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CHAPTER 13

BLINDNESS TO GOODWILL

MAKES DEAFNESS TO MERCY

John 9

Comparisons

When, as we are seeing, it comes to communication and information, the prime disposer of assets, indeed definitively of truth, it is to God our Maker we look (Romans 1:17ff., cf. SMR, TMR). The reception in man is often not good, and has for some thousands of years been more than suspect, although the information source and base has been so utterly obvious that it is amazing God has tolerated our race for so long; but He is like that. There is a time for everything, including the Gospel, budding in the Old Testament, blooming in the New, for the long predicted death date of the Messiah (The Christian Prescription Ch. 2), on the fruit of which all the world depends, as with air, whether it seem good or otherwise.

There is a time for its application, and much of what is happening now, in modern dress and with special features, tends to resemble a virtual re-run of the desolatory errors of ancient Israel (cf. Three Anzas, One Answer Ch. 2), when she sacked the Messiah, and naturally enough, her foes then sacked her land, her city, her Temple and her panache. It is intensely sad, and Israel is now back, in the movement of God's predicted, long-term reliable love (cf. Jeremiah 31:18-20, Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32) ; but that is not all. That is a simple fact: God said it, God did it, and it is there to see - just like the once blind man, from birth, begging day by day, who then in the space of the same day, was there to be seen engaging in the art of seeing, after the work of moments on the part of Jesus the Christ. Many did not like that, then; and many are of the same disposition now. The obvious is intolerable. Truth is the victim.

Contemporaries

Indeed, the Gentile nations are imbued with an almost incomparable, seething spiritual drunkenness, as they resist to the end the Gospel of grace, in vast proportions, ruling the world as if it were a bonfire, needing fuel.

Today, then, we look at John 9, showing some salutary lessons, courage, faith and grace in the important case of ONE MAN, amid those who knew him, when Jesus Christ came on the scene.

We come here to the penetratingly presented case of restoration of sight, in one born blind. What a kefuffle, what an almost modern governmental series of taboos and tarnishings of simple truth. A man is healed, but by WHOM, and can now see, but through WHOM, and his relief is occasion for an ecclesiastical storm such as a modern crassly secular nation might stir up.

You see the sort of thing brewing now in the USA. There is report in The Australian, February 12, 2014, that there is a movement in the USA to have one day in the year called Darwin Day, together with accolades assuming the opposite to simple truth, with public shame shamblingly and irrelevantly pushed onto those who obey the simple truth of creation. Is it possible ? Was it not enough that not so very long ago, we heard of an amazingly belated acceptance of Darwinism by a man given accolade as the pope. It was when the last dregs of the folly of Darwin's ideational adventurism had been drained, and his rupture of scientific method fully exposed, a mere extrapolation on adaptive change, now shown provided for in the DNA's brilliant and controlled elasticities, that the pope acknowledged him! It was a question whether his corpse could be exhumed, none that his reputation could ever logically live.

But this corpse did not rise. Neither the Darwin corpse nor fantasy could rise again.

When it was clear that by this time Darwin was doubly dead, even some still caught in nature-myths yet appalled by the casuistry of Darwin and the admitted lack of evidence geologically, from his own lips, and the continuing failure of evidence to the last degree microbiologically, the coffin cracked. Even, in succession, two famous professors at Harvard University in different ways acknowledged crucial weaknesses in the state of the case, one appalled that ways of advance of life were being touted when in fact there had been a vast decrease in vast designs over time.

With Darwin evidentially discredited, the pope accredited that disastrous era of Darwinian deception^*1:

	father of wars^*1A and pride, or better,
	the facile conduit for their conduct,
	nursing mother of reductionism in the modern era^*2 and
	child of blindness in a comprehensive idolatry of nature.

In fact, 'nature' did not cease to do as it was told, failing

to build new information,

to craft new signals to order,

to make new meanings,

and this most naturally, since it is equipped with less relevant power than a moron might supply!

Its capacity to signify meaning and message is nil.

its ruminative power, null.

its assignment and consignment options not provided.

Its laws run, as cars do; they do not make cars, or nature itself. It is mute. It was spoken. It is good not to mix the powers, and attribute speech to what was spoken, as if they were the same.

What would you expect! Nature without intelligence is silent on speech, whether by code or other comprehension creating modes. Yet man has in droves invented as the ancients did, and Israel in particular (cf. Jeremiah 1-9), natural wonders never seen, and then he worships them as if they had control, or he could wrest it from them, more to the point! Such is man from Genesis 3 on, sedulously doubting the Speaker of his being, and seeking to secure some kind of parity or control, as if the power to make himself were kicking about and he could seize it. The thought may to some be alluring, but the evidential reality is not.

