Isaiah 5:20, commentary and pictures

The verse pronounces woe and curse upon those who reverse moral distinctions by making evil good and good evil, darkness light and light darkness, bitter sweet and sweet bitter, sin righteousness and righteousness sin. This reversal comes from casting away God's law and despising His word, and it is joined with self-conceit, being wise in one's own eyes, justifying the wicked for reward and denying justice to the righteous, leading to ruin. It is Satan's constant deceptive work to cloud understanding and turn minds from Scripture and obedience to feelings and impressions, and when people neglect, reject, or misuse divine light their perception is blinded until they call light darkness and truth error. Those thus deceived lose spiritual discernment so that they cannot recognize their condition, truth, or God's work, thinking they are near God and in the light while under Satan's control in darkness, and by deliberately stifling conviction and persisting in sin they harden heart and conscience, separate from God, and sink deeper toward sorrow and ruin. Therefore God requires His servants to call evil evil and good good, to expose wrong as it is and correct sin without cloaking or excusing it, in a Christlike manner, while safety is found only in grace, vigilance, closeness to Christ, receiving the Word in sincerity, and the quickening influence of the Holy Spirit which renews the mind to distinguish truth from error.

Meaning and Context

The pronouncement is one of woe and curse upon those who reverse moral distinctions, calling evil good and good evil, putting darkness for light and light for darkness, putting bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter, turning sin into righteousness and righteousness into sin. The reversal corrupts understanding of right and wrong through false reasoning and indulgence in sin, and it misleads others about the nature and extent of divine claims when those who profess to follow Christ set their own standard instead of God's while practicing wrong and claiming righteousness. It also appears when leaders let likes and dislikes override justice and equity, so that unsanctified character and uncontrolled tendencies distort judgment and influence those around them.

In its setting the distortion follows misinterpretation and misuse of revealed truth and rejection of the law, arising from casting away the law of God and despising His word. It stands joined with self-conceit and drunkenness, with taking payment to justify the wicked and denying the righteous justice, and with being wise in one's own eyes. Strong drink confuses the sense of right and wrong so that drinking lawmakers, witnesses, jurors, lawyers, and judges enact oppressive laws, condemn the innocent, defend injustice, and treat evil as good. The same confusion twists Scripture, narrows general commandments into loopholes, makes forbidden things seem acceptable and serious sin appear innocent while claiming obedience, obscures the law and sets aside its spiritual demands, urges abandonment of truth, and ends in ruin.

Approach to God must be with reverence and awe in His own appointed manner, making a difference between common and holy things instead of departing from His commandments and reversing right and wrong. Partial obedience cannot be accepted, no part of His commandments is non-essential, and no substitute will be accepted for what He has required.

Calling darkness light does not make darkness light, and calling error truth does not make error truth, however people label them. Separation from God leads to this reversal of moral and spiritual distinctions, and those who misuse light and render false judgment remain accountable and guilty for the distortion.

Causes of Moral Reversal

The reversal is the constant deceptive work of Satan to cloud understanding so that evil is made to appear good and good evil, sin is called righteousness and righteousness sin. Under that deception God's faithful servants who stand fearlessly in defense of truth are met with censure and reproach and left to stand alone under suspicion and distrust, while agents of Satan in opposition to truth are praised and flattered and pitied and lauded as martyrs and victims of cruelty and oppression. So Luther was blamed even for errors he labored to correct while those exerting every energy against the Reformation were regarded as martyrs, and the same spirit continues with great success. Counterfeit holiness and spurious sanctification carry the same deception by diverting minds from Scripture and obedience to God's law to follow their own feelings and impressions, bringing reproach upon purity and truth. In the final crisis Satan will work with all deceptive power to influence the heart and darken the mind so wrong looks right and right looks wrong, and those claiming righteousness while trampling God's law will impugn motives, misinterpret best efforts, cast out names as evil, and turn with hardness, cruel determination and unyielding hatred, stirring fiercer rage the stronger and purer the faith and the firmer the obedience of God's people.

