The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.
The barren and desolate places become glad and rejoice and bloom with abundant beauty and fruitfulness, flowering with joy and singing and receiving divine glory so that God's glory and excellence are seen there. It promises the restored earth and the new heaven and new earth as a peaceful, beautiful home where God dwells with His people and ends death, sorrow, crying, pain and the effects of sin when the redeemed are gathered into the heavenly Canaan. It teaches that life's desert is the human heart and character, which rejoices and blossoms when grace is implanted, evil passions are cast out and the graces of God's Spirit develop, giving true peace and Christlike fruit. It teaches that the moral wildernesses and unworked waste places of earth become fruitful when cultivated by the life-giving Word, loving deeds and faithful missionary work in reliance on God's Spirit, until the whole field is worked and illuminated with truth. It is a word of promise to be trusted and claimed to give faith, hope, courage and confidence to fearful hearts and discouraged churches, calling every soul to be glad and to tell of God's goodness wherever the gospel is carried.
Words and Context
The wilderness, the solitary place and the desert are barren and desolate places that become glad, rejoice and bloom with abundant beauty and fruitfulness. That transformation is fulfilled in the lives of God's people even in this world through God's work. Its promises are given to encourage churches and believers facing spiritual lack, discouragement or emergency, and are to be trusted and claimed as God's sure assurances, including in the call to proclaim the gospel in America's cities as desolate places promised joy and renewal.
The rejoicing includes abundant flowering with joy and singing. Those places receive the glory of Lebanon and the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, so that those there see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of God. It is a precious promise for the future in which the lonely wilderness and desert become glad and display the glory and excellence of the Lord. It is given as words of cheer calling every soul to be glad, to speak that gladness in the congregation of the saints, and to tell of God's goodness and power in every place where the gospel is carried to those who do not know present truth. It is to be read and repeated to strengthen weak hands and confirm feeble knees and to uphold those of fearful heart in times of depression, discouragement and fear with the assurance that God will come and save.
The surrounding prophecy connects this renewal to the revelation of God's glory and to the ransomed of the Lord returning to Zion with songs and everlasting joy. They obtain joy and gladness while sorrow and sighing flee away. It promises the new heaven and new earth where God will dwell with His people as their God, wipe away all tears, and end death, sorrow, crying and pain because the former things are passed away. It describes the time when the ransomed are safely gathered into the heavenly Canaan, forever delivered from the bondage of the curse, when the great work of atonement is completed and sins are forever blotted out, and the redeemed rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
The wilderness has no glory of its own, so all honor for the transformation belongs to God and not to the people through whom He works. This renewal is promised as people cooperate with God and their lives and work reflect His power.
Promised Future Restoration
The gladness of the wilderness and the rejoicing and blossoming of the desert describe the restored earth and the new heaven and new earth as a peaceful, beautiful home prepared for God's people. There God will dwell with His people as their God, wipe away all tears, and bring an end to death, sorrow, crying and pain because the former things are passed away and the effects of sin and desolation are gone. The rejoicing wilderness means the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads, obtaining joy and gladness while sorrow and sighing flee away. That gathering is when the ransomed are safely brought into the heavenly Canaan, forever delivered from the bondage of the curse. It comes when Christ's great work of atonement is completed and sins are forever blotted out, and then the redeemed rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
The earth, now a desert of sin, will in that restoration become like Eden in gladness and flourishing. It would have remained as Eden if the human family after Adam's fall had worked according to Christ's example of purity and righteousness, with God as owner requiring perfect faultless characters, and with every father and mother leaving their children an example of how to fulfill obligations to God and leaving the results to future generations. The same promise of wilderness and desert rejoicing and blossoming is given as encouragement for the fitting-up time for heaven, before the work is closed up and the sealing of God's people is finished. It belongs to the future restoration of God's people when there will be the outpouring of the Spirit of God, and at that time God's people will be out of the cities.
The renewed land is a bright, holy, fair country for the redeemed to dwell in, where wilderness and desert bloom with beauty and green fields remain untouched by blight. Its deserts bloom with roses, including roses of Sharon, in the renewal of the redeemed land of promise. Around the glorious temple on Mount Zion the seven mountains blossom with roses and lilies, and the place is made all over glorious with box, pine, fir, oil, myrtle, pomegranate and fig trees. The flowers there never fade, and little children climb those mountains or fly to their tops on little wings to pluck the never-fading flowers, while the fig tree is bowed down with the weight of its timely figs.
