Future

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

1 October 2010

The future is now, says Peter Kreeft in his essay online on "Time". To put it exactly the way he said it is “Eternity is not in the future, but in the present”. I do not know how others feel about this aspect of future, but for me the definition of future lost its meaning if we say that future is now. There is a hairsplitting definition at stake here when we say future is now. I would rather revise the saying in putting it: future is the next second after now. Now is the second just before future. With this we talk about future within our zone or within our reach. What Kreeft is not dealing with, and which is biblically very important for the Christians and their faith, is future outside our own domain and outside the domain of our generation or a few generations down the line. But what Kreeft was trying to drive home, I think, is that future is not so distant that it is not connected to our own time zone. This point is well taken, if it was so meant. For a catholic, Peter Kreeft has sometimes nice things to say apologetic for the Christian faith and for belief in God, but at the same time many of his logical foundations are a bit shaky at times, like when he gave the reason why he changed his religion from Calvinistic Protestantism to Catholicism. He read the Church Fathers. But that is another point to be discussed at another time.

We want to spent time with the concept of future. Sometimes with a new technological invention, it is said, the future has arrived. When fashion of cars, dresses or computors are a bit innovative in the sense that we have not seen it before, people classify it as futuristic trends.

Futurism in theology is the tendency by scholars to say that what was held in the past to be distant in future is actually relevant today and happening today. This kind of futurism is acceptable since Jesus do predict that we need to look at signs in our own time that may link to predictions that He made while on earth.

God has charted and mapped out history within the continuum of time. Past, present and future rolled along from Adam and will continue to do so until the Advent. Every human being defines past, present and future within their own lives. Individually there is a past, present and future that is different from other humans and their past, present and future. Each of us have our own past, present and future. Of course we share a present with those living with us and we share a past of those who lived with us and a future with those who will be living with us. Our presents are overlapping as we find our pasts and futures are too. There is a sense in which we need to distinguish our own future from that of God's prophetic future. What is said here is that what human regarded as future in their lives may not at all correspond to God's prophetic future. This is a problem.

Since God controls history and since God made predictions of his time chart through history until the Advent and beyond and recorded it in the Bible in books like Daniel and Revelation and other books like Isaiah and other prophets, it is important for us to pay attention to what the prophets of the Bible says since our future should align with God's future, if we want to have a part also in His future.

What humans want for the future corporately or individually is not that important as what God wants for the future for everyone. If we just talk about our own future or the future of United Nations objectives discussing World issues in the future, we are missing the broad picture. The future of the prophets starting in our zone already is bleak.

There will be many earthquakes, floods, signs on the sun moon and stars. Strange phenomena or out of the ordinary phenomena. Global warming was predicted by the prophets and knowing that should not surprise us or cause us to sympathize with the green disciples of environmental theology. Wars are to happen in relay and especially Daniel 11 the last part is very definite what our future holds for us starting this very moment.

The now moment is separated from the future moment by one second and every second the now moment pulls the future moment closer just to have the future moment run away by one second again and the past moment is creeping up one second behind the present moment. When I finished talking, it is already past. Historicism is the use of past events to link to the Word of God like Daniel 11:36-45 in order to explain what is happening since 911 in our own world and domain. At least this is how this reader reads it although Christianity is slow in reading it the same. They are all past events almost 9 years ago. In the past the Roman Empire got so frustrated with vaticinia ex eventu books like Daniel, that they insisted that they should be banned and burnt. The reason is that the civil establishment do not want to hear that there will be a time in future when they will not be in power any longer. This is difficult for them to digest. See no evil, hear no evil, touch no evil, speak no evil and there is no evil. This is their philosophy. They are operating on the outer skirts or periphery of the matter.

Predict

A word related to future is predict. It comes from the adverb prae in Latin which means before. And dict comes from the Latin meaning, word, say, speak. talk. To say [dict] something before [prae] it happens is to predict. It is also called foretelling. Prophets predict since they are given the videos of the future by the Holy Spirit and then write down excerpts of what impressed them most for us to know also. If we read them. Most people do not bother to read them. That is why they depend on agencies that specializes in forthtelling. Those are people who studies recent trends and past trends and on the basis of past trends they can try to predict what may happen soon. Millions are spent for these kind of media analysis but nothing is paid for the real thing as it is given to us for example in our own day and age in Daniel 11:36-45.

Fortunetelling

The fortuneteller does not want to have anything to do with the Bible. They focus on stars and astrology to concoct stories about people's lives and make money off it. The process is so subjective that verifying it is a big problem. In the case of the prophets' prediction, there is a verification system since it can be objectively tested whether the link is truly so or not. From that vantage point the next prediction can be made. But for prediction analysis of prophets of the Bible, CNN will not pay anything. The whole thing is that it is totally free. It is as far as your hand can reach, that close.

