Isaiah 59:14, commentary and pictures

The verse pictures a complete public breakdown of right order, where fair judgment is forced back, justice is kept at a distance, truth is left fallen in the open, and upright dealing is shut out from entering. In that state the honest are left exposed as prey to the unjust, and God Himself sees the absence of right judgment and is displeased. It was fulfilled when an innocent Christ was condemned by a compromised ruler yielding to a lawless mob and by religious leaders who rejected light and exalted tradition above the word. It also describes the world just before Christ's second coming, when rejection of God's law, the Bible and the Sabbath, with greed, intemperance, bribery and Satanic deception, fills society with lawlessness, violence and corruption. With no human intercessor, the Lord Himself interposes with salvation, righteousness and vengeance to restore His image in the repentant and to repay oppression, calling His people to come out separate, be converted, and act justly with mercy and love.

Public Collapse Described

Isaiah 59:14 portrays a nation where right order has broken down in public life, with fair judgment driven back, justice kept at a distance, truth collapsed openly in the street, and uprightness or equity unable to gain entrance. It is a condition in which the distinction between right and wrong, honor and dishonor, truth and error is treated as worthless, with justice pushed aside and fairness finding no place. This same collapse reaches into modern public, business, social, domestic, and religious life whenever Christ's teachings are not followed, showing itself in corruption, bribery, fraud, violence, and disregard for human suffering as proof that justice stands far away. It belongs to a wider account of a nation's unrighteousness and calamity alongside forgetting God, breaking His law and covenant, and despising the Sabbath, and it forms part of a picture of wrongdoing that moves God to intervene with salvation and righteousness. It also exposes ambitious schemes and secret, underhand dealings that distort principle and justice, demanding people who call things by their right names and stand firm and unmoved in duty.

In that collapse truth fails, and the one who turns away from evil makes himself a prey, becoming a target, victim, and object of hostility to those who act unjustly. When principles are perverted, justice is pushed aside and uprightness cannot enter, so that leaving evil behind leaves a person vulnerable and exposed. This was fulfilled in Christ, who obeyed God's commandments rather than human traditions and requirements and was hated and persecuted for it, and the same pattern recurs whenever human laws and traditions are placed above God's law, so that the faithful face reproach, persecution, and false accusation. It is seen in prevailing greed and oppression, where passion for money, luxury, and display turns minds from God while the rich heap treasure and live in pleasure, defraud laborers of wages, and leave multitudes in poverty, hard toil, sickness, and misery. It is seen also in God's institutions, business rooms, and council meetings when scheming and dishonest plans replace noble, generous, holy, and true action with an eye single to God's glory and tarnish sacred places, and in Phariseeism and in established practices that persist despite injustice and departure from Bible principles.

The Lord sees this lack of judgment and is displeased that there is no judgment and no right dealing. That displeasure rests upon church councils when leaders let themselves be swayed by the judgment of men not controlled by the Spirit, fail to discern evil clearly and stand firmly and boldly for the right, and allow selfishness and wrongs such as robbing God's treasury to continue without correction despite repeated messages. It is the same divine sight that finds no man and no intercessor, so that His own arm brings salvation and His righteousness sustains Him as He puts on righteousness as a breastplate and salvation as a helmet, with vengeance and zeal for clothing.

Causes of Moral Collapse

The collapse comes from forsaking and forgetting God, choosing other gods and following corrupt ways until He turns away, transgressing His law, trampling it, breaking His everlasting covenant given on condition of obedience, despising the Sabbath, departing from His way and righteous government, and coming under the sway of seducing spirits. It is long-continued and progressive rebellion against His higher constitution and laws that pushes justice far away, makes public truth collapse, and bars fairness from entering. In that state men carry out Satan's purposes by craft and deceit, the standard of morality sinks lower and lower, corrupt rulers with debasing principles are chosen who will not check evil or restrain depraved appetites but let intemperance and other evils have full sway, including sympathy for slavery, until a pall of darkness and death lies over the earth groaning under accumulated guilt where even the innocent, wives and children, suffer bitterly for others' sins. It is the state of the world just prior to the second coming, when iniquity abounds through continual transgression and men, even professing godliness, indulge their own traits and become self-indulgent and self-centered unless conscientiously controlled by God, who calls for just action and kindness and mercy to one another.

