Question Corner by Milton C. Wilcox

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 16, 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 Name and address must be given, not for publication, but as evidence of good faith and to insure reply by letter if thought best.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 — MATT. 16: 17-19 — ITS APPLICATION

Does this passage refer to the Roman Catholic Church? E. B. T.

No, it does not. The passage reads as follows: “And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

First, the passage refers to Peter’s confession of Jesus. Jesus asked him, “Whom say ye that I am?” Peter reached the very basic fact of man’s salvation when he said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Second, that confession was of Jesus Himself as the foundation of all hope. It was not Peter building upon himself. It was not Peter building upon his own confession. It was nothing whatever of what Peter did that brought the blessing, for even what he said, he did not say of himself. Jesus declares, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven.” Therefore the confession itself, as well as the one confessed, lay entirely outside of human strength or wisdom or perception—all was of God, and all centered in Christ Jesus.

Third, Peter’s confession placed him upon the Rock, he a stone upon the Foundation Stone, and therefore built into the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. A few scriptures upon this will be of help—first, Isa. 28: 16—a prophecy of Christ: “Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.” Again in the eighteenth psalm we read, “For who is God save the Lord? or who is a rock save our God?” Verse 31.

There are many other kindred expressions in the Old Testament. The apostle Paul teaches the same thing. Speaking to the church, he declares, “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone.” Eph. 2: 19, 20. Christ the foundation; those who are built upon Him constitute the church. Again: “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 1 Cor. 3: 11. Surely this ought to be conclusive, “Upon this rock,” said Jesus, “I will build My church.” The apostle declares that that rock is Christ Jesus.

But we have the testimony of Peter himself, and he tells us that Christ is the chief corner stone, “elect, precious,” and that those who build upon Him are “lively stones,” or living stones, forming a “spiritual house, an holy priesthood.” 1 Peter 2: 4-6.

Certainly this is conclusive as regards the foundation and the believer. The foundation is not Peter, therefore. It is Christ. And Peter is a stone built upon that foundation, and forming one of the living stones that constitute the great church of God.

Fourth, the binding and the loosing of souls does not rest in the man, but in his message. Peter, separate from Christ, our Lord called Satan—an adversary. In this very chapter in which the text in question is found, Jesus said to Peter, when Peter possessed wrong principles and was held by them, “Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art an offense unto Me.” But Peter with God’s gospel in his heart and on his lips, became the one who opened the door to both Jews and gentiles in the gospel church. But as before stated, the power to bind and to loose was in the message and not the man. We have an example of this in the experience of the prophet Jeremiah. When God called Jeremiah, He said to him, “See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.” Jer. 1: 10.

No mightier commission was ever given to men than that to Jeremiah; but Jeremiah himself tells us how this was accomplished, namely, by the word of God. For the Lord declares through that Word: “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in My sight, that it obey not My voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.” Jer. 18: 7-10.

So is the message of John the Baptist. The power was not in John because he was of the priestly tribe, but because of the message he bore. And so when the Pharisees sent a committee to ask him who he was, he did not tell them that he was of the tribe of Levi, that his father was an honored priest, but, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.” John 1: 23. He was God’s voice to that generation. And so Jesus declares of him: “And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him.” Luke 7: 29, 30.

Therefore, when Peter on the day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2, bore the message of God to the Jewish nation, it was the Lord speaking through him to bind and to loose. Those who accepted that message were loosed from their sins. Those who rejected it were still held by them—slaves to sin. This was not true of Peter alone. It was true of the other disciples as well. “Whose sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose sins ye retain, they are retained.” John 20: 23.

All these things do not apply to the Roman Catholic Church or to any other church that has departed from the simple principles of God’s truth. They do apply to the true followers of Christ everywhere in whom the Word is living.

86 — WHERE IS HEAVEN?

I have studied the Scripture, and find the word “heaven” mentioned a great many times in the Bible, but I get no light as to where it is. C. R.

There are three heavens mentioned in the Scriptures:

1. The atmospheric heavens, where the birds fly, where the clouds are. Gen. 1: 20.

2. There are the sidereal heavens, where the stars are. Gen. 1: 14, 17.

3. There is also the third heaven, where God dwells. The apostle Paul thus refers to it: “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth); and such an one caught up to the third heaven. How that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” 2 Cor. 12: 2-4. This text teaches us that Paradise and the third heaven are one and the same thing.

From Rev. 2: 7 we learn that “in the midst of the Paradise of God” is the tree of life; and from the twenty-second chapter and the first and second verses, that the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God, is fast by the river of life, which flows from the throne of God.

The third heaven, therefore, is where God dwells, where His throne is, where the tree of life is, where Paradise is. But the throne and the tree and Paradise are in the heavenly Jerusalem—the “Jerusalem which is above,” we read in Gal. 4: 26, “the heavenly Jerusalem” in Heb. 12: 22; and the Jerusalem which shall at last rest on this earth, coming “down out of heaven from God,” in Rev. 3: 12.

Just where in the great sidereal universe this throne of God is we do not know. We may well believe that it is the very center of the universe of God. It is that which balances and ballasts all the great suns and worlds. It is near us in this sense—that God’s agencies can come and go as the flash of lightning; that heavenly angels are continually near to the children of God, and that they also behold the face of the Father who is in heaven. In the words the apostle Paul said to the Athenian philosophers, “He is not far from each one of us.”

God is able to annihilate time and space, so to speak; but just where the great center is, we do not know, nor do we need to know. In all probability we could understand nothing if we were told it, because it is far beyond human comprehension. We do know this, however,—that when our Lord comes, He will take His children to heaven. This is told us in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of John. At the end of the thousand years, the New Jerusalem, with all the saints of God, will descend to this earth, and the renewed earth will be the home of God’s children forever.