<TITLE>06. Par 19-21</TITLE>L-19 Then, you see, in those days... These days a--a blind man is usually led by a trained dog. In those days they was led by a trained lamb. So the priest said to Bartimaeus, "Bartimaeus, thou cannot offer this lamb, for that lamb is your eyes."
He said, "But oh, priest, if I keep my promise to God, God will provide a lamb for Bartimaeus' eyes." So he goes and offers the lamb.
Got a little chilly, so he pulled his ragged coat up over him, moved sideways again. And he continues, as he shifts around towards the west where the sun comes down from the Jordan crevice there, across to the wall of Jericho. I can see him as he moves his ragged coat up and shivers a little, turns around, said, "Well, I haven't got a coin all day. Perhaps maybe I am--won't have any today. And what will I tell little Rachel tonight when we can't take bread home?"

L-20 "But I remember when I was young." he said, "I remember when I used to look up to the skies and see how pretty it was at night, the stars, how beautiful the trees were when they were blooming, what the sunlight looked like. I'd jump up into my dear old mother's arms, who's passed on years ago. How she used to rock me and tell me the great stories, how Jehovah stood for His people: Down in Egypt, how that He brought the people out of their troubles, how He opened the Red Sea and brought them into the wilderness and fed them manna out of heaven for forty years."
"And how that one day when they were in need of healing, God in His mercy, had the prophet Moses, which was led by a Pillar of Fire, and Angel in the form of a Pillar of Fire, led the prophet Moses as he led the children. And one day they had need of healing. And they erected a brass serpent. And every one that looked at that serpent was healed. "Oh," he thought, "what if I could only been with them then? You know, I'd have someone to lead me right up to the direction of the serpent, and then I'd raised up my eyelids and ask Jehovah, and looking on the serpent, I'm sure He'd a had mercy on me. But alas, them days are gone. The priest tells me that the days of miracles is past. My church says them things can't happen no more. Jehovah was great then, but He just quit with the people."

L-21 What a sad story, if Jehovah's great to begin with, He's Jehovah all the time, and always great. But it seems like it's repeated again today. The people forget that God is from everlasting to everlasting. He's infinite to begin with; He's infinite at the end. And if He did something at the end--at the beginning, and a crisis arose, and the people were dying, and nothing could help them, and He made an atonement for their sickness in the wilderness; and if the same crisis is raised today with cancer, heart trouble, TB, and many things that we have no remedies to heal, or to take care of; then if He doesn't act the same way today, then He did wrong when He act then. He's got to act the same.
We learn more; we're human beings; we become more cultured. Or--I just don't like the word culture. We become wiser, maybe. And so then when... But He doesn't. He was perfect to begin with and He's perfect forever. There isn't any difference in God; He's always the same.


<A HREF="P7">Next Page</A>