The doctrine that men are released from obedience to God's requirements weakens moral obligation and opens the floodgates of iniquity, so that lawlessness, dissipation and corruption sweep like an overwhelming tide. Widespread infidelity and rejection of the Bible, the law, and the seventh-day Sabbath remove the defense against error, for Satan as effectually destroys faith in the Bible as destroying the Bible itself, works through churches that refuse unpopular scriptural truths and sow skepticism, clings to natural immortality and consciousness in death and thus removes the only defense against spiritualism, and declares the law no longer binding to escape the duty of keeping the seventh-day Sabbath enjoined in the fourth commandment. Law and Sabbath are cast away together in a rejection that will become well-nigh universal as Sabbath reform extends, leaving fearful responsibility upon religious leaders for the iniquity in the Christian world, even under full gospel light in an age of religious freedom.

Selfish gain drives the collapse, for the passion for money, luxury, display and sensual indulgence turns minds from God. The rich heap treasure and live in pleasure while defrauding laborers of wages, multitudes are left in poverty, hard toil, sickness, misery and wretchedness, well-nigh destitute of food, shelter and clothing, while in the same cities others have more than heart could wish and spend on richly furnished houses, personal adornment, and gratification of sensual appetites upon liquor, tobacco and other things that destroy the powers of the brain, unbalance the mind and debase the soul. By oppression and extortion men pile up colossal fortunes while the cries of starving humanity come up before God, professed Christians become leavened with pride, covetousness, self-sufficiency and love of money, oppressing the poor and robbing the widow and the fatherless for advantage and display until pride makes a Sodom of the world, with every act written in heaven and the cries of the oppressed reaching Him who judges righteously, yet even then He is still able to save and to hear. Among worldly-wise men character is measured by gold and silver and possession of houses and lands, and this corrupting standard has leavened even those claiming to be Christians so that they bring in corrupting principles and dishonor Christ, while men rush in a mad race for gain and selfish indulgence as if there were no God, no heaven and no hereafter.

Intemperance, bribery and sensual pleasure corrupt courts and rulers, for strong drink benumbs the senses so a man cannot judge calmly or see right and wrong clearly, making him responsible for all injustice committed under its power and opening the way for Satan to work through him to oppress and destroy the innocent. Rulers are actuated by desire for gain and love of sensual pleasure, jurists are perverted, bribed and deluded, intemperance has beclouded and clouded the faculties of many so that Satan has almost complete control of them, and drunkenness and revelry, passion, envy, dishonesty of every sort, corruption, bribery and sensual desires are found among those who administer the laws, keeping justice far away because truth has fallen in public life and fairness cannot enter. Therefore those with jurisdiction over lives and all who execute laws must be law-keepers and men of self-control, with full command of physical, mental and moral powers, vigor of intellect and a high sense of justice, guilty of crime when yielding to intemperance.

When men in authority can be bribed to excuse sin and let the guilty pass unpunished, perverting laws marked by strict and impartial justice, atrocious crimes permitted to pass unheeded cause licentiousness, robbery and murder continually to increase until they hardly awaken horror. Then the earth becomes as corrupt as in the days of Noah and as Sodom when violence and licentiousness were lightly regarded. The nation that does not condemn and punish wrong becomes guilty before God, the accumulating weight of unpunished sin sinks it to destruction, makes it subject to retributive justice, and prepares the world to receive unmixed wrath, so those who make and execute laws must ascertain facts with zeal, decide with strict integrity, execute penalty with impartial justice, and by all possible means bring the wrongdoer to justice rather than shield him by negligence.

Moral distinctions are treated as worthless, with the just standard of right and wrong, honor and dishonor, truth and error counting for nothing, justice pushed aside, truth publicly disregarded and fallen, and equity finding no entrance. People judge character falsely, honoring the impure and hating the pure and good, calling evil good and truth falsehood under the prompting of the adversary of all righteousness. Those who mingle with the world come to view matters from the worldling's standpoint instead of seeing as God sees, acting on misrepresentations in ambitious schemes and secret underhand dealings and invented projects that distort principle and justice. The remedy demanded is to come out and be separate, to see as He sees and honor and love the pure and good, with men who shun the least intrigue as sin, will not be drawn into secret confederacy, call things by their right name, and stand barricaded by principle and braced for duty, pleasant or unpleasant, unmoved by flattery, pretense, cunning or art, remaining firm in duty.

