Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Jeremiah 28:15
Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet, Hear now, Hananiah; The LORD hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie.
Verse 15. Hear now, Hananiah; the Lord hath not sent thee] This was a bold speech in the presence of those priests and people who were prejudiced in favour of this false prophet, who prophesied to them smooth things. In such cases men wish to be deceived.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Jeremiah being a second time confirmed in the truth of his revelation, and having likewise a special revelation relating to this false prophet, comes now and tells him his doom, viz. that he should die within a year, because he had taught people to believe, and to hope for, and trust to what was false, and they were never like to see.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
15. makest . . . trust in a lie(Jer 29:31; Eze 13:22).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Then said Jeremiah the prophet unto Hananiah the prophet,…. The false prophet, as he is again called by the Targum, and in the Syriac version; where he went to him, and met with him, whether in the temple or elsewhere, is not mentioned; very probably in some public place, that there might be witnesses of what was said; for it was for the conviction of others, as well as for his own confusion, the following things are observed:
hear now, Hananiah, the Lord hath not sent thee; though he spoke in his name, and pretended a mission from him, when he had none, which was abominable wickedness:
but thou makest this people to trust in a lie: that the Lord would break off the yoke of the king of Babylon, and free the nations from servitude to him, particularly Judea; and that the king, and his princes, and people, and the vessels of the temple, carried away with him, would be returned within two years; this the people depended on as coming from the Lord, when he was not sent by him.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
There would not have been weight enough in the plain teaching of Jeremiah had he not confronted his adversary, as the case is at this day with us; when insolent and unprincipled men rise up and dare to vomit forth their blasphemies, by which they darken and degrade the doctrines of true religion, we are under the necessity to contend with them, otherwise what we teach would be ineffectual; for the minds of many, I mean the simple, are in suspense and fluctuate when they see a great conflict between two contrary parties. It was therefore necessary for the holy man to expose the lies of Hananiah, for he ever vaunted himself and boasted of his own predictions.
But what did Jeremiah say? Jehovah hath not sent thee This refutation ought to be noticed whenever we contend with Satan’s ministers and false teachers; for whatever they may pretend, and with whatever masks they may cover their lies, this one thing ought to be more than sufficient to put an end to their boastings, — that they have not been sent by the Lord. Jeremiah might have contended in a long speech with Hananiah, for he might have been made sufficiently eloquent through the Holy Spirit suggesting and dictating whatever was needful on the subject; but this concise brevity produced much greater effect than if he had made great display and used many words. Let this, then, be borne in mind, that wherever there is a controversy about religion, we ought ever to ask whether he who speaks has been sent by God; for whatever he may babble, though the most acute, and though he may talk things which may fill with wonder the minds of the simple, yet all this is nothing but smoke when his doctrine is not from God. So also we ought at this day to deal in a brief manner with those mercenary dogs of the Pope who bark against the pure truth of the Gospel; we ought to be satisfied with this compendious answer, — that God is not their master and teacher. But as our state now is different from that of the ancient people, we must observe that sent by the Lord is he only whose doctrine is according to the rule of the Law, and of the Prophets, and of the Gospel. If, then, we desire to know whom the Lord has sent, and whom he approves as his servants, let us come to the Scripture, and let there be a thorough examination; he who speaks according to the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel, has a sure and an indubitable evidence of his divine call; but he who cannot prove that he draws what he advances from these fountains, whatever his pretences may be, ought to be repudiated as a false prophet. We hence see what an important instruction this passage contains.
He then adds, Thou hast made this people to rely on falsehood They pervert the meaning of the Prophet who thus render the words, “Thou hast falsely rendered this people secure,” at least they lessen by one half what the Prophet intended to express; for not only is Hananiah condemned because he vainly and falsely pretended God’s name, but the word שקר , shicor, is introduced, the very thing employed; as though he had said, “Thou feedest this people with a vain hope which thou hast formed in thine own brains; therefore thy fictions make this people to go astray.” Hence Jeremiah not only accused this impostor that he by his fictions deceived the people, but also that he brought forward his prophecies in God’s name; and these removed their fear and gave them some hope, so that the people became torpid in their security.
