From: harwood@umiacs.umd.edu (David Harwood)
Newsgroups: alt.messianic
Subject: Re: were it not for the VEIL . . .
Date: 22 Jan 93 18:52:06 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742

In article <1993Jan21.224240.16216@cs.tulane.edu> goff@pops.navo.navy.mil writes:
>In article <1je7rlINNr8@pollux.usc.edu>, kjh@pollux.usc.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson) writes:
|>> 
|>> Rabbinic Jews are incapable of seeing and/or understanding the truth.
|>> *Incapable*!  3:16 says that when they turn to G-d, the veil will be
|>> removed, but it is also clear that their eyes *are* veiled, making it
|>> impossible for them to see the True G-d to turn to.  (See also
|>> 1 Cor 2:14; Eph 2:1,5; John 6:44,65; Acts 5:31,11:18)  It is necessary
|>> for God to remove this veil from the eyes of the Rabbinic Jews, to
|>> *grant* them repentance, and *cause* them to come to Yeshua before they
|>> can see the Truth.  It is exactly the same for the gentiles.  Salvation
|>> is truly 100% from the L-RD.
|>> 
>
>This put what I have experienced into total perspective. Thanks Ken, very
>eloquent and I believe you are exactly right. My personal experience is
>my convincing proof. The bible had been a confusing and frustrating book
>to me before I was saved. I just could not understand it and it would
>amaze me how someone much less educated than I could understand it.
>
>It was not until the day I read the third chapter of John did the veil
>fall from my eyes and I began to see what certainly had been hidden
>for so many years. The moment that veil falls, you have to make a 
>decision, and to reject Christ is to refuse God! I'll never forget
>that day that in a split second, I couldn't understand and then I
>could. I will never forget the reading I did, day and night for about
>a week, the joy to understand and the faith to believe. Wow, it has
>been fourteen years and I still remember like it was yesterday.
\\\\\\

This accords with my experience of sudden, unexpected conversion from
skeptical atheism - in an instant I was judged by God who points to
Christ whom I had rejected, by my own thoughts. So very much as Paul says,
there is revelation in that instant of the the graciousness of God, His
mercifulness as well as His judgemnt, and His power to transform Creation
and our hearts. We must decide in that instant that we want God's Messiah,
whom we did not know of but rejected nevertheless.

Paul says in a famous verse, supposed to be about 'the rapture' of
faithful to be with Christ - at his 'second coming' in the heavens,
the Day of the Lord, part of Handel's Messiah: "Behold - I tell you 
a mystery - we shall not all die, but we shall all be changed - 
in an instant (Greek atomos) - in the twinkling of an eye - at the 
sound of the last trumpet." And so can God transform us in "the
twinkling of an eye" in this life, to be raised up to spiritually be
joined in company with Christ.

There is a famous verse of Isaiah reiterated by Jesus to answer
why others have no faith in him: Thus saith the Lord - "they (shall)
have eyes but not see, and ears but not understand ..." (until only
a remnant remains). Many do not know that this theme is repeated by
Isaiah in two places: the apostle Paul refers to the other context
of Isaiah, implicitly, in I Corinthians 14 (where he explaining why
so many people should not "speak in tongues" (this means hymns in the
only two extra-Biblical references by the way, one found at Qumran -
a kind of liturgical practice) at assemblies. He says that this may
scandalize outsiders who are attending, but who cannot hope to understand
their "speaking in tongues" which will be incomprehensible to them.
He is again avoiding scandal to faith (what some accuse him of being
"all things to all men" - distorting Paul's direct message of the
Gospel.) Anyway, Paul "proves" this - that those outside of Christ -
cannot (shall not) understand by appealing to the divine decree in
Isaiah's second context: Thus saith the Lord: (the people shall mock
the words of the prophet as babble which they cannot (shall not)
understand - until the end and they repent.)

D.H.