Jeremiah 28:6.  "[A]nd the prophet Jeremiah said "Amen! May the Lord do so; may the Lord make the words which you have prophesied come true, and bring back to this place from Babylon the vessels of the house of the Lord and all the exiles." Jeremiah is talking to Hananiah here. Hananiah was a self-styled prophet who was telling the people left in Jerusalem after Babylon's victory not to worry - that the Lord would bring back the exiles and the holy vessels within two years' time. While wishing that was true, Jeremiah knows differently - Hananiah's prophecy was in contradiction to what God had told Jeremiah - that even the holy vessels remaining in Jerusalem would be carried off to Babylon and that the people were to submit to the king of Babylon, to whom God had given control and power for now.

Hananiah was telling the people what they wanted to hear, and what Hananiah wanted to believe. But Jeremiah was telling the people what God wanted them to hear - that they were to submit to the king of Babylon and live under his rule until the time that God decided to remove them from it. As the city had just been conquered, Jeremiah's words were hard to swallow. In fact, Jeremiah's words were always hard to swallow - he had nothing but promises of destruction and exile to tell the people, and he was compelled by God to tell these things. It led to him having a very difficult life, since they never listened to him nor wanted to hear what he had to say, and often punished him for saying these things!

When we get ourselves into such a bad place that the only way out is through the suffering, we can cast around for someone, anyone, to offer us a way out. There's almost always someone willing to offer false hope and an "easy" fix, especially if it means money, status, or power for them. But we have to learn to look at things from God's point of view as best we can - that is wisdom. If we are wise, we will realize that we got ourselves into these situations by not listening, and by being proud and sinful, just like Jerusalem was. Maybe we even shut out the people God was sending to us to warn us, like Jeremiah. Was someone trying to tell us the hard truth, yet we instead listened to the ones like Hananiah who said everything will be fine, just do what I say? Several very recent examples of this come to mind, and many more people than I would have ever thought fell under the sway of the false prophets of our time, leading to some very terrible behavior, and lasting damage to our society and relationships.

God doesn't need to send us prophets to tell us what we want to hear, we have plenty of secular people willing to do that. When we are faced with conflicting messages in dire times, it is wise to look for a person we know to be truthful, who stands by his message, repeating it even in the face of persecution and suffering. That is what a true prophet looks like, and as difficult as his words may be to hear, that is the person to whom we should be listening.