Let us learn from this passage that we ought especially to take heed when the ground of trust is the subject, lest we rely on any empty or perishable thing, like wretched hypocrites who devour shadows only, and afterwards find nothing solid in their own fictions. But when we refer to trust, let there be something solid on which we can safely rely; and we know that we cannot possibly be disappointed, if we look to God for all things, if we recumb on his mercy alone; for there is no rest nor peace for us anywhere else but in Christ. Let us then retain this object of trust, and let it be our only support. It follows, —
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
EVOLUTIONA FALSE PHILOSOPHY
Jer 28:15
(This sermon was one in a series on the subject.)
IN speaking to you this evening on the subject of Evolution and False Philosophy, 1 propose the objective of justifying my theme, and the method of making the friends of the theory of evolution confirm all that I say.
It is quite the custom nowadays for those pseudoscientists who teach this philosophy to tell the new, uninstructed student that all scientists are agreed on the subject, and that its last great opponent is long since dead. Unfortunately, the average freshman, and for that matter the average post-graduate, who has never heard from the opponents of the philosophy or read a single book in opposition to the same, swallows this statement as thoughtlessly as young fledglings take into their stomachs whatever the mother drops into the mouth.
An editorial in the Minnesota Daily of February 10th, 1932 headed, Do Contemporary Scientists Fear Religion?, while justly criticizing the scientific lecturers for not fully accepting the anti-Christian results of their philosophy, falls into the dual mistake, first that of supposing that those of us who represent Christianity have any quarrel whatever with science. We have not! Christianity has been the forerunner of science in every country to which it has gone. It has cleared the path for scientific investigation, and heartily approved of all its true products; but Christianity, like all truth, is not tolerant of error, and it will not harmonize with this pseudo-science,this utterly false philosophy.
The second mistake into which the Editorial fell was that of imagining that science was steadily undermining religion, leaving it less and less room upon which to stand. On the contrary, in the 1900 years since Christ quit the world, there is not a single essential of the Christian Faith that has been evilly affected by any scientific discovery. Instead, true science is more and more confirming our Faith at every point.
The Science of Archeology has effectually answered the critics of the Old Testament, while the Clinics in Regeneration, running through the entire period of the church, suffice to confirm the claims of the New.
To this hour no man has improved upon the decalogue of the Old Testament, and to this minute no mortal has attained to the high ideals of New Testament teaching.
I have selected the text of this evening in order to show you three things, namely,
The prophets of evolution are false prophets;
Their claims are false pretences;
Their judgment is fore-ordained.
THE PROPHETS ARE FALSE
Hananiah was a false prophet, and Jeremiah dared to face him and charge him with that fact. Hear now, Hananiah; The Lord hath not sent thee.
That is the exact charge that I make against the prophets of evolution.
They are false prophets, every one! They seek to substitute a pure speculation for science. In that procedure they contort their profession. They are set by their employers to teach the truth; they are salaried with that intent. The public has a right to expect from them the output of truth.
On the contrary, they themselves, having been turned to believe a lie, propagate the same, and, in order to get it accepted, dare to labelscientific,a theory confessedly without verification.
The whole doctrine of transmutation which Spencer himself affirmed was the essential, the sine-quanon of the hypothesis, is unknown to natures ways. This fact was admitted by Darwin himself. Here is Darwins language from The Descent of Man the 1874 edition
It is asking a great deal of intelligent people to believe the theory which is not supported by evidence, just where evidence is most needed. Now these missing links, if there are any, should be more highly developed than the forms lower down in the scale from which they evolved, and therefore more able to continue. Then why not continue, if they ever evolved, while their weaker progenitors, less able to live, continue to this day!
Now listen to Darwins answer to his own question:But this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution.
This is the sad thing of the whole evolutionary propaganda. The lack of evidence in no wise phases its friends and advocates, a circumstance that proves that they have no kinship to true scientists.
