Mark 4:12

Plain English Version

You know, God got one of his men to write these words, and they are in God’s book. He wrote, ‘People will look with their eyes at what I do, but they will not try to understand what it means. They will hear my words with their ears, but they will not try to understand them properly. If they do understand me properly, then they will turn around and come back to God, and then God will not blame them for the bad things they did. But they don’t want to know about that.’ And those things are happening now.”

Cross References

Mark 8:18

You’ve got eyes, but you don’t look. You’ve got ears, but you don’t listen. Do you remember the time we had 5 loaves of bread, and I gave food to 5,000 men? How many baskets of left-over bits did you pick up?” They said, “12 baskets full.”

Acts 3:19

So listen. You mob have to change the way you live, and you have to turn back to God, so that he will not blame you or do payback to you for the bad things you did.

2 Timothy 2:25

If somebody doesn’t agree with the true message, you have to straighten them out, but do it quietly, in an easy way. You know, the devil, the boss over the bad spirits, he tries to trick people. It is like he sets a trap for them. He catches people in his trap, then he makes them do whatever he wants them to do. But if you teach people properly, they can wake up, then God will help them turn around, and he will get them to think straight, and they will understand that true message, and God will get them out of the devil’s trap.