Ryan Schiavo: When Evil Is Called Good, and Good Evil

We want to share a message from a dear friend of this ministry, Ryan Schiavo, an evangelist who preaches boldly and travels widely, ministering across many fellowships and on the open streets. This message — “When Evil Is Called Good, and Good Evil” — is, in his own words, a heavy one. But it is a needed one. You can find more of his preaching on his channel, Last Days Pulpit Ministry.

The text: Isaiah 5

Ryan opens in Isaiah 5, where the prophet pronounces a series of woes over a people in serious moral and spiritual decline — a people who had the law of God plainly before them and yet drifted into idolatry, injustice, and self-deception. The heart of the message is one verse:

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

This, Ryan argues, is an absolute distortion of reality. God’s very first act of creation was to separate the light from the darkness — He distinguished the two because they are not meant to mix. To reverse them, to call darkness light, is not merely to sin but to celebrate sin as though it were righteousness. And that, he warns, is precisely the hour we are living in.

From sin to delusion

There is a sober progression the Bible describes. It is one thing to sin and know it is wrong; it is another to sin and call it good. When people persistently reject the truth, Scripture warns that a hardening — what the late David Wilkerson called a “judicial blindness” — can settle over them:

And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

John 3:19 (NKJV)

…because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie.

2 Thessalonians 2:10-11 (NKJV)

Ryan illustrates the danger of hardening with the account of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16) — the man who wanted nothing to do with God in life, and to whom Abraham finally says that if people will not hear Moses and the prophets, no sign will persuade them. His plea is simple and searching: know the Word of God. A people who will not believe and follow Scripture become susceptible to believe anything.

The church’s calling: salt, light, and a voice

Much of the message is a call to courage. Ryan is careful to affirm the distinction between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of men — he is not preaching partisan politics. His concern is that the most basic, fundamental truths of God’s character are being overturned, especially where children are concerned, and that the church has too often gone silent. He returns again and again to God’s created order:

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Genesis 1:27 (NKJV)

The believer’s task, he insists, is to be salt and light — to speak the truth in love, with genuine compassion for people who are confused or hurting, yet without compromising what God has said. He shares from his own life: ministering on the streets to those wrestling with these questions, and even being arrested and held in a London jail cell for ten hours for preaching openly that homosexuality is sin. Through it all, he refuses to be silenced, echoing a line he loves from the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.”

Justice, and a righteous Judge

Ryan widens the lens to justice and lawlessness, turning to the psalm that charges those in authority to judge rightly:

Defend the poor and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy; free them from the hand of the wicked.

Psalm 82:3-4 (NKJV)

He grieves the ways justice is bent and the vulnerable are left unprotected, and he calls God’s people not to fear or intimidation but to a proper, biblical understanding of the times — knowing that the issues the world parades most loudly are often the very ones that matter most to the enemy.

The closing hope

For all its weight, the message does not end in despair but in confidence. God is a righteous Judge who cannot be defeated, and He raises up a standard against the flood of evil — most often through His own people:

So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun; when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.

Isaiah 59:19 (NKJV)

That standard, Ryan reminds us, is often you and I — the church, standing firm in the truth, speaking it in love, refusing to call evil good. It is our responsibility, in these last days, to be bold and full of the Holy Spirit, and to raise our children to be uncompromising in a dark and confused world.

🎥 Watch the full message: When Evil Is Called Good, and Good Evil — Ryan Schiavo

📺 More from Ryan Schiavo: Last Days Pulpit Ministry on YouTube