Question Corner by Milton C. Wilcox

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 11, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 19.

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 Name and address must be given, not for publication, but as evidence of good faith and to insure reply by letter if thought best.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.

120—DEGREES OF SIN

Does the Bible recognize any degree of sin? For example, is the man who wantonly takes human life considered any greater sinner than the one who takes advantage of another in a business transaction, or takes what does not belong to him in any way? Also will he receive any greater punishment? M. E. D.

Surely there are degrees in sin. These things are expressed over and over and over in the Scripture. Take the first psalm for instance, which is so often quoted: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.” We have three different classes of sinners named there. The “ungodly” may be those who simply do not know God; the “sinners” are those who are knowingly transgressing His law; but the “scornful” are those who really set themselves against God and scorn His service. Take for instance the thirty-sixth chapter of 2 Chronicles, where the Lord points out the wickedness of Israel. He had forgiven them again and again; but they had gone on to greater and still greater wickedness, until there was no remedy for their sin. The heart becomes hardened by continual sinning; and the soul that merely dislikes a fellow being at first, may soon hate him; and after hatred, comes murder. A man might steal—his bodily necessities might require it, in his mind. The next time, it would be easier for him to take something, even if it were not required. So he would go on, and add sin to sin; and by and by, in order that he might get what he desired, it might be necessary to take life. This is the way some of the criminals develop. And every man shall be judged according to the deeds done in the body. Of course the ultimate of all is death, for death is the wages of sin. See Luke 12:47: “And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.”

121—THE SINNER A HUNDRED YEARS OLD

Will you please explain, in the Question Corner, Isa. 65:20? Does not this passage refer to the New Jerusalem? If so, what is meant by “the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed”? Will there be any death in the new earth? If not, what is meant by the child dying a hundred years old? J. A. S.

First of all, this is one of the difficult passages that we find in double and treble prophecies of the Old Testament—prophecies that seem to us, when we look at them as a whole, badly mixed; but when we come to their fulfillment, they are very clear indeed. Take, for instance, some of the prophecies in Isaiah concerning our Lord. They are so mingled with prophecies pertaining to local events, that they seem anything but clear; yet in the light of the fulfillment at the first advent, how clear, and strong they shine out!

Isa. 65:17-25 is a prophecy of what God would do for His people if they were only faithful to Him. It includes some of the promises to Jerusalem at that time, and the more glorious promises of what will be given in the new heaven and in the new earth. But His people had to pass through the preparatory stage before they could inherit the holy city. The judgment would have to be decided upon the wicked, and the righteous gathered out from among them. The seventeenth verse is the promise of the new heavens and the new earth; and those who inhabit that will not remember nor will they lay upon their heart the former things. When they are thus gathered home, God will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in His people; and the voice of weeping shall be heard no more, nor the voice of crying. And this is in perfect harmony with the last two chapters of the Revelation. Consequently there can be no death there, because there is no mourning nor crying.

Therefore, in that renewed promised land, “there shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days.” All the things mentioned in verse 20 shall precede the new heavens and the new earth. “The child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed.” This is thought by many to have reference to that “little season” which will occur after the wicked are raised from the dead and are deceived by Satan. See Rev. 20:7-10. During that time, the devil will gather from the immense number of the wicked a great army, and seek to possess the city of God. There will be raised from the dead at that time those who had died in childhood, who had just passed the age of accountability, who had not given themselves to God. The Lord suffers them to live in the very presence of His own glory, to show that His judgment upon them has been just, that they merit the punishment of death which will be visited upon all those who are identified with sin. Consequently the child shall live during this period, and then die; and the sinner also, of whatever age he may be, who shall live during this period, shall die accursed. All this will occur before the saints of God enter upon the new heavens and the new earth. When they do that, at the end of the thousand years, after the purification of this earth by fire, and its renewing by the creative fiat of God, then shall they build houses and inhabit them, and plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not do as they formerly have done—build and another inhabit, plant and another eat; for as the days of a tree—the tree of life—are the days of God’s people.

This, it seems to us, is the teaching of the passage; and the rest of the chapter states, in language just as strong as could be used to them who lived in those days, that there should be nothing in that new earth such as they knew in this earth in the way of dangers, trial, sorrow, misery, and hatred.

