Question Corner

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 16, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 36.

“IF YE WILL INQUIRE, INQUIRE YE.”

This Inquirer's Department is conducted for the purpose of helping those who are studying the Bible. The answers are oftentimes only suggestive. They are never to be considered infallible, only as they agree with the infallible Word. The writer who may answer these questions does not consider that his opinion is infallible. He will simply give the best that he has, and plead with the inquirer to search the Word. Such questions only will be answered as, to the editors, seem to minister to the good of the readers and to the mission of the paper. We can not answer repeatedly in the same volume questions upon the same scripture. The name and address must accompany question, not for publication, but as an evidence of good faith, and that answer may be made by letter if deemed advisable. No letters are answered which do not contain the name of the writer. It is well always to enclose stamp for reply.

4177 — What Became of Mary the Mother of Our Lord?

At the time of the Saviour's death, He turned His mother over to His beloved disciple's care. I take it by that that her husband Joseph was dead. Was her husband Joseph the son of Jacob, who was sold into Egypt? I have been told that she was taken up to heaven after she died, and is with Jesus pleading with those who are passing through purgatory. E.

First, this Joseph and the Jacob referred to in the New Testament in Matt. 1:15, 16, are not the Jacob and Joseph of Genesis. That Jacob lived 1,750 years before Christ. Jacob and Joseph were common names among the Jews. Joseph the husband of Mary was simply a son of one who was named Jacob. Names ran through families then the same as now.

Yes, in all probability Joseph was dead when Jesus died upon the cross. The fact that He commended her to John intimated that she had no other support. We have no record whatever of her death or end. In all probability she died the same as other women die. She was not immortal. There is nothing in the teaching of the Bible to indicate that she was. In fact, the Bible very clearly states that man is mortal, and that God “only hath immortality.” The traditional teaching of the immortality of the soul, that there is something in man that survives the body and that lives on after the body is dead, is all based on that first falsehood of Satan (Gen. 3:4), “Ye shall not surely die.” If this Bible truth were accepted, there would be no teaching of purgatory nor ever-burning hell.

Mary was the honored medium through which our Lord was brought into the world and became a partaker of human flesh, but nowhere in God's word is there any intimation that she was made God. Jesus Himself distinctly says in Mark 3:31-35, on a certain occasion when some came to Him and said that His mother stood without desiring to speak with Him, “Who is My mother and My brethren? And looking round on them that sat round about Him, He saith, Behold, My mother and My brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother.” A knowledge of the truth of the Bible does away forever with purgatory, invocation of the saints, and the worship of Mary. There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man—the Man Jesus Christ.

4178 — Silence in the Churches

Will you kindly explain 1 Cor. 14:34, 35? I always thought that this meant to speak with authority, but this verse seems to contradict this. W. H. B.

If we understood all the various customs of the days of the apostle Paul, some of these scriptures would not trouble us. The very context itself would seem to indicate that there was a great deal of disorder in the church at Corinth. Every one had a tongue, and every one had a doctrine, and every one had a revelation, and there was more or less confusion, of which the apostle tells them that God is not the author. Some of their women seemed to be doing as did those devoted to heathen worship. The apostle certainly did not mean that they should not testify of Christ, or should not speak to His praise. Some of the women associated with him in his labors, and whom he mentions in the 16th chapter of Romans, were women who labored in the Lord. We read in Acts, the 21st chapter, the 9th verse, that Philip the evangelist “had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy;” that is, they taught for God. The great object of the apostle seems to have been to correct the disorders that had sprung up in the Corinthian church. “Let your women keep silence in the churches.”

Another meaning, however, is given to the scripture by some critics, and it is not unreasonable; namely, that verses 34 and 35 are the language of the objector. It is the objector that says, “Let your women keep silence,”—do not permit them to speak; let them learn at home; and so on. And Paul's response to this is in verse 36, “What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?” And then what should they do? Verse 39: “Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues.” But “let all things be done decently and in order.” This last supposition certainly is not unreasonable.

4179 — Clean and Unclean Fowls

Is it correct to classify all the unclean fowls as those that do not have gizzards, and the clean as those that do have gizzards? I have heard this stated by those who claim to know. Will it always work? O. F. F.

