“For when there are judgments from you for the earth, The inhabitants of the land learn about righteousness.” (Isaiah 26:9)
This is a very helpful verse to get our heads around John 5:28-29, which doesn’t make a lot of sense otherwise:
Says Jesus: “The hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, and those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment.”
Those who did good things arriving at a “resurrection of life” is a slam-dunk. It takes no imagination at all. Not so with “those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment.” What’s that all about? You’re going to raise them up from the dead just to pronounce them guilty? Who would do such a crazy thing?
Not Jehovah, it would appear. 26:9 says what he will do. There will be “judgments from [him] for the earth, [and] the inhabitants of the land learn about righteousness.” (Isaiah 26:9) They will. Maybe not all of them. The very next verse of Isaiah (26:10) convinces us that we are on the right track:
“Even if the wicked is shown favor, He will not learn righteousness. Even in the land of uprightness he will act wickedly.”
Yeah, what if they “practiced vile things” not through ignorance but because they are wicked through and through? If they really are wicked, a second chance won’t help. But it’s not really a second chance. Most of them never had a first chance. They lived at a time when knowledge of God was so distorted as to not even count as a first chance. Their second chance is really their first. And if they blow through it as though it is nothing—something much easier to do in this compromised world, so that it’s good not to get into the habit of judging—but if they do it when “there are judgments from [Jehovah] for the earth” and they should be “learn[ing] about righteousness,” then they find themselves enmeshed in the last verse of the chapter:
“For look! Jehovah is coming from his place To call the inhabitants of the land to account for their error, And the land will expose her bloodshed And will no longer cover over her slain.” (26:21)
It’s only God’s standards that work. Everything else results in the mess of the world presently seen. When the doomed experiment of human self-rule at last comes to its deserved conclusion, and there might be little interval of hiding out in the interior rooms, just like 26:20 says, then at last is realized the 24-27 “Isaianic apocalypse.”
“Go, my people, enter your inner rooms, And shut your doors behind you. Hide yourself for a brief moment Until the wrath has passed by.” (26:20) It’s sort of like that Lord’s Prayer verse: “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” If you want to be delivered from evil, don’t make a beeline to where it hangs out.
****** The bookstore
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