Now order all the people of Israel to meet me at Mount Carmel. Bring along the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of the goddess Asherah who are supported by Queen Jezebel."

"Why should I help you?" Elisha said to the king of Israel. "Go and consult those prophets that your father and mother consulted." "No!" Joram replied. "It is the LORD who has put us three kings at the mercy of the king of Moab."

The time will come when people will not listen to sound doctrine, but will follow their own desires and will collect for themselves more and more teachers who will tell them what they are itching to hear.

On another occasion King Zedekiah had me brought to him at the third entrance to the Temple, and he said, "I am going to ask you a question, and I want you to tell me the whole truth."

So King Zedekiah promised me in secret, "I swear by the living God, the God who gave us life, that I will not put you to death or hand you over to the men who want to kill you."

But if you do not surrender, then this city will be handed over to the Babylonians, who will burn it down, and you will not escape from them."

I said, "You will not be handed over to them. I beg you to obey the LORD's message; then all will go well with you, and your life will be spared.

In it I saw all the women left in Judah's royal palace being led out to the king of Babylonia's officers. Listen to what they were saying as they went: 'The king's best friends misled him, they overruled him. And now that his feet have sunk in the mud, his friends have left him.' "

Zedekiah replied, "Don't let anyone know about this conversation, and your life will not be in danger.

Just tell them you were begging me not to send you back to prison to die there."

And I was kept in the palace courtyard until the day Jerusalem was captured.

and said to me, "Please do what we ask you! Pray to the LORD our God for us. Pray for all of us who have survived. Once there were many of us; but now only a few of us are left, as you can see.

Pray that the LORD our God will show us the way we should go and what we should do."

that you are making a fatal mistake. You asked me to pray to the LORD our God for you, and you promised that you would do everything that he commands.

When he appeared before King Ahab, the king asked him, "Micaiah, should King Jehoshaphat and I go and attack Ramoth, or not?" "Attack!" Micaiah answered. "Of course you'll win. The LORD will give you victory."

until a spirit stepped forward, approached the LORD, and said, 'I will deceive him.' 'How?' the LORD asked.

The spirit replied, 'I will go and make all of Ahab's prophets tell lies.' The LORD said, 'Go and deceive him. You will succeed.' "

So I will give their fields to new owners and their wives to other men. Everyone, great and small, tries to make money dishonestly. Even prophets and priests cheat the people.

They act as if my people's wounds were only scratches. 'All is well,' they say, when all is not well.

But I have seen the prophets in Jerusalem do even worse: they commit adultery and tell lies; they help people to do wrong, so that no one stops doing what is evil. To me they are all as bad as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

To the people who refuse to listen to what I have said, they keep saying that all will go well with them. And they tell everyone who is stubborn that disaster will never touch them."

That same year, in the fifth month of the fourth year that Zedekiah was king, Hananiah son of Azzur, a prophet from the town of Gibeon, spoke to me in the Temple. In the presence of the priests and of the people he told me

Within two years I will bring back to this place all the Temple treasures that King Nebuchadnezzar took to Babylonia.

Then in the presence of the priests and of all the people who were standing in the Temple, I said to Hananiah,

But listen to what I say to you and to the people.

But a prophet who predicts peace can only be recognized as a prophet whom the LORD has truly sent when that prophet's predictions come true."

and said in the presence of all the people, "The LORD has said that this is how he will break the yoke that King Nebuchadnezzar has put on the neck of all the nations; and he will do this within two years." Then I left.

to go and tell Hananiah: "The LORD has said that you may be able to break a wooden yoke, but he will replace it with an iron yoke.

Then I told Hananiah this, and added, "Listen, Hananiah! The LORD did not send you, and you are making these people believe a lie.

And Hananiah died in the seventh month of that same year.

This is what the Sovereign LORD says: "These foolish prophets are doomed! They provide their own inspiration and invent their own visions.

They don't guard the places where the walls have crumbled, nor do they rebuild the walls, and so Israel cannot be defended when war comes on the day of the LORD.

I tell them: Those visions you see are false, and the predictions you make are lies. You say that they are my words, but I haven't spoken to you!"

I am about to punish you prophets who have false visions and make misleading predictions. You will not be there when my people gather to make decisions; your names will not be included in the list of the citizens of Israel; you will never return to your land. Then you will know that I am the Sovereign LORD.

Tell the prophets that their wall is going to fall down. I will send a pouring rain. Hailstones will fall on it, and a strong wind will blow against it.

Now this is what the Sovereign LORD says: "In my anger I will send a strong wind, pouring rain, and hailstones to destroy the wall.

"The wall and those who covered it with whitewash will feel the force of my anger. Then I will tell you that the wall is gone and so are those who whitewashed it---

"These people want the kind of prophet who goes around full of lies and deceit and says, 'I prophesy that wine and liquor will flow for you.'

The city's rulers govern for bribes, the priests interpret the Law for pay, the prophets give their revelations for money---and they all claim that the LORD is with them. "No harm will come to us," they say. "The LORD is with us."

The beast was taken prisoner, together with the false prophet who had performed miracles in his presence. (It was by those miracles that he had deceived those who had the mark of the beast and those who had worshiped the image of the beast.) The beast and the false prophet were both thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur.