Why God does not reveal the future

I know many people wonder this, both when reading the mysterious revelations that are made in the Bible (wondering why God is not more specific) and also nowadays when things are so confusing. There are two reasons why God is not more specific.



The first reason is that God does not want to take away from people their ability to use free will and "opt for goodness instead of the bad." The future is never fixed in stone and concrete; God does not have a script of actions planned. God is all knowing because at any point in time God can extrapolate what people are doing, the choices they are making, and what the outcome will be. Look at an auto accident as an example. God knows everything in the universe, down to each and every sub-atomic particle and its motion. God can extend the implications of each and every movement into the future, knowing what each atom will do and how it interacts with others, who are likewise poised in certain activities at any given time. So if a person is leaving their house at a given time, God "knows" that this person will drive a certain route to work, and will collide with the car driven by someone else, because God also "sees" the current and imminent actions of that other driver. God knows who will be present on the scene with the cell phone to ring the police, and God knows who is on duty to respond. You must understand that God knows this because he knows all, not because he scripts all. God does not decide that two folks should smash into each other in an accident on a given date. But he knows it will happen because at some point each person will have made decisions leading them to that point. (And by decisions I don't mean bad decisions. What I mean is that everyone who is alive is enroute to their next activity, whether it is their next breath, heartbeat, meal, drive, or meeting. Everything that lives is in motion; it is enroute to their next motion, and this is what I mean by a decision. Some things cannot be decided, like the beating of the heart, although of course health, food and stress choices are decisions that may influence. For example God will know the moment that someone takes a bite of food if that is the one that tips the balance in some way or another). So God does not plan that people, like these two drivers, should collide. God does have a plan, which is always how to lead people to greater goodness, joy and spiritual/love prosperity. So people are not incorrect to say an accident is "part of God's plan" or "God's will" but they are incorrect if they say God planned that accident. God always "hopes for the best" right up to the moment where an action becomes a certain choice by a human. For example, God is always hoping that people wear their seatbelts, use defensive driving, drive carefully, be sober and clean, watch out for people walking and biking and so forth. So God would never tell the two drivers in our example, "you are going to have an accident today" because until it actually happens, people can use their free will to be as careful and responsible as possible. Again, I'm not saying this in a blame way. I'm using an example everyone can relate to about the difference between an auto accident being "part of God's plan" and not being "planned by God." God's plan is that people have choices in how they live their lives, that people have knowledge to do things like build cars, and that people should care and love neighbor so that they protect others on the road in addition to themselves. So God finds a way to help people find the good out of even the worse tragedy. If God told people in advance how many people will have auto accident tragedies, it is human nature to then sink into a resigned acceptance (and resentment) for the information. That would dampen, because of human's flawed nature, the efforts by humans to do better. If they think a certain number of accidents are inevitable, they will just slog along doing what they do.



Here is a real example of how this difference between God's plan and "being planned by God" works. The Kingdom of Jordan recently had a terrible accident with many passengers killed. Many parts of the world have very poorly skilled drivers on tricky roads with not enough care and Jordan is an example of this. However, King Abdullah of Jordan, bless his heart, authored a letter and then chaired a meeting just a few days ago to put an end to the very bad driving conditions in the Kingdom. The King is personally involved in discussing improved roads, driver certification and training, fixing trouble intersections and so forth. This is an example of how God would never have given countries such as Jordan dire driving reports and predictions because then it would have seemed like God's planning these accidents. Instead the King wisely realizes that it is God's will that his people be protected, even if against themselves and their bad driving. God always nudges toward "the good" and "doing better." God does not want to be the statistics guy who tells you the bad news in advance about someone because God "hopes" until the last moment when actions are inevitable that people will tend toward better and better decisions.



The second reason God does not provide specific predictions of the future is that men and women of good will would have their courage assailed and their willpower, even their will for living, weakened if they knew all the "bad things" in advance. Let me give you an example. St. John was graced with visions of the End of Times. He was shown symbols and "battles" without specifics and people have puzzled over the "meaning" of these symbols, trying to figure out specific actions that God was revealing. But this is wrong thinking for two reasons. One is the reason I gave above. For example, God may see that millions of people will die in a war if things go the way they are trending. But while God is all knowing he does not sit back and watch the miserable developments. The Holy Spirit works tirelessly to avoid tragedy. For example there has been much discussion about why the Allies in World War II did not bomb the tracks that took the trains to the concentration camps. Who do you think was pushing for that bombing? The Holy Spirit who stirs the conscience of people even as they are in the middle of seemingly inevitable evil. God did not "will" or "plan" that concentration camps even existed, say nothing of them operating in the open under the Allies very noses. The Holy Spirit is the form of God that is constantly pushing humans to opt toward goodness and holiness in every decision. God would have wanted people to bomb those railroad lines and to accept into their countries all refugees. So what would be the good of telling St. John, for example, that millions would die in concentration camps? Would people not then glom on that part of the Bible and justify those very abhorent actions? So God provides the rough outline of the dimensions of what humans are trending toward doing, and the depth of wickedness they might do, but he still "hopes and works for the best" through the Holy Spirit right up to and within those events of humans. For example the Virgin Mary appeared in Fatima to make one last appeal to divert people from their trend lines toward the two World Wars and also from the many souls lost due to lust in the future. Sometimes God and his messengers are listened to and sometimes not, but that sure is not because God scripts tragedies. Only humans script evil and tragedies.



Look at the erupting volcano in Ecuador. In the past people would have had no options. Now the government drags away even those who want to protect their homes from "looters" in order to save their lives. That is an example of humans always being able to opt for good, even if there is a "God sent" natural disaster. Why were there no tsunami warning systems in place before the great tsunami? It was not God's choice that people neglect putting simple buoys and a warning system in place a decade after they had the technology to do so.



Back to what I started to say about losing willpower for goodness. I gave one example which is that if people knew that concentration camps would be built and millions would die, many would have stopped positive and mitigating actions at all, thinking it is "inevitable." Here is a second example. After Jesus Christ died and resurrected, ascending into heaven, the Apostles and disciples, only a hundred or so men, were left to bring the Church and the New Covenant into being. They needed all the courage and grace that they had in their characters, and that the Holy Spirit bestowed on them in Pentecost. The last thing they would have needed would be to have details about how low humans would sink. What if St. John was told in the visions that over forty million babies would be aborted by the hands of their own mothers someday? He would have fainted dead away and have despaired as to why Jesus bothered at all with his ministry. This is because humans cannot see the big picture (all the people who weren't aborted, for example); good humans are crippled in spirit by horror. What if St. John was shown that one day adult men and women would take newborn babies, rape them and kill them? Again, St. John, the purest of the Lord's Apostles, would have fainted in body and heart dead away. So instead he is shown images of the ashes of martyrs crying for justice, but is not emotionally crippled by the reality of how low humans will sink. This is why God would never hold a mirror up to humans and show them how low they can go in advance.



Whenever I read about a baby or child being raped, used in sexual slavery, tortured for the video camera, and beaten to death, my heart feels very faint. I do not become as other humans do, hardened to this horror. So it would have been with the Apostles, disciples and other prophets if they had been shown details of the future that humans themselves are creating, decision by decision. They would have seen dead babies of the future in their heads and spirit rather than the millions of babies who are not aborted and who do have good and normal fulfilled lives. People cannot help but be fixated by horror. Look at the sick entertainment industry where an actor needs meds because he can't sleep from his horror filled movie role, dies of the anxiety and sleeping meds, and yet our children are supposed to watch the movie that has such a horror role that it cost the actor his own life? How stupid and depraved is that? People are fixated by horror and God will not enable that weakness by providing humans with details. It's bad enough that I can extend in my vision what humans are doing and the likely outcome, and all I can do is cry while people do it anyway, and actually, even worse than I predicted.



So this is why God does not "predict the future" for humans and, in fact, damns those who do. This is because fortunetellers are trying to lock people into a preordained set of circumstances, which God himself does not even do. As I said the Holy Spirit works right up to the moment and within the evil to try to change or mitigate it. Yet dirty human fortunetellers defy the Holy Spirit and cripple the spirit of those idiotic or wounded enough to seek them out.



This, by the way, is the reason that the Qur'an was given to the Prophet (PBUH) with very little prophecy within it. God chose to give the purest direction for behavior to Muslims without distracting or tempting them from faith by prophesy. At the time that God revealed the truths of the Qur'an God could obviously see that there were distractions by faithful who sought to manipulate the future through prophesy. For example, Arabic people have a tradition of astrology just as do pagans, Christian gentiles, and some "mystic" Jews. God kept the Qur'an pure of revelation so that people would not be tempted to insert themselves into understanding of the events to come, which only God can do.