TO CORRESPONDENTS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 13, 1879

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Does the pronoun “him,” in the expression, “even him,” in 2 Thess. 2: 9, refer to “that wicked,” or to the Lord? As there are supplied words, should they be left out altogether? C. A. W.

Ans. They should be left out altogether. The words “whose coming,” in verse 9, refer to the coming of Christ. A strictly literal word for word translation of verses 8 and 9 would be, “And then shall be revealed the lawless one whom the Lord shall consume by the spirit of the mouth of him, and shall destroy by the brightness of the personal presence of him [verse 9] of whom the personal presence is at the time of the working of Satan,” &c.

In reference to the query on Gen. 6: 6, we would say that the expressions, “it repented the Lord,” and “it grieved him at his heart,” can denote no more than that the Lord finds it necessary to change his purpose because his original design is not carried out. So far from these expressions proving God to be a fickle, changeable being, as the infidel claims, they are the very evidence that he is not such a being. If it had not repented him that he had made man, and if it had not repented him that he had made Saul king, then the infidel might have claimed with some reason that God is a changeable being. For, from the very beginning, God’s revealed principle of action has been to uphold and sustain the obedient, and to cast off and destroy the disobedient. Thus: “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them.” Jer. 18: 7–10.

God made man upright, and designed, on condition of his continuing so, to sustain and support him; but man had so utterly apostatized in the days of Noah that only eight righteous persons could be found; now according to the unvarying principle on which God acts, he must “pull down and destroy” the race, because they had done evil and obeyed not his voice. Hence it is said that it repented him that he had made man. But if God, notwithstanding man’s apostasy and rebellion and continual insult to his throne, had decided to change his principle of action, and pay no attention to man’s rebellion, but still let him live, sustaining him by his power and bounty, then he would have shown himself either a weak or a changeable being; he would have aided and abetted rebellion against his own throne; he would (if for the sake of the argument we may be allowed the irreverent expression) have shown himself unworthy to be the ruler of the universe.

Just so in the case of Saul. The principles of God’s actions are undeviating and inexorable; but man, by a change of action on his part, brings himself into a different relation to God, and a different attitude before him, for the very reason that God does not change, as man changes. This is the only kind of repentance that exists on God’s part.