Neglect or rejection of divine light blinds perception until light is called darkness and darkness light, truth error and error truth. Spiritual darkness falls not by arbitrary withdrawal of grace but by devotion to the world and forgetfulness of God and His Word, which darkens understanding, makes the heart earthly and sensual, leaves ignorance, and leads in pride and unbelief to reject truth and lose all desire for Heaven's gift. As with the Jewish people in the time of Christ, who by neglect of God's word became ignorant of Messiah's coming and rejected Him, the light within becomes darkness, and wherever divine truth is spurned or slighted faith and love grow cold. To put darkness for light is deliberately to stifle conviction of duty because it interferes with inclination, until power to distinguish truth from error is lost, conscience becomes callous, the heart hardened, and the soul separated from God, and when a church spurns divine truth it falls into spiritual darkness. The same reversal overtakes workers opened by wrong influences and carelessness to deception so they fail to recognize their condition and do not live by the truth they handle, those in sacred positions who become careless and believe they do right while bound by Satan's influence and not walking in the light, and those like Bro. G whose growing doubt about the established faith and resistance to God's work for the time bring increasing darkness; sincerity does not prevent it when doubts are cherished and God's requirements disregarded.

Conformity to worldly principles brings spiritual blindness in which law-breakers cannot be distinguished from commandment-keepers, and evil is called good and good evil. As the spirit of the world takes hold and controls the heart, love for God and desire for communion with Him grow cold, the brightness of eternal realities fades, and the preciousness of Jesus and truth is no longer recognized, with no hunger for truth remaining. Those who judge by the world's standards and see themselves as rich, honorable, and righteous fail to recognize guilt and need, and because they feel already full they do not ask for or receive blessing and go away empty. Worldly customs, practices, influences, associations and habits darken and confuse the mind until light cannot be distinguished from darkness nor truth from error, and close affinity with the world breaks vital connection with Christ so Jesus is not seen as He is nor the beauty, loveliness and exalted character of truth. Placing oneself on the world's side blinds moral and spiritual eyesight so nothing is seen clearly, and unless those blind eyes are opened this unfitness disqualifies for responsible positions and sacred trusts.

The reversal comes from setting one's own standard instead of God's, measuring self by self instead of the ways of the Lord, trusting one's own wisdom and judgment, and pursuing worldly ambition while treating that dark course as right. Prejudice and human traditions obstruct the enlightened mind that would otherwise distinguish truth from error and recognize truth as from God, while openness enables recognition and belief. Under a deceptive spirit men become self-confident and fully turned from the ways of the Lord yet believe themselves right and in favor with God, working in blindness while resisting rays of light and the Holy Spirit, withstanding God while withstanding His instrument as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses and as self-confident men in Christ's day rejected Him. It takes only a step to leave the straightforward path for the diverging path where Satan leads to deny the light, and those who refuse to humiliate the soul, confess wrong, lift the cross, and cherish God's flashing rays walk in darkness contrary to light and truth while believing themselves in light, opening the heart to unbelief until the Spirit departs and they move under a deceptive spirit, mold others to please self, and unless they gather and cherish light end separated from God and from truth. Through pride and stubbornness light is rejected and resistance mistaken for faithful integrity.

Strong drink confuses the sense of right and wrong so that evil is treated as good and injustice defended, with drinking lawmakers, witnesses, jurors, lawyers and judges enacting oppression, condemning the innocent, justifying the wicked for reward and denying the righteous justice, a corruption joined with self-conceit and drunkenness that arises from casting away God's law and despising His word and leads to ruin under woe. Intemperance in eating and drinking and gluttony and liquor drinking dull moral sight, while clear sight to call evil exactly what it is and righteousness righteousness depends on keeping a level brain by temperance in all things as health reformers, denying self, and keeping the body in right condition of health.

Moral discernment becomes perverted and blinded so darkness is called light and light darkness, wrong appears right and right appears wrong, through sympathy with unfaithful and dishonest men by excusing and sustaining them in position and thereby partaking in their wrong, while the reprover is regarded as the troubler. Even when the evil course and its result are fully developed and evident to all who have the Spirit of God, the blinded judgment cannot see what is out of the way. Friendship with people not right with God can draw into spiritual darkness and dull right and wrong even without obvious wrongdoing, while devotion to God and closeness to Christ preserve discernment and prevent contamination. The reversal also comes by accepting misrepresentations, sympathizing with those whose wrongdoing is exposed, defending those justly reproved for unfaithfulness, treating the guilty as innocent, abused and mistreated, making God's counsels of no effect, and giving sympathy where undeserved, from trusting erring mortals more than God and His Spirit working through appointed agencies who correct wrongs. Those who do this blind themselves, lose power to discern the enemy's workings from the Spirit's setting things in order, imperil souls God warned in mercy, and spread false impressions to minds ignorant of the real workings of evil and of the Spirit. At a great distance from God such sympathizers speak soft pleasant flattering words that excuse wrongdoing and break the force of reproofs and warnings, unable to look into the heart or cancel recorded sin, and by siding with the wrongdoer against those appointed to reprove they prove they cannot discern the True Shepherd's voice from a stranger's. Cherishing doubt and unbelief brings darkness and confusion by taking the world's wisdom and men's opinions for God's truth and failing to take heed how one hears, and encouraging doubts and talking unbelief lets sophistry poison the mind until unbelief gains pre-eminence.

