“Your palms are defiled with blood, your fingers with iniquity; your lips speak guile, your tongue utters duplicity. None calls for righteousness; no one sues for an honest cause. They rely on empty words, deceitfully spoken; they conceive misdeeds, they beget wickedness. They hatch vipers’ eggs and spin spiders’ webs; whoever eats of their eggs […]
The De-Created—Briars, Reptiles, Feral Animals Read More »
Explanation: As people ascend the spiritual ladder by keeping the laws of God’s covenants pertaining to each level, God re-creates them closer to his own image and likeness. By keeping the laws God has decreed, they grow more like God and acquire his divine attributes. Isaiah’s creation theme shows that God continues to create or
Spiritual Levels—Re-creation Read More »
Question: Does Isaiah say anything about the return from exile of Israel’s Ten Lost Tribes who were taken captive into Assyria? Answer: The short answer to the Ten Tribes’ return from exile is that just as they went captive into ancient Assyria in Isaiah’s day (circa 722 B.C.), so they will return from exile out
Question about Assyria and the Ten Lost Tribes Read More »
“Thus says the Lord who created the heavens, the God who formed the earth—who made it secure and organized it, not to remain a chaotic waste, but designed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord, there is none other.” (Isaiah 45:18) “It is I who made the earth and created man upon it; I
The Lord as Creator and Re-Creator Read More »
Question: If the prophecies of Isaiah are about the end of the world, where does he speak about America, and what does he predict for this nation? Answer: To answer that question, a quick review of exactly how Isaiah prophesies the end of the world is warranted, followed by what he prophesies of end-time America.
Question about End-Time America Read More »
In God’s Day of Judgment no one will be able to say “You have no idea what I had to deal with,” or “You put me through this while you sat aloof on your heavenly throne,” or “I had to sin to survive,” and so forth. Israel’s God paid the ultimate price to save his
The Lord Is Judge, Lawgiver, and King Read More »
“Come near, you nations, and hear! Pay attention, you peoples! Let the earth give heed, and all who are upon it, the world, and all who spring from it. Jehovah’s rage is upon all nations, his fury upon all their hosts; he has doomed them, consigned them to the slaughter. . . . When my
God’s End-Time Judgment Read More »
Question: What is so important about understanding the words of Isaiah that the Savior makes it a commandment to search them diligently (3 Nephi 23:1)? Also, why does he call them “great”? Aren’t the words of other prophets great also, including the words of modern prophets? Answer: The fact that only one prophet appears in
Question about the Imperative to Understand Isaiah Read More »
I sat spellbound as a rabbi taught that the clean animals Isaiah mentions allude to God’s people Israel and the unclean to Gentiles. This gave new meaning to the ox and the ass and the millennial idea of harmony between the lamb and the lion. Although I don’t recall much of what the rabbi taught,
Metaphors as Aliases of End-Time Persons Read More »
“Woe to those who enact unjust laws, who draft oppressive legislation—denying justice to the needy, depriving the poor of my people of their right, making plunder of widows, mere spoil of the fatherless! What will you do in the day of reckoning when the holocaust overtakes you from afar? To whom will you flee for
A Tyrant Named “Sea” and “River” Read More »
Question: In a class discussion, the question arose as to when Gentiles become numbered among those of the house of Israel. Many have the belief that when they are baptized and make a covenant with the Lord they are adopted into the house of Israel. And yet the scriptures indicate that collectively we are a
Question about Church Members Being Gentiles or House of Israel Read More »
The roles Israel’s God fulfills when redeeming humanity from evil—of Father and Son, Priest and Sacrifice, Savior and Firstborn—all fall in the category of “salvation,” that being a gift from God which we receive on condition we “repent” of sins and “return” to him. Repentance, in turn, is the essence of living the lesser law
Salvation Leads to Exaltation Read More »