Renewed Heart and Character
Life's desert is the human character and heart, and when grace is implanted there it rejoices and blossoms as evil passions are cast out and the graces of God's Spirit develop in their place. Even those who seem hopeless and who have been debased by Satan can be delivered from sin and become subjects of grace. When that grace enters, it drives out the passions that cause strife and dissension, and life's desert becomes glad and fruitful. This true peace is harmony with God born of truth, and it cannot be manufactured by human plans for purifying and uplifting individuals or society, because those plans do not reach the heart; only Christ's grace can create it and keep it.
When truth becomes an abiding principle in the soul, the barren desert becomes fruitful and glad. That fulfillment is inward and personal, preserving individuality and individual accountability under the Lord's order rather than forcing all into a human mold of grasping control. Receiving Christ surrounds life with the atmosphere of heaven, and breathing that atmosphere imparts healthfulness, fragrance and healing power to life and character, turning barren and fruitless souls into fruitful ones. This change comes by having the mind of Christ so that weakness becomes strength, and by drinking of Christ as a well of water springing up into everlasting life, so that the receiver is refreshed and refreshes others. In place of pride, vanity, selfishness and roots of bitterness that defile many and misrepresent Christ, the soul bears the fruit of a Christlike character that blesses others, and by that fruit it is known whether one has right to the Christian name.
What appears spiritually barren and desolate to an unrenewed, earthly mind becomes beautiful and fruitful to a soul renewed through God's truth. To a mind renewed by the Holy Spirit and turned to God's word it becomes a land of living streams, like a wilderness transformed into a garden filled with blooming flowers. This renewal comes as people cooperate with God, so that their lives and work reflect His power and the wilderness and desolate places become glad and fruitful, rejoicing with joy and blossoming abundantly. When people repent and return to God with confession, reformation and loyalty to Him, He brings renewal and gladness where there had been spiritual desolation. The wilderness has no glory of its own, so all honor for the transformation belongs to God and not to the people through whom He works.
In sanitariums, publishing houses and schools, the sear and barren wilderness and desert are the selfish, suspicious, self-important atmosphere where arbitrary authority rules. The blossoming is the change that takes place when self is denied and Christlikeness is yielded to in practical life. Then the love of Jesus, as an ever-flowing stream refreshing all, banishes selfishness and suspicion, brings peace, revives spirituality, and brings in the holiness and peace of heaven. Thus the wilderness is turned into a green pasture where flowers spring into fragrant life to delight the senses.
Mission to Moral Wilderness
The wilderness, the solitary place, and the desert are the moral wildernesses and waste places of the earth, places now unworked and without truth that shall be made glad and blossom as the rose when cultivated to become as the garden of the Lord. The dreary, uninviting desert is the spiritual condition of many cities, towns, and country places that have not yet heard the message, which would have been made like the garden of the Lord if those who know the truth had put forth earnest, self-sacrificing effort to impart light to others. Barren desert land made fruitful by cultivation and irrigation pictures what saving grace does in human hearts and lives, with changed hearts and changed places when stewards of the water of life go as missionaries into the barren places.
The message given to the world through messengers, if received, changes the character of society entirely, turning a wilderness of thorns and thistles into a garden of beautiful flowers and fruit-bearing trees. Waste places in spiritual darkness and foreign fields become fruitful and blossom like the rose when cultivated by bringing the life-giving Word of God that saves people of every age. Places now barren and desolate can become fruitful and beautiful through far more extensive missionary work, until the waste places bud and blossom.
Loving deeds open the way for the living Word, bringing fruitfulness, joy, and renewal to places and lives pictured as wilderness and desert. Bringing good into unattractive, barren, wild places makes them beautiful and joyful as they blossom. As believers obey the command to work for others in reliance on God, the spiritual desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose, obstacles become a plain path, and barrenness gives way to fruitful service by the Spirit and grace.
The vineyard is the whole world and every part is to be worked, with labors continually rising to greater prominence until they encircle the world before the second appearing of Jesus. Budding and blossoming means new territories worked, new churches established, new congregations organized, and representatives of present truth in every city and in remote parts, until the whole earth is illuminated with the glory of truth and everyone has heard the warning and decided and the end comes. The work must not stay centered in a few places while the great field is left dry and barren, for as water brought into a garden must irrigate every part and not one spot only, so the stream must flow through every neglected place carrying fertility and gladness. Desolate fields left dry and barren by concentration at Battle Creek are watered not by erecting greater buildings and making more display in the same place after the burning of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, but by spreading means, effort, and institutions outward. God makes the wilderness sacred when His people, filled with the missionary spirit, go forth to make centers for His work, establishing sanitariums to care for the sick and afflicted and schools to educate youth aright, including America's cities as desolate places promised abundant rejoicing and blossoming.
