Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone! As I posted before, we were able to enjoy a nice break with the family, and we’re all geared up to start 2007. Being a somewhat religious (I say somewhat because I like to distinguish between being religious and being Christian) guy, I must say that I’m a little concerned about how 2007 is going to shape up. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Pat Robertson has made dire predictions for the upcoming year. Check out the full article here.

According to Pat, “God told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in ‘mass killing’ late in 2007,” the article reports. Now this puts me in a little bit of a conundrum. According to the Bible that I dearly believe, God has behaved this way in our past, and since God is outside of time, it’s reasonable to assume that He could still behave this way today. Specifically, the He would communicate directly to a human, and use that person to foretell future events. On the other hand, I don’t really believe that Pat Robertson is a prophet.

Let’s take a look at the evidence and see if I’m way off base by examining past prophecy by Mr. Roberston:

· 2004
o Prophecy: President Bush will easily win re-election.
o Outcome: Bush won 51 percent of the vote and won the election.
· 2005
o Prophecy: Bush will have victory after victory in his second term, will nominate conservative judges to federal courts, and Bush’s Social Security reform proposals will be approved.
o Outcome: John Roberts and Samuel Alito were confirmed to the Supreme Court, and the Social Security initiative was stalled.
· 2006
o Prophecy: God punished Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a stroke for ceding Israeli-controlled land to the Palestinians and storms and possibly a tsunami will crash into America’s coastline.
o Outcome: I doubt that the medical report listed “hand of God” as the cause of Sharon’s stroke, and it rained in New England.
· 2007
o Prophecy: Terrorist attack will result in “mass killings” late in 2007.
o Outcome: Unknown.

When it’s laid out like this, it seems to me that his success is on the decline. He started strong with Bush winning re-election, then followed that up with two victories and Supreme Court judges (a twofer), but it started going south with Social Security, and last year seems just a bit embarrassing. Should I feel bad for not believing, though?

What if he’s the real deal, and I’m making fun of him? Would that be the same as all of those people that made fun of Noah? I don’t know, but I would think that prophecies handed down from the Lord would correct more than 50 percent of the time, and I really have to believe that someone that’s really getting a message from God wouldn’t say, “I have a relatively good track record. Sometimes I miss.”

Sometimes you miss? If the message is from God, doesn’t that imply that sometimes God misses? And how could that be possible? I know the Lord works in mysterious ways, so perhaps this is just a test. Perhaps He wants to see if we’ll believe His prophet even when the prophet is wrong, and if that’s the case, then I guess I just don’t have enough faith. As far as 2007 goes, though, I’m not planning to build a bomb shelter or anything just because Pat Robertson says it’s going to get rough.

I’m determined to have a Happy New Year, and I hope you are, too!