Their plan for success is the imposition of the philosophy upon immature minds. The greatest outrage against childhood in America is not being perpetrated by sweat factories, nor even by unfit and oppressive parents; the greatest outrage to American childhood, at this moment, is a mental outrage.
To take little children, in the third grade, and teach them The early history of man, and bring them to believe that the manufactured and imaginary creations of such a book ever had a historic basis, is to wilfully perpetrate a mental derangement.
To adopt as text books in the Public Schools, The Tree Boys, The Tree Men, and The Cave Men, is to turn blank time into a Tarzan travesty; and to accomplish all of this with little undefended children, or even with college freshmen, under the pretense of a new interpretation of Christianity, is a hypocritical and conscienceless procedure.
Some years ago Dr. A. W. Slaten was the Head of Religion in a Baptist College. It had been founded and fostered by Fundamentalists; its very Constitution demanded, on the part of every teacher in the school, loyalty to the great essentials of Christianity. Slaten was an evolutionist. He believed the school presented an opportunity to influence the future for his philosophy. He persuaded himself that the end of bringing his boys and girls to believe the same, justified the hypocritical and surreptitious method of putting it over; and in that endeavor he was successful, until, by and by, he foolishly wrote a book that brought to the Board of Control exhibits of his true belief, whereupon he was forced from his professorship.
Inside of a week he was a Unitarian pastor, and inside of three months he was denying the existence of God. In other words, when a monthly salary was removed, he voiced his true views for the first time.
Unfortunately for the youth of America, the State University now justifies itself in a course such as has been charged, with pretty good reason, against the University of Chicago, viz., the Academic Department convinces the student that he has no mind; and the Theological course that there is no God.
The only difference is, that, in our State Universities, the departments of Animal Biology, Philosophy, and the study of the English Bible, unite to do the same work that the University of Chicago Theological Department accomplishes, namely, destroy faith in God.
Now there are people who imagine that a minister of the Gospel, under such circumstances, should take one of two courses:shut his eyes to the facts and close his ears to the philosophies of modern teaching: or, if he see and hear, seal his lips in the interests of quiet and peace.
Old Martin Luther said, I was born to fight devils. Pardon the boisterousness of my books. It is my business to remove obstruction, to cut down thorns, to fill up the quagmires, and to open and make straight the paths; but if I must have some failing, let me rather speak the truth with too great severity than act the hypocrite and conceal the same.
To that deliverance the pulpit of the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis, says Amen.
I turn then from these false prophets to their
FALSE PRETENSES
The claim for evolution that it is a science is a false pretense.
Among the old advocates of this theory that was never made, except by Haeckel. He was the most atheistic man, and, in order to provide a basis for his atheism, he asserted that evolution was a science.
Darwin never made such a claim; Huxley never made it; Wallace never made it. The greater scientists do not now make it.
The declaration that evolution is a demonstrated science, marks its maker as a diminutive man; and the smaller he is the more loudly he proclaims.
Professor Neuman, zoologist of the University of Chicago, a man who falsified the facts concerning the Tennessee author of the anti-evolution law, then refused, upon proofs to the contrary, to apologize, is one of those American midget professors, who dare to say that Evolution is a guess only in the same sense that the law of gravity is a guess, and yet, in the same conjunction, has to admit in all frankness, The evolutionists volunteer the admission that evolution is not absolutely proven. It is a joke to put in the word absolutely, in view of the utter poverty of evidence. It is not proven at any point.
Wm. Bateson, the most eminent biologist of the age, himself an evolutionist, frankly admitted in his Toronto speech, The assumed appearance of variability is largely illusory. Of the occurrence of genetic change which might be likely to lead to the production of new species no indication has been found. The immediate consequence has been that the development of the evolutionary theory has been tacitly suspended.
In a letter received this week from a student of the State University, I am asked, Did it ever occur to you that in the process of evolution, these changes we know about, do not happen in an instant? to which my answer is, The whole question is begged by its presentation. No one knows of such changes!
I have already shown you that Darwin himself admitted that we do not know about them.
