Did God forbid divining the future? Why?

[Sunflower15]

Did God forbid attempting to know the future? Did he forbid only astrology or all other forms of ‘divining the future’ as well?

Do we know why God forbid ‘seeing the future’? Is it because it reveals our lack of trust in Him or because it seems to infringe upon people’s Free Will? What is the most prevalent opinion of theologians on this?

Is the obsession with religious prophecy of the ‘end times’ related to this prevalent need of ‘divining the future’? Is it the same whether we use astrology or the strange systems some have invented in order to decipher some ’hidden code’ within the Bible to know what God has not plainly revealed?

Did God invent some ‘treasure hunt’ game for us to find ‘hidden messages’ within Holy Scriptures? Does God play games with our eternal destinies?

I keep hearing from time to time about yet another ‘new’ mysterious way to ‘decipher hidden codes’ within the Bible meant to be revealed NOW…for some reason, prior generations did not need to know this ‘hidden’ information about the ‘end times’…

 

[ljubim]

God forbids for us to SEEK OUT information of the supernatural kind. If He wants us to know, he’ll give us visions. If not, then our attempts to play God will only bring out demons who will trick us and get us into a LOT of trouble. There are countless accounts of so-called white wiccans, and pagans, etc, who don’t know that they are truly serving the devil and have REALLY scary experiences, seeing things and all of that. Dabbling in the occult gets you into a lot of trouble, and even after you convert and confess you still feel the effects.
To clarify: visions are not of this world but of the next… so just because you see something doesn’t mean it’s from Satan, it could be from God. But as I’ve heard it’s not very difficult to tell. But the main difference is that God won’t come to you through divination, because He is Lord Almighty and cannot be controlled by you in the least. The devil is described as a hungry, roaring lion prowling around looking for some poor soul to devour. Because of this, he’ll always attempt to come to you through the occult because this opens a door to him and to hell.

2115 God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. Improvidence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility.

2116 All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future.48 Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.

2117 All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others - even if this were for the sake of restoring their health - are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity.

I hope this helps There’s lots more reading all over CAF and CA about this, just search. Also read some exoricsm accounts. You do not want to be near this stuff with a ten foot pole.

As for end times: we know as Christians that we will not know the time of the final judgement until it’s underway. Don’t believe any of the junk that bible literalists have interpreted from Revalation and other books. They don’t understand what they’re talking about. If you’re talking about the Mayan 2012 thing… well it will be interesting watching how people react around us. We will have a great laugh about that! Also you could probably derive a few prophecies from my post here using bible code formulas. Remember we don’t actually have original copies of the books of the bible. We only have a few copies to work off of. Do you really think that God came to the copiers a hundred years later to make sure that each letter fell under perfect sequence?

Oftentimes these crazy prphecies and speculations are believed by people who are lacking God in their lives. You aren’t like them, you’re much smarter. Don’t succumb to such pop culture rumors, it is much better to sit back and have a really good laugh like the rest of us!

 

[Sunflower15]

…
As for end times: we know as Christians that we will not know the time of the final judgement until it’s underway. Don’t believe any of the junk that bible literalists have interpreted from Revalation and other books. They don’t understand what they’re talking about. If you’re talking about the Mayan 2012 thing… well it will be interesting watching how people react around us. We will have a great laugh about that! Also you could probably derive a few prophecies from my post here using bible code formulas. Remember we don’t actually have original copies of the books of the bible. We only have a few copies to work off of. Do you really think that God came to the copiers a hundred years later to make sure that each letter fell under perfect sequence?

Oftentimes these crazy prphecies and speculations are believed by people who are lacking God in their lives. You aren’t like them, you’re much smarter. Don’t succumb to such pop culture rumors, it is much better to sit back and have a really good laugh like the rest of us!

Actually, I was more curious about this type of ‘divination’ because it masks itself as religious, while the other type masks itself as entertainment. I keep hearing about Christians, mostly literalists, who claim that God meant for us to find ‘hidden codes’ NOW due to the development of technology [because God knew we would have it now…] so that we would know about the ‘end times’.

It seems to me that trying to find out about the ‘end times’ is just as bad as finding out what will happen next month to me personally [through astrology] because at the root, we find lack of trust in God, a need to control history [events] through some knowledge that only WE possess, and possibly to control others [who don’t have this knowledge]…

However, there is a genre called Christian Prophecy or Religious Prophecy under which many books are published and sold as Christian books…at least no astrologer calls him/herself a 'Christian astrologer offering God’s revelation for your future;!

 

[DOShea]

When God created man, the only tree He forbade man to eat from was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Whether you interpret this as actual, historical fact, allegorically, or by any other method, it seems clear that the message at least contains the idea the there were some things God did not wish man to know.

When the Apostles asked Jesus when He would return, Jesus also deferred the answer to being within the realm of something only the Father knows, and it was not to be shared with man.

