On Knowing the Future – Sunday, November 12, 1944
Among the frequent and persistent questions concerning the future are these: “Why can’t we know the future?” and “Why shouldn’t we know the future?” There are a number of possible answers, perhaps none of them fully satisfying—but all of them very much in point—and one possible answer would seem to be that oftentimes we can’t know more about the future, because oftentimes it doesn’t exist. By this we mean that many things that will happen in the future will depend upon what we do and upon what others do, and since neither we nor they may yet have made decisions in these matters, the results that are to follow those decisions may not now be known.
Yet another reason, and an all—sufficient one for many, is that he who directs the affairs of the universe, he who is the author of the plan of life, and the Eternal Father of men, has decreed in his wisdom that we should not in most instances know what the future shall bring, even as it is not now given to us to have remembrance of what preceded birth. For those who would like still other reasons, suppose we ask ourselves what kind of life it would be if we did know everything that was going to happen to us.
Actually, a detailed foreknowledge of trials and tragedies to come might well be expected to destroy much of the happiness that is. Also, in knowing the future, there would be less of the joy of discovery and less of the growth that comes with faith and struggle. Imagine the monotony, the humdrum, of a life in which each hour, each day, each year, everyone knows everything be is going to do, everything that is going to happen—nothing of the unexpected, nothing of the unforeseen, no pleasant surprises, no unlooked for joys, no merciful concealing of the sorrows and heartaches to come—everything in a lump sum right now, and nothing in reserve.
This, of course, is carrying speculation to an absurdity, but it does invite attention to the wisdom of things as they are. And if there were some clandestine means of acquiring a detailed knowledge of the events to come in our own lives, it still wouldn’t bring us happiness. We had best learn to live by faith from day to day, and by good works coupled with our faith, ready to meet the future whatever it brings, confident that the mercy and the wisdom and the justice of God will give to each of us, all that we could ever hope for or expect, for our good and our eternal happiness.
They who know what it were better not to know, are much less happy than they who think they would like to know some things they don’t.
Heard over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Nov. 12, 1944. Copyright – 1944.
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November 12, 1944
Broadcast Number 0,795