Now I come to tell you that Bateson, who, doubtless, was quite as well up on this subject as is the student who wrote the question, says concerning the time question in this imaginary process, Even time cannot complete that which is not yet commenced.
These false prophets substitute for fact fictional imagination. Think of the following statement, and ask yourself if there is one known fact involved in it, and yet it is in practical accord with Van Loons mental meandering:
Way back in the dawn of life a bit of naked protoplasm rose in the warm seas of the earth; let us say God created it out of the substances in the water, and endowed it with life. Now this bit of living matter was neither plant nor animal, but from it arose two lines of development,one to become the future plants, the other the animals.
That is quite a statement. What scientific basis has it? The Standard Dictionary definition of science is, Knowledge gained and verified by exact observation and correct thinking.
I do not know the age of the young lady who writes me this statement. I have heard of a spinster who prided herself on having read every book that came from the press. Finally, one day, a friend asked her, Have you read sops Fables? to which she replied, Yes, I read them when they first came out. sop died 564 B. C. But that spinsters age was infancy in comparison. In fact she was still in foetal form as compared with sister Fern, if she made exact observation upon the rise of the protoplasm.
Professor Lewis T. More, Head of the chair of Physics of the University of Cincinnati in his Dogma on Evolution, wisely remarks,
Some day men of science will learn that hypotheses cannot always be avoided, but that they are to be used only as a confession of ignorance.
The proponents of evolution are specialists in imagination. Because they want the theory to be true, (that God may be shorn of His creative ability and man may be accepted as the supreme creature of the universe), they will adopt the lamest arguments, and seek, with the crutches of imagination, to provide them standing.
It is not my purpose in the lecture of this night to repeat any considerable portion of what I have said on the previous occasions, but in illustration, let me remind you again that there is not anything like the kin-ship in physical form, appearance, comparison of part with part, between the EoHippus and the modern horse than there is between a jackass and a jack rabbit; and yet, because geology marks indefinite space of time between the former, and brings the latter under mans observation, the first is accepted as a fact, and the second is laughed at as a fancy.
Again, take the two most outstanding of the imaginary links between the monkey and the man, namely, Pithecanthropus Erectus and Piltdown, and consider their history, and tell me if any man, whose mind has a scintilla of the scientific about it, could bring from these, impressive evidence even, for this philosophy.
Since Pithecanthropus has been most paraded, consider the following thoughtful objections to his place in the Hall of the Age of Man.
Professor Dubois found four small bits of bones; the cap of a skull, two teeth, and a femur.
Two of these were found in 1891, brought from an old river-bed, and the other two, the left thigh bone and a molar tooth, were found months afterwards in the same vicinity.
The teeth were five feet apart from the skull, and the femur fifty feet away. Does observation or correct thinking demand, or even approve, the idea that these parts all originally belonged to one person, or one animal?
Science, Aug. 17th, 1923, Suppl. VIII, says:Dubois himself now believes that his much-prized fossils are bones of a large ape, rather than a form of ape-man.
His second Pithecanthropus Erectus skull, (on the discovery of which he declared a race of such missing links), was finally proven to be the knee-cap of an elephant, as he himself admitted in an embarrassed confession before the Old World Scientists in their Convention at Amsterdam in 1924.
Now take Piltdown! The pieces from which this Dawn man was imaginatively created were not found together; not even the parts of the skull, but separated by a distance of several yards.
The pieces were not found at one time, some months intervening between the discovery of the parts.
The skull and the jaw were apparently mis-fits. According to Keith, the skull is that of a woman; the jaw, according to Hrdlicka, is that of an ape. Professor Keith admits that Woodward had difficulty in securing an approach to symmetry and a correct adjustment of parts. We should think he would!
Professor J. H. McGregor said that he did not believe the jaw and the skull belonged to the same individual, and Professor W. Waterston agreed to that opinion.
But let Lull, the ardent evolutionist of Yale University, famed also as a Paleontologist state the objections to this exhibit:First of all it was in a shallow stratum of gravel, less than four feet in thickness at the point of discovery.
