Rude Awakening
How is it that Latter-day Saints who have been given the key of knowledge of the end-time in the prophecies of Isaiah do not feel compelled to SEARCH them for themselves as their Savior has commanded but instead leave that up to the “wise and learned”—the academics of our day who “illuminate with mere sparks” in order to maintain their tenured professorships (Isaiah 29:13–14; 50:11)? How is it that “precepts of men” and the “line upon line” principle of learning continue to wield more power in the minds of Latter-day Saints than the Word of God they are counseled to SEARCH, in the end leading to their condemnation for never having personally tasted of its fruits (Isaiah 28:7–13; 2 Nephi 28:12–15, 26–32)? How is it that year after year Latter-day Saints pursue the same course for understanding the words of Isaiah that hasn’t worked—yet expecting a different result—because they “will not SEARCH knowledge, nor understand great knowledge, when it is given unto them in plainness, even as plain as word can be” (2 Nephi 32:7)?
What becomes PLAIN when applying simple interpretive tools the Isaiah Institute provides is that underlying literary structures transform the entire Book of Isaiah into an allegory of the end-time in which the names of ancient world powers serve as codenames of end-time world powers that are identifiable by how Isaiah characterizes them. What becomes PLAIN is that people who appear in the Book of Isaiah exemplify seven spiritual levels of humanity on a ladder to heaven that are recognizable by their occupants’ character traits, whether good or evil. What becomes PLAIN is that Isaiah frequently resorts to codenames to portray the main actors in the world’s end-time drama—such as the Lord’s “arm” to denote his end-time servant and the Lord’s “fire” and “sword” to denote an end-time king of Assyria—creating a prophecy within a prophecy that adds an entirely other dimension to his vision of the end-time. Must Latter-day Saints “awake to a sense of their awful situation” before giving Isaiah’s prophecy the attention it deserves?
