Random Thought #18

So I just had this random thought that I absolutely couldn't pass up. I was thinking about the various TV shows and movies that involve time travel to the future and how its all screwed up and they have to change their ways in the present in order to change the future. That got me thinking, I wonder why we aren't capable of seeing the future, at least not for very long. If you think about it, only special people (prophets, seers, revelators) can glimpse into the future, and only to further their understanding of God's works.

In all of the movies, the current person travels into the future and tries not to interact but silently observes how life is as a result of their current choices. Some are actual characters (Back to the Future) and some are just an invisible spectator (A Christmas Carol, etc.) Let's look at the situation from the perspective of the characters that actually exist in the future. Can you imagine what it would be like if you met your previous self in your present? I think that would be kinda freaky. Everything that happens to your current self affects you as a future self. What if your future self gets mad at your current self and hits your current self causing some facial deformity, then you (the future self) would immediately end up with a facial deformity. Talk about "what goes around comes around" LOL. What if you weren't in the same plane of time as your current self, you still would notice the affects of the choices your current self is making. If your current self got into a car accident, your future self would go from walking down the street to wheeling down the road in a wheelchair. That would suck to be the future self. Every little choice that current self made affected your daily life. You'd be so sick of unexpected changes, you would probably wish that you could go back in time and smack yourself and straighten yourself out.

Now imagine if your current self meets your future self and changes his ways because of what the future self told the current self. (Back to the Future - where future Biff tells current Biff about cheating on the sports events based on a book of stats). Our minds are so futile that the movie producers had to come up with 3 Biffs for logistical reasons I'm sure. So there are now 2 future Biffs and one current Biff.

If you now change back to current self's perspective, if you had never met future self, what would your life be like? This is of course when current self is in the future and looks at the comparison between your two future selves. Does that memory travel with you when you are going back to your current present?

This guessing game is getting a little confusing so let's now change to God's perspective. If future and present and divided by an opaque wall and current self and future self have no knowledge of each other's existence (after all, they are the same, not two different instantiations of one's self as the movies depict) then God's perspective if that of someone looking from the top, seeing both. The interesting thing is that the future self (again assuming two different instantiations) never changes as we might think from the movies we've seen. God knows what the end result (bad word since our progression is eternal) will be because He is Alpha and Omega. He is the beginning and the end. He knows all of the choices you are going to make before you are even presented with  the choice. Its not like God is thinking "...OK, so Mike is going to write this blog post" and then all of a sudden, I decide, I'm going to outsmart God and stop writing this post right now!! He knows that thought is going through my head and that I'm going to finish writing this post anyways.

Blows your mind right? The cool thing is that if we study enough and continually learn, we'll be able to do that as well as Gods and Goddesses. Anyways, getting back to my original thought, this is probably why we aren't allowed to see the future. Its considered cheating in this test of life. Those that are allowed to glance into the future are only allowed to do so for a brief period of time and are only shown enough so as not to blow their minds. After all, if you're a prophet, seer, or revelator, you're probably getting an A on your test of life anyways. Consider all of the examples of all openers of dispensations (Adam, Enough, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ, and Joseph Smith). Every single one of them had a glimpse into the future, but only for a short time and only shown what they could handle or what was appropriate for them to see.

One of my favorite scriptures is Isaiah 55:8-9. It inspires me to learn more and more and to one day be as Heavenly Father and partake in all that he hath.