If you’ve ever heard someone say, “The devil blinded the minds of unbelievers,” and nodded in agreement, you might want to buckle up. Because what if we’ve been misreading one of the most quoted verses in Christianity?

Let me take you on a journey that started for me over a year ago. I’ve been chewing on the biblical concept of God blinding Israel, and the more I dug into scripture, the clearer it became: God didn’t just react after Israel rejected their Messiah. No, the blinding was part of the plan from the very beginning.

We can trace this back to Deuteronomy 28:28: “The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart.” It’s echoed again in Deuteronomy 29, where Moses says, “Yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.” This isn’t about physical blindness; it’s spiritual. A planned, prophetic condition that would unfold over time.

By the time we reach Isaiah 6, God tells Isaiah directly: “Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes.” Why? “Lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.” The conversion wasn’t scheduled yet. God’s judgments needed to play out. Their full salvation would come later.

Fast forward to Jesus. He quotes Isaiah when explaining why He spoke in parables. Contrary to what many Sunday school teachers say, the parables weren’t to make things clearer—they were to hide truth from those who weren’t meant to understand it yet.

Paul reinforces this in Romans 11:25: “Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” It’s not forever. It’s purposeful.

So here’s where it gets interesting. There’s one verse that has thrown people off for centuries: 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, “If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not…”

Everyone reads “god of this world” and immediately thinks Satan. But every single other verse about blinding? It’s God. The word “god” in Greek here is theos – used nearly every time in the New Testament to refer to the true God. So why make the exception here?

We don’t.

God did the blinding. He prophesied it, He fulfilled it, and He did it to accomplish a bigger plan that none of us could’ve orchestrated. And He did it so that in due time, all Israel would be saved.

This might ruffle feathers, but the scriptures stand. God blinded Israel. Not out of spite, but as part of a divine strategy to bring salvation to all. And if you’re open to seeing it, the Bible lays it out plain as day.

Stay tuned. There’s more to uncover.