Sabbath School Lesson Podcast

Not Elijah or Jeremiah or Some Other Prophet Read again Matthew 16:14. That people should mistake Jesus for John is one thing. But for Elijah? Or Jeremiah? Or some other Old Testament prophet? Where did such ideas come from? Elijah was the fearless prophet of Mount Carmel fame, the firebrand who had the temerity to confront Israel's recalcitrant king and demonic wife. He was the one who held forth alone against the combined religious establishment in Ahab's corrupt regime (see 1 Kings 18). Jeremiah ("the weeping prophet"), coming upon the scene at a time of intense national ferment and crisis, conveyed a message to his compatriots that could not have been more unwelcome to the national mood—and he paid for it, too (Jer. 20:1, 2, 7, 8). As for the rest of God's faithful prophets in the Old Testament, Jesus in His scathing woes upon the scribes and Pharisees left Israel's treatment of these godly stalwarts for the last, as if to suggest that it was the central point He wished to make: "So you testify agains