Seeing Through Our Own Eyes

I like old fashioned stuff. I appreciate the older styles of the early portion of the last century. I have mentioned this subject before, but here goes again. Have you ever seen some of the old predictions of the future from a hundred-plus years ago? Some are hysterical, and others are downright goofy. Rarely did anyone in the late 1800's or early 1900's see the future with the same kind of serious eyes that Leonardo DaVinci did (and he still got a lot wrong).

The most amazing thing about those old predictions, in my opinion, is the fact that when you look at them the are clearly influenced by what was going on in their day. Predictions of futuristic devices saw them in the twenty first century with "click buttons" on everything instead of touch screens. Clothing of the future always appeared like something from 1920 with just an odd flair.

Why do future expectations always reflect more about the individual's present than the future? The reason is because we are locked into our own context. We can rarely see past ourselves and our view of the future is always tainted by our experience of the present. I remember hearing about the first cell phone back in the 1980's. They were gigantic, like a military walkie talkie. Day dreaming about them, I never imagined that people would become addicted to them and they would become entertainment devices that people depended on for almost everything.

This is why interpreting predictive prophecy almost never is successful. When we look at a passage of Scripture that tells us about the future, we always read it with minds and hearts in the present. Yes, we think that we are putting ourselves into the future, but that is no more accurate than those who predicted Flash Gordon with a jet pack: we see what we want to see, and we expect what we want to expect.

When Jesus was incarnated on this Earth, there were hundreds of predictions in the Old Testament telling of what it would be like. And everyone, even the Apostles, misunderstood them. They needed Jesus to take them through the Bible and point out what it meant (Luke 24:45ff). There were numerous Jewish interpretations of what the Messiah would be like, and none of them fit perfectly with the reality. This is why I often tell people to "tone it down" when they start saying things like "I think this prophecy is being fulfilled today" or, "Father, don't you think the end of the world is coming any day now?"

God does not tell us about the future so that we can figure it out beforehand, but rather to let us know He has got it all under control. Nothing surprises Him, and He wants us to take confidence in that fact. No confidence should ever be found in our own interpretation of what a prediction means. We can (and often do) get it wrong. We can only see through our present eyes, and they are limited in wisdom. Let us merely trust that God will show us what we need to know, and that we can be humble about the things that we do know for certain; like the fact that God loves us.