Encouragement and Daily Practice
The chapter is a word of promise giving reason for faith, hope, courage and confidence for the future restoration when wilderness and desert rejoice and bloom in beauty and joy. It is given to encourage churches and believers facing spiritual lack, depression, discouragement, fear and emergency. That encouragement applies when spiritual weakness, halting, disaffection and unwillingness to be helped are seen among believers.
The promises are to be trusted and claimed as sure assurances, and to be read and repeated to strengthen weak hands, confirm feeble knees and uphold fearful hearts with the assurance that God will come and save. The whole chapter is to be read together with the fiftieth chapter and held as yea and amen in Christ while carrying on the Redeemer's work for humanity seen in His life and death. Instead of becoming discouraged or repeating human words that confirm unbelief, believers are to lean on the promise and take hold of the mighty assurances given in Christ and His word, even when evil influences work in the ranks to counterwork the Spirit, bringing unbelief and strange spirits into meetings not to receive blessing. It is a word of cheer calling every soul to be glad, to speak that gladness in the congregation of the saints, and to tell of God's goodness and power in every place where the gospel is carried to those who do not know present truth.
The blossoming is seen literally when wilderness hills and valleys and unimproved lands are made glad and bloom abundantly through intelligent, educated agriculture. Poor, neglected and uncultivated land said to be too poor to raise anything is made productive and fruitful by clearing, proper planting, tending, watering and rain, with God providing even in the wilderness. A school serves as center sending out advanced knowledge, with children and adults combining physical labor with mental study, with trained farmers working the soil to advantage and elevating manual labor, treating the earth as God's precious treasurehouse lent in trust. Under capable management doing God's will, as at the Huntsville school farm, neglected land flourishes, rewarding labor with luxuriant crops and living orchard trees as an object lesson proving God's testimony about the land true, with great changes already made and fuller progress still to come. The same blossoming is reflected in a wilderness home set apart for flowers and made beautiful with them, which express God's love and turn children's minds from nature to God. It was illustrated when the Mojave Desert, usually marked by sagebrush and cactus, showed abundant grass and acres of wildflowers.
The barren and desolate places become glad and rejoice and bloom with abundant beauty and fruitfulness, flowering with joy and singing and receiving divine glory so that God's glory and excellence are seen there. It promises the restored earth and the new heaven and new earth as a peaceful, beautiful home where God dwells with His people and ends death, sorrow, crying, pain and the effects of sin when the redeemed are gathered into the heavenly Canaan. It teaches that life's desert is the human heart and character, which rejoices and blossoms when grace is implanted, evil passions are cast out and the graces of God's Spirit develop, giving true peace and Christlike fruit. It teaches that the moral wildernesses and unworked waste places of earth become fruitful when cultivated by the life-giving Word, loving deeds and faithful missionary work in reliance on God's Spirit, until the whole field is worked and illuminated with truth. It is a word of promise to be trusted and claimed to give faith, hope, courage and confidence to fearful hearts and discouraged churches, calling every soul to be glad and to tell of God's goodness wherever the gospel is carried.
Words and Context
The wilderness, the solitary place and the desert are barren and desolate places that become glad, rejoice and bloom with abundant beauty and fruitfulness. That transformation is fulfilled in the lives of God's people even in this world through God's work. Its promises are given to encourage churches and believers facing spiritual lack, discouragement or emergency, and are to be trusted and claimed as God's sure assurances, including in the call to proclaim the gospel in America's cities as desolate places promised joy and renewal.
The rejoicing includes abundant flowering with joy and singing. Those places receive the glory of Lebanon and the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, so that those there see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of God. It is a precious promise for the future in which the lonely wilderness and desert become glad and display the glory and excellence of the Lord. It is given as words of cheer calling every soul to be glad, to speak that gladness in the congregation of the saints, and to tell of God's goodness and power in every place where the gospel is carried to those who do not know present truth. It is to be read and repeated to strengthen weak hands and confirm feeble knees and to uphold those of fearful heart in times of depression, discouragement and fear with the assurance that God will come and save.
