Their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. (2 Corinthians 3:14) It is no small thing to have true spiritual sight. It represents a mighty victory. It is not going to come to you by just sitting passively and opening your mouths for it to arrive. There has to be exercise about this matter. You are right up against the full force of the god of this age when you are really out for spiritual understanding. It is a supernatural battle.
Their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. (2 Corinthians 3:14)
It is no small thing to have true spiritual sight. It represents a mighty victory. It is not going to come to you by just sitting passively and opening your mouths for it to arrive. There has to be exercise about this matter. You are right up against the full force of the god of this age when you are really out for spiritual understanding. It is a supernatural battle. So every bit of ministry that is going to be a ministry of true revelation will be surrounded by conflict. Conflict will go before, conflict will go on at the time, and conflict may follow after. It is like that. Herein, then, is the need for you to be exercised about light, that, while you hear the thing, you shall not take it for granted that, having heard it, you have got it; that you should afterward have very definite dealings with the Lord, that what He is seeking to break through to you shall indeed be entered into, and that you are not going to delude yourself by assuming that you know now merely because you have heard it in its terms. You may not know it. It may not yet be delivering light; there may be a battle necessary in this matter.
If we did but know it, a very great deal of the conflict which arises in our lives is because God is seeking to bring us further on the road, to open our eyes to Himself, to bring us into the light of His Son. God is seeking to broaden our spiritual horizon, and the enemy is out against that, and he is not going to have it if he can help it. Conflict arises. We may not understand it, but very, very often, more often than not, it is just that, namely, that the Lord is after something, and Satan says, "They shall not see that if I can help it!" So there arises a mighty warfare. This blindness is supernatural, just as enlightenment is supernatural.
I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won't have enough room to take it in! (Malachi 3:10 NLT) There is very much prayer being made, and appeal being pressed for revival.... If the Spirit of God either ignores or transcends so much that marks the Christian system, and makes it as though it counts so little, (and the Holy Spirit never compromises on what is vital and really of God), does it not mean that He calls for a reconsideration of very much that obtains? The days of the Church's greatest spiritual power and impact were days when ecclesiastical forms, architecture and ritual were nil, and the Lord Himself was everything.
We have been seeing that the testimony of Jesus is Christ, and what Christ signifies in relation to God's eternal thought as to man and the world. You can go beyond that, if you like, and say, of the universe. That signification is comprehensive and all-comprehending, but it is gathered up into three things, and those three things are: Light, Life and Love. We come now to Life. Life has a large place in John's first epistle, just as we saw Light has, and as we may yet see that Love has. What does this say?
"Wherefore, said they, if we have found grace in thy sight, let this land be given unto thy servants for a possession, and bring us not over Jordan" (Numbers 32:5). That is the request of two-and-a-half tribes, the tribes of Reuben, the tribe of Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh. It takes you right to the heart of this extraordinary phase of Israel's history. It is quite impossible to study the whole subject of God's plan for Israel without seeing beyond a shadow of a doubt that God's purpose for Israel was that they should as a whole, in entirety go over Jordan and possess the land.