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On Whose Promises Can You Rely?

IN 1893 a group of 74 social commentators met at the Chicago World’s Fair to discuss the future. (Its site is shown above.) Looking ahead 100 years to 1993, they made the following predictions among others: “Many people will live to be 150.” “Prisons will decline and divorce will be considered unnecessary.” “The government will have grown more simple, as true greatness tends always toward simplicity.”

Similarly, in 1967 a book entitled The Year 2000 predicted: “By the year 2000, computers are likely to match, simulate, or surpass some of man’s most ‘human-like’ intellectual abilities, including perhaps some of his aesthetic and creative capacities.” “The idea of moderately priced robots doing most of the housework . . . seems most reasonable by the year 2000.”

Mankind’s inability to foresee future events contrasts strikingly with God’s ability. For example, compare the foregoing predictions with what the Bible foretold almost 20 centuries ago in regard to our day: “Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, self-assuming, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up with pride, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power.”—2 Timothy 3:1-5.

This Bible prophecy concerning “the last days” is just one of many that have been fulfilled in our day. God’s Word foretold that “the sign” of Jesus’ presence would include world war, food shortages, pestilences, earthquakes, and the worldwide preaching of the good news of God’s Kingdom.—Matthew 24:3-14; Luke 21:11.

The unerring accuracy of God’s promises moved one Bible writer to declare centuries ago: “Not one word out of all the good words that Jehovah your God has spoken to you has failed. They have all come true for you. Not one word of them has failed.”—Joshua 23:14.

Yes, we can be assured that all of God’s promises will soon come to pass. God’s Kingdom will bring an end to sickness, crime, drug addiction, hunger, and war—the whole earth will be a paradise. (Psalm 37:10, 11, 29; Revelation 21:3, 4) You can count on this prophecy’s fulfillment! It comes from our Creator, “who cannot lie.”—Titus 1:2; compare Hebrews 6:13-19.

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Cleveland State University Archive