THIS BLIND AGE

By C. Dickey

EVERY period of upheaval and destruction recorded in Biblical history was preceded by an era of blindness in regard to divinely-revealed truth and its inherent obligations. It was so in the days of Noah.

Noah’s contemporaries were not in darkness as to the will of God; for it had been made known to them just as it had to Noah. The total blindness and depravity which characterised their era was due to the delusion that they could defy God’s specific commands with impunity. This fateful error spread until the day of reckoning – then there was no recourse. The Lord said,

‘1 will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth,’ (Gen. 6:7).

However, there was one notable exception:

‘But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord’(Gen. 6:8).

After that, the deluge!

Another blind age of far-reaching consequences began during King Solomon’s reign over all Israel. Solomon received from his father David a kingdom already united and prosperous. For a time he not only maintained the standard of his father, but by the genius of his own personality, his wisdom and dedication, he led the kingdom to still greater heights of wealth and renown.

‘So King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth in riches and for wisdom. And all the earth sought to (consulted) Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart,’  (I Kings 10:23-24).

Although the division of the kingdom and the scattering of its people did not occur until after Solomon’s death, it was he who undermined the foundation of Israel’s Divine law and faith for generations to come. First, Solomon defies God’s basic law of segregation in Israel. Read the sordid story in I Kings 11, and note that it begins only five sentences after the remarkable tribute to the king quoted above from the tenth chapter of I Kings. The proximity of two such contrasting pictures of a man seems to emphasise the short span which may lie between an hour of triumph and the day of ignominious defeat. Solomon’s violation of God’s law of racial segregation is recorded in the first two verses, and reads as follows in Dr James Moffatt’s translation:

‘Now king Solomon was a lover of women; he had seven hundred royal wives, and three hundred mistresses. He married many foreign women – Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Phoenicians, and Hittites belonging to nations against whom the Eternal had warned the men of lsrael, “You must not mix with them, nor let them mix with you, for they will be sure to seduce you to follow their gods. ” Solomon clung to these women in love.’ (I Kings 11:1-3).

The Judgment of Solomon. A painting by William Dyce, R.A.(courtesy Scottish National Gallery)

God gave Solomon great wisdom to judge his people wisely, yet he disobeyed the law of segregation.

Next, Solomon is charged with departing from faith in the true God to whom he had prayed with such fervour and devotion at the dedication of the temple. The record of Solomon’s defection continues with facts so shocking as to seem almost incredible. The Moffatt version reads:

‘When he grew old, he had no undivided mind for the Eternal his God, as his father David had; his wives seduced him to follow foreign gods. Solomon did what was evil in the eyes of the Eternal; he did not follow the Eternal faithfully, as his father David had done. For he put up shrines for Astarte, the goddess of the Phoenicians, and for Milkom, the detestable idol of the Ammonites, and for Kemosh the detestable idol of Moab, on a hill to the east of Jerusalem. He did the same for all his foreign wives, burning incense and offering sacrifice to their gods,’ (I Kings 11:4-8).

It is written, furthermore, that the Lord was angry with Solomon for his defiance of the God of Israel, ‘who had twice appeared to him and given him this order, that he was not to follow foreign gods.’ Nevertheless, Solomon continued his rebellious course and unwittingly sealed the fate of his beloved kingdom; for God said of his evil decision:

‘Since this is your mind, since you have not obeyed my compact and the rules 1 laid down for you, 1 will tear the kingdom from you and give it to your servant.’ (I Kings 11: 11, Moffatt Trans.)

What madness possessed the soul of Solomon! What blindness engulfed his mind and heart as he dared to defy God’s racial law and build altars for the worship of false gods! Solomon’s one-rman ‘united nations’ and ‘fellowship of faiths’ led to his undoing and, eventually, to the break-up of the once glorious Kingdom of Israel.

When Jesus came to visit and redeem His people, He found them scattered and steeped in spiritual blindness. At that time a small segment from the former Judah kingdom occupied Palestine. This fact is generally known. But it is equally important to know that the main body of the covenant race, from both Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel, had been in the process of migration from their captive lands, and were then living in various centres all the way from Babylon to Asia Minor, and on westward across the mainland of Europe to the British Isles.

In the thirteenth chapter of his Gospel, Matthew tells how Jesus sat by the seaside and spoke to great multitudes in parables. Then the disciples came and asked why He spoke to the people in parables.

