What a lot of mistakes would be avoided if we saw further ahead!

Anyone who can see rightly into the present can look perceptively ahead. When we know what is, today, and what is not, today, then we know what will be—and what will not be—in the future. Knowing what is, and what is not, is a spiritual faculty. We can cultivate it.

To believe that man is mortal is a mistake right now, and always will be. To accept that man is the expression of Spirit is correct right now. And it always will be. This truth of man comes from divine Truth, from everlasting Mind. In Science and Health, by the marginal heading "Scientific foreseeing," you'll see Mary Baker Eddy's words: "The ancient prophets gained their foresight from a spiritual, incorporeal standpoint, not by foreshadowing evil and mistaking fact for fiction,—predicting the future from a groundwork of corporeality and human belief." And a little further along, "It is the prerogative of the ever-present, divine Mind, and of thought which is in rapport with this Mind, to know the past, the present, and the future." ^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 84;}

There are matter-based predictions and Spirit-based predictions.

An example of the former would be a prognosis that a disease will get worse and a patient decline. It's vital in Christian Science treatment to deal metaphysically with any lurking matter-based views of the future. Admitting, for instance, that someone may have to worsen for a bit to learn lessons from suffering is a prophecy based on the belief in matter and mortal man.

Spirit-based prophecy expects the emergence of Spirit because Spirit and its creation always make up the only reality anywhere and at any time. What is inevitable—in the next hour, next week, now, always—is the omnipotence of Spirit. This is what divine Mind knows, and it is what we know when we are in rapport with Mind. And the essence of Christian Science treatment is the bringing of our thought into such rapport.

Divine Truth manifests itself to us through the Christ. Predictions of the emergence of good and the retreating of discord are prompted by the Christ. The full appearing of Truth is entirely predictable because Truth is already All. Whatever divinely is will inevitably appear humanly, until Truth is realized to have always been All. As the Bible puts it, "The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." ^{Isa. 40:5;} These truths are at the very heart of Christian Science.

The Christian Science era, this era, is the time of the modern prophet. Mrs. Eddy understood scientifically the viewpoint and method of the ancient prophets. We can, through Science, prophesy from a spiritually scientific basis. Time-past, time-present, time-future, are human beliefs. Science shows us how to look into spiritual reality, and the natural outcome of doing this is to be able to usefully look into, and see through, human belief. Moving ahead is then much less like stepping into the dark of an unlit basement. We can detect and deal with threatening problems before they become humanly visible.

Human belief thinks in terms of minutes, decades, centuries. It sees the full emergence of good as always delayed. It considers the emergence of what is not good as virtually irresistible. Such reasoning may seem to be sustained by the input of the senses. But what is it that sustains these senses? Human belief itself. Enlightened by divine Science, we see beyond sense evidence to the reality of Spirit's eternal allness.

Mrs. Eddy tells us in plain language what constitutes and identifies a prophet: "A spiritual seer; disappearance of material sense before the conscious facts of spiritual Truth." ^{Science and Health, p. 593;} In an unequaled degree, Christ Jesus was a spiritual seer. The Nazarene Prophet, in his teaching and healings, showed the practicality of subordinating material sense with "the conscious facts of spiritual Truth." In modern times, through Christian Science, we are understanding the basis of his thought and repeating in some measure the healing of sickness through spiritual seeing.

Doing so, in fact, is what ratifies one's status as a modern prophet. "The prophet of to-day," Mrs. Eddy writes, "beholds in the mental horizon the signs of these times, the reappearance of the Christianity which heals the sick and destroys error, and no other sign shall be given." ^{ibid., p. 98.} Modern prophets are those who see above and beyond the pictures of the senses; but who also, in a manner of speaking, see beneath them. They detect and negate the undercover mental ways—the subtle suggestions of materiality—by which mortal mind would postpone good and perpetuate evil.

The divine Mind, or God, knows the timeless nature of all real being—knows, as it were, the up and the down, the out and the in, the past and the future, of all that really exists. This Mind belongs to the real man, Mind's idea; and man belongs to this Mind. Finding our way to this understanding through Christian Science, we are modern prophets, contemporary healers, fore-stallers of evil, and confident predictors of the ultimate universal realization of God's eternal presence.

Geoffrey J. Barratt