None so blind… Pt. 1

As the old proverb goes, there's none so blind as those who will not see. Last night, "Compass", a weekly program devoted to "faith, values, ethics, and religion" put on by the Australian Broadcasting Commission, aired an episode about the current rage for predicting the imminence of our age's end. The show beautifully illustrated the capacity of human beings to sentence themselves to blindness.

As representative of the hundreds of current claimants to the role of end-time prophet, modern-day Elijah, or two witnesses, the producers chose one Ron Weinland, the leader of a tiny church and the author of a couple of books announcing the end of the age by 2012. Weinland believes that he is the God of Abraham's spokesman to you and me today; we'd better listen up or else. Though I haven't seen him for about fifteen years, I have known Ron since June, 1972, when I met him at a church meeting in Kansas followed by two years of attendance at the same college. Contra the opinion of many bloggers who believe he's in it for the money, I am sure he believes in his heart of hearts everything he says. But you don't need the proverbial degree in rocket science to recognize he is suffering from a huge dose of self-delusion. Earlier this year he announced that the 1260-days preaching of the two witnesses (himself and his wife) and the agonies of the Great Tribulation would begin on 17th April. How distressed he must have felt when nothing happened. But he has convinced himself that God deliberately led him astray in order to mock Satan! Oh the power of self-imposed blindness. So now he has adjusted his timeline; the bombs will begin to drop and he will receive his unimaginable powers sometime in December.

Like other self-appointed visionaries who announce that the end may begin tomorrow, Weinland has ignored plain biblical evidence to the contrary. (We take it here as a given that Scripture is God's Word.) Though not even the Son of Man knew exactly when the end would begin, you can forget about the opening of the end-time fifth through seventh seals of Revelation until the fourth — the death of one quarter of the human family — has stalked the earth (Rev 6). Isn't that logical enough? (For more on this, see the Dawn to Dusk blog, "The forgotten fourth horseman".) Furthermore, Jesus Himself revealed the sign heralding the beginning of the very last days (Matt 24:14-21). Read it

for yourself; Ron Weinland and his ilk seem to take no notice of this basic truth.

Ron Weinland wasn't the only blind person on last night's "Compass". The experts called on to debunk his scenario did not take him to task over his (mis)interpretation of Scripture. That would have been the correct tack to take; rather, they dismissed the book of Revelation as having anything truthful to say about the fate of mankind. Revelation was thrown in the same basket as other apocalyptic literature. Since nobody would take the apocalyptic book of, say, 2 Enoch, seriously, why would you think of taking Revelation seriously? Not logical! A little reading of apocalyptic literature will surely convince the sighted person that Revelation (and Daniel) towers head and shoulders over all other writings of the apocalyptic genre just as the Bible itself cannot begin to be compared with, say, the Koran. (See "Christianity and Islam".)

Seems to this bear of little brain that to read the book of Isaiah, say, and dismiss it as the writings of a mere man is to deny the obvious. The Roman Catholic Church refuses to see the obvious — that its teaching that salvation is administered by means of taking the sacraments at the hands of an officially-ordained priest — has absolutely no biblical basis whatsoever. Protestantism performs some mighty gymnastic feats of misinterpretation in arguing that Old Testament law has no normative validity today; worse, many contend that anybody who submits to Old Testament law is fighting against God by trying to earn his own salvation. You talk about palpable nonsense. Self-delusion is not restricted to the Ron Weinlands of the world; it seems near universal. I sure hate to join the Pharisee-bashing brigade, but they do provide one of the most unbelievable examples of self-administered blindness. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave you would think that nobody would deny the obvious — that He was God's servant. Not so the Pharisees. They responded by plotting to kill Him (John 11:53). Oh that such blindness should be.

As for me, what am I blind to? Don't know, do I. That's the problem with blindness — you don't know what you can't see. And if I'm refusing to see something, I sure won't admit it to myself, now will I. Please help me if you can. We're all in this together.