400
The Desire of Ages
with a sneer, as if they would prove Jesus to be a madman, “Thou art
not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?”
With solemn dignity Jesus answered, “Verily, verily, I say unto
you, Before Abraham was, I AM.”
Silence fell upon the vast assembly. The name of God, given to
Moses to express the idea of the eternal presence, had been claimed
as His own by this Galilean Rabbi. He had announced Himself to be
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the self-existent One, He who had been promised to Israel, “whose
goings forth have been from of old, from the days of eternity.”
Micah
5:2
, margin.
Again the priests and rabbis cried out against Jesus as a blasphemer.
His claim to be one with God had before stirred them to take His life,
and a few months later they plainly declared, “For a good work we
stone Thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that Thou, being a
man, makest Thyself God.”
John 10:33
. Because He was, and avowed
Himself to be, the Son of God, they were bent on destroying Him.
Now many of the people, siding with the priests and rabbis, took up
stones to cast at Him. “But Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the
temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.”
The Light was shining in darkness; but “the darkness apprehended
it not.”
John 1:5
, R. V.
“As Jesus passed by, He saw a man which was blind from his birth.
And His disciples asked Him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man,
or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath
this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be
made manifest in him.... When He had thus spoken, He spat on the
ground, and made clay of the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the
blind man with the clay, and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of
Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent). He went his way therefore,
and washed, and came seeing.”
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It was generally believed by the Jews that sin is punished in this
life. Every affliction was regarded as the penalty of some wrongdoing,
either of the sufferer himself or of his parents. It is true that all suffering
results from the transgression of God’s law, but this truth had become
perverted. Satan, the author of sin and all its results, had led men to
look upon disease and death as proceeding from God,—as punishment
arbitrarily inflicted on account of sin. Hence one upon whom some