Lessons From the Life of Jeremiah

In the course of 40 years in a major prophetic office, Jeremiah learned certain hard-won lessons that 21st century men and women desperately need to grasp and understand. What are they?

by John Ross Schroeder

The 20th century was always the age of anxiety. Yet after two world wars and two draining conflicts in East Asia, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 seemed to herald a new era and a fresh opportunity for world peace. Western leaders talked freely of a "New World Order."

Yet just 14 years later with Afghanistan and Iraq as recent hot spots—and now outbreaks in the Congo and Liberia—we seem further from real peace than ever. Following the road map to peace in Palestine is proving to be a rutty and difficult path indeed. The future seems very uncertain as the world experiences one crisis after another.

Yet one of the purposes of preaching and publishing the true gospel is to spread the certain truth that the message of the Bible offers real hope for the future in spite of our present chaotic, unstable world.

"For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope" (Romans 15:4, NIV).

Jeremiah to the rescue

In the 6th and 7th centuries B.C., the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah lived in a moral and political climate not so different from our own. His own nation was under constant threat from two ancient powers of the time, Babylon and Egypt. By that time the Assyrian Empire (which had previously conquered and taken the 10-tribe northern house of Israel into captivity) had begun to disintegrate as an imperial power.

Jeremiah’s basic commission from God included "presiding over" the demise and captivity of the nation of Judah by a foreign power, King Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon.
In the course of 40 years in a major prophetic office (626 to 587 B.C.) encompassing the reigns of five kings of Judah, Jeremiah learned certain hard-won lessons that 21st-century man desperately needs to grasp and understand.

Read the full article at www.wnponline.org/wnp/wnp0307/lifeofjeremiah.htm

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