p. 11 | Question Corner by Milton C. Wilcox

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 6, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 14.

Question Corner

By Milton C. Wilcox

Conducted by MILTON C. WILCOX

Mountain View, California

NOTE.—This department is for the purpose of helping Bible students. Answers must of necessity be brief, often only suggestive, never exhaustive, never infallible, only as they agree with the infallible Word. Such questions only will be answered as seem to the editors to minister to the mission of the paper. Questions of the same import can not be answered repeatedly in the same volume. Name and address must be given, not for publication, but as evidence of good faith and to insure reply by letter if thought best. It is well always to inclose stamp, not stamped envelope, unless answer is desired by letter alone.

106 — A Prophetic “Time”

Why do we call a time 360 days, and use 30 days for the month in the computation of the 42 months, and yet apply the 1,260 days to the 365-day year? So also with the 2,300 days of Dan. 8:14? N. A. B.

We use the twelve months and the thirty days to the month for the year because this was the regular Jewish year. The Jews reckoned thirty days to the month. Compare Gen. 7:11, 24; and 8:3, 4. The Flood came upon the earth in the second month, the seventeenth day; and the ark rested in the seventh month, and on the seventeenth day, upon the mountains of Ararat, which we learn is one hundred and fifty days, or just five months, making thirty days to the month. This was too short a year, but this was made up by adding a month every three years. This, however, does not come into the regular reckoning of the year. The regular year is 360 days. This is also called a “time.” See the margin of Dan. 11:13, “at the end of times, even years.” So too the 1,260 days of Revelation 12, the forty-two months of Revelation 13.

The “time, times, and a half” of Dan. 7:25 and 12:7 refers to the same time. Three times and a half, or three years and a half, would mean just forty-two months. Forty-two months, with thirty days to the month, would be 1,260 days—symbolize 1,260 years. That is the number of years that was symbolized; and it is the number of years, and not the number of days, that the prophecy deals with. That would have reference to just so many natural years, whether we counted the year 365 days, 360 days, or any number of days. It was so many years, irrespective of days. The fact of the added five days makes no difference in the number of years, because the year was continually brought back to the autumnal equinox. All that the prophecy itself aims to do is to give us a certain number of years for the existence of a certain power and a certain phase of its power. This it has symbolized under the term “day.” The prophecy itself has interpreted what is meant by the three and a half years, by mentioning the number of months, and also mentioning the number of days. We can therefore make no mistake regarding that; and inasmuch as the days symbolize years, they symbolize so many solar years. The same reckoning applies to the 2,300 days.

107 — A Living Soul

What is the soul? and does every living creature have a soul? J. W. T.

The word “soul” is used in at least three different senses in the Scriptures.

First, a person (Adam) was created out of the dust of the earth, and became a “living soul” (Gen. 2:7)—that is, a living creature. Peter tells us there were “eight souls” saved in the ark—that is, eight persons. Again and again we read, in the tenth chapter of Joshua, that “all the souls” that were in various cities “were slain”; that is, persons were slain.

Secondly, the term is used for life,—the animal or soulical life, which every being has. It is used in this way in the very first chapter of Genesis, verse 30, margin: “Everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life”—margin, “wherein there is a living soul.” It is so used in Matt. 16:25, “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it,” etc. The same word is translated “soul” in the next verse, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” “Life” would be better in both cases.

Thirdly, it means the emotions, the desires, the thoughts of the heart, as used in Ps. 103:1, “Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless His holy name.”

But in no one of these cases is the soul said to be immortal or never-dying. It is simply the life of the flesh. Beasts have souls, and men have souls. Each has a life, which is given it in harmony with the law of the creature that receives it. That life in man is human life. In the beast it is the beast life—each according to the law of the creature. When man comes into living connection with God by faith, he receives the spirit life. And the Word clearly discriminates between the soul and the spirit. Heb. 4:12.

The man who has the soul life alone, does not know or apprehend the things of the Spirit. See 1 Cor. 2:14: “But the natural man” literally, the soulical man—“receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.” There is great truth which lies in this. When the soulical man is converted, however, God gives him the Spirit, and the Spirit dominates the soul, or the life, of the flesh; but when a man is unconverted, he does not have the spiritual life, and his soul is dominated by the flesh.

108 — The “Days” of Daniel 12

To what time do the “days” of Dan. 12:12 refer? O. S.

