Specimen Questions by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 11, 1883

Specimen Questions.

By Editor

OUR readers can bear witness of our willingness to answer questions; but we insist that they shall be reasonable, and show some desire on the part of the writer to draw out information on truth or duty. We sometime since received a long list of questions from an unknown person, who peremptorily demanded that we answer them to his satisfaction! and then proceeded to assert our inability to answer them, and read us a lecture for our supposed unwillingness to answer them. Of course we threw the letter aside at once without any notice, regretting the time we had to waste over it. Not many are so bad as that, but very many we are compelled to pass by without notice. We sometimes notice anonymous letters, but do not hold ourselves under any obligation to do so.

We recently received a letter from one who professed to be interested in the advent doctrine for many years. It contained about a half a score of questions, and a much larger number of affirmations. We give the second question as a specimen of the whole letter of many pages:—

"If Nebuchadnezzar saw a vision of 'what shall be in the latter days,' how could he fulfill any part of the parable?"

Daniel said he received the interpretation from the God of Heaven, and he said Nebuchadnezzar was a part of the image seen in the dream, and also that the intention of the dream was to make known what should be in the latter days. Now it was not necessary that everything which he saw should be in the latter days in order to make known what shall be in the latter days. The question really casts discredit on the statements of Daniel 2. If the questioner doubts the words of Daniel in that chapter, we cannot help it. But what would a thousand such questions amount to? Please do not ask us to spend our time over trifles.