So he aspires, though evidence of nature creating in itself or afresh the order of things, whether inanely, before it was there to do it, or equally, after it came by magic from nothing, is as nul as the basis is nil. Indeed, it is contrary not only to reason, but evidence, and not only to evidence, but to the ACTUAL direction, for example of the human genome, as Professor Sanford of Cornell University has so stressed in empirical terms (cf. work, Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome). The human genome is not only decreasing its accuracy and function, but doing so, he indicates, at a rate that enshrines peril to the race. So much for illusory supermen and an array of access coming all the time, from nowhere, as if the Second Law of Thermodynamics were fitfully on holiday.

So man, ignoring all, returns to the Primary School project in his history, worship of natural things, whether as a religious feature expressly, or merely in the sense of giving these delimited and law-girt things some mysterious power to do what they are never in any single instance seen to do.

How COULD such rejuvenation of unfounded myth meet with such praise, and truth itself with such blind fury!^*3 What has happened to many current propounders of legislation, seeking to enforce a myth. To be sure it was predicted for this time (II Timothy 4:3-4); but this does not lessen its staggering aplomb.

It was just so when Jesus by UNDENIABLE fact gave sight back to one born blind. The testimony of truth became meaningless, offensive. As God created life, so His Son restored creation through healing. When the latter was seen, tradition triumphed over observation, and it stayed course, like a Titanic that did not sink at once.

The empirical fact could not be challenged, its extent was vast in kind, demonstrative with ease, but efforts were made to hide it, and to make, as in parallel, in the USA case concerning creation, a PRONOUNCEMENT to condemn the statement of fact. Such is both a sick and slithery spiritual syndrome. As the one born blind, now could see, but was mistreated, so hypnotised dreamers brought up indoctrinated, would now mistreat those adhering to the evidence before them!

Nothing provides nothing and what is inadequate never can supply what is necessary. The result ? What IS adequate preceded before our time, the things requiring its presence for their own, and has shown it both in the failure in verification of the lie ('nature' cannot even hum, far less articulate message or command) , and the constant verification of the truth, as in the genome and the micro-biological finesse with its discrete and non gradualistic findings (cf. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, pp. 290f., 277ff., 69ff.).

Go on, make a moron make information and write script, do it, or less than a moron, this blind 'nature' in creative and inherent imagination; and then make what has even less intelligence, this vaunted 'nature' , do the same. Why talk about it ? SHOW it. But it dies, dead with tongue still flapping in the breeze. Let us see the prototype.

THE LIGHT SHINES

The Simplicity, the Sensation and the Activation

Not so with the creative power of the Lord and His Christ. Whether it is God creating the universe or a renewed eye, the infinite power is the same.

First, challenged, as Christ so often was, while casting out evils by the power of the Spirit, as the finger of God (Luke 11:20), as to why a man could have been born blind, when God was as He depicted and exhibited, Jesus answered in two domains. Firstly, in dealing with God, do not forget that He is there. It is like doing some mathematics, and forgetting that numbers are there. Look for a moment at the perspective of God, He indicated. It was NOT because of some special guilt in the one blind from birth, OR in his parents, but it was with the purpose of glorifying God that that person was born blind.

Stunning as the concept might be, God has for long been using method on method to awake the human heart to its predicament (cf. Hosea 12:10), and in Christ His own wonder in word and grand deeds of power, were to be found two methods. Here, that a man born blind, set in the midst of a barbed attack on God, should simply have the REASON for the blindness explained was one. Then, with the attestation that in a tiny time, the blindness was removed by the very One who made the statement about the reason, there was given a direct, experimental confirmation. He knew what He was talking about, exhibiting the kind of power that COULD have such a plan, by His action...

The case was simple, the result was overwhelming not only in power, but in timing to meet the timely challenge; and all could see it for themselves in a kind of outdoor laboratory experiment, in which the result was more assuredly shown than any lab could do.

THE SKY DARKENS

The light had shone. Now the gross human darkness came in like a band of radioactive waste; for it was a poisonous darkness. Consider some aspects

Savvy Citizens

In John 9:8-9, you see citizens assessing the case of this Sabbath healing. The Pharisees were death on it... Some said, Well this fellow now seeing is like the beggar who used to sit there begging. So do people often speak for the truth, but stare vaguely when it comes to decisive conduct under fire! So their wits seemed oddly slowed!

