Read the following sentences.

(a) I do hope I’ll live to see him.

(b) He will come! Fear not, Earnest: the man will come.

(c) Gathergold is arriving tomorrow, people said.

(d) Blood-and-Thunder starts his journey back to the valley next week, everyone proclaimed.

(e) The great man is going to spend his old age in his native town.

Notice that in the above sentences, verbs in bold type are in four different forms, denoting four important ways of expressing future time. None of these can be said to be exclusively used to show future time, though each is used to refer to some action in future.