“Amazing grace! how sweet the sound – That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost but now am found, Was blind but now I see.” “Amazing Grace” by John Newton.

“Then they took up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by. Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’” John 8:59-9:1-2.

The last verse in chapter 8 has been added for continuity; the actual events leading up to it were covered in the entry entitled “You Dishonor Me”, published 11-12-17.

The study of chapter 9 which follows is a look at the amazing metamorphosis of a man who went from being healed of physical blindness to one who was healed of spiritual blindness.

By examining the last words of chapter 8 and the first of 9, we can see a smooth transition from one chapter to the next, which confirms that this is not another time, but the same day that began in John 8:1-2.

“Then they took up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by. Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth.” John 8:59-9:1.

The question then arises.

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” John 9:2b.

Like Job’s three friends in the book of Job the disciples immediately attempt to assign blame for the man’s blindness.

Rightfully, they do not blame God for this poor man’s predicament but in error they try to blame the parents or the man himself.

There is a certain amount of dumb logic to this, there has to be a reason, perhaps the parents?

In our promiscuous age the parents should often be blamed when they bring a child into the world out of wedlock, conceiving a child nobody wants, or is capable of caring for; but nobody blames them, we can just kill it.

Or if the child is not fortunate enough to be adopted by a good family, they can grow up in a dysfunctional single parent home or one with an unhappy couple and go on to repeat the cycle when they come of age.

However, I know many good women, Christian women included, who have gone through this experience and brought their children up, giving them all the love and care that anyone could give them, but it was and is a hardscrabble life – and unnecessary.

Men and women have to repudiate the pagan notion that sex out of wedlock hurts no one. It does, women become disillusioned and bitter when man after man comes and goes through their life, using them and then leaving them.

Men become calloused and hateful toward women, hypocritically blaming them for having the same lusts as they have. Despising them, using them, abusing them, and then leaving them; even sinking to the low of calling all women bitches.

What kind of sick, hateful, godless generation sinks to this low? All of these things can and do happen even when children are not conceived.

I say these things in great earnest and in hopes of persuading some to examine, and reject the lies of liberal stupid-think, pagan ideas that press in from all sides, not only from peer pressure, but the temptations that they put before us daily in words, pictures and music.

They will sneer at you and mock you for holding to a godly moral code, and then they will revile you if you fall into sin and do the very things they approve of.

But they mocked Paul when he spoke of Christ’s resurrection from the dead and they mocked Christ as He hung on the cross, will they embrace you?

This brings us to the reason why the man was born blind, sin. It is sin that causes so much misery in this world. The parents did not sin, Jesus said so, and the child did not sin.

Even though some of the religious leaders who agonized over questions like this believed this is why these things happen, reasoning in part from the incident of Jacob and Esau.

“Now Isaac [Abraham’s son] pleaded with the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord granted his plea, and Rebekah his wife conceived. But the children struggled together within her; and she said, ‘If all is well, why am I this way?’ So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her: ‘Two nations are in your womb, two peoples shall be separated from your body; one people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.’ So when her days were fulfilled for her to give birth, indeed there were twins in her womb. And the first came out red. He was like a hairy garment all over; so they called his name Esau [hairy]. Afterward his brother came out, and his hand took hold of Esau’s heel; so his name was called Jacob [supplanter]. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.” Genesis 25:21-26.

The religious teachers reckoned this to mean that by taking the heel of his brother, Jacob sinned from the womb. All things considered even the wrestling within the womb could be considered sin.

However, these things were not acts of sin; rather they were signs, as Rebekah found out when she inquired of the Lord. David said an interesting thing in one of his Psalms.

“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” Psalm 51:5.

This is not that David’s mother had sinned in his conception or in the sex act; rather its meaning is that he was born with a sin nature just as we all were at conception.

“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned…” Romans 5:12.

When God turned the world over to man it was after He had first pronounced it all very good, what happened?

What happened to something that the God who dwells in a heaven of inexpressible beauty could say was very good?

What happened to clear unpolluted streams of water, peaceful blue oceans, perfect weather, well watered green landscapes with flowers of every color and description, lush fruit hanging from every tree and vine, healthy vegetables that merely had to be picked, vibrantly colored birds, docile animals?

What happened to an earth that was absolutely disease free? Have you considered these things?

I turn to the God hating atheist, the thief, murderer, rapist, pedophile, and other perverts, the idolater, the greedy, glutton, self-centered, the ones who wish to dominate and rule over others, not for the benefit of mankind but for their own egotistical self-satisfaction.

I turn to the rapacious, the brutal, sadistic, the pseudo-intellectual, the liar, the incompetent know it all, the necrophile, the necromancer, sorcerer, occultist.

I turn to all the God rejecting sinners in this world and ask them a question. What happened to this very good world that God gave us for free?

Tell me then why, a world that can feed 79 billion people cannot feed 7.5 billion, why are the streams polluted, the oceans dying, why is there drought, and famine?

Why have the rain forests which produce 40% of earth’s oxygen dwindled from covering 15% of the earth’s surface in 1950 to just 6% today? Why are there vast deserts where there used to be dense foliage?

Why did millions starve to death in Ethiopia, what is happening in Darfur, what happened in Rwanda, why was Stalin’s forced famine in the Ukraine, a genocide of 4 to 7,000,000 Ukrainians, 1932-33, ignored?

Did God do this; did He ruin this beautiful world? After all, people blame Him every day. Why does God allow these things to happen?

God could seat Himself on a throne here on earth and stop it almost instantly. But when the King rules, His rules apply, open sin will not be tolerated.

Then in the midst of peace, plenty, and perfect weather, the complaint would be, why does God have to interfere with my affairs, am I not competent to take care of myself?

The question that all of mankind should be asking is, why does man allow all of this destruction? Why does man allow rapist, pedophiles, sex rings, and murders to flourish? After all, man is in charge of the earth, why does he do nothing?

Their answer to this is, well we are working on the problem now and we do not need God’s help.

No they are not; in their rejection of God and embracing their sin and self will they are rushing headlong into the tribulation period. Then man’s evil heart will finally destroy everything, and prove God right, all of man’s thoughts are evil only.

“Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5.

And soon this will culminate in man’s last battle against God, Armageddon.

Blind from Birth, John 9:1-2 taken from godisrevealed.com posted on 1-3-13, updated on 11-16-17.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version, copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission, all rights reserved.