Secondly,Lull admits that Smith, Woodward, Keith, and McGregor could not agree upon what it represented, or in their estimation of its cranial capacity.
Thirdly,Lull says, The jaw proved to be a veritable bone of contention. G. S. Miller, Jr., declared that the jaw and skull could not belong to the same individual, or even the same genus.
According to Prof. Lull in Evolution of Man the question of time to which these belonged, is in dispute. Whether the jaw and skull belonged to the same individual is in dispute. Whether the teeth were upper or lower was in dispute. The cubic contents of the skull are in dispute.
In fact, the whole thing is a question mark, and yet it is used in text books as a scientific (?) demonstration of the infidel philosophy of evolution.
Men who can accept such evidences in a science realm are hard pressed for proofs.
There is not a step in the entire philosophy, but is in dispute. I do not mean in dispute as between the opponents of Darwinism and its advocates, but I mean in earnest and hot debate among advocates themselves.
Let me illustrate.In my attack the other night upon the theory of recapitulation, some student from the University put to me the question, Do you profess to be a better embryologist than Prof. Scammon?, to which I replied, as you will remember,
Certainly not. Professor Scammon has an excellent reputation as an embryologist, so I understand; but a good reputation as an embryologist does not justify calling the arches that are found in the throat region of a human foetus, gill-slits, when there is neither a gill nor a slit there at any time!
Now I return to that subject, and will bring you the opinions and exact words of men whose names are not only well known in Universities to which they belong, but who have world-wide reputation as Scientists.
Professor T. H. Morgan of Columbia University in Evolution and Adaptation, p. 83, says of the Recapitulation Theory, This idea is in principle false.
Professor W. B. Scott of Princeton in Readings in Evolution, p. 173, says, This fundamental law is nowadays very seriously questioned, and by some authorities, is altogether denied.
Professor Karl Vogt, Geneva, says,This law which I long held as well founded, is absolutely and radically false.
Professor Adam Sedgwick, the eminent English embryologist, in Darwin and Modern Science, p. 174, says,
But as Huxley has pointed out and as the whole course of paleontological investigation has demonstrated, the extinct forms of life are very similar to those now existing, and there is nothing specially embryonic about them. So that, the facts, as we know them, lend no force to the theory of recapitulation.
Professor Percy E. Davidson, in his volume The Recapitulation Theory, printed in 1914, says, From these authoritative statements it appears that the facts of embryonic resemblances fail to support recapitulation in all three of its main implications.
Professor A. Weber, Geneva University, in the Scientific American, Feb. 1921, p. 121, says,
The critical comments of such embryologists as O. Hertwig, Keibel, and Vialleton, indeed, have practically torn to shreds the aforementioned fundamental biogenetic law. Its almost unanimous abandonment has left considerably at a loss those investigators who sought, in the structure of organisms, the key to their remote origin, or to their relationships.
One further illustration to show you, at another most important point, how the teachings of the present small professor are at variance with the great authorities.
I speak of vestigial remains. A few years ago we were somewhat astounded to be told that we had in our human bodies 180 vestigial remains, each and every one of which pointed back to our animal origin.
These vestigial parts were supposed to have functioned in some former animal ancestor, but to have failed in that function in human life for the simple reason that mans more highly developed frame no longer required their function.
I will not attempt to mention all these vestigial remains; to even name the 180 would require the time allotted to this address, but I shall deal with one or two of the most commonly mentioned, and some others of the most important significance.
For instance, the Appendix!
This was supposed to be a vestigial remain; of no value now, but a mortal menace instead, and so everybody who had a pain in the side or could dig up the price, had the pesky thing removed.
Now the word comes to us that Dr. Howard A. Kelly, of Johns Hopkins University, says of the appendix, It increases the extent of the intestinal mucus surface for secretion and absorption. This is also the position of Sir Arthur Keith.
Take the Thyroid Glands!
