History is the Second Best Teacher

We all agree that Jehovah is the best teacher of all. He teaches us primarily with principles. These concepts are more or less abstract; they are rules of life, and it's up to us to understand how to apply them. Therefore, we must be trained to use our mental faculties to distinguish good from evil, as the apostle Paul tells us in the letter to the Hebrews.

To make this task easier for us, Jehovah has made the Bible largely a collection of life stories. In fact, it's also possible to do the reverse: extrapolate principles and lessons from what others have done in the past, both good and bad.

Herein lies why principles are better teachers than history: no one needs to have experienced firsthand that not following them is harmful.

History, in general, is a collection of stories, and therefore history is the greatest storehouse of lessons that spare us the pain of making bad choices or the effort of figuring out which choices are right, because someone else has already tried it. This is why history is the second best teacher.

While principles are a kind of micro-prophecies that require a good dose of faith to apply -because we must believe they will have the effects they promise- in the case of history, we already know how a certain course of action will turn out, and it's easier for us to trust.

Jehovah has truly been good to us by giving us the Holy Scriptures! Seeing history in this light might make it less boring for you.

Do you find history boring?

However, it's not always true that knowing the past allows us to predict the future. If there's one thing history has taught us, it's that some things have happened against all odds. The element of unpredictability cannot be ruled out.

Fortunately, history has also shown us that the things Jehovah has said have always come true, and therefore we can be sure that some aspects of the future will be just as Jehovah has made them known to us.

As you may have already heard in some talks at meetings or read in publications, prophecies -and therefore principles- are history written in advance: only the perspective from which we observe it changes.