Bad news is bad news, and often we don't want to hear it, or we want to rationalize it away. Such was the case here in Judah with Jeremiah and the yoke that he bore, an unmistakable message of warning to the people. The amazement of the assembled council of nations knew no bounds when Jeremiah, carrying the yoke of subjection about his neck, made known to them the will of God.-Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, p. 444.
Read Jeremiah 28:1-9. Imagine you are a Judean standing there and watching all this going on. Whom would you believe? Whom would you want to believe? What reason would you have, if any, for believing Hananiah rather than Jeremiah?
Jeremiah raised his voice in the name of God, and Hananiah spoke in the name of God too. But who was speaking for God? They both couldn't be! For us today, the answer is obvious. For someone at that time, it might have been more difficult, even though Jeremiah does make a powerful point in Jeremiah 28;8-9: the prophets in the past have preached the same message that I am, that of judgment and doom.
Jeremiah, in the presence of the priests and people, earnestly entreated them to submit to the king of Babylon for the time the Lord had specified. He cited the men of Judah to the prophecies of Hosea, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and others whose messages of reproof and warning had been similar to his own. He referred them to events which had taken place in fulfillment of prophecies of retribution for unrepented sin. In the past the judgments of God had been visited upon the impenitent in exact fulfillment of His purpose as revealed through His messengers.-Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, p. 445.
In short, just as we today are to learn lessons from sacred history, Jeremiah was seeking to get the people in his time to do the same thing: learn from the past, so you don't make the same errors that your forefathers did. If it had been hard for them to listen to him before, now with the ministry of Hananiah there to counter him, Jeremiah's task was going to be that much more difficult.
Hananiah, whose name means God has been gracious, seemed to be presenting a message of grace, of forgiveness, of salvation. What lessons should we learn from this false preacher of grace?
bad news, and often we don't want to hear it, or we want to rationalize it away. Such was the case here in Judah with Jeremiah and the yoke that he bore, an unmistakable message of warning to the people. The amazement of the assembled council of nations knew no bounds when Jeremiah, carrying the yoke of subjection about his neck, made known to them the will of God.-Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, p. 444.
Read Jeremiah 28:1-9. Imagine you are a Judean standing there and watching all this going on. Whom would you believe? Whom would you want to believe? What reason would you have, if any, for believing Hananiah rather than Jeremiah?
Jeremiah raised his voice in the name of God, and Hananiah spoke in the name of God too. But who was speaking for God? They both couldn't be! For us today, the answer is obvious. For someone at that time, it might have been more difficult, even though Jeremiah does make a powerful point in Jeremiah 28;8-9: the prophets in the past have preached the same message that I am, that of judgment and doom.
Jeremiah, in the presence of the priests and people, earnestly entreated them to submit to the king of Babylon for the time the Lord had specified. He cited the men of Judah to the prophecies of Hosea, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and others whose messages of reproof and warning had been similar to his own. He referred them to events which had taken place in fulfillment of prophecies of retribution for unrepented sin. In the past the judgments of God had been visited upon the impenitent in exact fulfillment of His purpose as revealed through His messengers.-Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, p. 445.
In short, just as we today are to learn lessons from sacred history, Jeremiah was seeking to get the people in his time to do the same thing: learn from the past, so you don't make the same errors that your forefathers did. If it had been hard for them to listen to him before, now with the ministry of Hananiah there to counter him, Jeremiah's task was going to be that much more difficult.
Hananiah, whose name means God has been gracious, seemed to be presenting a message of grace, of forgiveness, of salvation. What lessons should we learn from this false preacher of grace?
bad news, and often we don't want to hear it, or we want to rationalize it away. Such was the case here in Judah with Jeremiah and the yoke that he bore, an unmistakable message of warning to the people. The amazement of the assembled council of nations knew no bounds when Jeremiah, carrying the yoke of subjection about his neck, made known to them the will of God.-Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, p. 444.