The surrounding prophecy connects this renewal to the revelation of God's glory and to the ransomed of the Lord returning to Zion with songs and everlasting joy. They obtain joy and gladness while sorrow and sighing flee away. It promises the new heaven and new earth where God will dwell with His people as their God, wipe away all tears, and end death, sorrow, crying and pain because the former things are passed away. It describes the time when the ransomed are safely gathered into the heavenly Canaan, forever delivered from the bondage of the curse, when the great work of atonement is completed and sins are forever blotted out, and the redeemed rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
The wilderness has no glory of its own, so all honor for the transformation belongs to God and not to the people through whom He works. This renewal is promised as people cooperate with God and their lives and work reflect His power.
Promised Future Restoration
The gladness of the wilderness and the rejoicing and blossoming of the desert describe the restored earth and the new heaven and new earth as a peaceful, beautiful home prepared for God's people. There God will dwell with His people as their God, wipe away all tears, and bring an end to death, sorrow, crying and pain because the former things are passed away and the effects of sin and desolation are gone. The rejoicing wilderness means the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads, obtaining joy and gladness while sorrow and sighing flee away. That gathering is when the ransomed are safely brought into the heavenly Canaan, forever delivered from the bondage of the curse. It comes when Christ's great work of atonement is completed and sins are forever blotted out, and then the redeemed rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
The earth, now a desert of sin, will in that restoration become like Eden in gladness and flourishing. It would have remained as Eden if the human family after Adam's fall had worked according to Christ's example of purity and righteousness, with God as owner requiring perfect faultless characters, and with every father and mother leaving their children an example of how to fulfill obligations to God and leaving the results to future generations. The same promise of wilderness and desert rejoicing and blossoming is given as encouragement for the fitting-up time for heaven, before the work is closed up and the sealing of God's people is finished. It belongs to the future restoration of God's people when there will be the outpouring of the Spirit of God, and at that time God's people will be out of the cities.
The renewed land is a bright, holy, fair country for the redeemed to dwell in, where wilderness and desert bloom with beauty and green fields remain untouched by blight. Its deserts bloom with roses, including roses of Sharon, in the renewal of the redeemed land of promise. Around the glorious temple on Mount Zion the seven mountains blossom with roses and lilies, and the place is made all over glorious with box, pine, fir, oil, myrtle, pomegranate and fig trees. The flowers there never fade, and little children climb those mountains or fly to their tops on little wings to pluck the never-fading flowers, while the fig tree is bowed down with the weight of its timely figs.
Renewed Heart and Character
Life's desert is the human character and heart, and when grace is implanted there it rejoices and blossoms as evil passions are cast out and the graces of God's Spirit develop in their place. Even those who seem hopeless and who have been debased by Satan can be delivered from sin and become subjects of grace. When that grace enters, it drives out the passions that cause strife and dissension, and life's desert becomes glad and fruitful. This true peace is harmony with God born of truth, and it cannot be manufactured by human plans for purifying and uplifting individuals or society, because those plans do not reach the heart; only Christ's grace can create it and keep it.
When truth becomes an abiding principle in the soul, the barren desert becomes fruitful and glad. That fulfillment is inward and personal, preserving individuality and individual accountability under the Lord's order rather than forcing all into a human mold of grasping control. Receiving Christ surrounds life with the atmosphere of heaven, and breathing that atmosphere imparts healthfulness, fragrance and healing power to life and character, turning barren and fruitless souls into fruitful ones. This change comes by having the mind of Christ so that weakness becomes strength, and by drinking of Christ as a well of water springing up into everlasting life, so that the receiver is refreshed and refreshes others. In place of pride, vanity, selfishness and roots of bitterness that defile many and misrepresent Christ, the soul bears the fruit of a Christlike character that blesses others, and by that fruit it is known whether one has right to the Christian name.
What appears spiritually barren and desolate to an unrenewed, earthly mind becomes beautiful and fruitful to a soul renewed through God's truth. To a mind renewed by the Holy Spirit and turned to God's word it becomes a land of living streams, like a wilderness transformed into a garden filled with blooming flowers. This renewal comes as people cooperate with God, so that their lives and work reflect His power and the wilderness and desolate places become glad and fruitful, rejoicing with joy and blossoming abundantly. When people repent and return to God with confession, reformation and loyalty to Him, He brings renewal and gladness where there had been spiritual desolation. The wilderness has no glory of its own, so all honor for the transformation belongs to God and not to the people through whom He works.
In sanitariums, publishing houses and schools, the sear and barren wilderness and desert are the selfish, suspicious, self-important atmosphere where arbitrary authority rules. The blossoming is the change that takes place when self is denied and Christlikeness is yielded to in practical life. Then the love of Jesus, as an ever-flowing stream refreshing all, banishes selfishness and suspicion, brings peace, revives spirituality, and brings in the holiness and peace of heaven. Thus the wilderness is turned into a green pasture where flowers spring into fragrant life to delight the senses.