‘This is why 1 speak to them in parables,’ Jesus replied, ‘because for all their seeing they do not see and for all their hearing they neither hear nor understand. In their case the prophecy of Israel is being fulfilled: You will hear and hear but never understand, you will see and see but never perceive. For the heart of this people is obtuse, their ears are heavy of hearing, their eyes they have closed, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they understand with their heart and turn again for me to cure them.’ (Matt. 13:13-15, Moffatt Trans.)

Commenting on the Scriptures some years ago, David Dickson wrote:

‘Obstinate maintainers of false doctrine and of corrupt traditions, enemies to Christ and His disciples, are given over of God, and are worthy also to be given over, and let alone by men; that is, fellowship is not to be kept with them. Where the teacher and people follow mere traditions in religion, and not the rule of God’s Word, the leaders and they that are led are both blind. The following of false teachers and blind guides will not be an excuse before God for people to plead immunity; but seeing none should follow any man, but as that man follows the Lord, the blind guide and the blind follower shall both perish, if they hold on in their wrong way.’

The most scathing language in all the Scriptures was used by Jesus in His denunciation of the blind leaders who opposed His every word and step. Let those who think He spoke only soft, sweet words read all of Matthew’s twenty-third chapter and note the authority and finality in His statements. Here are a few of them, lest we forget:

‘But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; … ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers; therefore, ye shall receive the greater damnation. … Woe unto you, ye blind guides, who say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! [Ye] fools and blind; for which is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? … [Ye] serpents, [ye] generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? (the fury of hell,’ says Ferrar Fenton, trans. ) … Verily 1 say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. … Behold, your house is left unto you desolate,’ (Matt. 23:13-38).

Thus the fate of the generation that sought to put out the Light of the world by crucifying the Lord of life and glory was sealed. Fortunately for us, the atrocious deeds of evil people are powerless to stop the onward march of God’s plan for His people. The death of Jesus ended, not in defeat, but in the wonder of His Resurrection and the inauguration of a new, world-changing Christian Age. This marvellous era is to culminate in the personal return of Christ as King, according to the angel Gabriel’s statement to Mary:

,… and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.’ (Luke 1:32-33).

What, now, shall we say of the present state of affairs in the modern house (or nations) of Jacob, to whom Christ gave the custody of the Kingdom of God when He took it from official Jewry? (Matt. 21:43). Despite the Gospel’s shining light for almost twenty centuries, the condition is blindness, deplorable blindness. In fact, Christians of the Western world are so blind today that they do not even suspect that they are God’s chosen Israel. They are wholly ignorant of plain statements in Jeremiah, Hebrews, and elsewhere, which declare that the New Covenant, like the Old, was made with the house of Israel. (See Jer. 31:31-34, Eze. 37:26; Heb. 8:8-12, 10:15-17.)

Jesus, the Saviour and Redeemer, came to a remnant of Israel in Judea, as the prophets had written centuries before. To the faithful few who received Him, Jesus gave the great commission to go forth as His witnesses and take the Gospel to all the world. But note particularly that He had already laid upon His disciples the necessity of taking the Gospel first to the wandering Israelites in other lands, the beloved sheep of His pasture. For love of them, Jesus said to His disciples:

‘But go, rather, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel … 1 am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel ‘ (Matt. 10:6; 15:24).

The apostles understood what Jesus meant by ‘the lost sheep.’ He was not referring to Jewry, but to the dispersed multitudes of all the Israelitish tribes. That they so interpreted His meaning is evidenced by the fact that soon after His Resurrection and Ascension, when the great missionary enterprise began, they went immediately to various centres in Asia Minor and Europe, where the ‘twelve tribes’ were ‘scattered abroad.’ (See James 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1-2) These people never returned to Palestine after the Captivities. They were never called Jews. They were so blinded by their pagan surroundings that they had forgotten they were Israel (Hosea chapters 1 & 2), and sometimes referred to themselves as Gentiles, exactly as their Christian descendants are doing now.

It was customary in the time of the apostles to call any uncircumcised person ‘a gentile.’ In that sense the twelve tribes scattered abroad were ‘gentiles,’ for they were then, and remain to this day, an uncircumcised people. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans cannot be elucidated until one learns that it was written to Israelites who, in the main, had lost their identity and become paganised. Doubtless Paul and Barnabas had this meaning in mind when they said to the Jews at Antioch in Pisidia:

‘It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you (a Judah segment of Israel); but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.’ (Acts 13:46)  

The woeful plight of the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic peoples at the present time is the direct result of ignorance concerning their Israel lineage and heritage. For some years now the two great Christian nations, the United States and Britain, have been surrendering their leadership in world affairs to Zionist Jews, in the foolish belief  that these anti-Christian schemers are God’s chosen people. What a break for international gangsters who are taking full advantage of the situation! Masquerading as the holy people of the Bible – and recognised as such by the leaders and laity of Christian Churches –  they are getting away with every conceivable type of  lying propaganda and usurpation all over the globe. Unless Christians wake up and wrest control of government and finance from the hands of these destroyers, they will soon be writhing in the coils of a world-wide satanic dictatorship.

