Contrary to What You May Have Heard, Jeremiah Was No Bullfrog

Excerpt From Newsletter

Jeremiah’s message was, for most in his day as it is for most in our own, a message of impending catastrophe. It was also a message that was vehemently rejected by the vast majority of those who heard it. Under those circumstances, God inspired Jeremiah to write a history of Israel that would take up where Moses left off in Deuteronomy and set the record straight. The purpose of that history was to show the sons of Israel that they had sinned and thus confirm that God had every right to bring the curses of the covenant down on their heads.

Did you hear what I just said? I said the purpose of the Deuteronomic History is to document Israel’s sin. So don’t be misled by its apparent emphasis on what went right in Israel. Jeremiah’s history is not a benign account of the things that men like Samson, Samuel, David, Solomon, and Hezekiah did right. It is instead an account of how the things that some in Israel did right were completely negated by things that others did wrong. In some (if not most) cases, it tells us that those who negated the good things done were the very men who did them in the first place.

Get one thing straight: Jeremiah was nothing more than one of God’s many witnesses. But he was an extremely important one. It was his assigned task as a Prophet to summarize the history of Israel and then add an account of his own ministry to it. Therefore, he and Moses together provide the bulk of the information that one needs in order to understand what the Prophets are talking about. That is why you must master Jeremiah’s message first. Once you have gotten his message firmly fixed in your mind, you can then see what relevance the statements of Moses have for Gentiles. After all, God promised the New Covenant to Israel, not to Gentiles like you, me, and the Jews who call themselves Israel today.

“Contrary to What You May Have Heard, Jeremiah Was No Bullfrog,” The Voice of Elijah^®, April 1997, p. 1

Newsletter Details