re portland earthquake paul hudson jr hudson athena cs uga edu wrote in article may athos rutgers edu cctr cantua canterbury ac nz bill rea writes in history seems to imply some pretty serious sin the one of the pastors in the church i attend christchurch city elim considers that a prophesy of a natural disaster as a judgement from the lord is a clear sign that the prophesy is not from the lord i would like to see his reasoning behind this you may have gotten if i get a chance i will ask them this weekend burned by natural disaster prophecies down there but that does not mean that every natural disaster judgement prophecy is false take a quick look at the book of jeremiah and it is obvious that judgement prophecies can be valid here in the us it seems like we might have more of a problem with positive prophecies though i am sure there may be a few people who are too into judgement the words i have underlined are at the heart of the problem a quick look doesn t do justice to the depth of the book of jeremiah having studied the jeremiah ezekial period solidly for over a year at one stage of my life i have to say that there is a great deal of underlying theological meaning in the judgement prophesies let me make one point the clash between jeremiah and the false prophets was primarily in the theological realm the false prophets understood their relatioship to god to be based on the covenant that the lord made with david it is possible to trace within the pages of the old testament who this covenant which was initially conditional on the continued obedience of david s descendants came to be viewed as an unconditional promise on the part of the lord to keep a descendant of david s upon the throne and to never allow jerusalem to subjegated by any foreign power jeremiah was not a judahite prophet he was from anathoth across the border in what had formerly been israelite territory when he came to prophesy he came from the theological background of the covenant the lord had made with israel through moses the northern kingdom had rejected the davidic covenant after the death of solomon his theology clashed with the theology of the local prophets it was out of a very deep understanding of the mosaic covenant and an actute awareness of international events that jeremiah spoke his prophesies the judgement prophesies were deeply loaded with theological meaning in my opinion both the portland earthquake prophesy and the david wilkerson new york will burn prophesy are froth and bubble compared to the majestic theological depths of the jeremiah prophesies bill rea o o w u w bill rea computer services centre e mail b rea csc canterbury ac nz university of canterbury or cctr csc canterbury ac nz christchurch new zealand phone fax