Results of Moral Reversal

Those under the reversal lose spiritual discernment so that darkness is taken for light and light for darkness, and wrong influences and carelessness leave even workers with sacred truth in hand open to deception, failing to recognize their own condition and failing to live by what they handle. They mistake careless neglect of duty for what is right while bound by opposing influence and unable to see the forces holding them in darkness. They may think themselves near to God and walking in the light while controlled from elsewhere, having rejected true light and called error light, and those long trained to resist messages cannot recover at once but need deep humility and continual repentance, must not trust their own judgment nor attempt to lead others, but submit to the judgment of the faithful. Blindness also unfits judgment of persons, so that those least approved are supposed to understand much of the Spirit, yet the one led into the enemy's trap can still turn back if warned in time, with undeceiving as the only hope.

Deliberate stifling of conviction of duty because it interferes with inclination destroys the power to distinguish truth from error, until conscience grows callous, the heart hardened, and the soul separated from God. This darkness does not fall by arbitrary withdrawal of grace but by neglect or rejection of divine light, by devotion to the world and forgetfulness of God and His Word, which darkens understanding, makes the heart earthly and sensual, leaves ignorance of saving visitation, and leads through pride and unbelief to reject truth and lose all desire for the gift of Heaven. Those who have had light and reject it walk by sparks of their own kindling instead of seeking wisdom from above, and therefore decide wrongly, regard light as darkness, and call error truth and truth error, and such shall lie down in sorrow. A selfish life taken as law places a person on the side of rebellion, and left to increasing depravity sin comes to look like righteousness and righteousness like sin, with each yielding against conviction doing untold self-injury, sinking deeper into deception, and hardening opposition to those doing right. Rejecting warnings and calls to repentance then leads step by step into deeper opposition, into secretly undermining divine law and lending assent and influence to evil plans, putting forth suggestions glossed with religious appearance, working against God and tempting others to the same, growing stronger by sympathy of associates to counteract right principles, and cherishing hatred toward any who oppose evil designs. Receiving the Word in sincerity and simplicity renews the mind, removes blindness and darkness, and causes true light to shine so the Word is clearly understood, but where divine truth is spurned or slighted faith and love grow cold and the light within becomes darkness, and great is that darkness.

Sincerity does not render the deceived guiltless when the light willfully rejected would have saved them from deception and from blood-guiltiness. So it was when grace bringing salvation had appeared with power and holiness and beauty, illuminating cities and hamlets and drawing thousands, and the nation turned away and put from it the heavenly gift, treating truth as pestilent heresy to be extirpated and bloody persecution of the faithful as service to God, until willful self-deception made persecutors actually believe they were doing right. That same moral confusion, in which evildoers sincerely believe they serve God while harming His children, has marked past conflicts and will recur in the closing work.

A lowered standard distorts the sense of divine requirements, so that sin clothed with a false appearance of holiness perverts judgment and righteousness is regarded as sin and sin as righteousness. Forbidden things are made to seem acceptable, plain and general requirements are twisted and narrowed into loopholes, serious sin is made to appear innocent while obedience is claimed, and under a show of godliness conscience is distorted, the mind clouded, and wrongdoing no longer appears sinful. Judgment becomes so corrupted that unrighteousness is treated as righteousness and bitter as sweet and sweet as bitter, and the danger extends to excusing a wrong choice because it seems small or appealing. Associating with persons of impure habits draws others to adopt their tastes and principles, and only grace guards spiritual sight and keeps the soul from accepting evil, even when evil ways are disguised with godliness.

