Prophets Reveal Future  

     We hesitate to call sacred Scripture "hide and seek," but God revealed his plans in a hide and seek manner through the prophets. Important information often appears in a chapter and verse where least expected. 

     While Daniel served in Babylon, God was also speaking to Jeremiah back in ruined Judah. 

     'The time is coming,' declares the Lord, 'when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers ... because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,' declares the Lord. 

     No longer will a man teach his neighbor ... saying 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me... For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. - Jeremiah 31:1-2, 4 

     I will bring Judah and Israel back from captivity and rebuild them as they were before. I will forgive all their sins of rebellion against me. Then this city will bring me renown, joy, praise and honor before all nations on earth. - Jeremiah 33:7-8 

     Judah was rebuilt, and destroyed again, A.D. 70, by Romans. Modern Israel - remarkable as it is - does not "bring God renown, joy, praise and honor before all nations on earth." The promises in Jeremiah 33 are yet to be realized. 

     Meanwhile, God had words for another contemporary, Ezekiel:

     I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will bring them back into their own land. There will be one king over them and they will never again be two nations or divided into two kingdoms. I will save them... I will cleanse them. They will be my people and I will be their God. - Ezekiel 37:21-23       

     (This may have begun in 1948, but the best is yet to come.) 

Tomorrow: The Redeemer...cut off?