In the Question Chair

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 11, 1902

In the Question Chair.

[Designed for the consideration of such questions as will be of interest and profit to the general reader. All correspondents should give their names and correct post-office address, that queries not replied to here may be answered by mail.]

855.—Baptism of Fire, and Let the Dead Bury Their Dead.

In Matt. 3:11, John says, speaking of Christ, “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.” 1. What does he mean by baptizing with fire? 2. Also Luke 9:60: “Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead.” What are we taught by this? E. C. M., Wadena, Iowa.

ANSWER.—1. We understand that the last clause of Matt. 3:12 explains what the baptism of fire is: “He shall burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” What is meant by being baptized with the Holy Ghost, it is not difficult to understand. It is to receive the Holy Spirit, till we are led by it, taught by it, and controlled by it. Paul says, “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” Rom. 8:15, 16. All who do not receive this Spirit which God says He will pour out upon all flesh (Acts 2:16, 17) so freely that this dispensation is called “the ministration [or dispensation] of the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:8),—all who will not accept of this Spirit are reckoned as chaff, or foul seed sown among the wheat (Matt. 13:24, 25); but when the time comes for the Son of man to send forth His angels, and gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, then all the chaff and all the tares will be cast into a furnace of fire, where the fire will envelop them, baptize them, and consume them. All who are not thus baptized with the Holy Ghost will, in this manner, be baptized with fire. But will Christ do it, as Matt. 3:11 says?—Yes; for He executes the judgment; He breaks the nations with a rod of iron, and dashes them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Ps. 2:8, 9. The angels go forth at His direction to gather out and consume the tares.

2. Christ’s words, “Let the dead bury their dead,” do not, we imagine, teach us that we should treat our dead friends with any neglect or disregard, or manifest toward them any lack of affection. There are many expressions in the Bible that are to be understood in a comparative sense. Thus we read in Luke 14:26: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” This cannot mean that one is to exercise that malevolent and hateful disposition now understood by “hate,” against which we are so often warned in the Bible, toward his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, in order to be a disciple of Christ; but we are to take these statements in a comparative sense. There are different degrees of love, and when we reduce it to a low enough degree, it is called “hate;” that is, to “love less” than something else. Now Christ and His cause are to have the supreme place in the affections of every one who claims to be His disciple. So this simply means that one who would be a follower of Christ must love His father, mother, wife, and children less than he loves Christ, so that in a confliction of interests, when one calls in one direction, and the others call in a different way, the decision would be for Christ every time. The same principle holds in the text under consideration (Luke 9:60), and this is indicated in the last clause of the text: “But go thou and preach the

kingdom of God.” If some supposed duty to a dying friend should interfere with the duty to preach the kingdom of God, this latter call has the first preference. There are those who have no interest in religious or spiritual things. They are called “dead,” in a spiritual sense. Eph. 2:1. They could comply with all the duties necessary to show proper attention to, and regard for, the dead, or attend to any other necessary duty, and at the same time neglect no demand that religious duties have upon them. Let such attend to the burial of the dead.

856.—Outpouring of the Spirit.

1. How many days after the ascension of Christ was it before the disciples received the Holy Ghost? 2. What day of the week was the day of Pentecost? E. C. M., Wadena, Iowa.

ANS.—After His resurrection, Christ was seen of the disciples forty days. Acts 1:3. Pentecost was fifty days after the resurrection. The resurrection was on the first day of the week. Mark 16:9. The fiftieth day from this event would be the first day of the week. The Scriptures do not name the day of the week; but they emphasize the arrival of the antitype of the day of Pentecost: “When the day of Pentecost was fully come.” Acts 2:1. The day of the week was of no account, and had no significance.

857.—Sins in the Most Holy.

How did the sins of the children of Israel get into the most holy place of the sanctuary, so that it had to be cleansed on the tenth day of the seventh month? H. N., Blair, Neb.

ANS.—The general means by which the sins of the people were borne away from themselves and lodged in the sanctuary was by the blood of the victim offered, and the ministration of the priest. The daily service that went on through the year preceding the day of atonement in the seventh month, we presume is well understood. The penitent selected his offering, and brought it to the priest at the door of the tabernacle or sanctuary. In the presence of the priest he laid his hands on the head of his victim, confessing over it his sin, then declaring that he offered that victim as his propitiation, a substitute for himself, who had sinned and was deserving of death. He then plunged the sacrificial knife into that innocent living victim—a victim innocent except for the imputed guilt of the sinner, which by this process was considered as transferred from the sinner to his offering. The priest caught the blood in a basin, and sprinkled it about the altar at the door of the sanctuary, or bore it into the holy place, and sprinkled it before the veil suspended between the two apartments of the building. On the day of atonement the work became general in form, with individual application. Two goats were brought before the priest, and by lot devoted to their respective purposes. The goat upon which the lot fell for the Lord was slain, and his blood borne into the most holy place, and ministered on behalf of all the people. The service had to do with all the people; for all were to come up around the sanctuary on that day, and afflict their souls, and whosoever would not afflict his soul was to be cut-off from among his people. Lev. 23:27, 28. The ministrations of this day, then, in a certain sense, called up all the sins of all the people for the preceding year. Paul doubtless refers to this when he says: “But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.” Heb. 10:3.

The daily ministration was the means by which sins were borne into the sanctuary; the day of atonement reversed the process, and shows us the means by which, after there was remembrance made of them every year, they were borne out. The apostle Paul says that into the second apartment of the sanctuary, or most holy place, “went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people.” Heb. 9:7. The priest released from the sanctuary the sins which had been accumulating the

through the year, by sprinkling the blood of the general offering, on the day of atonement, upon the mercy seat, and before the mercy seat seven times (the perfect number) to show how thorough and complete is the work of forgiveness. The sins having thus been released from the sanctuary, by satisfaction having been made by the blood, to the law, the priest, bearing the sins upon him, came out to the door of the sanctuary; the live goat was brought, and the high priest, putting his hands upon its head, confessed over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their

sins, putting them upon the head of the goat (Lev. 16:21), which was then sent away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness, thus bearing all their iniquities into a land not inhabited, or, margin, a “land of separation,” where the goat and all the sins upon him perished together. This ceremony was a figure showing how our sins, if we are overcomers, will be laid on the head of the antitypical scapegoat, the devil, who, when he perishes in the lake of fire, will take our sins with him, and we shall be troubled with the guilt of them no more forever.