The reversal spreads because those who set their own standard instead of God's, professing to follow Christ while practicing wrong and claiming righteousness, mislead others about the nature and extent of divine claims. Those who profess righteousness while practicing ungodliness and dismissing their sins as trifling become false guides pointing others the wrong way, and teachers who present evil as good and good as evil and darkness as light cause the misguided to stumble from the safe path. Charm and cleverness can make what is bad appear better than what is good, confusing moral judgment and leading others into ruin, and association molds others to please self. Those hardened in selfishness tempt others to do as they do and are strengthened by sympathy to oppose right principles, so plain and urgent exposure of prevailing sins is required that the honest and the confused may recognize truth.

False Teachings Exposed

The verse condemns the spiritualist claim that the wicked are accepted and exalted in heaven regardless of how they live or whether they believe in God and the Bible, for this calls evil good and obscures the distinction between righteousness and sin. Such teaching falsely presents evil as pleasing to God and assures the unrighteous that heaven is their home while portraying them as righteous.

It condemns the deception that God has abolished His law and will admit transgressors to heaven, though His government and law are unchanging. This is Satan's work of leading people to mistake darkness for light and error for truth, presenting rebellion against God and rejection of His law as truth and loyalty.

It condemns the false charity that believes good of evil and evil of good, especially in excusing popery and Rome. Blinded by desire for the favor of the world, degenerated Protestantism apologizes for past opposition, begs pardon for bigotry, and speaks well of evil instead of standing in defense of the faith, with the inevitable result of speaking badly of what is good. Greater intellectual, moral, and religious light brings greater darkness when misused, and human intelligence serving false religion can do more harm than ignorance.

It condemns counterfeit holiness and spurious sanctification that turn minds from Scripture and obedience to God's law toward feelings and impressions, bringing reproach upon purity and truth. This same reversal treats sin as righteousness and righteousness as sin, so that God's faithful servants standing fearlessly for truth are met with censure, reproach, suspicion, and distrust and left to stand alone, while agents of deception are praised, flattered, pitied, and regarded as martyrs. That deception worked with great success in Luther's day and continues in the same spirit.

It condemns calling the Holy Spirit's righteous work deception, delusion, fanaticism, harmful excitement, or sin, and calling sin righteousness. Teachers and those in positions of responsibility must not dismiss divine influence, misinterpret heaven-sent blessings, or resist further light, but must recognize the Spirit when visited again and yield to the righteousness it brings. Those who reject divine light and call darkness light and light darkness cherish darkness, oppose Christ, shut out truth, show ignorance of Scripture and God's power, imperil God's cause, and risk becoming so fixed in rebellion that they no longer receive Christ or know the true God.

It condemns praising false doctrines and destructive heresies, excusing sin in the name of charity, treating transgression as harmless, and offering reassuring messages while people remain in sin and disregard Scripture's warnings. False teachers pervert Scripture to lead others against the truth and oppose what God calls good while promoting what He calls evil, but their wickedness will eventually be revealed to all. In such an age the faithful response is grief over the abominations being done.

Historical and Prophetic Examples

Rejecting light turns moral judgment upside down, so that under Satan's control people treat light as darkness and good as evil. The Jewish leaders looked on the goodness of Christ with jealousy and hatred, called Him an impostor, and treated getting rid of Him as virtuous, though they could name no wrong He had done and could point to no wrong act in His life. They persuaded themselves that killing Him was right and virtuous, hating His goodness and reproof. The Pharisees condemned their ancestors for persecuting the prophets while repeating that same violence against Him, calling righteousness sin and sin righteousness.

Israel's spiritual sight grew dim until Egypt's slavery seemed more desirable than freedom and the land to which God was leading them. By forgetting God's deliverance and dwelling on difficulties, they treated the darkness of bondage as light and the light of God's leading as darkness. The same reversal appears when professed Christians grow weary of self-denial and duty, turn toward worldly self-indulgence, and regard restraint and discipline as burdens rather than as part of the path of faithfulness. Aaron did the same at the golden calf, putting light for darkness and darkness for light through terrible spiritual blindness. He gave decided sanction to aggravating sin because it was easier than standing for the right, exerted powerful influence on the wrong side, and with calm assurance proclaimed an idolatrous feast as a feast to the Lord, thus presenting evil as good and setting up Satan's banner in Israel as the banner of God, showing the power Satan has over minds not fully controlled by the Spirit of God.

