Dan Phillips @BibChr has pointed out for years that our problem is not a lack of good preaching and teaching, but a reticence to hear and respond to the truth preached.

False teachers are propped up...they don't lead, strictly speaking.

So in Isaiah 8, the prophet prophesies

destruction and Calvin has this comment I took from this website which I love which speaks to a similar vein.

( https://pro.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/cal/isaiah-8.html)

"And yet these words were spoken not so much to the king as to godly men;

"and hence we ought to infer that the servants of God do not always speak so as to be believed by their hearers; for Isaiah here addresses wicked men, in whom he produces no conviction."

The inquisitive reader might ask "Why?"

JC answers...

"Why, then, does he speak to them? To convict them more and more of their unbelief, and to reprove them for it; and next, to render the goodness of God more manifest:"

The notion that "if we just preached the truth finally everyone would believe and follow" is foolish and

discouraging to faithful men who proclaim God's goodness regularly to a people who get cut and don't bleed.

If you don't believe me, read about the life of the greatest preacher ever, Jesus Christ, and look at the responses he got. Was he rejected because he didn't preach truth?