So what are you doing if you are trying by any method to tap into this knowledge? You are in essence committing the same basic disobedient act that got Adam and Eve tossed from the Garden. You are trying to gain access to what God does not want you to know.

BTW, the 2012 thing with the Mayan calendar? They have more than one calendar. Another replaces this one when it runs out, so it is not like they ceased to bother keeping any sort of time in 2013, it’s just that the current calendar won’t be the one used to do it. Those who base end-of-the-world claims on the ending of the current calendar are simply operating out of ignorance.

 

[Sunflower15]

When God created man, the only tree He forbade man to eat from was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Whether you interpret this as actual, historical fact, allegorically, or by any other method, it seems clear that the message at least contains the idea the there were some things God did not wish man to know.

When the Apostles asked Jesus when He would return, Jesus also deferred the answer to being within the realm of something only the Father knows, and it was not to be shared with man.

So what are you doing if you are trying by any method to tap into this knowledge? You are in essence committing the same basic disobedient act that got Adam and Eve tossed from the Garden. You are trying to gain access to what God does not want you to know.

Have you heard of religious/biblical prophecy? It seems to be popular with certain Christians. There is a very popular Dr. Grant Jeffrey, who has written a LOT of books on this subject. One of them says that God included some encoded messages in the Bible for when we had the technology -that we now have- to decode it with computers. Something like every few letters throughout Genesis, or something, and it gives the names of historical figures, such as Stalin & Hitler…

Anyways, very religious people who attack any ‘fortune-telling’ ferociously, are into this! And, I just don’t understand why it is any different!

I guess they think God meant for this to happen within His Plan for our salvation…but the God I know is no elitist, He meant to make things plain and simple to understand by even the most humble…always! Not a certain year in history, not by a certain people with computers or high I.Q.'s…

What do you think?

 

[DOShea]

I am very skeptical of claims made about “secret codes” hidden in Scripture. First and foremost, assuming just for sake of argument they are there and are true, I have the following questions:

1. Why was there never any hint of future revelation of this sort? We would be totally depending on accident to get them.
2. Why, when Jesus came, would He give us an incomplete message? What message possibly contained in these cryptic puzzles is important enough for God to give us, but not important enough for Jesus to give it to us while He lived among us?

So, I firstly doubt them from the perspective of the incomplete revelation idea.

Second, when you take a book as large as most books in the Bible (Genesis, Isaiah, Job, John) the odds are against NOT finding something by using skip-letter sequences. The question is, what is being found and how is it being interpreted? Suppose they found this sequence: B16 IS RIGHT What are you going to do with that? Apply it to an encyclical? The latest canonizations? The comments he made yesterday? Everything he does or says?

This is precisely the same thing we Catholics find fault in with the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. We have something that isn’t self-revealing (in our view), and we must have something outside of it to guide our interpretation of it. So what is that outside “thing” we’re using? A computer program? An algorithm? The fellow who discovered the sequence?

 

[revert_jen]

Those who base end-of-the-world claims on the ending of the current calendar are simply operating out of ignorance.

What are you talking about? The world ended in 2000 as predicted, too, didn’t it?


Good post, thanks!

–Jen

 

[DOShea]

Have you heard of religious/biblical prophecy? It seems to be popular with certain Christians. There is a very popular Dr. Grant Jeffrey, who has written a LOT of books on this subject. One of them says that God included some encoded messages in the Bible for when we had the technology -that we now have- to decode it with computers. Something like every few letters throughout Genesis, or something, and it gives the names of historical figures, such as Stalin & Hitler…

Anyways, very religious people who attack any ‘fortune-telling’ ferociously, are into this! And, I just don’t understand why it is any different!

People who do research and pour through various historical accounts and try to formulate ideas like “where did the Arc of the Covenant go?” are, IMO, seeking answers. Where they cross the line, also IMO, is when they turn their speculations into some sort of Dan Brown-like conspiracy dramas and start pointing fingers at established religions or groups within them as conspirators of some evil plot. When they try to read the Bible in such a way as to show their fringe ideas are perfectly justified, I don’t take that as any kind of truth at all. I take it for what it is; some guy trying to twist Scripture to fit his pet theory.

In Dr. Jeffrey’s case, take his interpretation that the movement of several hundred Ethiopian Jews airlifted back to Israel after the Ethiopian civil war in 1991 is the fulfillment of Zephaniah’s prophecy in Zep 3:20. What about the rest of the prophecy? Like the part in Zep 3:18-19 about gathering together the triflers? Cutting off those who afflicted?

Bottom line is, this is his personal interpretation. We have no way to know if he is correct, or another airlift will take place 30 years from now and be equally fulfilling. It’s all speculation.

