By Nels Angelin

I have a new vision for what I see today. My story includes some rich spiritual application to give glory to God. I have struggled with finding new glasses to be able to see clearly. The answer finally came to me. I have cataracts. With my first new lens, it was a complete revelation for me. What a difference it makes to see clearly! When you have nothing to compare it is only natural to accept what I have seen is “clear”. Now, in one eye, what a difference it makes when the lens is truly clear! It is so bright and the colors so brilliant; it is like high definition! The eye which remains, though “clear”, in comparison is dull and a yellow cast that was totally unrecognized till there was a comparison.

In this amazing experience, the word of God came to mind. “We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord,” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Also another, similar and familiar verse “For now we see through a glass darkly. but then face to face,” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Surely I can appreciate the clearing vision to see face to face, but there is more here for a little deeper application. What does the seeing through a glass darkly mean? In my example, I had not recognized a darker vision. The Greek translation for “darkly” which Paul wrote is “in a riddle or enigma…that the revelation appears indistinctly, imperfectly.” So much I could say about that thought but let me make an application in another text.

“As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him.’ But, ‘Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ,” (Colossians 2:6,8). The term “rudiments” shown here is rendered in the NASB as “the elementary principles of the world.”

Secular science takes the position that all the origins of the heavens of the universe must be impersonal and unsupervised. Thus the premise is to search for a meaning for proof that the universe created itself by a “natural” process rather than a supernatural process. It becomes all the more interesting then, to accommodate the expanse of the heavens, the cosmology theories have turned its concepts to the necessity of a supernatural event of their own devising to explain how it would have to have had a beginning. The big bang would have happened in a fraction of a second, and thus everything was created from nothing. It is just that there is no God. “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written He taketh the wise in their own craftiness,” (1 Corinthians 3:19; See Job 5:13).

When I look up into the expanse of heavens of God with the vision the glories of God, I listen for His voice to tell of who made all these things, and when. When my eyes have been clouded with cataracts I had no comparison of clarity I was missing. Science is not blind to the majesty of the glories of God. It is just when they choose to view through the lenses of their own making in hope to find other life in the cosmos. “Are we alone?” Amazing how close the truth is sometimes seen. One worldly SETI posit was formed; “perhaps we are quarantined from alien intelligences.”

You see, the problem with isolating understanding of the mysteries of the universe from the wisdom of God is that to do so must deny the existence of sin. Great strides have been advanced to navigate in space in learning the dynamics of space travel and even set foot on our own moon. The laws of physics in nature have been mastered and even extrapolated with the intent to colonize another uninhabitable world.

The gospel of God is sure in its design for the saving of mankind and will come to know God as our Redeemer. The plan of God is near to come. And it does include, to meet the Lord in the air, and to inhabit the dwelling places the Lord Jesus promised He has gone to prepare. The gospel of God also includes the necessity of the judgment of God that also must come when He brings the rewards with Him.

Photos: Glasses and vision chart by David Travis on Unsplash, Glasses and Bible by Aaron Burden on Unsplash