Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
Vision in this verse is genuine messages from God, the true testimony of His Spirit, His voice to men in warnings, counsels and reproof, light from His throne and heaven's rays of light given to the people. Where that vision is lacking the people perish, left in darkness and lost. The same perishing comes from lack of proper instruction, which is a warning to ministers who serve themselves instead of faithfully teaching and caring for the people.
When ministers disbelieve and disrespect that light, exalt their own finite judgment, ideas and plans above it, and let self come between them and the people to shut it out, the people look to their ministers rather than going to God for themselves and perish. Such work draws souls to pay no heed to the voice of God, spreads an unbelief that cannot be gathered up again, brings coldness, lukewarmness and demoralization, charges those ministers with the loss of souls, and will stand condemned in the judgment.
Satan's very last deception will be to make that testimony of none effect, working ingeniously in different ways and through different agencies to unsettle the confidence of God's remnant people in it. False visions undermine confidence in the true testimony and lead away from the truth. He presses in the spurious, brings in false visions to mislead, and mingles the false with the true, so that people become disgusted and regard everything bearing the name of visions as fanaticism, and confidence in the true is uprooted. Contrasting the false with the true enables honest people to distinguish between them.
Vision in this verse is genuine messages from God, the true testimony of His Spirit, His voice to men in warnings, counsels and reproof, light from His throne and heaven's rays of light given to the people. Where that vision is lacking the people perish, left in darkness and lost. The same perishing comes from lack of proper instruction, which is a warning to ministers who serve themselves instead of faithfully teaching and caring for the people.
When ministers disbelieve and disrespect that light, exalt their own finite judgment, ideas and plans above it, and let self come between them and the people to shut it out, the people look to their ministers rather than going to God for themselves and perish. Such work draws souls to pay no heed to the voice of God, spreads an unbelief that cannot be gathered up again, brings coldness, lukewarmness and demoralization, charges those ministers with the loss of souls, and will stand condemned in the judgment.
Satan's very last deception will be to make that testimony of none effect, working ingeniously in different ways and through different agencies to unsettle the confidence of God's remnant people in it. False visions undermine confidence in the true testimony and lead away from the truth. He presses in the spurious, brings in false visions to mislead, and mingles the false with the true, so that people become disgusted and regard everything bearing the name of visions as fanaticism, and confidence in the true is uprooted. Contrasting the false with the true enables honest people to distinguish between them.