Dealing with Blindness

In the "God Is Able" prayer campaign of June 15, the New Gideon's Army prayed (in part): "Open their hearts, eyes, and ears so that they may be blessed and turned from their iniquities, as you have done for me."

Christians and others have wrestled with the thought that God could heal men's blindness and deafness easily and quickly, but does not seem to be in any hurry to do so. This is an enigma of those with the spiritual gift of healing. But it is also a philosophical problem for those who contemplate spiritual blindness upon so many people.

Most seem to satisfy themselves that the devil does this to people, for in this way they are able to separate "bad" things from God and make them the responsibility of the evil god, Satan. The price tag on this view is that it creates another god in the universe who remains outside the control of the good God.

To me, it would be a frightening world if an evil god, supposedly almost as powerful as the good God, were on the loose with the ability to destroy or erode God's plan. I, for one, am glad to have read the book of Job, where we find "Satan" needing God's permission to do anything to Job. The story leaves no doubt that Satan is not an independent god outside of God's control.

However, this view brings up the other big objection: If God could eliminate Satan at any time, and if God is truly more powerful, then why does He allow Satan to do all these "bad" things to us? When we find such issues to be beyond the comprehension of our carnal minds, the mind begins to create answers according to its limited capability. The answer is always warped, because it reasons from a dualistic perspective, creating a world of good God vs. evil god. The carnal mind is, by its very nature, double minded and unstable in all its ways (James 1:8).

The mind of the Spirit, however, thinks with singularity (unity). It sees all things from the basic premise that there is one God and one reality from which proceed all things and all truth. Truth is the firstborn son of Reality. God is the ultimate Reality who creates all matter and all Truth by the power of Love--that great engine that gives motion to the Universe.

This singularity of God as the ultimate cause of all things comes forth in a statement in Exodus 4:10, 11,

"And Moses said to the Lord, "O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither up to now nor since You first spoke to Your servant, but I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue." And the Lord said to him, "Who has made man's mouth? or who makes the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord?"

My carnal mind finds it rather amazing that God did not just heal Moses' speech impediment. Would that not have been so much easier? But He did not. In fact, I would go so far as to say that God was the ultimate cause of his "slow tongue." Certainly, God did not give Satan any credit for doing this. In fact, in Deut. 29:4 Moses tells us that up to that moment in time God had not given Israel ears to hear or eyes to see or a heart to understand.

Turning to the New Testament, we see in John 9:1 "a man who was blind from his birth." The disciples were wrestling with the cause of his blindness and wondered if this was caused by his parents sinning or if the man himself had sinned (presumably in a previous life time, since he was born blind). Jesus said that neither explanation was true.

"Jesus answered, Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest ["revealed"] in him."

In other words, regardless of any medical explanation through which God may have worked, God caused the man to be blind from birth. The purpose of his blindess was not that he would remain blind forever, but that his condition would serve as an occasion for God to heal him at the appropriate moment in time.

If the man had been a fatalist, thinking that he was paying the price of "bad karma," he would not have accepted the healing that was offered to him. But he did. And in his healing, he set forth for all future generations the sixth miraculous sign in the book of John which teaches us something about the feast of Tabernacles. There are eight such signs in John, which correlate with the eight days of Tabernacles.

Another blind man is set forth in Genesis 27:1. It is Isaac. Because of his blindness, Jacob was able to steal the blessing from his father. In so doing, the pattern was set for a long series of prophetic events that still affects us today. See my book, The Struggle for the Birthright.

Because Abraham had dedicated his son, Isaac, to God on Mount Moriah (Gen. 22), Isaac was God's Servant. Insofar as he was later blind, he became the original type of the "blind servant" in Isaiah's writings. Isaac's descendants were spiritually "blind," as we read in Isaiah 42:18-20,

"Hear, you deaf; and look, you blind, that you may see. Who is blind but My servant? or deaf, as My messenger that I sent? Who is blind as he that is perfect and blind as the Lord's servant? Seeing many things, but you observe not; opening the ears, but he hears not."

The reason for their blindness as a people is seen later in Isaiah 29:10,

"For the Lord has poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes; the prophets and your rulers, the seers has He covered."

God always takes credit for blinding the eyes of His people. As for God's reasons, Scripture does reveal some insights. First, the people were in rebellion against God, so He blinded them to lessen their liability. This comes out in John's teaching associated with the man born blind. In John 9:39-41 we read,

"And Jesus said, For justice I have come into this world, that they which do not see might see; and that they which 'see' might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees which were with Him heard these words and said to Him, Are we blind also? Jesus said to them, If you were blind, you should have no sin; but now you say, 'WE SEE,' therefore your sin remains."

Thus, blindness was a merciful thing, for a blind man does not have the same liability as one who sees--that is, one who sins with full knowledge of his actions. Secondly, God blinded His servants so that He would be obligated by His own law to set them free. His own law reads in Exodus 21:26,

"And if a man smites the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, so that it perishes; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake."

Thus, God blinded the eye of His servant, as Isaiah tells us, so that we would know and understand that God was CERTAINLY going to set them free in the great Jubilee. God always takes credit for His actions, and He acts according to His own law. The law (like every word that comes from his mouth) is an expression of his character, and God will always be true to Himself. Thus, He established a law on which the restoration of all things is based.

The outpouring of the Spirit in these latter days involves opening the blind eyes and deaf ears of the people--both physically and spiritually. If the desire to see this is in your heart, pray with me as follows:

"Father, thank you for your mercy in blinding men's eyes in the world. Thank you for taking responsibility for it as well. We ask now that you open their eyes by Your Spirit and set them free, according to Your word. Thank-you for doing this, in Jesus' name."