'Your Collection Will Not Deliver You'

"Whom did you become frightened at and begin to fear, so that you took up lying?" Asks Jehovah.  A good question! Judah certainly shows no wholesome, godly fear of Jehovah.  Otherwise, she would not have become a nation of liars, worshipers of false gods. Jehovah goes on to say:  "I was not the one that you remembered.  You took nothing to your heart. Was I not keeping silent and hiding matters? So you were in no fear even of me."  (Isaiah 57:11)  Jehovah has kept silent, not inflicting immediate punishment upon Judah.  Does Judah appreciate this? No. Instead she views God's forbearance as indifference.  She has lost all fear of him.

However, the period of God's  long-suffering will end.   Looking toward that time, Jehovah declares:  "I myself shall tell forth your righteousness and your works, that they will not benefit you.  When you cry for aid your collection of things will not deliver you, but a wind will carry even  all of them away. An exhalation will take them away." (Isaiah 57:12, 13a)  Jehovah will expose Judah's sham righteousness. Her hypocritical works will be of no benefit.  Her "collection of things," her inventory of idols, will not deliver her.  When calamity strikes, the gods in which she trusts will be blown away by a mere breath of wind.

Jehovah's words are fulfilled in 607 B.C.E. that is when Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar destroys Jerusalem, burns the temple, and takes most of the people captive.  "Thus Judah went into exile from off its soil." -2 Kings 25:1-21.

Similarly, Christendom's large inventory of idols will not deliver her in the day of Jehovah's anger.  (Isaiah 2:19-22; 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10)  Along with the rest of "Babylon the Great"-the world conglomerate of false religion-Christendom will be annihilated.  The symbolic scarlet-colored wild beast  and its ten horns "will make [Babylon the Great] devastated and naked, and will eat up her fleshly parts and will completely burn her with fire."  (Revelation 17:3, 16, 17)  How glad we are to have obeyed the command:  "Get out of her my people, if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues"!  (Revelation 18:4, 5) May we never return to her or her ways.

Next time: "The One Taking Refuge in Me Will Inherit the Land"

From the Book Isaiah's Prophecy Light for all Mankind, Volume II, 2001