Fortunetelling is as old as the world itself. We have texts from Babylon that were written in the 12th century BCE and then copied in the sixth century BCE by plagiarism and then presented to the king as a fresh creation of hemerology, a science of astrology where the fortuneteller tells the king what is going to happen to him the whole year. The king did not know the fortuneteller was plagiarizing another ancestor's future for him too for that year! Examples can be seen at VAN WYK NOTE at http://www.egw.org dealing with the hemerological texts and the 360 day in a year principle.

Eschaton

This is a word that means end. We are definitely in a time zone in history where the topic of eschaton should interest us. History is not a never ending cycle. History has a beginning and an end. The end is called eschaton. We are informed about the eschaton in no uncertain terms in the Bible and it will be well for us to pay careful attention to it. Some SDA's feel that the Word of God has given us clear direction to 1844 which is the end of the 2300 year prophecy of Daniel 8:14 calculated by the year-day principle and starting correctly in 457 BCE with Ezra. But then they think that for the last 160 years we have been hanging in the air. That is not true. God did provide us with detailed descriptions of our own day, in this researcher's opinion, especially with Daniel 11:36-45 going to Daniel 12:1 with the Time of Trouble during which the Messiah comes vertically and not horizontally as Classical Judaism is teaching and expecting. Whereas Judaism are waiting for two Messiah's to come, one a teacher and one a king, Christians saw the Messiah as the same one, coming in 4 BCE-31 CE in Jesus Christ as Shepherd to the flock and return as the same Christ in the eschaton as King. Islam has also an eschatology and they are waiting for the 12th Imam to come which they believe is soon to arrive. Islam is divided into mainly two groups, the Sunnis and the Shi'ites. The Sunnis are awaiting in the eschaton a Mahdi who can be either Jesus or some unknown personality or both but the Shi'ites are waiting for the arrival of the hidden imam. When the time of the eschaton eventually comes, the hidden and expected Mahdi will make his appearance to usher in the End of Days and at last establish his rule and the ideal Islamic order. The Christian messiah is universal, the Judaistic messiah is national and the Islamic "messiah" is complex and perpetual. Human history is viewed by Islam as a turning wheel. The highest point of the wheel was when Muhammed lived and taught. Islam was original, fresh, pure. After his death the wheel began to turn. The highest point moved downwards and sinked lower and lower until there was no other way to get out of, but through the great upheavel at the End of Days. Since the End of Days was to be preceded by unusual disasters, calamities, and suffering, Islam sought to postpone the coming of the End of Days for as long as possible. They did this through "renewal" or tajdid. By renewing itself and causing the wheel of Time to revolve to the same position in which it was in the time of the prophet. Islam cannot achieve this on their own and a renewer is needed, a person. This person is divinely guided and able to revitalize Islam and make it central in men's lives and in so doing, lift it from its state of degeneration. There were renewers in each Islamic century. It became a perpetual movement of decadence and renewal and this will continue until the final renewer, the 12th Imam will eventually appear to renew Islam once and for all (Moshe Sharon, "The Messianic Idea" in Judaism, Christianity and Islam - Interaction and Conflict [Johannesburg: Snap Print, 1989], 153-155).

Personal future

But what about our personal future. What about our future day in and day out? Let us look at it. The Bible asks us not to be concerned about the day of tomorrow as to what we shall eat, drink or wear, since God is our Father and He will take care of us.

Three words are connected to our future and they are dream, vision and hope. When I say I dream to get marry one day, it means that it is one of my goals in future to get married. Dream means imagination about a future husband or wife that will be married to myself. Vision means that we are seeing with the mind's eye ourselves in a future role that we are happy and satisfied with. Hope means that there is a duracell battery in the brain and it energize the brain to say: yes I can, yes I can. It is the duracell battery or hope that helps the person in future to make a goal a target and then the person achieves what he/she has dreamed for. Many people do not have this duracell battery or energizer in the brain, so they cannot make the goal into a target and thus marriage for them is just a future goal, vague and non-specified. I was for that for a long time until I realized that without a duracell battery or hope I cannot get married. And I did. So did my wife.

But there is another point about our future that is very important. Each one of us have two doors for our future. There is not only one door. One door is called "my way" and the other door is called "not my way". Many people see only one door and when they arrive there and cannot enter or pass through, they are in anguish and look for a rope to hang themselves or a cliff to jump. 'For every front door there is a backdoor,' the saying goes. What this means is that when your dreams are not fulfilled as you hope it should and the door is closed for "my way" it means that the door is available for "not my way" but that sometimes this other door leads us to higher plains that we would never have reached if we would have entered through the first door. We should not complain but wait patiently for time to run its course and this is where agnostics and atheists do not know it, but God is leading them on better paths for themselves. Everything is simply not in our own hands or control. We have to rely on others and on the Great Other called God. Although agnostics do not care about God He cares about them and provide daily for them health to continue their course in the hope that one day they will realize what a Great God their Caretaker is. God really has the whole wide world in His hand.

Sources

1.   Peter Kreeft, “Time” http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/time.htm The article is excellent and very convincing. It is one of his best products. Very useful.

2.   Moshe Sharon, "The Messianic Idea" in Judaism, Christianity and Islam - Interaction and Conflict [Johannesburg: Snap Print, 1989.