Fulfilled in Christ's Trial

The verse was fulfilled when Pilate condemned Jesus, for judgment was turned backward when Pilate, though convinced of His innocence, compromised principle and dignity and yielded his own judgment to the people. He had examined Jesus and found no blame and knew the accusers had proved nothing, yet in weakness to appease the mob he offered to scourge an innocent man and then submitted the sentence to a lawless and infuriated crowd demanding crucifixion. Justice stood afar off and equity could not enter because he violated his conscience step by step and excused himself from judging with equity and fairness as his position as governor demanded, until he was almost helpless in the hands of the Jews who from envy and malice had delivered Jesus up for trial. He repeatedly pronounced Jesus innocent and just, yet put the life of a just man in the balance against the clamor of priests and people crying for Barabbas and for crucifixion, so that truth was fallen in the street when envy and malice prevailed over evidence and conscience. The words describe justice and judgment being driven away while truth and fairness are shut out, applying to Pilate's trial where though he recognized innocence he surrendered judgment to an infuriated mob and allowed an unjust sentence and rejection of truth.

Truth was cast down in public and justice shut out, for though nothing worthy of condemnation could be found in Him, He received only a mock trial from beginning to end and the innocent Son of God was given up to the mob instead of being protected as a just ruler should have done. The religion of the Jewish teachers had become a religion of oppression that could not reform them, exalting worthless traditions and rites above the Word of God and letting injustice and fraud triumph. They rejected and condemned the Light of the world and crucified the truth because He witnessed against their evil works. Priests and rabbis misled even those convinced He was the Son of God by false reasoning, repeating prophecies of the Messiah reigning in glory and having dominion, then making contemptuous comparisons between that pictured glory and the humble appearance of Jesus. They thus perverted the very words of prophecy to sanction error and to keep the people from studying the word for themselves and seeing the harmony between prophecy and His life, a wrong handling of God's vineyard that Christ came to correct and set in right light in working out the purposes planned in the counsels of heaven to save people under Satan's power.

The verse exposes Phariseeism that kept outward regularity while the principles of justice were perverted, filled with regular lines yet perverted in justice, and its words prove true again where holding to regular lines has led to irregular practices. It shows that when principles are perverted justice is pushed aside, truth fails, and those who turn from evil become vulnerable, applying to established practices that can persist in spite of injustice and departure from Bible principles. Only God's principles are safe, and only God by His Holy Spirit gives wisdom to tell truth from a lie and almost instinctively to separate good from evil. This was fulfilled in Christ, who obeyed God's commandments rather than human traditions and requirements and was hated and persecuted for it, showing justice and truth failing and those who turn from evil becoming targets. The same pattern recurs when human laws and traditions are placed above God's law, so that those who remain faithful to God's commandments face reproach, persecution, and false accusations.

Condition of Last Days

The verse describes the world just before Christ's second coming, which is the condition existing today. As in Noah's day, as in the prophet's day, and as before the first coming, so now judgment is driven back and justice stands far off because truth has fallen publicly and uprightness cannot enter. Before the second coming Satan's deception and opposition to God's law intensify, men come more under seducing spirits by turning from God and His righteous government, and iniquity abounds because men have transgressed the law and broken the everlasting covenant given on condition of obedience. That turning back of judgment means courts are corrupt, with rulers actuated by desire for gain and love of sensual pleasure, jurists perverted, bribed and deluded, and drunkenness and revelry, passion, envy and dishonesty of every sort found among administrators of law. Intemperance has beclouded the faculties of many so that Satan has almost complete control of them, while the passion for money, luxury and display turns minds from God, the rich heap treasure and live in pleasure while defrauding laborers of wages, and multitudes are left in poverty, hard toil, sickness and misery. In that public collapse truth fails and the one who turns from evil becomes a victim and a prey.

It portrays the lawlessness, violence and corruption seen when God's law and the Bible are rejected. Men rush on in a mad race for gain and selfish indulgence as if there were no God, no heaven and no hereafter. Men professing godliness indulge their own traits of character and become self-indulgent and self-centered unless conscientiously under the control of God.

