Sermon Central
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Predicting The World Series Winner. . . And Failing Miserably
Contributed by Jim Butcher on Apr 11, 2018 (message contributor)
It was a dramatic performance in Game 7 of the World Series about a month ago: Madison Bumgarner coming in as a relief pitcher and proceeding to sow up the win for the San Francisco Giants. An impressive performance.
Let’s go back to the spring – before the first pitch was thrown on the 2014 Major League Baseball season – and see whether the baseball experts had as impressive a performance.
PunditTracker tracked 64 of the biggest baseball experts in the country in their predictions for the season. How did they do? Poorly. Really poorly.
How many of the 64 experts correctly picked the Kansas City Royals to win the American League pennant? Two. Yes, just two. Dismal.
It gets worse, though.
How many of the 64 experts correctly picked the San Francisco Giants to win the National League pennant? Zero. Yes, zero. Pathetic.
That, of course, means that zero correctly picked the World Series matchup and zero picked the World Series champion.
It’s not an isolated event: last year none of the 64 experts picked either the Boston Red Sox or the St. Louis Cardinals to make the World Series. So much for being “experts.”
This is worth remembering as we come into the Christmas season for one key reason. Centuries before Jesus was born, there were many prophecies about the circumstances under which the Messiah would be born. And Jesus fulfilled every one.
As our baseball pundits can attest, predicting the future is harder than it looks. Kind of makes you think that Someone knew what was going to happen ahead of time, huh?
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