“He spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch? The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master.”-Luke 6:39, 40; Matthew 15:14.
The Great Teacher in this lesson emphasizes the necessity of knowledge and of a faith built thereupon. The blind leading the blind represents the ignorant leading the ignorant into difficulties, into the ditch. In the mental blindness of the past, many Christians assumed that the Master here taught that the blind leaders and the blind followers of our day would all fall into the pit of eternal torment, but not so. The thought is that they will stumble and experience injury instead of reaching the desired destination.
The destination sought by the Jews was fellowship with and relationship with God-His highest favor mentioned to Abraham, saying, “In thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” St . Paul says of that promise, “Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh, but the election hath obtained it and the rest were blinded.”-Romans 11:7. The entire Jewish race was blinded and turned aside and fell into the pit-into confusion, darkness, separation from God. This was the very matter against which Jesus warned them. They were following the lead of the Scribes and Pharisees and Doctors of the Law, all of whom were blind leaders who misled their too trusting followers. The disciple or follower will not fare better than his master or leader or teacher; he cannot hope for better results than his leader.
How important, then, that God’s people recognize the true Leader, Jesus, that they hear his voice, and heed not the voice of others. In the present, in the ending of this Gospel age, we have a condition of things very similar to that which obtained in the end of the Jewish age. We have many great, learned, and wise men in all the denominations of Christendom, as the Jews had in Jesus’ day in all their different sects. It is equally important that we take heed that we do not follow blind leaders today-in fact, it is much more important. Why should we follow any of the creeds when we now have the word of God in such convenient form and when all are able to read it? Who cannot rejoice that recently the Pope issued instructions that the Roman Catholic bishops should encourage Catholics to study the Bible? How it would rejoice us to find the Protestant leaders similarly urging the Word of God upon their people!
Alas! on the contrary, we find that many of the great and wise of the principal pulpits of the world are undermining the faith of the people by telling them that the Bible is not divinely inspired, that Moses and the Prophets did not write the books ascribed to them, and hence indirectly saying that Jesus and the Apostles were deceived when they made quotations from the Old Testament and ascribed them to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Moses, Habakkuk, etc. These great men style themselves Higher Critics and endorse the theory of Evolution, that humanity is undergoing a process of evolution from monkey-likeness to God-likeness. They are thus indirectly telling their people that there was no fall from God’s image and likeness, that there was no sin committed, no sentence for sin, no Redeemer from sin and its sentence and that restitution is not to be hoped for nor to be desired.-Acts 3:19-21.
Surely the Great Teacher’s advice not to follow blind leaders was never more needed than in our day . Blessed will they be who heed the warning, and by it will be guided back to a more thorough study of the words of the Great Teacher, his apostles, and the prophets.
R5029 (1912)