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"Mine Eye Seeth Thee" "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee." (Job 42:5) The climax to the drama which is the Book of Job comes at this verse. All the arguments and debates, all the wisdom and knowledge, displayed by Job’s three philosopher friends, had contributed nothing to his understanding of God. It was experience, the effect of all that life brought him of good and evil, prosperity and suffering, happiness and heartbreak, which enabled him at last to see God. His bitter comment upon the philosophy of suffering as expounded by the three "I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all" (Job 16:2) is matched only by the scornful, peremptory demand of the Almighty "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?" (Job 38:2) Job started out in life believing in God and the overruling benevolence of God: what he got in return was an overwhelming succession of disasters which led him at last passionately to exclaim "O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave." (Job 14:13) But at the end he was able to say what perhaps very few men in any age have been able to say; "Now mine eye seeth thee." His belief held firm because he knew—and the whole tenor of the Book of Job reveals this as its outstanding thesis—that God is working to a purpose which involves progress and development through discipline and endurance, a purpose of a nature which transcends the events and time‑span of this earthly life, so that whatever may be the apparent evidence to the contrary it is true of God with respect to every man that "He knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." (Job 23:10) There are so many today who look at their Christian background in the light of what they know of modern science and the wisdom of this world, find the two apparently irreconcilable, and jettison their faith in consequence. Because God cannot be defined in terms of the measurements used to define things of daily experience they decide God does not exist. Because they have never heard in modern times of One coming from another world to live among men and women for a spell and return whence they came, they declare such a happening is impossible. Because the existence of such other world, asserted in the Christian Scriptures, cannot be demonstrated by telescope, radio, or mathematical calculation they refuse to believe in the possibility. This in an age when every incredible wonder becomes commonplace within a few years of its invention or discovery. Of all ages in the world’s history this present one with all its discoveries from the formerly unknown should surely be the one in which people could be expected the most readily to admit not only the possibility but even the probability of a sphere of life and power still unperceived by any means the human has at their command. The position is more tragic when the man who thus announces his loss of faith is one who to that point has stood before his fellows as a minister of the Gospel. There have been a number of such cases in recent times. The fact that the stand is usually an honest and sincere one does not minimise its tragedy. "We do not know what God is; Jesus was a good man but only a man: Resurrection? Impossible!" Contrast the calm confidence of the Apostle Paul at the end of a long life of arduous experience. "I know whom I have believed and am persuaded;" (2 Tim.1:12) that of the ancient patriarch "Now mine eye seeth thee." Is there not a real likelihood that such assurance is positive knowledge due to an actual attunement with that other world, that such men and women may have bridged the gap which no manmade detecting instrument and no philosophical investigation can ever bridge? Bible Study Monthly |