They were supposed to be useless vestigial organs. They are located on either side of the windpipe, just below the larynx. Now we learn that if they are removed from a cat or dog it means death, and if they have been defective in a human mother it will produce cretinism. Dr. C. W. Saleeby says of the thyroid that it produces a unique substance, mostly consisting of iodine. Without it, none can live.
Take the Pituitary Body!
It was called another vestigial remain. Vincent says, It was established by Paulesco in 1906, that the organ is essential for life. When removed from animals the operation is fatal. It helps to regulate secretions from various glands of the body, and its failure to function properly will produce giantism,or it may result in the opposite,infantilism.
Take the Pineal Body!
Some years ago on a train riding west, I read a whole page from the pen of Professor Lull of Yale, in which he declared that this body was nothing but a vestigial eye. He asserted that our mud-loving ancestors used to immerse their huge bodies in pools of slime, and left this one eye above the same to look about for enemies, dangers, as well as friends and food. But in the process of time something evolved two eyes on opposite sides of the head, and so this little one, not being needful, went its way.
It is a small organ located in the roof of the third ventricle of the brain. Now Swale Vincent, professor of physiology of the University of London, says that this gland is one of the most important organs in the entire human body, and that it seems to control the inflow and outflow of the cerebrospinal fluid of the third ventricle.
Is it any wonder that a leading Scientist Dr. P. C. Mitchell, in Encyc. Britt, vol. 20, p. 33 recently said,
It is almost impossible to prove that any structure, however rudimentary, is useless, and, if it is, in the slightest degree useful, there is no reason why, on the hypothesis of direct creation, it should not have been created.
Sir Arthur Keith, in spite of his skepticism admits in the British Medical Journal of 1926,As our knowledge increases, the vestigial organs are decreasing.
Do you know, the profound pity expressed by immature students for those of us who are such backwoodsmen as to have reached identical conclusions with the most clever investigators, is small beside the deep sympathy we feel for that student who is taken advantage of in his third grade immaturity and is falsely instructed until he has secured his Ph. D., and sent out to be a propagandist of a philosophical lie that has to live by calling itself scientific.
However, ignorance, or even educated infidelity, is not a preventative of justice, and for all such teachers
JUDGMENT IS FORE-ORDAINED
This philosophy, like its predecessors, will perish. One hundred fifty years ago Deism was as popular in our schools as Darwinism is today. It had its marvelous exponentsPaine, Hume, Voltaire, Tyndall, Bolingbroke and Hobbs, but it now lies buried with their disintegrated bodies, and is not even so well known as are the names of its opponents, several of whom are familiar to the careful students of history only.
One thing certain, and, in consequence, cheering, is that a false philosophy must eventually fall. You can create an imitation of a man, and you can put inside of him a machine and wind it up and make him walk, but he cannot walk far, and he will not walk long! His fall, when it occurs, will be a crash.
The greatest Scientists of Germany never accepted this philosophy.
Rudolph Virchow was in Germany what Saul was in Israel, head and shoulders above his fellow-scientists, and he never accepted the philosophy.
Bateson, who, until his recent death, was Englands most outstanding man, gave an address in Toronto, that was a practical admission of all for which its opponents contend.
More of Cincinnati holds to scorn the idea that the lowly Algae evolved into a choir of angels.
Within a year Austin Clark has not hesitated to confess the weaknesses of the philosophy.
The loud noise now being made in certain Universities, by the smaller Scientists, is only the increasing rattle of machinery that is running down.
To be sure, these men have the almost immeasurable advantage of compulsory attendance upon what they have to say, and they take the additional advantage of creating, in the Universities, a rabid and egotistical atmosphere such as brow-beats the student who does not accept it, if not into acquiescence, at least into silence.
I have had it told me this week by students who do not accept the philosophy, that they feared to back its opponents lest they themselves be made the butt of further scorn and heckling.
However, the so-called science that has to live after such a manner is certainly short-lived. You can coerce youth, but graduates become free men.
In my first debate on this subject in the State College of North Carolina, I was backed up by four Alumni of the College, two of whom were attorneys, and all of whom, in their maturity, had flung away the tattered and decaying philosophy.
