Question Corner by Milton C. Wilcox

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 9, 1915

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 Name and address must be given, not for publication, but as evidence of good faith and to insure reply by letter if thought best.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

85 — PROBATION’S CLOSE AND THE LORD’S COMING

“Will you please give the time between the close of probation and when our Lord comes? I have understood that it was a year, but what is the Bible proof concerning it?” M. T. W.

The time is generally held to be one year, from these facts:

First, probation closes before the Lord comes. In other words, the great day of salvation ends and the day of God’s wrath begins,—sometimes called “the great day of the Lord.” See the earnest appeal in Zeph. 2: 1-3, in which he exhorts God’s children to “seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought His judgment,” “before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord come upon you, before the day of the Lord’s anger come upon you;” from which we learn that the passing of the day of salvation, which is now—“behold, now is the day of salvation”—and the beginning of the great day of God’s wrath, will be marked by decree.

This decree is set forth in Rev. 22: 11: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.”

Second, this decree is not an arbitrary decree that cuts souls off from seeking God or returning to Him. It simply declares that that time has passed when souls will seek God, when God has done everything in His power to win them, and they have turned from Him.

Third, the wrath of God is manifest in the pouring out of the plagues. In other words, the great day of the Lord begins in the pouring out of the plagues, for “in them is filled up the wrath of God.” Rev. 15: 1.

Fourth, the pouring out of these plagues, or the setting in operation of the agencies of God’s wrath, is accomplished in one prophetic day. Rev. 18: 8 declares, “Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire.” The day, being a prophetic day, would represent one year. This seems to be the thought of Isa. 34: 8, where the same period is mentioned: “For it is the day of the Lord’s vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion.”

At the close of that year of wrath upon the nations of the world, the Lord comes. Those who are not destroyed under the plagues will be destroyed by the glorious presence of Christ. Rev. 9: 21; 2 Thess. 2: 8.

86 — BAPTIZED FOR THE DEAD

Will you please explain 1 Cor. 15: 29? What does it mean? J. W. C.

The middle part of the twenty-ninth verse holds the key to its solution—“If the dead rise not.” Baptism is a setting forth of the great facts of the gospel, and these great facts are that Jesus died for our sins, that He was buried, that He arose again the third day. 1 Cor. 15: 1-4. These same facts are set forth in baptism. “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection: knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” Rom. 6: 3-6.

Those who are baptized, are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ; and if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him; but if there be no resurrection, of what account is it that we should be baptized into His death or for the dead? The “dead” of the text, it seems to us, is Christ Jesus, and we dying with Him. In reference to His death we are baptized. Through Him too we are raised from death—our only hope.

87 — ZEPH. 3: 8, 9

Please explain Zeph. 3: 8, 9. A. L. B.

The prophecy of Zephaniah is a double prophecy. There are judgments pronounced against God’s children of old and the land that they occupied. And these judgments were typical of the great day of Judgment—that day of the Lord against Palestine was a type of the great day of the Lord.

Chapter 3 of Zephaniah opens with a prophecy against Jerusalem. She is called “filthy” and “polluted,” “the oppressing city.” And the Lord’s destruction of that city was typical of the destruction that would be visited upon all the nations, as indicated in the eighth verse, when He should “gather the nations,” and would pour out upon them His indignation, even all His fierce anger, “for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of My jealousy.”

But not all the people would be destroyed, for God would save His own; and of that people He says, “Then will I turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of Jehovah, to serve Him with one consent.” The “pure language” is sometimes said to have reference to one particular tongue or language of earth, but what is evidently meant is that it will not be a deceptive tongue with which God’s children will serve Him. The language will express the heart, and the pure language will mean that behind it is the pure heart, just as it is later said in the same chapter, “The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies; neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth.”