It marks the present time when Satan has come down with great power with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish. Unseen satanic agencies work to destroy human life, scenes of calamity are entering, everything that can be shaken will be shaken and what cannot be shaken will remain. The Lord is coming very soon to establish His kingdom on the earth, and Christ is coming to establish His kingdom.

Since October 1844 the condition is fulfilling as intercession comes to an end. There is no intercessor when Christ finishes His priestly work in the Holy of Holies and lays off His priestly attire, and then He puts on the garments of vengeance to repay fury to His adversaries in the wrath of God in the seven last plagues. The Lord is displeased that there is no judgment.

The collapse appears in the corrupt practices and pleasures of influential people in the cities. Judgment is turned away, justice keeps its distance, truth is publicly dishonored, and those who turn from evil become targets. Placing Christian institutions among them endangers the work with hostility and difficulty.

God Sees and Intervenes

When judgment is turned backward and justice stands far off because truth is fallen in the street and equity cannot enter, with truth failing and he that departs from evil making himself a prey, the Lord sees the lack of judgment and is displeased that there is no judgment. With no man and no intercessor, the Lord Himself interposes, His own arm bringing salvation and His righteousness sustaining and covering Him. Satan as destroyer has nearly obliterated the image of God in man, and he is met by Jesus Christ as Restorer. Christ restores His moral image in all who connect with God, overcoming hereditary peculiarity and deficiencies of character through faith and the imputed righteousness of Christ in the new birth, and as merciful and faithful high priest He makes reconciliation and succors them that are tempted.

He puts on righteousness as a breastplate and salvation as a helmet, with vengeance and zeal for clothing. When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord lifts up a standard against him. Then they fear the name of the Lord from the west and His glory from the rising of the sun, and the Redeemer comes to Zion and to them that turn from transgression in Jacob.

Every oppressive act is written in the books of heaven, and the cries of the starving and oppressed reach Him who judges righteously. When men in authority can be bribed to excuse sin and let the guilty pass unpunished, atrocious crimes pass unheeded and licentiousness, robbery, and murder increase until they hardly awaken horror, and the accumulating weight of unpunished sin sinks the nation to destruction, makes it subject to retributive justice, and prepares the world to receive the unmixed wrath of God. Human law punishes the drunken doer of dark crimes while the liquor-seller who is also morally responsible goes free, is not called a murderer, and is calmly watched in his unholy trade, yet the fairness shut out from public life leaves murdered blood unavenged by men only until God brings the bolts of His wrath on the vender who sells violence and death in the poisonous cup that takes away reason and makes a man a brute. Pride, covetousness, self-sufficiency, and love of money leaven professed Christians until they oppress the poor and rob the widow and the fatherless for advantage and display, and pride is making a Sodom of the world. Even in this fallen national state, with public judgment turned back and fairness shut out, the Lord is still able to save and to hear.

Call to God's People

Isaiah 59:14 applies to God's own institutions, business rooms and council meetings where scheming and dishonest plans are worked instead of noble, generous, holy and true action with an eye single to God's glory, acting on principles that tarnish sacred places. God Himself is present and walks through those rooms and meetings and will not justify any evil thing done there. Right judgment is driven back and fairness shut out when those in holy trust and responsible positions compromise truth, honor and integrity to gain advantages. They lift themselves up in vanity and lift up men to control body and soul of fellow men as if their word must be done after their own idea, without clean hands and pure, unselfish, holy purpose, instead of recognizing that all are brethren and leaving guidance to the Holy Spirit who alone can guide men, so blessing does not come upon those handling sacred things and they stand under controversy in the open sight of God.

