Isaiah 29:11
And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed: And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed:
The vision of all has become like the words of a sealed book, inaccessible even to one who is learned, who answers that he cannot read it because it is sealed. Spiritual darkness and deception make the prophetic vision a sealed book to those who cannot understand it. The sealing rests on both classes alike: the learned cannot read because the book is sealed, and the unlearned cannot read because he lacks learning.
This blindness comes when people turn from God in heart, withdraw their hearts from Him, reject heavenly influence and resist His warnings, and let their religion and its fear be shaped by human teachings and precepts. When sealed in this way they cannot understand Jesus Christ, the spiritual meaning of Scripture, or prophecy. They may profess to believe prophecy yet fail to understand it or to recognize that they themselves are fulfilling it, and they cast truth behind them, set it aside for error, and are deceived by misleading words.
The condition was fulfilled in the Jewish nation at Christ's first advent, when human traditions and ceremonial forms obscured the spiritual meaning of the rites that pointed to Christ. The interpretations of the scribes and Pharisees, shaped by their own ideas and traditions, left Scripture closed to the people's understanding, so they failed to recognize Christ as its fulfillment and kept demanding signs despite the evidence, revealing the need for a Teacher sent from God. The same picture fits trusted men in Battle Creek who, while carrying forward the third angel's message, let in false ideas and confusion. They rejected the message God had entrusted to His messengers and treated those messengers with contempt, yet silencing its human messengers cannot prevent God from making the message known.
The vision becomes sealed to men who claim to be teachers, counsellors, and wise men while remaining unconverted in heart and soul. Though they take up the truth and hold responsible positions at the heart of the work, they keep their old hereditary and cultivated characters, mingle their own spirit with their words and actions, pervert principle, and confederate together to do what God has expressly forbidden. Therefore their eyes are greatly blinded that they should not see, justice and mercy and love for God and man fall in the streets and equity cannot enter, and they weaken the Lord's work and dishonor truth of heavenly origin, and this word will be fulfilled to all such teachers who act out these principles. God's truth is likewise sealed to false shepherds who refuse light that has reached them: they cannot read or understand it, evade its claims by changing their positions and turning people away from the truth, and when questioned whether the seventh-day Sabbath is the Bible Sabbath they divert people with fables rather than acknowledge the light and accept the conclusions truth would require.