The question, plainly
Every month, on television and social media around the world, the same kind of message goes out: this is your month. Doors will open, money will come, what you lost will be restored. When the month disappoints, the next message explains why, and promises the next month instead. At the end of 2019, the same promise was made about a whole year: 2020 would be a year of “perfect vision.” Three months later, churches everywhere were closed by a pandemic.
What this page tests
Promises that a coming month or year will bring believers better circumstances have no basis in the Bible or in historic Christianity. What the Bible promises for this month, it promises for every month: Christ’s presence, God’s mercy, forgiveness, and a hope beyond death. And a promise that is renewed every month whatever happened is not comfort. It is a prediction that is never checked.
There are two ways to get this wrong. One says faith should declare a good month. The other says Christians should expect nothing good at all. This page argues against both. The apostles comforted people constantly, and taught them to pray boldly. They just never told them what next month would bring.
What the message looks like
These examples are made up by this page, not quoted from anyone, but most readers will recognise them:
“Welcome to your month of overflow. Every door shut against you opens before the thirtieth.”
“Did last month disappoint you? The enemy only fights what is about to be born. This is your month of recovery.”
“Whatever you lost this year, God is restoring sevenfold before December.”
Notice four things. The message is dated (this month). It promises circumstances (money, doors, restoration). It is for everyone listening, whatever they believe or do. And it resets: a bad month never counts against it.
Try it: promise or forecast?
Six statements. Is each a promise the Bible gives believers, or a dated forecast of better circumstances?
What James says about next year
One passage in the New Testament speaks directly to people who announce what the coming year will bring:
Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. … For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.
James 4:13–16
James does not tell them to stop planning or stop hoping. He tells them to stop announcing. A prayer asks God for a good year; a forecast tells people they will have one. Jesus said the same: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow … Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matthew 6:34). Each day, he expected, would have its own trouble.
It calls a confident forecast of a profitable year “boasting,” and replaces it with “If the Lord will.”
The favourite verse, and the chapter before it
The verse most often quoted for a new month is Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
It was written in a letter to Jews who had been taken captive to Babylon. The verse just before it says when God would bring them home: “after seventy years” (29:10). Most of them would die in exile. Meanwhile, the letter told them to build houses, plant gardens, raise families, and pray for the city they had been taken to (29:5–7). And it warned them not to believe the prophets who were promising a quick return (29:8–9).
One of those prophets appears in the chapter before. His name was Hananiah, and he announced in the temple that God would end the exile “within two full years” (28:3). Jeremiah answered: I hope you are right. But a prophet who promises peace is only proved true “when the word of the prophet shall come to pass” (28:6–9). Then God’s word came: “The LORD hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie.” Hananiah died that same year (28:15–17).
The monthly message quotes Jeremiah’s verse with Hananiah’s timetable. The two chapters were written to tell those two voices apart.
What Jesus and the apostles told people to expect
The cross. “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34).
Trouble, and peace in the middle of it. On his last night, Jesus told his disciples: “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Hard times as normal. Paul, days after being stoned and left for dead, told new Christians: “we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Peter wrote: “think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you” (1 Peter 4:12).
A dated forecast, once. In the book of Revelation, Christ gives one church a word for a stated period. It is: “ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Revelation 2:10).
A hope beyond this life. “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:19). The day when every tear is wiped away is the day Christ makes all things new (Revelation 21:4–5), not the first of next month.
“His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22–23). It was written in the ruins of Jerusalem. The mercy was new; the city was still in ruins.
The apostles’ sermons in Acts announce what God has done: Jesus died and rose, sins can be forgiven, the Spirit is given. They call people to repent. Not one of them tells the listeners what the coming year will bring.
When the plague came before
2020 was not the first time Christians lived through a plague. Around the year 252 a plague reached Carthage in North Africa. Some Christians there were upset that it killed them just as it killed their pagan neighbours. Their bishop, Cyprian, told them they had misunderstood their faith: they were acting “as if the Christian believed for this purpose, that he might have the enjoyment of the world and this life free from the contact of ills.”
In 1527, when plague reached Wittenberg, Martin Luther wrote that he would pray for protection, take medicine, avoid spreading infection, and visit anyone who needed him. “If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me.” He prayed boldly, and promised himself nothing.
Luther had ended his famous Ninety-five Theses ten years earlier with the same point: “Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, ‘Peace, peace,’ and there is no peace!” Christians should expect to enter heaven “through many tribulations.”
Try it: the month that can’t fail
The Bible tests a word spoken in God’s name by whether it comes true (Deuteronomy 18:22). Here is what the monthly reset does to that test. For each month, choose how your month really went, and watch the next message. The messages are made up.
Whatever you choose, the next message promises a good month. A good month proves the word. A flat month means the blessing is about to arrive. A bad month means the enemy is fighting it. No month can ever count against it, and a word that nothing can count against tells you nothing about the month.
What the church said instead
The historic church did have a word for every month. Its calendar followed the life of Christ through the year, and every Sunday had its own short prayer. Here are three things Christians have prayed and confessed for centuries:
“In all time of our tribulation; in all time of our wealth; in the hour of death, and in the day of judgement, Good Lord, deliver us.” The Litany, Book of Common Prayer (1662). They asked to be kept safe in good times too.
“Rain and drought, fruitful and barren years … health and sickness, riches and poverty … come, not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” The Heidelberg Catechism (1563). It adds: be “patient in adversity; thankful in prosperity.”
“Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing.” The Methodist Covenant Prayer, traditionally prayed at the start of a new year.
The monthly message tells God’s people which kind of month is coming. The historic church prayed through both kinds, and left the choice with God.
Try it: what is actually proven?
Four claims. Rate each, then see what the evidence supports.
The point, one more time
The Bible never promises a believer a better month. Its one dated forecast to a church is ten days of trouble, with a crown of life beyond it.
What it does promise, it promises every month. Christ is with you. His mercy is new tomorrow morning. Your sins are forgiven. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. And the day is coming when every tear is wiped away.
That word never needs resetting, because it was never placed on the month. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8).