Isaiah gives a vivid picture of conditions in Christian Israel lands at the present moment:

‘Who {is} blind, but my servant? Or deaf, as my messenger {that} 1 sent? … But this {is} a people robbed and spoiled; {they are} all of them snared in holes, and they are hidden in prison houses; they are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore. Who among you will give ear to this? Who will hearken and hear for the time to come? {Who} gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not the Lord, he against whom we have sinned? For they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law.’ (lsa. 42:19-24)

Make no mistake about it, the circle of the serpent is about ready to close on us. Have we waited too late to join hands in resistance to this deadly peril? Only the intervention of God can save us now, though He will not hold us guiltless if we make no effort to save ourselves.

The oppressed people of all nations have looked hopefully to the Israel nations for wisdom and guidance, but our leaders have failed them as totally as Solomon failed the kings of the earth in his time. Moreover, they have missed the mark on the same issues that led to Solomon’s downfall, namely, departure from the true faith in God, which led, inevitably, to the repudiation of His unchanging fundamental laws.

Jesus did not revoke any of the basic laws which God ordained for His Kingdom in Israel. One of these laws is racial separation. It has not been altered ‘one jot or one tittle’ by Christ and His Gospel.

‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil,’ Jesus declared.

Only the old ordinances of worship through animal sacrifice were abolished by the New Covenant. God’s laws for the nations of Christian Israel stand impregnable, awaiting our recognition, obedience and fulfilment. Accepting Christ as Saviour does not license one to violate any of God’s established laws or commands; on the contrary, a Christian is all the more obligated to obey them, as Jesus explained in Matthew 5:17-22.

 It is well to remember that spiritual decline, due to loss of faith in the verity of God and the Bible, always precedes national decline; hence, the former condition is a cause and the latter is an effect. The seeds of subversion were sown in the theological seminaries of Europe and America in the nineteenth century, and blossomed into the ‘social gospel’ of the twentieth, before the theories of Karl Marx became a serious threat to the stability of Western nations. This fact is corroborated by Herbert A. Philbrick, former FBI agent, when he says, ‘There are more names of ministers than any other profession on the list of Communist supporters in this country.’ As a result, the church took the road to ruin first, and the nation followed.

Sometimes people wonder why the educated and well-to-do are always in the forefront of socialistic projects. It is to be expected, if one judges by the past history of our race. In every period of decline in Israel, the officials, the prominent, the educated, have led the majority of Israelites into a sense of false security and blindness. Isaiah, writing of an evil time, disclosed the root of their troubles:

‘For the leaders of this people cause {them} to err; and {they who are} led of them {are} destroyed’ (Isa. 9:16).

Malachi also reveals treachery on the part of leaders in his time:

‘For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth; for he {is} the messenger of the Lord of hosts. But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of hosts. Therefore have 1 also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.’ (Mal. 2:7-9)

The utter confusion which prevails among all our people – rich, poor, educated, unlearned, politician, preacher – cannot be more aptly described than in the following statements: 

‘Stay yourselves, and wonder; Cry out, and cry; they are drunk, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes; the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered. And the vision of all has become unto you like the words of a book that is sealed, which {men} deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee; and he saith, 1 cannot;  for it {is} sealed. And the book is delivered to him who is not learned, saying, Read this, 1 pray thee; and he saith, 1 am not learned.’ (Isa. 29:9-12.)

The plight of the wilful blind – those who reject light and truth by choice finds adequate expression in the lines below:

‘The deaf may hear the Saviour’s voice,

The fettered tongue its silence break;

But the deaf heart, the dumb by choice,

The laggard soul that will not wake,

The guilt that scorns to be forgiven,

These baffle e’en the spells of heaven.’

Paradoxically, this present age, which has received the greatest light, is also the age of greatest blindness. Consequently, the warning words of Jesus the Christ should be of special significance to our generation.

‘If, therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great {is} that darkness! … Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?’ (Matt. 6:23, Luke 6:39).

Used with acknowledgments to Look Up