The general interpretation is that the 1,335 days begin at the same time as the days in the previous verse,—the time when the “daily” is “taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up.” That is usually placed, in the beginning of it, at 508 A. D.; and the ending, of course, in 1798, at the overthrow of the papacy. Inasmuch as no beginning is given for the 1,335 days, they are supposed to begin at the same time, 508, and would reach to 1843, the culmination of the great second advent movement; and the blessing that was received at that time was the wonderful blessing that came to those who gave their all for the Lord Jesus Christ and entered into blessed relationship with Him.

109 — The Crumbling Wall and Untempered Mortar

Please explain Eze. 13:1-5 and 22:28. I. E.

The prophecy, true in the days of Ezekiel, was also symbolical of what would be in the last days; for we are told, in verse 5, that “ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord.” God’s hedge around His people is His holy law, and the blessed truth of His gospel. There has been a breach made in this through apostasy, and one of God’s commandments has been trampled in the dust. Isaiah speaks of that in the fifty-eighth chapter and the twelfth and thirteenth verses, and tells us that in the last days a people will be called out who will repair the breach and build up the paths that have been broken down. But there are those among the professed servants of God who have not gone up into the gaps, or the breaches, that have been made. They have not built up the hedge. See the margin of Eze. 13:7. “They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The Lord saith: and the Lord hath not sent them: and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word.” This is true many times of men who promise that there is any amount of Bible truth and proof for the false sabbath with which they have tried to repair the breach in God’s law; but the prophet tells us that to substitute for God’s wall that which is not of God, to endeavor to repair the breach made in truth by error, is like building up a wall and dashing it with untempered mortar. He also tells us that it matters not how beautifully this may have been faced, and how smoothly the untempered mortar may have been placed over it, the wall is “a slight wall”—margin of verse 10. And when the plagues of God fall, and the great hailstones descend, and the overflowing shower of His judgments comes upon the earth, the wall will fall, and those will fall also who have built it. God will break it down, and accomplish His wrath upon those who have thought to use human subterfuges in the place of God’s truth.

The 28th verse of the 22d chapter uses the same figure. But the context tells us more than this. It declares that these priests or ministers of God who have built up the wall are those who have violated His law, and profaned His holy things, and have put no difference between the holy and the profane, “neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from My Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.”

This clearly shows that the slight wall which men have built up, and the mortar with which they have dashed it, are not of God’s building, and are contrary to the wall in which they have endeavored to build it. The only way in which the break in God’s wall can be restored is by the restoration of His downtrodden truth.

110 — The Bond Woman and the Son

Will you please explain Gal. 4:30? B. H. P.

The scripture reads: “Nevertheless what saith the Scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.” The foundation of this parable is found in the history of Abraham. Sarah was Abraham’s lawful wife. Through her was to come the promised Seed. Hagar was the bondwoman, and in human planning and human idea her seed was to be the promised Seed—so Abraham thought. But the Lord said: Sarah is right. Let the bondwoman go. Sarah’s son and only Sarah’s son is to be the promised Seed—the child which came not through any human power or planning or effort, but solely by the power of God.

These things are a parable. The bondwoman and the seed of the bondwoman represent those who seek to obtain salvation by their own works. So the Jews did of old. And Jerusalem represented her who was in bondage with her children. It was utterly impossible for man to win salvation of himself—that must be by faith, and not of human works. Consequently those who thus endeavored to control the church or people of God will be cast out. The Lord will have only the children of promise for a seed. The Jewish church might have become the children of promise. All of them might have accepted Christ at His first advent. Had they done so, they would have done just what Abraham did in passing from his own plans to the simple, absolute faith in God. They would have done just as Jacob did when he gave up all of his planning and rested solely on the arm of God. The Jews would not do that, and consequently they were cast out, and the Lord’s people have been His people by faith.

111 — Creating Evil

Kindly explain Isa. 45:7. In what sense does God create evil? H. S. P.

“Evil” is not used, in this scripture, in the sense of sin or wickedness. The prophecy, it will be seen, has reference to Cyrus and God’s use of Cyrus for His people. The Persians worshiped the god of light and the god of darkness. They believed that there was one god that ruled the light, and another god that ruled the darkness, and that these were at continual war with each other; that from one god, the god of light, came peace, and from the god of darkness came all the evil upon the world. The Lord would have Cyrus and all others understand that the light and the darkness are sent by Him, and that the judgments which come upon the world, that may be called evil, also come from Him,—either through direct sending or by permission. If there is an earthquake, the Lord permits it to come. If mighty storms sweep over sea and land, bearing destruction in their train, the Lord has Himself permitted it, in order that men may learn that sin has perverted even the physical laws of the universe. “Evil” is simply used in the sense of judgment, and God sends both upon the earth, but He does not create sin or wickedness.