Fantastic FAF Weekend
Thank you so much for such a fantastic weekend. It was truly life-changing for both of us. We can’t stop talking about how nice it was to be around people who understand what we have been feeling for a very long time.
Everyone we met was so nice, and the presentations were wonderful. We will definitely be back next year, and we hope to enjoy the online groups all year long.
Please tell your team thank you. I know how much work goes into an event such as that. And it was a pivotal moment for me, for sure.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: We loved having you in attendance, and we look forward to seeing you next year. The Lord truly sets us free in Jesus!
Healing the Blind
(Response to a comment on the two-phased healing of a blind man recorded in Mark 8:22–26 made at the Friday Q&A session at the FAF Conference last weekend.)
Some people, when reading about the blind man in Mark, don’t think about growing up blind. The assumption is that when made able to see, one would know what he’s looking at. But growing up blind, never seeing light, or even with light perception but lacking image cortical stimulation, the brain doesn’t know how to interpret images, an acquired skill. Think of the experiment where spectacles projecting images upside down were projected into the eyes. After a week or so of wearing these glasses, the brain took a long time when the glasses were taken off to return to seeing normally. It is the brain and mind that interprets vision, not the eyes. Experiments have made evident that nerve tissue mediates images to the brain in a heuristic template of images.
This excerpt from a sermon by R.C Sproul on this passage is interesting:
So here Jesus performed a second miracle in my view, of giving the brain of this blind man the ability to interpret his sight without learning how. At the first miracle of healed, working eyes, the man saw indistinctly. At the second intervention, the man began to be able to glance distinctly and to correctly interpret what he saw. Mark 8:22-26:
“They arrived at Bethsaida. Some people brought a sightless man and begged Jesus to give him a healing touch. Taking him by the hand, he led him out of the village. He put spit in the man’s eyes, laid hands on him, and asked, “Do you see anything?” He looked up. “I see men. They look like walking trees.” So Jesus laid hands on his eyes again. The man looked hard and realized that he had recovered perfect sight, saw everything in bright, twenty-twenty focus. Jesus sent him straight home, telling him, “Don’t enter the village.”
—VIA EMAIL
Response: I have thought often about the implications of Jesus’ healings of all kinds of physical disabilities. It’s not enough to “fix” the affected organ; the entire neurological process of sending, receiving, and interpreting impulses—whether it’s the information comprising sight or the ability to walk on command when a person has been crippled for 38 years, for example—must be healed as well as the nonfunctioning organ. Jesus’ healings revealed Him as the only One who had the power and authority to create. His healings functioned at the level of creating physical life and response where there had been none. Only the Creator could do that!
The account in Mark, as our pastor Gary Inrig has said, is likely Peter’s story (Mark is generally thought to be Peter’s amanuensis; he wrote Peter’s memories of being with Jesus during His ministry). Gary said this miracle, recorded only in Mark, echoes Peter’s own experience of coming to faith. When did Peter really know and believe in the Lord Jesus? Was it when He said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” when Jesus questioned him at Caesarea Philippi? Then what about Peter’s denial? Was Peter’s true transformation when Jesus forgave him three times and commissioned him to feed His sheep? Or was it on the Day of Pentecost when Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit and preached the famous sermon recorded in Acts 2?
Gary pointed out that some people come to Christ in a moment that they always remember. Others do not have a specific date, but their coming to know Jesus happens over a series of events in time, each one bringing that person more and more clarity. This type of transformation seems to describe Peter’s coming to faith. Certainly by the Day of Pentecost he was truly a born again believer. But exactly when did he come to faith? We cannot assign a specific time to Peter’s experience, but we know he was foreknown and chosen by God, and his work was prepared in advance for him to do (Eph. 2:10).
A Rabbi Comments on Moral and Ceremonial Laws
I have wondered for some time how to counter the Adventist argument that the law was divided between moral and ceremonial and civil laws, so I finally went to an “ask a rabbi” site. I said that Christians tell me about (the civil/moral/ceremonial) division and asked how that fits with what the Bible says. Here is his response:
Thank you for your question. The idea that the Mosaic covenant contains two separate laws is not a classical Jewish teaching. It is primarily a Christian interpretive framework developed for theological purposes. Traditional Jewish sources consistently emphasize the unity of all the laws given at Mount Sinai. There is no Jewish basis for categorizing some laws as eternally binding (moral) and others as temporary or merely ‘ceremonial.’ The violation of any single Torah law is considered a breach of the covenant.
While Jewish law does not use the “moral/ceremonial” distinction, it does group commandments conceptually. However, these groupings are for understanding, not for abrogation.
So there you have it from a rabbi, a scholar of the Bible. Not that Adventists will accept that as an authority! After all, they have Ellen!
Response: Have you read “The Unity of the Law” by RK McGregor Wright? He goes through the history of the division of the law by the fourth century church and shows that it is a man-made division that cannot redefine the law. This entire article was written to answer his SDA friend who insisted the sabbath was for everyone, forever. Here is a link:
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