Article December 30, 1967 Issue

"Wonderful foresight"

EVELYN M. S. DUCKETT

Most people look to the future either with eagerness or apprehension. Some try to anticipate the demands it will make so that they can cater to them. Politicians and housewives prepare budgets. Meteorologists forecast the weather. Shopkeepers study consumer trends. When predictions are favorable, they serve to boost human thought. When they are unfavorable, discouragement tends to follow. But however carefully human calculations are made, they are always incomplete. An unforeseen contingency can invalidate them at any moment. Then confidence proves to have been only complacency, and gloom turns out to have been unfounded after all.

In Bible times people were much less expert in analyzing themselves and charting their prospects. Yet many of the Bible characters showed a remarkable prophetic insight that owed nothing to statistics. Noah built an ark to save himself and his family from the impending flood. Joseph laid up enough corn during seven good harvests to cover the seven-year famine that followed. Moses saw the promise of deliverance in what seemed to be a hopeless situation.

From a human standpoint there was no precedent in any of these cases to justify the action taken. It was a question of spiritual insight rather than drawing conclusions from material evidence. Prophecy is an intuitive spiritual conviction based on divine revelation and its infinite possibilities for good.

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