in the Manual of The Mother Church: “The members of this Church should daily watch and pray to be delivered from all evil, from prophesying, judging, condemning, counseling, influencing or being influenced erroneously” (p. 40). 