When it is in agreement with his purpose and ways, Jehovah God can literally cause people to become blind, deaf or speechless. Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, is an example of this. When Zechariah expressed doubt upon learning that he would become father to a son by his aged wife Elizabeth, the angel Gabriel said to him: “You will be silent and not able to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their appointed time.” (Luke 1:20) Zechariah was then for a time made mute, not able to speak until the circumcising of his eight-day-old son.—See also Acts 13:8-11. Still another way in which God “appoints” the speechless, the deaf and the blind is in a spiritual sense. If people choose to be deaf and blind to his message, he permits them to persist in unbelief. This was the case with unfaithful Israel in the time of Isaiah the prophet. Isaiah was told: “Go, and you must say to this people, ‘Hear again and again, O men, but do not understand; and see again and again, but do not get any knowledge.’ Make the heart of this people unreceptive, and make their very ears unresponsive, and paste their very eyes together, that they may not see with their eyes and with their ears they may not hear, and that their own heart may not understand and that they may not actually turn back and get healing for themselves.”—Isa. 6:9, 10.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 02:51:24 +0000
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