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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 14, 1871

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 38, No. 22.

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To Correspondents.

By Uriah Smith

QUESTIONS BY W. P., OF BROCKWAY CENTER, MICH.:
“1. How do you reconcile Matt. 25:31–34 with the idea of two resurrections; the second to take place after an interval of 1000 years?”
ANSWER. We think Matt. 25:31–33 will meet its fulfillment at the second coming of Christ; that the “all nations” then gathered before him, are the nations then living; and that the separation there takes place between the righteous and the wicked. The angels are then sent to gather the elect from one end of Heaven to the other, and the righteous dead are raised. Matt. 24:31; 13:49. After this event the righteous and wicked are never again mingled promiscuously together; hence, this must be the point where this scripture applies. Then after the separation is accomplished, the sheep are set on the right hand and the goats on the left. This seems to be a work not accomplished simultaneously with the separation, but by an after process, and well answers to the work of the thousand years which is the apportioning to each one the amount of reward or punishment he is to receive. All the judgment rendered in any case at the second advent is simply the decision of life and death, one class set apart to life, the other to death. All other particulars in each case are wrought out during the thousand-years’ day of Judgment. And after this is accomplished, then for the first time the full development of all cases can be presented. And then the final sentence is pronounced, the King reminding the righteous of the particulars of their godly lives, and calling them to the inheritance of the kingdom, the earth made new; and reminding the wicked of the particulars of their evil lives, and assigning them to the fires which shall reduce them to utter extinction.
“2. What became of those who came out of their graves after the resurrection of Christ?”
ANSWER. We think they are referred to in Eph. 4:8, as having ascended to Heaven with Christ. The text says that “when he ascended up on high he led captivity captive,” but the margin reads that he led “a multitude of captives;” that is, he led a multitude of those who had been captives in the grave, but were released from that captivity at the resurrection of Christ; for what inference could be more easy and natural than that the multitude of captives which Paul says he led up were the ones he had just released from the dominion of the grave? Who else, in fact, could they have been?
“3. If Enoch and Elijah were taken to Heaven, how shall we understand John 3:13 which seems to contradict that view?”
ANSWER. That Enoch and Elijah were both translated to Heaven is very certain. The record says plainly of Elijah that he “went up by a whirlwind into Heaven.” And although the same terms are not used with reference to Enoch, yet it says that “God took him,” which must be an equivalent. We must then limit the expression in John 3:13 by the context. Christ is speaking about conveying to the minds of men a knowledge of heavenly things; and when, with this idea before them, he says that no man has ascended into Heaven, he evidently means to be understood, that no man has ascended there bodily to return and bring them word respecting what he there saw and heard. But the Son of Man was qualified to testify of heavenly things; for he had been there and came down directly from there; and through his divine nature, and his constant union with the Father, he was even then, with respect to a knowledge of heavenly things, as if “in Heaven.” The Scriptures frequently use expressions which are to be qualified or limited in this manner. As one instance, we refer to Deut. 30:12:
“It is not in Heaven that thou shouldst say, Who shall go up for us to Heaven, and bring it unto us that we may hear it, and do it?” Paul in Rom. 10:6 quotes, or comments on, this declaration, thus: “But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, who shall ascend into heaven?” And then he immediately adds this qualifying clause: “That is, to bring Christ down from above.” So may we not, when we read in John 3:13, “No man hath ascended up to Heaven;” immediately add, “that is, to bring back word from thence of heavenly things?”
A. B. HOUGH and JOS. KNOWLAND: The REVIEW has a very clearly-defined mission to perform in advocating important truths which have been developed within the last twenty-five years. The positions we defend rest upon a mass of evidence immovable as the pyramids. We cannot therefore open our columns to any uncertainties, nor agree to publish anything which we are not well assured will tend toward the accomplishment of the object which this paper has in view, namely, to lead a people to prepare by obedience to the truth for the immediate coming of the Lord.
J. NICHOLS: We understand Christ to be the first fruits of them that slept, primarily, in the sense of his being the antitype of the wave sheaf, and remotely, as the one upon whose resurrection that of all others depended, whether before or after his time. Paul, in 1 Cor. 15:13, says: “But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is not Christ raised,” from which the plain corollary may be deduced that if Christ is not raised, there is no resurrection of the dead. Then it would not be true that any had been raised before him or would be after him. All depended on him. In the light of this fact we are to interpret such passages as Acts 26:23; Col. 1:18; and Rev. 1:5. See this question discussed at length in REVIEW, Vol. 18, No. 2. See also Thoughts on the Revelation, p. 5.
U. S.