BEING RAISED ON a wheat ranch and spending a considerable amount of time at the controls of a combine as a youth, I had firsthand knowledge of the difference between the worth of wheat and chaff.  Chaff is the worthless husk that encloses the kernel of wheat, while the wheat itself is the valuable grain for which we worked so hard all year.  The chaff, on the other hand, was an irritant, an ever present byproduct of harvesting the grain (the process of separating the kernel from the husk).  The chaff reddened the eyes, blew down the neck, filled the lungs-it was uncomfortable, but the satisfaction of harvesting the wheat and trucking it off to the granary made the bothersome chaff of very little consequence.

In Jeremiah's day, the Lord compared the false prophets who were troubling the children of Israel to chaff.  He also likened His Word, faithfully spoken by the true prophet of the Lord, to be wheat-the real thing: "I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in My name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. ... The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath My word, let him speak My word faithfully.  What is the chaff to the wheat, saith the LORD " (Jer. 23:25, 28).  The messages these deceivers proclaimed to God's people, supposedly as from the Lord, were consistently positive and optimistic.  They were just the kinds of words the people wanted to hear.  The net result for those who listened and heeded this contrived counsel was vanity, false hope and certain judgment (Jer. 23:16, 17).

Today, we are experiencing the fulfillment of the prophecy given to the early church: "But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you ... and many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of '(2 Pet. 2:1, 2).  Dear fellow-servant, today we must faithfully proclaim the words of the inerrant, all-authoritative completed canon of Scripture.  No more prophecies or "words from the Lord" exist, despite the fact that I heard otherwise as I covered the Celebrate Jesus 2000 Congress in St. Louis.  At the Congress, Pat Robertson claimed God said He would "make it easy" for the conversion of vast numbers in the days of revival ahead.  Jack Hayford said God told him to tell those in attendance to stand, put their finger on the top of their heads and do a slow pirouette to signify a "breakthrough" of repentance and revival.