August 16, 2024 Bible Study — God Rarely Sends Prophets to Tell Us Good Times Are Coming

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 28-30.

At the end of yesterday’s passage, Jeremiah prophesied that the people of Judah and Jerusalem should submit to the “yoke of Babylon.”  Today’s passage begins with a prophet named Hananiah telling Jeremiah in the presence of the people in the temple that God had told him He would break the yoke of Babylon and the captives would return, including Jehoiachin, who had been king.  To which Jeremiah replied, “May it be so, but God usually sends prophets to prophesy war, disaster, and plague.”  So, Jeremiah continued that prophets who prophesy peace and prosperity need to be taken with a grain of salt, they need to be held to a higher standard before being believed.  Prophets who prophesy war, disaster, and plague can be believed when they tell us these things will happen if we do not turn from our sins, even if the war, disaster, and plague do not come.  Because those things may not have come because enough people turned to the Lord.  But if a prophet prophesies peace and prosperity, we need to give it careful evaluation because peace and prosperity only comes when God is not calling us to change our ways.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.