What Lies Ahead?
By Richard G. Mendoza, MPH, PhD
The year 2012 is a mixture of good and bad events for our country. Better economic growth, fight against corruption, better awareness on health issues, and the passage of beneficial laws are just some of the blessings we’ve received. Pacquiao’s knock-out, the death and destructions brought by typhoon Pablo, unresolved crimes, the high price of goods, and unemployment are a few of the misfortunes. But it’s a good year for us Filipinos in general. Let’s hope and pray that the momentum could be sustained until 2013. May the “daang matuwid” (righteous path) continue to thrive under a lively and vibrant democracy.
But who knows what lies ahead? Definitely not the psychics, whose predictions are based on statistical probability. Nor the card-readers or the self-proclaimed prophets, who make guesses than prophecies and sound more cultic. Only an omniscient being knows the future. The term “omniscient” refers to the all-knowing nature of God. Webster defines it as “the quality of knowing all things at once; universal knowledge; knowledge unbounded or infinite.” Omniscience is the attribute of God by which He perfectly and eternally knows all things which can be known – past, present, and future. He knows our very thoughts, our feelings, our desires and our needs. He knows our words before we say them and he knows our thoughts before we think them. He knows all of our ways. In fact, God even knew us before we were born.
The Bible says: 1.) O Lord, you have searched me and you know me; 2.) You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar; 3.) You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways; 4.) Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord; 5.) You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me; 6.) Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain; 13.) For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb; 14.) I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well; 15.) My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the Earth; 16.) Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Psalms 139:1-6, 13-16 (NIV)
There are no secrets before the Almighty God. He knows what lies ahead for the world, for our country, for you and me. Through the Bible, in the form of prophecy, God accurately foretells the future. “… I am God and there is none like Me …declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done …” Isaiah 46:9, 10. Yes, as God pulls back the curtain of time, He is giving us a glimpse of the future. Before Babylon reached the height of its power and glory, God in His Book foretold its fall: “And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans’ pride, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” Isaiah 13:19. The Bible even foretold the power that would overthrow this mighty kingdom. “…The Lord has raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes. For His plan is against Babylon to destroy it…” Jeremiah 51:11
The name of the man who would lead the armies against Babylon was prophesied 150 years before his birth, as was the very way he would do it. “Thus says the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus … I will … open before him the two leaved gates…” Isaiah 45:1. Were these prophecies fulfilled? To the very letter! In the Persian Hall of the British Museum stands the Cyrus cylinder—discovered in the ruins of Babylon. On this clay cylinder, Cyrus tells of his conquest! The details are accurate! The Bible not only foretold Babylon’s destruction, it further stated: “Babylon shall become heaps …” Jeremiah 51:37
Isaiah wrote: “It shall never be inhabited…but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there … and owls shall dwell there …” Isaiah 13:20, 21
What lies ahead before the second coming of Christ is foretold in the 24th chapter of Matthew. War, famine, pestilence, and natural disasters are some of the signs.
But the Bible does not foretell what will happen specifically to our country this year 2013. But God knows what lies ahead and we don’t. Thus, we can face the future unafraid, if we believe that our life is in His hands.
In the coming year of uncertainty we can only cling to God by faith. This prayer-poem by Martha Snell Nicholson could be our supplication too.
The New Year
Dear Lord, as this new year is born
I give it to thy hand.
Content to walk by faith what paths
I cannot understand.
Whatever coming days may bring
of bitter, or gain.
Or every crown of happiness:
Should sorrow come, or pain.
Or, Lord, if all unknown to me
Thy angel hovers near
To bear me to that farther shore
Before another year.
It matters not,- my hand in Thine,
Thy light upon my face.
Thy boundless strength when I am weak,
Thy love and saving grace!
only ask, loose not my hand,
Grip fast my soul, and be
My guiding light upon the path
Till, blind no more, I see!
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