Not I, but there are plenty around today.
The premillennial dispensationalists examine Ezekiel, Daniel and Revelation with a magnifying glass in order to divine the future. Groups vainly standing on hilltops (throughout history) waiting for THE END have discredited the religious enterprise. However, since religious experience is ordinary experience understood religiously, the impulse to know the future is ever with us.
Soon, the August issue of Sports Illustrated will come out with their annual predictions of college football ratings. Last year's August issue put Penn State as the top team and Michigan as 16th. At the end of the season, Michigan was number one and Penn State was 18th. In fact, eight teams predicted to be in the top 20 in Sports Illustrated were not there at year's end. Poor prognostication will not prevent millions from again gathering in August on the hilltop with Sports Illustrated in hand to gaze into the future.
The pages of The Wall Street Journal have knowledgeable men and women predicting the future of the stock market. The editors have also introduced the Dart Throwers--individuals who throw darts at a list of stocks. It is fascinating to note how often, on the hilltop, the Dart Throwers outperform the experts.
Reading Ezekiel, some found the birth of the State of Israel to be a sign of THE END, taking place within 40 years. Since that date has come and gone and THE END did not occur, some Christians decided to give God a bit of help by financing the blowing up of the Temple of the Mount (the third holiest place of Islam) in order to have room to rebuild the Temple of Solomon. I suppose that the theory is that if God is too kind to act, then He (never She in their literature) could use a nudge to begin the terrible tribulation. If they do blow up the Temple of the Mount, I predict there will be a conflagration-created by the world Muslim community.
There is a safe way to predict the future. Jeanne Dixon sets the example. Predicting in 1963 that someone important would die--and John F. Kennedy was assassinated-her publishers now promote her prescient power.
In the style of Jeanne Dixon, I place myself on the hilltop and predict the following: this fall a major American university will win the football championship, the business cycle will repeat the past, public education will make the headlines, a popular entertainer will end tragically, and the end of religion will be announced. And, those of us still breathing will wake up to a brand new day on January 2, 2000.
Place this Mind Matters on your refrigerator
door and see if these predictions are not 100% accurate. Remember-you
read it first from this secular premillennial dispensationalist.
--Robert H. Tucker
29 June 1998