The Day of the Lord

Special Installment: Ash Wednesday
Joel predicts that a day of reckoning is coming. But a survey of predictions reveals that some seers get it wrong in a big way.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent. In the next 40 days, some amazing transformations will occur.

Or not.

Many of us want our lives to change, but our desires are often dashed. We dream, hope and predict that the future will be different for us — with mixed results. A recent issue of The Atlantic magazine (May 2015) lists some of the worst predictions of all time:

By the year 2000, we'll abolish war. That was the prediction of an essayist in The Atlantic magazine at the start of the 20th century. It also anticipated that the poor would be living in high-rise "abodes of happiness and health." Around the same time, the Ladies' Home Journal predicted that all mice and rats would soon be eliminated, along with the letters C, X and Q.

In the early 21st century, Mars will be colonized. Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury predicted that we would have to colonize Mars because of a global nuclear war. Fortunately, such a war has not happened. But our failure to make ...