France had been illuminated when grace bringing salvation appeared with power and holiness and divine beauty, reaching cities and hamlets and drawing thousands, but the nation turned away and put from it the heavenly gift. Reversing right and wrong meant treating the truth as pestilent heresy to be extirpated and treating the bloody persecution of God's people as service to God. In willful self-deception they became victims who actually believed they were doing right and serving God while calling evil good and good evil. Their sincerity did not render them guiltless, because the light they willfully rejected would have saved them from deception and from staining their souls with blood-guiltiness. The same reversal worked with great success in Luther's day and continues in the same spirit, for it is Satan's constant work to deceive men into calling sin righteousness and righteousness sin.

In Luther's day God's faithful servants who stood fearlessly in defense of truth were met with censure and reproach and left to stand alone under suspicion and distrust. At the same time men who were agents of Satan in opposition to the truth were praised and flattered and pitied and lauded as martyrs and victims of cruelty and oppression. Luther himself was blamed even for errors he labored to correct, while those exerting every energy against the Reformation were regarded as martyrs. In the coming final crisis Satan will work with all deceptive power to influence the heart and darken the mind so that wrong looks right and right looks wrong, clouding understanding so that evil appears good and good appears evil. He will work through his agents' influence and impressive signs to deceive, if possible, even the elect, and this moral confusion that has marked past conflicts will recur in the closing work of God.

In that crisis the inversion will be seen in those who claim to be righteous and claim righteousness while trampling on God's law and persecuting the faithful. Those under that deception impugn the motives of the true, misinterpret their best efforts, cast out their names as evil, and turn against them with hardness of heart, cruel determination, unyielding hatred, hardness, cruelty and hatred. Evildoers may sincerely believe they are serving God while harming His faithful children, and judges and lawyers do this same work of making evil appear righteous and deceiving people into dishonesty. The stronger and purer the faith of God's people and the more firmly they obey, the more fiercely rage is stirred against them. Standing true then requires courage, firmness, knowledge of God and His Word, conformity to the divine standard, firmest trust and heroic purpose to hold fast the faith when secular rulers unite with ministers to dictate conscience, with the assurance that while enemies watch servants for harm God watches over them for good and their godlike character shines brightest when darkness is deepest, until Christ opens eyes to see what sin is and the Lord by His power puts an end to these false arguments.

Calling Right by Name

God places hostility to wrongdoing in the hearts of His servants, so they are required to name evil as evil and good as good, to strengthen what is good and to lay open evil exactly as it is, and they are not at fault for reproving conduct that corrupts His people while it is a grave delusion to treat such corrupters with peaceable respect and turn reproof upon their opponents. The time demands that things be called by their right names, that unrighteousness never be treated as righteousness nor sin as righteousness, that those who know the truth keep its principles in the heart lest they be corrupted without discerning it and come to desire smooth deceptive teaching, and that all remain awake, hold fast by faith, and stand firmly for truth and righteousness with no fellowship for worldly practices that pervert the faith. People are needed who call sin by its right name and stand for what is right.

Faithful reproof corrects errors and sins instead of passing over evils that need correction, cloaking evil, lessening the sense of wrong, conniving at evil, or reversing good and evil, and silence that sanctions wrong or wavering when truth requires a firm stand has no virtue. Such correction must be done in a Christlike manner, filled with the Spirit of Christ and the spirit of Jesus, with words not harsh or abrupt and with no corroding destructive influence but with gracious sanctifying ennobling influence, or abruptness will spoil efficiency and make offered truth unpalatable, and it must be without boasting or self-sufficiency and in love. Only that spirit keeps the church from the sad blunder of turning its weapons in sharp warfare against God's true messengers from fear that errors will enter, meeting error without a harsh fierce haughty tyrannical spirit. Human sympathy must never be used to counteract God's reproof, nor drawn to self while giving undue inappropriate sympathy to those who in no way deserve it, for that course makes a man more like Absalom than like a true firm open decided unselfish friend, injures ministers and unfits them to be retained in the ministry unless changed by conversion, whereas living connection with God produces right influence in families visited.