Savvy Parents

The Authorities were distressed. A man had dared to contravene, to contradict the voice of the religious commissars. How unthinkable! So they pursued the young man's parents. Knowing the danger of being thrown out from the assembly if you told the truth (as I did before being thrown out of an utterly corrupted Seminary in Melbourne, but the Lord delivered me, praise His name), the parents here did not make a statement, except of what was incontrovertible fact, even for bigots. Yes, it is our son, yes he was born blind, and now he sees.

This is not to be praised, nor practised if you want to attest what the Lord has done; but they passed the matter to the one in question, the primary evidential source. He is of age! they chimed. If you need to know what happened, then ASK HIM!

You too may have opportunity to attest the simple truth, and be thankful for the opportunity to "contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints", as Jude exhorts you to do; and use it! Remember the apostles in Acts 5:40.

To be sure, many of the authorities were intent on removing practical and obvious truth from the synagogue, as Christ depicted, making themselves an example of His exposure as seen in Mark 7:7ff.. You are "voiding the word of God by your traditions," He attested, Mark 7:12. His expression they did not desire; His suppression they did! Indeed in due time they would act in removing Christ bodily from the earth, which has suffered its non-peace through the lack of the Prince of Peace, in increasing measure.

Now in this advanced hour, world history increasingly becomes a cross between an ugly farce and ludicrous fiasco: wars are seething and spreading in fury, indomitable in confusion, many unillustrious in self-seeking, rampaging like bush-fires, as if the misuse of tongue and truth, earth and heavens were a game, not a noose (cf. Matthew 24:21-22). As it was predicted to be, so it is; and the merger with the unthinkable follies and the unblinking fixed ideas continues like a racing car approaching a precipice.

Birthed in blindness, miraculously restored in care, what did it matter! They did not care, these authorities; as they WILLED, so it would BE. In the end, they were sacrificing by this attitude, not only the temple (doomed), site of their seduction, but the city (destroyed), place of their power, site of their foolish traditions. There, contrary so often and ruthlessly to the word of God (the historic cultural centre with its hive of exhibits), they lost not only this hub, but in invasion's rout, in large measure, lost their country. In time, their entire race, saved only by the promises of God which are irrevocable (Romans 11:28-36, Ezekiel 36) was threatened. Many modern cultures are much the same, as if nothing could invent something, or something could EVER come from nothing at any time, if that were all. It is therefore apparent that something was ALWAYS there, always adequate, eternal, wonderful in works, marvellous in wisdom, and His name is God. Some may forget, as lies are forged with a reckless enthusiasm, leading as so often in history, to the brink of disaster the unsavoury bride of ruin.

THE THUNDER ROARS

Testimonial Son

Seeking now to purge all opposition to their tenets, preferences and misreadings of obvious facts (the man once could not see, now could, and the Christ in explaining the ways of God, made the difference), the loose-limbed authorities caught up with the healed 'culprit' (in this perverse abuse of good as if evil!). Instructing him with their obfuscation, they alleged that the man who healed him was a sinner, having broken the Sabbath; but of course Christ had pointed out that they would not hesitate to rescue even a fallen part of their stock from some pit on the Sabbath! that is, to perform a work of mercy thrust before them in their way! In his classic rebuff to this, the one healed could without fear from contradiction reply, as he did (John 9:25): "Whether or not he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing, I know, that though I was blind, now I see."

Evidently incensed at such a non-prosecutable and eminently reasonable reply, they pursued it: "What did he do to you ? How did He open your eyes?" John 9:26. Showing both courage and character, the man chided them: he had told them already, so why say it again ? Do you want to become his disciples! he tauntingly asked, a rebuke to their persistent re-questioning, as if trying to taint the simple truth. Was it really a matter of learning, or of being outraged by the fracture of their ideas ? Begging the question, they affirmed Moses, seeing but the general case, and not the particular (for instance the priests worked on the Sabbath); but the man was not impressed. Sunday rest is great, and to be kept: but it is to serve man, not oppress him.

Here, he cried, is a wonderful thing, that since the foundation of the world such a thing as this has not been seen, as one born blind being so healed. Unless God were with him, he could not do it.

Actually, the case is the same with the wonderful and colossal information thrust which came mightily and with intensively mutual interactivity of multitudes of components, ONCE into the world in its creation. If God did not do it, no one else could; and such a thing as information without mind is never seen^*4 now.

