God’s men don’t always have “good news” to share.  If they do, they are certainly not God’s men!

We see an example of that in Isaiah 7. God has just told King Ahaz that he does not need to fear two kings who are invading his land.  God calls them “two stubs of smoldering firebrands” who are not worth fearing.  But this didn’t mean that all would be well for the land of Judah.

Beginning in verse 17, God has Isaiah the prophet declare what was going to happen to the land: “The LORD will bring on you, on your people, and on your father’s house such days as have never come since the day that Ephraim separated from Judah …”.  This was not what anyone wanted to hear.  Even though the land of the two kings he fears will be forsaken (:16), there are coming OTHER enemies who will indeed devastate his land. It is going to get bad in Judah.

Passages like this in scripture help us realize that genuine Christianity is not a “health, wealth, and prosperity” religion in which there is always what we would call “good news” just around the corner.  God’s prophets do not preach “peace & prosperity” where there is none.  Sometimes the role of God’s man is to preach the “bad news” of what is impending — and in fact that may be very applicable in a nation like ours today, which continues to turn its back on the Lord.

Thus sometimes the role that God’s people get to play in a given age is not that they will experience unbridled “success”, but that they will be faithful witnesses to God and His truth, even in the midst of devastation or adversity. That is all that a faithful person living in the time of Isaiah could do. We may be coming into such a time in our land as well.  It’s not always “good news” around the corner for a country.  Only the false prophets will tell you that.  The REAL good news is that through Jesus Christ, we can be saved from this wicked age, and experience true joy and happiness in the presence of the Lord forever.