Isaiah 57:1
The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.
The righteous perish and merciful men are taken away, and no one lays it to heart or considers it, notices their decline, or grieves that the righteous are becoming few. God Himself lays the righteous in the grave and takes them away by death in order to save and spare them from the evil to come. That coming evil from which they are spared is the time of trouble, through which they are given rest. The one so taken is sealed and kept safe, and will come up at the voice of God to stand upon the earth with the 144,000.
Charles Fitch and Levi Stockman, who had preached the gospel of the kingdom, were taken away in this way. Their death is sleep, and while sleeping they are spared the trials the living must still pass through. Even so they share in heavenly glory under the tree of life. Those left behind need not mourn for such dead as if harmed, but only for their own loss in being deprived of their company, because the death results in good.
That failure to consider the loss is seen where professed Christians in the churches conform to the world, seek respectability and comfort, and avoid suffering or reproach for Christ. Blindness to that spiritual condition leaves little hope. The verse belongs to a whole field of comfort and encouragement in Isaiah 55, 56, 57, and 58. There is an open door there to enter and meet with God, to seek Him earnestly, and He will be found.
The verse foretells the great and solemn work of presenting the warning message to the world and giving the reason for present belief. This is to be done through camp meetings and through establishing sanitariums in different parts of the world as an educating power. That educating power is to reform people and restore the moral image of God by knowledge of the Word, and to arouse slumbering senses to see how far they have departed from the Lord's ordinances by adopting worldly policy and conforming to worldly principles in transgression of the law of God.
The chapter means much to God's people and must be read and studied carefully and prayerfully to become wise unto salvation. Value in God's sight does not come from being rich in the wealth of the world but from being meek and contrite, whom the Lord acknowledges and honors. This requires the meekness represented in Christ's life and character, humbling the heart before God and standing in right relation to Him.