Truth lies fallen publicly when men in places of holy trust who have had light walk contrary to the light, care nothing for reproof, refuse testimonies, and allow judgment of men not controlled by the Spirit of God to sway them. Counselors boast that responsible men have lost faith, thereby strengthening rejecters of light in unbelief, while leaders fail to discern evil clearly and stand firmly and boldly in defense of the right, and let selfishness and wrongs such as robbing God's treasury continue without correction despite repeated messages. Fairness and right judgment are shut out while this unbelief spreads as a deadly atmosphere and malaria through the ranks nigh and afar off, and while matters are left unchanged for years the Lord's favor cannot be expected. At the heart of the work at Battle Creek justice and mercy and love for God and man have fallen in the streets and equity cannot enter because men in responsible positions walk contrary to God, insulting Him and abusing His honor while misrepresenting Him though called by His name. This happens because men without light and truth in heart and soul take up truth without conversion, keeping old hereditary and cultivated character while assuming places as counselors and wise men, mingling their own spirit with counsel and perverting principle, and confederating together to do the very things expressly forbidden in the Word.

Among God's people pride and selfishness drive mercy and love for God and fellow men from the heart, so though there is no lack of means for advancing the work He takes no pleasure in them. Covering wrong actions with a pretense of righteousness is deceit, dishonest weights, unfair balances and fraud, and this is their iniquity, meaning the pledge has not been restored and what was taken away has not been given back. The same collapse marks false shepherds and unjust dealing among believers who hinder circulation of truth-bearing books, break solemn promises about spreading truth, practice injustice and double dealing in business from jealousy, shut out warnings given by God, and leave precious truth and light meant to prepare a people for the great day in obscurity. Truth fails and he who turns from evil makes himself a prey, but only truth is vindicated and everyone who practices such injustice and double dealing will be judged. Love of trade and gain, commercialism and engrossment in worldly business must not crowd the pure and powerful truths of God's Word out of the life, and responsibilities must now be understood and souls truly converted.

Only God's principles are safe, and only God by His Holy Spirit gives wisdom to tell truth from a lie and almost instinctively to separate good from evil. Outward regularity with perverted principles of justice is Phariseeism, filled with regular lines yet perverted in justice, and holding to regular lines has again led to irregular practices. The collapse of justice and fairness in public dealing also marks selfish movements of those who claim to be righteous but are not what they claim, who think they are governed by principle but lack the connection with God that knows His mind and discerns His will, so that falling into their hands is as unsafe as falling into the hands of those who neither know nor fear God and dealing with them is to be avoided when possible. Hope is only in God as stay and staff and strength, calling for conversion from incoming principles and a turning and overturning until every unrighteous principle is expelled, with sanctification by the Spirit becoming the controlling power so blessing can come. Ambitious invented schemes and secret underhand dealings that lose all sense of distinction between right and wrong, honor and dishonor, truth and error, act on misrepresentation and pervert principle and justice, demand men who shun the least intrigue as sin, call things by their right names, and stand barricaded by principle and braced for duty pleasant or unpleasant, unmoved by flattery, pretense, cunning or art.

Those who have jurisdiction over lives of others and all who make and execute laws must be law-keepers and men of self-control with full command of physical, mental and moral powers, vigor of intellect and a high sense of justice. Strong drink benumbs the senses so a man cannot judge calmly or see right and wrong clearly, making him responsible for all injustice committed under its power and opening the way for Satan to work through him to oppress and destroy the innocent, so yielding to intemperance is guilt of crime. They must ascertain facts with zeal, decide with strict integrity, execute penalty with impartial justice, and by all possible means bring the wrongdoer to justice rather than shield him by negligence or bribery to excuse sin and let the guilty pass unpunished. Because the truth the Christian represents opposes the ambitious plans of a world where judgment and justice have withdrawn and truth has fallen, the Christian cannot share its fellowship, and this opposition explains why the world hates Christ's followers. People there judge character falsely, honoring the impure and hating the pure and good, calling evil good and truth falsehood, and those who mingle with the world come to view matters from the worldling's standpoint instead of seeing as God sees, so God calls His people to come out and be separate, to see as He sees and honor and love the pure and good, and to act justly and show kindness and mercy to one another.

The present time demands sanctified tongues used to glorify Him and urgent work as never before, making openings for truth, improving every opportunity to draw souls to Christ and being instant in season and out of season. This urgency belongs to a time when Satan has come down with great power with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, unseen agencies work to destroy human life, scenes of calamity are entering, everything that can be shaken will be shaken and what cannot be shaken will remain, and the Lord is coming very soon to establish His kingdom on the earth. Those whose life is hid with Christ in God will see His grace and salvation.