Avoid Foolish Words

“Words from a wise man’s mouth are gracious, but a fool is consumed by his own lips.” – Ecclesiastes 10:12

In an article entitled “18 Spectacularly Wrong Predictions Were Made Around the Time of the First Earth Day in 1970, Expect More This Year” author Mark J. Perry recounts some of those failed predictions.

Here are three of them:

Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years [by 1985 or 2000] unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated that humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.

Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an Ice Age.”

We need to guard our lips against foolish talk and we need be gracious in our speech.

Ask Jesus to give you wisdom in all that you say.

“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.” – Dale Carnegie

“Wise men store up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool invites ruin.” – Proverbs 10:14