Beware of predictions,
it is Kardec’s advice

The lack of knowledge about the past and our ignorance about the future are two blessings that God has given to us, though it is not always treat them with the necessary circumspection.

Related to forgetting the past, we suggest the reader read the study that we published in issue 83 of this magazine, which can be accessed by clicking at http://www.oconsolador.com.br/ano2/83/esde.html

Regarding the future, our ignorance is clearly explained in the main of Spiritualism – The Spirit’s Book.

Kardec asked the immoral (LE 869): why is the future kept hidden to man?

The Spirits answered: “If man knew the future, he would neglect the present and he would not act with the same freedom, because he would be swayed by the thought that, if a thing is to happen, there is no need to occupy one’s self about it or else he would seek to prevent it. God has willed that it should not be thus, in order that each may concur in the accomplishment of the designs of Providence, even those which he would desire to thwart. So it is that you yourself often prepare the events that shall occur in the course of your life.”

Clearly, as we read the following to the above question, God allows us to know the future when it can facilitate the implementation of something, rather than hinder, forcing the man to act differently from the way in which they would act if it were not because knowing what to expect. But the revelation may also constitute a proof. “The prospect of an event may suggest thoughts more or less good”, say the immortals (L.E., 870). 

“If a man becomes aware, for instance, that he will receive an inheritance which he had not expected, this revelation may tempted him by a feeling of greed, by elation at the prospect of adding to his earthly pleasures, by a desire for the death of him to whose fortune he will succeed, in order that he may obtain possession of it more speedily, or on the other hand, this prospect may awaken in him only good and generous thoughts. If the prediction be not fulfilled, it is another trial that of the way in which he will bear the disappointment. But he will none the less have acquired the merit or the blame of the good or bad thoughts awakened in him by his expectation of the event predicted.” (L.E., issue cited). 

It is known by the actual content of the answer above quoted that the prediction can be fulfilled or not, a fact which suggests we have the utmost care to any kind of prediction, wherever it comes from.  

If it comes from a disembodied personality, it is worth bearing in mind the lesson that Kardec consigned the item 267 of The Mediums’ Book:  

“(...) good spirits “do things that are envisioned future, when this feelings suits; never, however, setting dates.” “The prediction of any event for a given time is indicative of mystification.” (The Mediums’ Book, item 267, eighth paragraph, q. 334)   

Another care we should have concerns the quality of the emissary – incarnated or disincarnated – presenting us with revelations pertaining to the future, mindful of the lesson that Emmanuel, by Chico Xavier, consigned in the question 144 of his book O Consolador, work published in 1942:  

“The Spirits of our sphere cannot penetrate the future, considering this activity a feature of the attributes of the Supreme Creator, which is God. We must consider, however, that human lives are subject to a general statement of evidence, where the character should move with the effort to illuminate for the future, and within that script, the highest spiritual mentors can marshal premonitory events, where suited to the statements that the man is not just a conglomerate of chemical elements in accordance with the definition of materialism dissolvent.”(O Consolador, 144.)  

Would be Emmanuel a trained instructor for such undertaking?  

He himself had not said that in the first of his works – Emmanuel – published in 1938 in which he stated categorically: “The human beings of my sphere do not know the future, nor can they interfere in things that belong to you”. (Emmanuel, chapter XXXIII, FEB, seventh edition, pg, 166.)