Speaking down-town here before one of the Commercial Clubs one day, there were four graduates of the State University of Minnesota who told me, at the conclusion of the address, that it was their first time to listen to an argument against it, and that it was so conclusive that they were absolutely convinced.
In St. Louis two young women graduates of Eastern Universities, both of whom were ardent advocates of the philosophy, and who declined when the Board invited me to speak in the Y. W. C. A. to make their appearance on the platform of the Y. W. C. A., of which they were secretaries. They were converted by a single address, and in tears voiced their grief that they had ever been called so far away from God. The philosophy will perish.
Its prophets will finally sleep beneath the sod. This year thou shalt die was said to Hananiah, the false prophet. That is the sentence God has already passed upon a number of the present-day false prophets. They will perish this year.
Hume, Paine, and Voltaire, each prophesied the demise of Christianity; but they died without seeing it. They sleep in infidel graves, while the cause of Christ sweeps on!
The conflict in the church is not at all a battle between Christians. It is a battle between the true believers in Christ and the followers of Chas. Darwin, who still cloak under the nameChristian.
The Christian Century is one of the most radical of liberalistic journals, and yet, a few years ago, it frankly said this,
Christianity according to Fundamentalism is one religion; Christianity according to Modernism is another religion; There is a clash here as profound and as grim as that between Christianity and Confucianism. Amiable words cannot hide the differences. The God of the fundamentalist is one God; the God of the Modernist is another. The Christ of the Fundamentalist is one Christ; the Christ of the Modernist is another. The Bible of the Fundamentalist is one Bible; the Bible of the Modernist is another.
Certainly! Fortunately for Fundamentalists, our Christ has stood the test of 20 centuries, and our Bible of thousands of years, while Modernism was born but yesterday, and is destined to breathe its last tomorrow.
Time is Gods agency for establishing the Truth, and it is equally His agency for bringing falsehood to its grave.
Christianity has this eternal advantageIt gives to its converts the noblest ideas of living, and provides them with a bright expectation of life beyond. These basal facts are constitutional with Christianity, holding, as it does, that God created all, and is over all, and that by His Spirit He is guiding in all. It expects of man made in the Divine image, that he will, by Divine help, reach Divine ideals.
It is easy enough to make fun of Moses, and it is supposed to be very scholarly to deny his existence, but up to the present no evolutionist has improved upon the decalogue. All those who repudiate these moral teachings bear in their bodies the mark of the beast.
It is easy enough to talk of Jesus of Nazareth, and in seasoned and careful speech surreptitiously deny the Virgin Birth of the Christ, His Miracle working, His Atonement on Calvarys Cross, His Victory over the grave, His Ascension to the right hand of God, and His promised Second Coming! But, up to the present, Christ is the only Person who has proved an antidote to the moral leprosy of the world; Christ is the only Person who has so imparted His Spirit to the hearts of men as to affect clinics in regeneration; Christ is the only Person who has been able to convert the harlot into a saint, to sober the drunkard; and even change the murderer into a man of the tenderest mercies and the most considerate care of his fellows.
When the Science League of America was formed, Professor Ritter, president of Science Service, speaking in defense of evolution, said,
We must have a confidence in the natural that will not leave room for one jot or tittle of faith in the supernatural, attempting by one blow to wipe out the Bible, to dispense with the claims of the Christ, and to ridicule from existence the hope of Heaven.
It is an ambitious program, I grant you; but it is a program that would blacken the world, reduce man to the level of the beast, and take even from the Christian himself that Blessed Hope of a personal fellowship with the saved, and an eternal residence in the Heaven which Christ declared He had gone to prepare for His own.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
(15) Hear now, Hananiah . . .The narrative leaves the time and place of the interview uncertain, but suggests an interval of some days between it and the scene in the Temple court just narrated. In the strength of the word of the Lord which had come to him, the prophet can now tell his rival that he is a pretender, claiming the gift of prophecy for his own purposes and that of his party. There is a strange significance in the fact that the same official title is applied to both the true and the false prophets.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Behold Reader! what holy boldness the Lord imparts to his faithful servants. It doth not appear by what was said in the former verses, when the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, that it was revealed to him of Hananiah’s death. And yet observe, Jeremiah not only pronounced his death, but limited the time. He had said, that within two years, the people should be delivered from the fear of the King of Babylon. Now Jeremiah limits Hananiah’s death to one. I beg the Reader to remark this, and to turn to other passages in the word of God, to observe how the Lord doth at times, thus give sanction to the message of his faithful servants. See Num 6:28-33; Act 13:8-11 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Jer 28:15 Then said the prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet, Hear now, Hananiah; The LORD hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie.
