Imagine what you could do if you knew the future! No doubt each of you has plans for the future, plans for what you will do when you get on the outside. What does the future hold? We go to considerable lengths to find out what the future holds. For instance, we pay people to be meteorologists, so that we can know what the weather will be like in the future. They have limited success - they might get tomorrow's weather right but things get very inaccurate past 2 or 3 days. What they do is look at the past conditions, track the trend and extrapolate it into the future. But it only works if things continue on as they are doing - no one predicted an earthquake was going to hit. It was a one off, an unexpected event. Things don't always continue on the way they always have. Sudden, unexpected, out of the ordinary things take place. It is a fallacy to think that the past is the key to the future.
The Bible speaks of those who mock the predictions of the Bible of a coming day of judgement:
[2 Peter 3:3-4 First of all, you must understand that in these last days some people will appear whose lives are controlled by their own lusts. They will mock you and will ask, "He promised to come, didn't He? Where is He? Our ancestors have already died, but everything is still the same as it was since the creation of the world!"] Everything carries on the same as it always does - but this is not case. It is impossible to plan unless you know the future. The one who knows the future is at a distinct advantage - in the past rulers and leaders spent considerable resources trying to gain the advantage of knowing the future - they employed astrologers, men who could read omens, examine livers etc.