It's No New Thing

I wrote a couple days ago about the increased tendency for people—Christians included—to believe as true whatever we want truth to be.  While it may be easier than ever to find voices of agreement with our desires in this age of limitless communication, the human inclination toward such is nothing new.  In the Life Journal reading passage for today we see that hundreds of years B.C. there were so-called prophets who were popular for telling people everything was OK, and there was no need to change their ways.  There were a far fewer number of them who actually spoke the word of the Lord and whose prophecies were fulfilled in detail according to what the Lord had said.  The question we each need to consider is: What voices are we listening to?  Do they line up with Scripture or just make us feel good about ourselves?  Here is a short passage from Jeremiah that illustrates the contradictions between a prophet of God and a self-proclaimed one. 

Then Jeremiah the prophet said to Hananiah the prophet, "Listen now, Hananiah, the Lord has not sent you, and you have made this people trust in a lie. Therefore thus says the Lord, 'Behold, I am about to remove you from the face of the earth. This year you are going to die, because you have counseled rebellion against the Lord.'" So Hananiah the prophet died in the same year in the seventh month. Jeremiah 28:15-17