Mission to Moral Wilderness
The wilderness, the solitary place, and the desert are the moral wildernesses and waste places of the earth, places now unworked and without truth that shall be made glad and blossom as the rose when cultivated to become as the garden of the Lord. The dreary, uninviting desert is the spiritual condition of many cities, towns, and country places that have not yet heard the message, which would have been made like the garden of the Lord if those who know the truth had put forth earnest, self-sacrificing effort to impart light to others. Barren desert land made fruitful by cultivation and irrigation pictures what saving grace does in human hearts and lives, with changed hearts and changed places when stewards of the water of life go as missionaries into the barren places.
The message given to the world through messengers, if received, changes the character of society entirely, turning a wilderness of thorns and thistles into a garden of beautiful flowers and fruit-bearing trees. Waste places in spiritual darkness and foreign fields become fruitful and blossom like the rose when cultivated by bringing the life-giving Word of God that saves people of every age. Places now barren and desolate can become fruitful and beautiful through far more extensive missionary work, until the waste places bud and blossom.
Loving deeds open the way for the living Word, bringing fruitfulness, joy, and renewal to places and lives pictured as wilderness and desert. Bringing good into unattractive, barren, wild places makes them beautiful and joyful as they blossom. As believers obey the command to work for others in reliance on God, the spiritual desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose, obstacles become a plain path, and barrenness gives way to fruitful service by the Spirit and grace.
The vineyard is the whole world and every part is to be worked, with labors continually rising to greater prominence until they encircle the world before the second appearing of Jesus. Budding and blossoming means new territories worked, new churches established, new congregations organized, and representatives of present truth in every city and in remote parts, until the whole earth is illuminated with the glory of truth and everyone has heard the warning and decided and the end comes. The work must not stay centered in a few places while the great field is left dry and barren, for as water brought into a garden must irrigate every part and not one spot only, so the stream must flow through every neglected place carrying fertility and gladness. Desolate fields left dry and barren by concentration at Battle Creek are watered not by erecting greater buildings and making more display in the same place after the burning of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, but by spreading means, effort, and institutions outward. God makes the wilderness sacred when His people, filled with the missionary spirit, go forth to make centers for His work, establishing sanitariums to care for the sick and afflicted and schools to educate youth aright, including America's cities as desolate places promised abundant rejoicing and blossoming.
Encouragement and Daily Practice
The chapter is a word of promise giving reason for faith, hope, courage and confidence for the future restoration when wilderness and desert rejoice and bloom in beauty and joy. It is given to encourage churches and believers facing spiritual lack, depression, discouragement, fear and emergency. That encouragement applies when spiritual weakness, halting, disaffection and unwillingness to be helped are seen among believers.
The promises are to be trusted and claimed as sure assurances, and to be read and repeated to strengthen weak hands, confirm feeble knees and uphold fearful hearts with the assurance that God will come and save. The whole chapter is to be read together with the fiftieth chapter and held as yea and amen in Christ while carrying on the Redeemer's work for humanity seen in His life and death. Instead of becoming discouraged or repeating human words that confirm unbelief, believers are to lean on the promise and take hold of the mighty assurances given in Christ and His word, even when evil influences work in the ranks to counterwork the Spirit, bringing unbelief and strange spirits into meetings not to receive blessing. It is a word of cheer calling every soul to be glad, to speak that gladness in the congregation of the saints, and to tell of God's goodness and power in every place where the gospel is carried to those who do not know present truth.
The blossoming is seen literally when wilderness hills and valleys and unimproved lands are made glad and bloom abundantly through intelligent, educated agriculture. Poor, neglected and uncultivated land said to be too poor to raise anything is made productive and fruitful by clearing, proper planting, tending, watering and rain, with God providing even in the wilderness. A school serves as center sending out advanced knowledge, with children and adults combining physical labor with mental study, with trained farmers working the soil to advantage and elevating manual labor, treating the earth as God's precious treasurehouse lent in trust. Under capable management doing God's will, as at the Huntsville school farm, neglected land flourishes, rewarding labor with luxuriant crops and living orchard trees as an object lesson proving God's testimony about the land true, with great changes already made and fuller progress still to come. The same blossoming is reflected in a wilderness home set apart for flowers and made beautiful with them, which express God's love and turn children's minds from nature to God. It was illustrated when the Mojave Desert, usually marked by sagebrush and cactus, showed abundant grass and acres of wildflowers.