Leaders pervert judgment when likes and dislikes override justice and equity and when unsanctified character and uncontrolled tendencies distort judgment and influence those around them. They must have clear keen perception to call evil evil and good good and to distinguish the sacred from the common, and must not defend established practices or regular lines merely because they are established when they have become irregular, contrary to God's principles, full of irregular practices leading away from Bible principles, leaving much work undone and many fields unworked. Dependence on the same routine of regular lines that has left work undone calls those lines right when they are wrong, and what is needed is revival and reformation, less pleading for the regular lines, and movement into work that looks irregular but is after God's order to cut away irregular working. Only God by the quickening vivifying influence of His Holy Spirit can give this discernment and make minds as they should be.

Clasping hands with men who have fallen into error and plainly reveal a wrong spirit and do not repent after Christ's directions are followed, giving them high places of responsibility, flattering and upholding them in a wrong course and retaining in influence men who by words and acts exert a wrong influence, is calling evil good and good evil, and the time has come for things to be called by the right name. Highly exalting Dr. Kellogg as a man of moral worth, giving him credit he does not deserve, and daubing him with untempered mortar upholds him in delusion, refuses repeated warnings from God, and is unfaithful, and unless those doing it come out of their delusive snare they will find no place in the kingdom of heaven but will be judged according to their works. Doing this brings shame from the Lord, destroys the man upheld, misleads many, and dishonors God.

Tender sympathy that defends wrongdoing is part of calling evil good and good evil, for sympathy that upholds wrongdoers, weakens those correcting them, shields people from the burden of reproof, defends those justly reproved for unfaithfulness, turns against correction, treats the guilty as innocent abused and mistreated, makes the counsels of God of no effect, and gives sympathy to those who do not deserve it is not Christlike but clothes sin in righteousness and helps the enemy. Those who obstruct God's agents appointed to reprove wrong and uphold righteousness share in the guilt of the wrong they protect, blind themselves, lose power to discern the workings of the enemy from the workings of the Spirit of God to set things in order, imperil souls God has warned in mercy, and spread false impressions to other minds that know neither the real workings of evil nor the positive workings of the Spirit of God, and this comes from putting confidence in erring mortals more than in God and His Spirit working through His appointed agencies. Unsanctified affection blinds spiritual discernment so wrong is neither detected nor corrected, passing over unholy practices as a very light matter and from human selfish love petting praising and indulging the wrongdoer, which injures the soul and stands directly in the way of reformation necessary for salvation, and such tender mercy is cruelty in disguise. True love represses evil and rebukes affection that opposes the mind and will of God, as Christ rebuked Peter's loving protest against His suffering, and this applies to parents turned toward children with unsanctified affection God does not approve and to relatives and friends who sympathize with the corrected one and oppose correction. Those at great distance from God speak soft pleasant flattering words that excuse wrongdoing and break the force of reproofs and warnings God sends to erring ones, and by siding with the wrongdoer against those appointed to reprove sin they prove they cannot discern the voice of the True Shepherd from that of a stranger, for they cannot look into the heart and discern its secret workings nor cancel recorded sin.

Excusing and minimizing grave sin, treating wrongdoers as though their course were righteous, permitting them church standing despite unrepented wrongdoing, and excusing and vindicating a wrong course from first to last brings God's anger and makes a person unfit for church leadership until reform and learning to view sin and sinners rightly. Misstatement and misrepresentation that put a false color on everything so wrong appears right and right appears wrong link those doing it with wrongdoers in determination to carry things their own way, and they become a curse instead of a blessing wherever placed and demoralize the institution unless thoroughly transformed, having no pleasure in its prosperity. When workers resist conversion and fail to improve under instruction, light around them becomes darkness, they call good evil and evil good, their testimony cannot be trusted, and they should be separated from the work. Failing to call wrong wrong and righteousness righteousness is acting like blind men, a blindness now among God's people which is terrifying, requiring rising before congregations to point out sins and lines of error such as love-sick sentimentalism even when opposers have lawyers and threaten prison, for accepting Living Temple is that evil acted out again in the midst.

Jealous gossip, false accusation, revengeful speech, and false witness reverse truth by calling good evil and innocence crime, twisting truthful or careless words into evidence against another, turning truth into falsehood, and using suspicion to condemn. One who calls evil suspicions discernment while claiming righteousness and spiritual insight treats light as darkness and darkness as light with no place for truth in the heart. Jealous revengeful speech can make black appear white and white black, and even when an accusation states a true fact, presenting it to create a false impression and ruin another's reputation is unjustifiable. Making good appear evil and evil good to misrepresent and injure a neighbor violates the ninth commandment and belongs to Satan's work of accusing others, and claiming to serve God or to be sanctified does not make it good. Allowing jealousy, evil suspicion, and evil-speaking to remain brings God's displeasure and leaves the church spiritually unhealthy until cleansed.

