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(1) The LORD said to me concerning the drought, (2) "Judah is in mourning; its cities are dying, its people lie on the ground in sorrow, and Jerusalem cries out for help. (3) The rich people send their servants for water; they go to the cisterns, but find no water; they come back with their jars empty. Discouraged and confused, they hide their faces. (4) Because there is no rain and the ground is dried up, the farmers are sick at heart; they hide their faces. (5) In the field the mother deer abandons her newborn fawn because there is no grass. (6) The wild donkeys stand on the hilltops and pant for breath like jackals; their eyesight fails them because they have no food. (7) My people cry out to me, 'Even though our sins accuse us, help us, LORD, as you have promised. We have turned away from you many times; we have sinned against you. (8) You are Israel's only hope; you are the one who saves us from disaster. Why are you like a stranger in our land, like a traveler who stays for only one night? (9) Why are you like someone taken by surprise, like a soldier powerless to help? Surely, LORD, you are with us! We are your people; do not abandon us.' " (10) The LORD says about these people, "They love to run away from me, and they will not control themselves. So I am not pleased with them. I will remember the wrongs they have done and punish them because of their sins." (11) The LORD said to me, "Do not ask me to help these people. (12) Even if they fast, I will not listen to their cry for help; and even if they offer me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not be pleased with them. Instead, I will kill them in war and by starvation and disease." (13) Then I said, "Sovereign LORD, you know that the prophets are telling the people that there will be no war or starvation, because you have promised, they say, that there will be only peace in our land." (14) But the LORD replied, "The prophets are telling lies in my name; I did not send them, nor did I give them any orders or speak one word to them. The visions they talk about have not come from me; their predictions are worthless things that they have imagined. (15) I, the LORD, tell you what I am going to do to those prophets whom I did not send but who speak in my name and say war and starvation will not strike this land---I will kill them in war and by starvation. (16) The people to whom they have said these things will be killed in the same way. Their bodies will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem, and there will be no one to bury them. This will happen to all of them---including their wives, their sons, and their daughters. I will make them pay for their wickedness."
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Notice what is happening. The land is suffering from a drought. Did the people connect drought with obedience to the message of a false minister? Probably not.
The spirit that was speaking to them was not divine, but it was supernatural. The people submitted to it because they did not put the prophet to the test to see whether or not his teaching was in harmony with what had already been revealed through God's messenger, Moses.
God blames the plight of the nation (the drought mentioned in verses 1-6) on the false prophets to whom the people listened (verses 13-16). What did the prophets do? They lulled the people into complacency, which led them to believe that all was well when it was not. They preached to them smooth things because the people had itching ears. They liked the things that were taught to them, but it was not the Word of God. God says they preached lies in His name. If one listens to them, then it is the same thing as the blind leading the blind and both falling in the ditch.
The land was in drought. How many carnal people would connect a drought with obedience to a false minister? Not very many because they would be thinking carnally and say, "It's just part of the cycle of things. It happens every so many years." They are not thinking that there might be a spiritual cause for it: that God is concerned about the well being of His people, and that He had brought the drought to make them think about why it is happening. The cause for concern is spiritual in nature.
Would any modern U.S. President or presidential candidate make an appeal to American citizens that the cause of our problems are spiritual in nature? If a national figure today said before a group of people that the reason we are having troubles in the United States is that we need to repent and get back to our God, they would be laughed into shame and contempt. The reason we are seeing the immorality in the United States is the effect of listening to false ministers!
— John W. Ritenbaugh