It is Professor Stephen Jay Gould in his Wonderful Life work (cf. Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6), who so stresses his findings of a mighty, early and innovative flush of major designs, later decreasing markedly in their extant number, while Professor Løvtrup, along with such as the French savant, Dr Grassé, stressed the purely fictitious character of imaginations that micromutations ever showed themselves in the least a path to changes of order (cf. SMR pp. 208ff., 252Aff., with parallel similarly startling exposures to sedation, as seen in SMR pp. 150-154, 208ff. and 312).

Similarly, it was Professor Heribert Nilsson who became exasperated by the continual failure for the continual chant about gradualism, to cease contradicting findings, in his broad perspective (cf. SMR pp. 105-113) developed in his work, Synthetische Artbilding.

Yet many would seemingly rather perish, or cause the perishing of freedom in others, than believe the evidential and logical realities and necessities, in their profound and majestic coherence.

It is not novel. The same febrile or turgid (depending on the case) insistence on ignoring empirical fact in favour of authority, be it in a religious or secular field, masters man in his soaring mentality again and again, satisfying desire. If 'nature' is to give birth to itself, rather than being started by an eternal Being always there, eternal, so that never was there nothing, but always sufficiency for the results: so be it. The nullity is chosen, directly or indirectly. The ducal estates, the rulers of one kind or another, desire it and let facts and logic flee together.

So when the man born blind insisted that the One who did the unique work on his eyes, was not some specious sinner, but rather one doing the will of God, the fact was insignificant; the desire to keep a misinterpreted law was final. He with his facts must GO!

Affirming the man's sinfulness (apparently in contrast to their own), they thrust him out of the synagogue. This procedure is common, in seminary unwise and university outrageous.

THE NIGHT THAT DOES NOT HIDE

Finally there are two things to note. First Christ introduced Himself to the one thrust out, as He does to those persecuted in the interests of His truth (cf. John 14:21ff., I Peter 4:14), and seeing who He was, the Son of God, the man personally worshipped Him, gaining in personally stated faith, what the synagogue still talked about, but now in effect, excluded! The synagogue, the temple, excluded its own salvation: just as it was, so often it is, as they cast out students and bar teachers. But the one healed WORSHIPPED CHRIST: have you done so ? On Him, he could rest: do you ? He could be known! do you know Him ? (John 17:1-3). He gives as to the blind beggar, who received both what He gave and who He was freely. Have you done this very thing ? (Romans 3:23-27, Titus 2-3).

Christ, to the healed man, gave out the understanding and power alike. He had come into the world so that the blind might see and those who claimed to see, might be made blind (John 9:38). Thus when some from among the Pharisees asked him about this (John 9:40-41), Jesus applied it for them: "If you were blind you would have no sin," (as in John 15:22-25), "but now you say you see, therefore your sin remains," (John 9:41). Claiming the light and ignoring the manifest darkness, while passing by the wonders presented before their very faces, they have no place left for mercy, but have hated both Christ and the Father (His charge in John 15:24).

This civilisation has had two millenia, rather like that of Israel before it, from the era of Abraham, in whose seed, Jacob, the Lord called a nation to show forth His praise (Isaiah 43:21). They erred. Now this, our present one has erred, former bastions of Christianity falling like Autumn leaves, as if the blood red of the leaves were their stamping under foot that of Christ (cf. Hebrews 10:29). It remains true, as for the formerly blind man, so for any in this generation who find in Christ the light, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow," (Isaiah 1:18). Thank God for that and act while you may.

NOTES

Surveying fantasies and calling them to order, and restoring reality to its place is a worth-while task in the world domain of II Timothy 4:1-4. This exercise occurs in such sites as Department of Bible and Spiritual Affairs ..., Volume 4, Chapter 4, Chapter 12,and Ch. 5 of Not only is God Great, but Glorious, and more generally in The gods of naturalism have no go! On the delusive aspect of Darwinism see esp. Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 4, and *3 below.

*1A See Department of Bible ..., Ch. 3.

Department of Bible and Spiritual Affairs ..., Volume 2, Ch. 8, Volume 3, Ch.2, Ch. 6.

*3 See

Department of Bible and Spiritual Affairs ..., Volume 4, Chapter 4,
Wake Up World! ... Ch. 6.

This is shown clearly in the scientific and carefully defining work of Professor Werner Gitt, in his Without Excuse! noted at Not only is God Great, but Glorious Ch. 5). His long-standing thrust concerning the criteria of information, conditions and implications is noted in History, Review and Overview ... Ch. 4, in a relevant exposé on such topics. See also Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed ... Ch. 4.