Friends,
 

Apart from the spiritual teaching and insight provided by Greg concerning the Holy “Double Touch” I want to share another amazing fact about this passage.
 

For those called to help demonstrate the harmony between the Word of G-d and the study of His creations, aka ‘Science’, this tidbit is likely old news.  In my earlier days of this study it was a wonderful blessing to become aware of, through one of Chuck Missler’s publications, as I recall, and I hope it will be for you, as well.
 

In short, this is a wonderful “proof text” for the validity of Scripture.  When someone who has been blind from birth is given eyesight the brain does not initially understand how to process this new information.  In these cases involving modern medicine, the second part of therapy begins to help train the brain to decode this new input.  The syndrome is known as “Apologesia”.  Like Apologetics it derives from the same Latin root meaning to give an answer to.  In apologetics, we comply with I Peter 3:15 to give an answer to all who ask about the reason for the hope within you.  With Apologesia the brain is unable to give an answer to the images or, to put it otherwise, unable to decode the information.  There are other similar symptoms where the brain behaves differently in dealing with this and this one is where the brain confuses the visual imagery, themselves, with concepts and ideas related internally.  (Note:  I am sharing this from memory and, doing a little on-line research, having trouble with the word Apologesia so I may have spelling off a bit.)
 

So, when our Lord applies a second healing he is no longer dealing with the blindness but the neurology of the person who had sight restored.  Much like how prophetic utterances, or speaking in tongues, is only the first half, the event is complete when interpreted, the 2nd half; again, the “double touch”.  There is much spiritual insight to be gained in this miracle concerning our Lord’s move to help us unpack what the light of His Revelation reveals, but that you can work out on your own in prayer.  I wanted to focus, here, on the details of this proof text.
 

So, how is this a “proof text”?  Well, until modern medicine had duplicated the miracle of providing eyesight to the formerly blind from birth, this phenomena was unknown, as you can imagine.  It was not until the modern era that such insight (pun alert) was possible.  So, for the Bible to clearly lay out a pattern of a events which seem nonsense, until you have the modern “proof” of the validity, there is simply no other explanation.  That science provides, a THOUSAND YEARS OR MORE LATER, the details of what happened, and, the story itself offers no reasons why it would have been fabricated, it is a shining moment of authentic proof ONLY explainable in light of an event which [1] really happened and [2] which was recorded (not fabricated) in spite of it seeming odd at the time, surely, yet which MUCH later [3] science completely confirms as reality, wow!
 

In other words, this, like Daniel’s words, simply COULD NOT BE fully interpreted/understood until the time of its understanding had come to fullness.

 

Can you see it now?  J

 

Jimboni