Do you believe that the world will change?
So this morning as I was trying to stop procrastinating and get on with some study (of course, blogging is another form of procrastination) I received a visit from two lovely ladies who introduced themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses. They asked me whether I read the bible and I said that I considered it to be a good book. They congratulated me and said that was very rare “for an Australian”.
One of them said that she inferred that I was a church goer and asked where and what denomination. I shared where I was from and it turned out that one of them grew up in our area. She asked me whether I believed that the world would change. I confess that I didn’t quite know what she meant, so I retreated into Christian language and said that I believed that creation would be redeemed. She seemed happy with that.
She then said that she would leave me with a scripture, one that it was unlikely I had ever heard before because these scriptures “hide” in the pages of the Old Testament prophets. As soon as she mentioned she was reading from Jeremiah, I thought I knew what was coming. And sure enough, she commenced to read from everyone’s favourite prosperity proof text:
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity. [a] I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
They were very impressed that I knew this passage, though I didn’t mention that I much prefer the verses that precede it:
4 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
This is actually the text that I use on the rare occasions that I am invited to preach somewhere. I think that Jeremiah’s message to the exiles is pretty valuable advice for those of us who are involved in churches inclined to think of ourselves as marooned in an increasingly foreign world.
Those ladies could have chosen hundreds of passages which I would not even have recognised, but they happened to choose one of the few passages I can quote at length from memory. So my accomplishment for the day was to impress some Jehovah’s Witnesses with my bible knowledge. I also got some interesting reading material entitled “Is religion losing its influence?”, so all in all a productive morning.