Jeremiah 25

 ‘Then it will come to pass, when seventy years are completed, that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity,’ says the Lord; ‘and I will make it a perpetual desolation. v.12

Read chapter 25
The words of Jeremiah were not only heard back then but were also written down.  The book of Jeremiah wasn't written thousands of years later just for us today to read.  We see that the man Daniel had been reading the book of Jeremiah as he discovers that captivity will last 70 years, "in the first year of his [Darius] reign I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem"(Daniel 9:2).  Daniel was one of the firsts to go into captivity in Babylon, we read how he became one of Nebuchadnezzar's top government guys due to his God given wisdom.  Daniel living not in his bubble of Christian community but in the "real world" with much responsibility as one of Nebuchadnezzar's top government guys, still makes time and priority to seek God's word and truth and to understand the time he's living in as well as seeking the hope to come.  Now unlike then there was a set time, 70 years, that the Israelites would be in captivity, but we don't have a set time recorded in scripture when God will come in His kingdom to set the captives free and put and end to the evil rulers of this world, but we can study what the ages to come are like that we may hold on to that hope.  Are you living in a life comparable to Daniel's atmosphere?  Are you making these excuses why you don't seek God's word or are they the reasons you seek God even more?