Ver. 15. Thou makest this people to trust in a lie. ] Who loved to have it so, Jer 5:31 and were therefore justly left to obduration and horrible destruction.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
not sent thee. The test applied (Deu 18:21, Deu 18:22).
trust = confide.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
trust
(See Scofield “Psa 2:12”).
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
The Lord: This was a bold speech, in the presence of those priests and people who were prejudiced in favour of the false prophets, who prophesied to them smooth things. Jer 28:11, Jer 14:14, Jer 14:15, Jer 23:21, Jer 27:15, Jer 29:23, Jer 29:31, Jer 29:32, 1Ki 22:23, Eze 13:2, Eze 13:3, Eze 13:22, Eze 22:28, Lam 2:14, Zec 13:3
Reciprocal: Deu 13:5 – prophet Deu 18:20 – in the name Deu 18:22 – presumptuously Deu 29:19 – that he bless 1Ki 13:18 – But Neh 6:12 – God had Neh 6:14 – on the prophetess Pro 19:9 – and Isa 5:18 – draw Isa 9:15 – the prophet Isa 28:15 – we have made Jer 5:12 – have belied Jer 5:14 – I will make Jer 7:4 – Trust Jer 20:6 – Pashur Jer 23:32 – to err Jer 27:14 – they Jer 29:8 – Let Eze 11:13 – when Eze 13:6 – saying Eze 13:9 – mine Amo 2:4 – and their Amo 7:16 – hear Amo 8:4 – Hear Mic 2:11 – a man Mic 3:5 – concerning Zec 10:2 – they comfort Mal 2:9 – before Mat 7:15 – false Joh 10:1 – He Rom 16:18 – by 2Co 11:15 – whose 2Ti 3:9 – their 2Pe 2:1 – there were
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Jer 28:15. Having received this confirming message from God, Jeremiah knew that Hananiah was a false prophet, and he accused him accordingly to his face.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Jer 28:15-17. Then said Jeremiah, Hear now, Hananiah Jeremiah, being a second time confirmed in the truth of what he had foretold, and having likewise a special revelation relating to this false prophet, comes and calls him by his name, and tells him his doom, that he should die within a year, because he had taught rebellion against the Lord Had taught people to believe and trust to what was false, contradicting Gods will revealed by Jeremiah, and encouraging and exciting the people to hold out against Nebuchadnezzar, and not quietly to yield to this dispensation of God. Thus, as Hananiah had limited the accomplishment of his prophecy to the space of two years, to gain credit with the people by such a punctual prediction, so Jeremiah confines the trial of his veracity to a much shorter time, and the event, exactly answering to the prediction, evidently showed the falsehood of Hananiahs pretences. Lowth. So Hananiah died the same year in the seventh month Two months after he had uttered this false prophecy, as appeareth from Jer 28:1. So dangerous a thing it is for those who speak in the name of God to teach people contrary to his revealed will!
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Jeremiah also told Hananiah that the Lord had not sent the false prophet. Furthermore, the Lord had revealed that He would take Hananiah’s life within a year because he had encouraged the people to rebel against the Lord’s Word. The penalty that false prophets were to suffer under the Mosaic Covenant: was death (Deu 18:20).
"It is a serious thing indeed to use the name of God to say that secondary solutions can cure our problems when the real problem is that people have turned away from God and the truth that He has revealed in verbalized, propositional form concerning Himself." [Note: Schaeffer, p. 59.]