As to secret codes pulled out of Scripture by computer, I am skeptical of all of them. For one, they are premised on the idea that when Jesus became man, He was either incapable of giving us a full revelation, OR He only gave a partial one, on purpose, and left no hint there was more to come or when to expect it. For someone to arbitrarily decide that the advent of the computer and the algorithm somehow mark the era that we are now open for further revelation business just seems crass to me.

And if these codes were a revelation, we are faced with the exact same problem Catholics face when confronted with the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. How would we interpret them, being that they are not self-revealing? Who or what is the standard by which we can know any interpretation of these secret messages is the correct one? Say for example a computer sliced and diced the text of John’s Gospel and revealed this message:

B16 IS RIGHT

What are we going to do with it? Is it validation of Papal infallibility? Does it mean his last encyclical is spot-on? What he said yesterday is perfectly correct? He’s always right in what he says and does? There would have to be another “secret” message to de-code the first one.

That’s why I think those things are useless. And not inspired.

 

[DOShea]

What are you talking about? The world ended in 2000 as predicted, too, didn’t it?


Good post, thanks!

–Jen

Shhhhh… we’re trying to not let that get spread too far.

You’re welcome.

 

[ljubim]

Actually, I was more curious about this type of ‘divination’ because it masks itself as religious, while the other type masks itself as entertainment. I keep hearing about Christians, mostly literalists, who claim that God meant for us to find ‘hidden codes’ NOW due to the development of technology [because God knew we would have it now…] so that we would know about the ‘end times’.

Why would God want us to not read the bible for its message, but read it to recieve a new message from Him? Remember, Protestants came up with the vast majority of these prophecies. And guess what they don’t believe in? Marian apparitions! If God wants us to know something that important, then HE TELLS US DIRECTLY! This happened in the bible, and why should we expect this to fizzle out over time? God is not bound by time. He’s the same now as He was to Adam and Eve, and Moses, and Abraham, and to the Apostles. And to the Saints and Popes and people who were visited by Mary. These prophecies are just watered down spirituality. You want the real thing, look to the Church.

 

[Ron_Conte]

Knowledge of the future is found in Sacred Scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments.
Christ Himself gave an eschatological discourse (Mt 24; Mk 13; Lk 21).
The Apostles Peter and Paul both taught about the future (Acts, the Epistles).

And the theological discipline of eschatology is approved by the Church.
Pope Paul VI spoke on the subject of eschatology, saying that the Church “already possesses a science concerning future and final realities, the science of eschatology, and she continually urges her children to study the sublime truths which it embodies, so that they may prepare themselves for the final and decisive meeting with the Creator.”

Seeking knowledge of the future by the science of eschatology is not divining and is neither sinful nor forbidden.

 

[Sunflower15]

Knowledge of the future is found in Sacred Scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments.
Christ Himself gave an eschatological discourse (Mt 24; Mk 13; Lk 21).
The Apostles Peter and Paul both taught about the future (Acts, the Epistles).

And the theological discipline of eschatology is approved by the Church.
Pope Paul VI spoke on the subject of eschatology, saying that the Church “already possesses a science concerning future and final realities, the science of eschatology, and she continually urges her children to study the sublime truths which it embodies, so that they may prepare themselves for the final and decisive meeting with the Creator.”

Seeking knowledge of the future by the science of eschatology is not divining and is neither sinful nor forbidden.

Maybe I’ve been looking at it wrong. For some reason, I would not call the deciphering of codes in the Bible -Eschatology- that is a formal study of the revelation contained in Scriptures and Tradition, not a ‘cryptic puzzle’ sort of thing. Or am I wrong?

 

[ljubim]

Maybe I’ve been looking at it wrong. For some reason, I would not call the deciphering of codes in the Bible -Eschatology- that is a formal study of the revelation contained in Scriptures and Tradition, not a ‘cryptic puzzle’ sort of thing. Or am I wrong?

You’re right the “bible code” is by no means a study of God’s revalation

Besides… eschatology means :
Encarta Dictionary:

es·cha·tol·o·gy èskə tólləjee]
n
doctrines about death and its aftermath: the body of religious doctrines concerning the human soul in its relation to death, judgment, heaven, and hell

, not the Bible Code. Don’t fall for it.

 

[Ron_Conte]

Maybe I’ve been looking at it wrong. For some reason, I would not call the deciphering of codes in the Bible -Eschatology- that is a formal study of the revelation contained in Scriptures and Tradition, not a ‘cryptic puzzle’ sort of thing. Or am I wrong?

I did not understand the OP as referring to Bible codes. I don’t believe that Bible codes (looking for words in the texts of the Bible by patterns of letters, skipping some letters so as to make words that the authors never placed in any books) exist; these are mere coincidences that can be found because of the large number of letters and the large number of possible patterns that are used.

There is much eschatology in the Bible on both the literal/figurative level of meaning, and the spiritual level of meaning.