We do not know. We have no authority as to the facts in the case. It might be well to follow out the study and so learn. The “Bible Companion” on Leviticus 11, regarding the unclean fowls, says: “No general rule is given for the distinction between clean and unclean birds, but there is a list of nearly twenty which are prohibited, nothing being said of those which might be eaten. It will be seen that as far as they can be identified, the birds here mentioned are such as live upon animal food. The ‘Mishna’ [a Jewish work] lays it down as a rule that every bird is unclean which strikes its talons into its prey. It quotes one authority which puts into the same class every bird which divides its toes equally in climbing, like the parrot and woodpecker. The distinction between birds in the Moslem law seems similarly to hinge upon their food.” In a further note, the same commentary says: “Many have considered that the prohibition of the unclean animals was based mainly or entirely upon sanitary grounds, their flesh being regarded as unwholesome.” “The instinct of our own nature points in the same direction. Every one dislikes the snake and the toad; no one likes the form and habits of the pig; we shrink from the notion of eating the flesh of the hyena or the vulture. When we are told of our fellow creatures eating slugs, snails, and earthworms, and accounting the grubs found in rotten wood a peculiar delicacy, the feeling of disgust which arises within us would not seem to be the offspring of mere conventional refinement. This conclusion is not invalidated by the fact that our own repugnant feelings have been subdued in the case of the oyster and the pig.”

The “Bible Companion” has this pertinent note: “Food plays a chief part in health and sickness. It is our wisdom to obey these laws now as far as possible. All are based on the preservation and health of the race, some for sanitary reasons, some from peculiarities of climate, some for separating from other peoples.”

4180 — Voting

Is voting a sacred or a civil right? C.

Voting is not necessarily a right at all. It is that which is given by a civic organization—state, county, or municipality—to classes of citizens that are considered to be worthy of it. Of course if a man is a constituent of any body or organization, contributing to the success of that organization, etc., etc., as a simple right he ought to have a voice in it the same as any one else. In that case, it would be a sacred right in the sense of being that which belonged to him as a matter of justice. But that is not so considered as regards voting in a republic like the United States, for instance. It is presumed that the laws themselves will protect every man equally, and therefore it is not regarded as so important that absolutely every person should have a voice in the matter of lawmaking and election of government officials. However, there is coming to be more and more a sentiment that it ought to go to all of full age who are not foreigners, idiots, insane, or who do not belong to some alien, unassimilable races.

4181 — What Was in the Ark?

I have noticed several times, in your paper, that there was nothing in the ark but the book of the law. Please harmonize with Ex. 16:33; 25:16, 21; Heb. 9:4. Your statement agrees with 1 Kings 8:9. L. J. R.

Ex. 16:33 is simply God's instruction to take some of the manna and lay it up before Jehovah. Verse 34 declares that as the Lord commanded Moses, so he did—he laid it up before the testimony. The testimony, of course, was the ark, and what was in it; not “within” it, but “before” it. Chapter 25:16 simply declares that “thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee”—that is, the tables of stone. Verse 21, the same thing: “And thou shalt put the mercy-seat above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee.” As before stated, that testimony was the tables of stone, those which testified for God. “And He gave unto Moses, when He had made an end of communing with him upon Mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.” Ex. 31:18.

As our correspondent intimates, 1 Kings 8:9 agrees with this. There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb when Jehovah made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt.

Referring to Heb. 9:4, there is a seeming contradiction; but may not the “wherein” refer to the holy of holies? “After the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the holy of holies; having a golden altar of incense, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein [that is, in the holy of holies] was a golden pot holding the manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant.” So it is understood by some. Others have thought that they were placed by the side of the ark, or in a pocket at the side of the ark, but not directly within the ark under the mercy-seat itself. And that would be in perfect harmony with what the Lord directed Moses in the 16th chapter of Exodus, to place the manna “before” the testimony, not within upon it. When Moses set up the tabernacle according to the instructions given of God, as recorded in Ex. 40:20, it is said, “And he took and put the testimony into the ark, and set the staves on the ark, and put the mercy-seat above upon the ark.” Nothing whatever is said of his putting anything else in the ark, but we do have a command concerning the book of the law: “Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee.” This, it would seem, is all that is meant by Heb. 9:4. There may have been made a pocket, or something of that sort, in connection with the ark, where these things were kept.