Calling mild license liberty and freedom, pleading for greater liberty against vigilant rules and regulations, encouraging disregard of order, reviling instead of respecting burden-bearers who keep up the standard, and entrapping and misleading souls continually reverses moral values and treats evil as good and good as evil. Under pretense of godliness such professed Christians warp the conscience and becloud the mind, making the moral atmosphere unsafe and impure and turning the institution into a hotbed of iniquity, while those who do not see the danger become dupes and victims of Satan, so those professing to be sons and daughters of God must elevate the standard and have no fellowship with the unruly who want rules bent to suit disobedience. The same reversal condemns calling dishonest business dealings good and honest conduct evil, reversing right and wrong as light and darkness or sweet and bitter, for ambition for gain can lead professed commandment keepers to lose the sense of justice and righteousness, and claiming to believe the truth does not make the conduct acceptable nor the profession sufficient. Those professing truth but pursuing worldly gain through real estate buying and selling are tempted to mislead and prevaricate, treating wrongdoing as acceptable, putting them at odds with God and others and bringing loss for time and eternity, and managers who use fallacious reasoning to defend dishonest or unfair dealings while claiming to serve God teach others corrupt practices and call right wrong and sin righteousness.

Parents are required to give right and wrong their true names and refuse to reverse them, to see the depths of evil in the heart and Satan's strong power over the mind for what they are, and to receive careful counsel to restrain and correct children as good done for their interest and good rather than counting faithful counselors as enemies and quickly cutting loose from them, tearing away every particle of the spirit that reverses good and evil. Honestly recognizing and correcting wrongdoing includes a parent's duty to restrain and correct children and not treating those who reprove wrongdoing as enemies.

Drinking lawmakers, witnesses, jurors, lawyers, and judges who enact oppressive laws and condemn innocent people, justifying the wicked for reward and denying the righteous justice, show how strong drink confuses the sense of right and wrong unto treating evil as good and defending injustice, belonging to a wider judgment upon those who reject God's law and despise His word unto ruin. Praising and elevating a person whose conduct is unlike that expected of a gospel minister and unfit for gospel ministry treats sin as righteousness and makes wrong appear right and black appear white from lack of true spiritual discernment. In Battle Creek professed believers claiming to uphold truth misrepresent it through self-indulgence, extravagance, and devotion to material possessions, withholding resources needed to spread the message in new fields, treating light as darkness and darkness as light in spiritual blindness, and having received great light increases peril if not lived by, requiring humility repentance and obedience to make witness consistent with truth. The warning also reaches Katy's husband, whose influence urges giving up the truth and whose arguments can make unbelievers appear better than some professed Christians, joined with condemnation of those wise in their own eyes.

Safety from calling evil good or good evil requires God's grace and vigilant guarding of the soul from evil, for sin corrupts spiritual judgment and evil allowed to darken the mind destroys discernment, and grace is needed to guard spiritual sight and keep the soul from accepting evil or excusing a wrong choice because it seems small or appealing. Those who have had light and rejected it, walking in sparks of their own kindling instead of seeking wisdom from God, lack the grace of Christ in the heart and so make wrong decisions, regard light as darkness, and call error truth and truth error, and shall lie down in sorrow, but receiving the Word of God in sincerity and simplicity renews the mind, removes blindness and darkness, and causes true light to shine forth so the Word is clearly understood. Without divine enlightenment serious mistakes are made in God's work, so spiritual discernment and carefulness are needed, while a mind enlightened by truth distinguishes truth from error and does not mistake falsehood for truth or darkness for light, though prejudice and human traditions obstruct discernment and openness enables recognizing truth as from God. The Holy Spirit's quickening influence gives keen perception to distinguish sacred from common and truth from error.

Speaking falsely about what is known to be true merely to please someone reverses truth by calling darkness light and light darkness and can imperil that person's soul, so truth grounded in God's word must be spoken even when it may be rejected. Harsh scolding management and misuse of authority is evil, not godly, and must not be excused or mislabeled, for God requires things to be called by their right names.