The Charge
There is a verse in Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) that most pulpits skip, and it may be the most important sentence in the whole chapter:
“I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in My name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed… Which think to cause My people to forget My name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers have forgotten My name for Baal.”
Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) 23:25, 27
Read the strategy slowly. The lying prophets of Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah)’s day were not mainly preaching another religion. They were preaching dreams — visions, impressions, “Elohim told me” — until the people of Yahuah did something worse than deny Him: they forgot His Name. And the text tells us exactly what filled the empty space where the Name used to be: Baal.
Baal is not just a statue in a museum. Baal is a title — it means “lord,” “master,” “owner.” The fathers did not stop being religious. They swapped the personal Name of their Elohim for the title of a false one, and in time the swap was complete: they prayed, they prophesied, they built — and the Name was gone.
That is the war of Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) 23. Not atheism. Amnesia.
Chaff and Wheat
Yahuah does not leave us guessing how to tell a true word from a lying dream:
“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 Yahuah. Is not My word like as a fire? saith Yahuah; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?”
Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) 23:28–29
Two tests are given in one breath. First: fidelity — the true prophet speaks the word as given, not as it will be received. Second: substance — chaff is husks; it fills a barn but feeds nobody. The lying dream leaves the people exactly as hungry as it found them, while the true word burns and breaks like fire and a hammer.
And the chapter seals the matter with Yahuah’s own verdict: “Behold, I am against the prophets… that steal My words every one from his neighbour… that use their tongues, and say, He saith” (Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) 23:30–31). A man saying “He saith” about words Yahuah never said is not a small error. It is theft — and it is the engine that drives the forgetting. Of the dreamers He concludes: “yet I sent them not, nor commanded them: therefore they shall not profit this people at all” (Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) 23:32).
The Name Was Given to Be Kept
Why does the Name matter this much? Because Yahuah gave it as a permanent memorial, not a temporary label:
“Yahuah, the Elohim of your fathers… this is My name for ever, and this is My memorial unto all generations.”
Shemoth (Exodus) 3:15
“I am Yahuah: that is My name: and My glory will I not give to another.”
Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 42:8
A memorial is something meant to be remembered — spoken, taught, handed down. When the prophets engineered forgetting, they were not attacking a doctrine. They were dismantling the memorial itself. And Yahuah promised the reversal in advance: “…at that day, saith Yahuah, thou shalt call Me Ishi; and shalt call Me no more Baali. For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name” (Hoshea (Hosea) 2:16–17). The names of the Baals come out of the mouth. The true Name goes back in.
Yahusha Restored What the Prophets Buried
This is why the words of Yahusha HaMashiach in Yochanan (John) 17 land with such weight: “I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me” (Yochanan (John) 17:6) — and again, “I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it” (Yochanan (John) 17:26). The Messiah did not come to replace the Name with a title. He came declaring the very Name the lying prophets had buried under dreams. And through Him the promise opens to everyone who calls: “Whosoever shall call on the name of Yahuah shall be delivered” (Yoel (Joel) 2:32).
How to Weigh Every Voice — Including This One
Yahuah gave His people the scale; no teacher is exempt from it:
- The word that does not come to pass is not His word — “When a prophet speaketh in the name of Yahuah, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which Yahuah hath not spoken” (Debarim (Deuteronomy) 18:22).
- Even a sign that comes true fails the test if it leads away from Yahuah — the prophet who says “let us go after other mighty ones” must not be listened to, “for Yahuah your Elohim proveth you” (Debarim (Deuteronomy) 13:1–3).
- Fruits over fluency — “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Mattithyahu (Matthew) 7:20), and the command stands for every generation: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of Elohim: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 Yochanan (John) 4:1).
A true teacher will never ask you to forget the Name, and will never fear the scale. Weigh this teaching too.
The Invitation
The Name was never lost. It was covered — by dreams, by titles, by centuries of men saying “He saith.” But a covered well is not a dry well. Yahuah kept His memorial; it stands in the Scriptures exactly where He left it, and His Son declared it openly.
So call on Him by the Name He gave. Teach it to your children as a memorial to all generations. And when a voice — any voice — leads you toward forgetting, you will know whose dream it is.
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