JUDICIAL BLINDNESS AND BRICK MAKING
by Gary North

And when they [Jews] had appointed him [Paul] a day, there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening. And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not. And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word, Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers, Saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them (Acts 28:23-27).

It is not easy for modern evangelicals to understand this passage. Their theology does not allow them to understand that God deliberately closes men’s hearts and minds to the gospel as a matter of punishment. Evangelicals can go through life and never hear a sermon on Jesus’ reason for speaking in parables:

And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear (Matt. 13:10-16).

How can we explain this? The same way we explain what God did to Pharaoh. "And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go" (Ex. 4:21). "And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt" (Ex. 7:3). But how do we explain what God did to Pharaoh? By citing Paul’s explanation:

And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? (Rom. 9:10-21).

Evangelicals can also go through a lifetime of sermons and not hear one on Romans 9:10-21. The message of all of these passages should be obvious to anyone who understands the sovereignty of God. God deliberately blinds individuals and societies so that they cannot hear the truth, repent of their sins, and thereby avoid His wrath in history. They are vessels fitted by God for dishonour and wrath. Paul calls them this, and so should we. In modern American terminology, God gives some men enough rope to hang themselves. He did this with Judas, after all – literally (Matt. 27:5). Judas was a vessel fitted by God for destruction. "And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed!" (Luke 22:22).

I can almost hear the howls of protest. "It doesn’t mean that. It couldn’t mean that. It means something else. I don’t know what it means, but it doesn’t mean that!" But it does. We can call it judicial blindness: blindness inflicted by God in order to bring men and societies under His wrath in history.

Old Order, New Order

When we hear people proclaiming the advent of a new world order, we are hearing messianic language. The phrase has been heard continually in this century, most recently in the United States in a series of speeches by President George Bush in 1990 and 1991. (Bush lost his bid for re-election in 1992.)

There is a new world order. It is called – or should be called – Christendom. It was predicted by Daniel.

Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth (Dan. 2:31-35).

And in the days of these [fourth kingdom] kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure (Dan. 2:44-45).

Christ’s new world order will expand to fill the earth, Daniel predicted. All rival kingdoms will be crushed by His new world order. But modern Christians refuse to believe this. They much prefer to labor as brick makers in the kiln works of a string of Pharaohs.

There has been an escalating number of rival claimants for title of new world order in this century. The most notable have been Communism, Nazism, and internationalism. Today, the latter is the last surviving pretender to the throne. Its adherents believe that a combination of computer technology, central banking, bureaucratically managed trade concealed under the banner of free trade, international treaties, NGO’s (non-government organizations operating under the United Nations), and similar deal-making will unify mankind. This is a familiar story with a familiar goal: "And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth" (Gen. 11:3-4).

In the 1991, the Soviets’ new world order went down in bankruptcy. The red flag no longer flies outside of Cuba, North Korea, and the desks of tenured English professors in major American universities. Today, as I have argued in the latest edition of Conspiracy: A Biblical View, the deal-doers are confident that they have gained a permanent upper hand. They are ready to move into the final phase of their plans to establish their version of the new world order. We have seen all this before, and we know its outcome: "And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city" (Gen. 11:5-8).

2,500 Computer Languages

There is a Web site that lists the names of computer languages. There are over 2,500 of them. We think that most of them are dead and gone, but aren’t. They survive, invisibly, in legacy programs on mainframe computers. Legacy systems containing a dozen, two dozen, even five dozen different languages, most of them forgotten, most without documentation ("grammar books"), today control the central functions of the central institutions of Western civilization. This will soon cease to be true. On January 1, 2000 – or possibly earlier, depending on the original programming – these integrated systems will cease being integrated. Hundreds of millions of little towers of Babel will shut down or cease to operate predictably. There are an estimated 300 million PC’s, at least 500. There are billions of microchips with code embedded in them, and no one knows what percentage of these are noncompliant or which ones are noncompliant. They operate elevators, traffic signals, and hundreds of other machines. An estimated one-quarter of all fire engines produced since 1985 will not start on or after Jan. 1, 2000, because their embedded chips will indicate that the mandated engine maintenance has not been conducted in a century. And so it will go, system by system.

Meanwhile, brick-making Christians go on with their work, unconcerned about their immediate future, dutifully serving Babelian employers who are constructing another new world order. Judicial blindness, sadly, is not confined today to covenant-breakers.

Conclusion

The good news is that the humanists’ Tower of Babel will soon go the way of all the other rival new world orders in history. The bad news is that brick-making will no longer be a profitable occupation with fully vested retirement benefits after ten years on the job.

 

 

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