122—NAMES IN THE BOOK OF LIFE

Were all the dwellers on the earth once in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, or only those who are overcomers? If not, what is the cause of the blotting out? H. L. N.

The names in the book of life from the beginning are the names of characters. The only worth there is about any person is character. Beauty and stature and accomplishments are all worthless in God’s sight without character. When Samuel the prophet looked upon the oldest son of Jesse, he said, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is before Him”; but the Lord said to the prophet, “Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature.” Then He declared a truth which we ought always to remember, that “man looketh on the outward appearance, but Jehovah looketh on the heart.” Consequently, those names written in the book of life from before the foundation of the world were the names of those characters which shall be in God’s kingdom to all eternity.

When men are born into this world, they are called to one of those characters. If they accept that call, their own names are written in the book of life; that is, on their conversion. So Jesus says to His disciples, in Luke 10:20, “Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” The apostle Paul writes to the Philippians, “I entreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow laborers, whose names are in the book of life.” Phil. 4:3. The conclusion is, then, that when people are converted, their names are written in the book of life, and they are written there as candidates for that character which is expressed in the name that will never be blotted out of God’s book. Now if the individual is faithful to God, God will lead that individual in just that experience which will spell out, so to speak, during that individual’s probation, that name which has been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life; but if that person proves faithless, his own name will be blotted out of the book of life, and some one else will be called to that same character, and the same crown, for with each name there goes a crown. And therefore we read in Rev. 3:11: “Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” The crown, of course, belongs to the overcomer. And the name written in the Lamb’s book of life belongs to the overcomer. That will be the overcomer’s new name, “which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.” Rev. 2:17. No man will know it, because no man has ever had the experience that the name means. It will be the secret between the individual soul and his Lord throughout eternity. There are other passages that confirm the same thing.

This is the work which God has been doing from the beginning, and will carry on until the last soul is gathered in. The last name in the book of life will be given to some human character. There will not be one wanting in that glorious kingdom of God. Fuller development of this thought can be found in Bible Students’ Library, No. 67, entitled “Bible Election.”

123—THE SABBATH BEFORE MOSES

Please give proof that the Sabbath was given before the law of Moses. L. K.

First of all, we have the record in Genesis, the record of the making of this earth in six days; and immediately after that, without any break whatever in the connection, is the making of the Sabbath by God’s rest, God’s blessing, God’s sanctification. Gen. 2:2, 3. We have no more right to say that that pertains to a later date than to say that the creation of man pertains to a later date.

One of the greatest of commentaries, Lang’s, declares that language itself is utterly unmeaning if it is not understood that God at that time gave a command concerning the Sabbath. The very words imply it. There could be no sanctification without that. See the use of the same expression in the setting apart of Mount Sinai, in the nineteenth chapter of Exodus. See the same thing in Joel 2:16, “Gather the people, sanctify the assembly.” In other words, “Proclaim it.” So the word is used in various places in the Old Testament. “Sanctify” means to set apart, separate.

Our Lord tells us the Sabbath was made for man. Mark 2:27. Not the Jew man, nor the man of any one particular tribe. The term is generic—the man, the race. The Sabbath is therefore coeval with the race.

God appointed the very day around which cluster the great facts of creation, in order that man might remember his Creator.

Secondly, before Israel came to Sinai at all, or before any laws were given through Moses, we have the record of the fall of the manna, in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, and in that chapter there is no mention of a new institution, but of the Sabbath of the Lord. In fact, we have a reference to it in Ex. 5:5, where Pharaoh charged Moses that he made the people rest from their burdens—sabbatize from their burdens. But as Pharaoh would not permit the Israelites to keep the Sabbath in Egypt, the Lord led them out of Egypt with mighty power; and one of the first tests which He imposed upon them was the Sabbath, to see whether they would keep His law or not. Ex. 16:4. And when some of them went out to gather manna on the Sabbath, the Lord reproves them by saying:

“Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, in it there shall be none. And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep My commandments and My laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore He giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day.” Ex. 16:26-30.

This is certainly conclusive evidence that the Sabbath was a known institution before Israel came to Sinai or any Mosaic laws were given. In fact, archeology clearly shows that it was known among other nations than Israel.