Question Corner by Milton C. Wilcox

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 20, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 28.

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 Name and address must be given, not for publication, but as evidence of good faith and to insure reply by letter if thought best.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

152 — The Law and the Prophets

Please give the meaning of the following through the Question Corner of your paper: Luke 16: 16, first part, and Matt. 11: 11.

J. H.

The passage in Luke should include the whole verse if you wish to get a proper understanding of this. “The law and the prophets were until John; since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.”

It does not mean that the law and the prophets lasted only until John; because many prophecies of the Old Testament are not yet fulfilled, and some of them reach forward to the new earth and the eternal state of God’s children. But up to the time of John, the preaching of God’s servants had to do with the law and the prophets. They had no light beyond that. But when John came, he preached the kingdom of God. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” was the burden of his message. Christ, the royal Majesty of heaven, had approached.

To say that the law ceased at the time of John, is to leave the world without any detector of sin at all. Usually the same ones who try to do away with the law when John began preaching, also tell us that it was nailed to the cross. But John began preaching about four years before Jesus died upon the cross. Certainly a law that was operating during that time, did not expire when John began his message. Our Saviour Himself showed that the law had not expired, in Matt. 5: 17, 18, by declaring that it was binding in every jot and tittle; and the next verse in Luke declares, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.”

In Matt. 11: 3 we have a question that John the Baptist asked Jesus: “Art Thou He that should come, or do we look for another?” In prison, suffering what he did, hearing nothing as to how the work of Jesus was progressing, John evidently had become discouraged. He had almost come to doubt; and to settle this question in his own mind, he sends to Jesus, to whom God had borne witness when John baptized Him. Our Lord answers John’s question by the miracles which He there wrought. John was the forerunner of Jesus. Jesus was the One who came not to restore a broken law, not to do away with that law, but to restore men’s hearts, so that they would find the greatest joy in being in harmony with that law and living it in character. God’s holy law does not depend upon the whims or changeable ideas of men. It is as eternal as His character.

153 — “A Ruinous Heap”

In Isa. 17: 1, it is stated that Damascus shall be “a ruinous heap”; but I understand that Damascus is yet inhabited and quite flourishing. Was this prediction fulfilled in the past, or does it only point to the future?

A. K.

Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the world. Its origin is not even known. Some have ascribed it to Abraham and to his steward Eliezer of Damascus; but the record in Gen. 14: 15 simply shows that Damascus existed then. It has passed through a great many vicissitudes, and in some of them it has been utterly subverted, and practically left in the condition the prophecy intimates—“a ruinous heap.” But it has been built again, and it is, as stated, a fairly prosperous town at the present time. It was at one time the capital of the whole Moslem world, until the caliphate was removed from it to Bagdad.

Of course the prophecy will be again fulfilled in a fuller sense when Damascus will be utterly destroyed. However, the passage in Isaiah does not forbid the rebuilding of the city—simply foretells the subversion of the Assyrian empire for a while.