Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”
Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,
“He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their heart,
lest they see with their eyes,
and understand with their heart, and turn,
and I would heal them.”
Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. John 12:37-43.
If you like your idols, you can keep your idols. That is the condition of people who fear man more than God. Your fear will keep you from believing, no matter what you have seen. Those who feared being put out of the synagogue knew that was the equivalent of being exiled from their culture, the source of their esteem and social connection.
Today we are threatened with exile from the culture because of wrongthink in an increasing number of subjects that have been overtaken by political ideology. These come down from “The Cathedral,” the academia-media partnership that crafts and disseminates the radical new ideas to which we must agree or be “cancelled.” This cancellation can get you hazed on social media, kicked off social media platforms, expelled from college, fired, shunned, and even denied financial services.
Every one of The Cathedral’s new ideas runs afoul of the word of God. You must discard your old ideas of absolute truth and the supremacy of the one true God. You must replace them with the ever evolving supremacy of “learned experience.” You must reject the spiritual and exalt the material. If you do, you will be blinded and find it impossible to believe. You will obey the rulers and reject your God.
“We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.” But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:27-28).