Ezekiel 12:26-28

If others did not go so far as to disregard prophecy altogether, they concluded that the prophecies bore reference to the future, and that the judgments threatened would not come in their day (Isaiah 39:8). This also was an inference not unnatural. The prophecies of the true prophets were moral and designed even when threatening to turn men away from their sins, and thus in a manner to frustrate their own fulfilment. They were not absolute predictions, but conditional threats, which might be averted on repentance and amendment (Jonah; Jeremiah 18; Joel 2:14). And in point of fact the most terrible threatenings of judgment were connected with the "day of the Lord," which might be supposed not very near (Isaiah 5:18-19). Cf. on Ezekiel 12:22; Habakkuk 2:3.