p. 2 | Question Corner

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 20, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 20.

Question Corner

“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 them 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 The name and address must accompany question, not for publication, but as an evidence of good faith, and that answer may be made by letter if deemed advisable.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.

4074 — The Genealogy of Our Lord

Why the difference in the genealogy of Christ as given by Matthew and Luke? Is it true that one is tracing the lineage of Joseph and the other of Mary?

F. F. P.

This would clearly seem to be the case. In Matthew 1 the genealogy is traced through the royal family; and as that came through the male, it is the genealogy of Joseph, for Jesus was the legal son of Joseph, and therefore the heir of the throne. We have also the tracing to Abraham, because the promises came through Abraham. Note how the two are connected in the first verse,—“The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham;” and then from Abraham we have the reigning house traced through David to Joseph. But in Luke there is a different purpose. Here we have the genealogy of Jesus traced not as the son of Abraham, or the heir to the throne of David, but as the son of Adam, the son of man, traced back to Adam, “the son of God;” and here, too, Joseph is named simply because he is the male member of the house. Heli is supposed to be the mother of Mary; and Joseph, as the husband of Mary, was counted the son of Heli. This certainly shows harmony, and we know nothing against the view.

4075 — God's Anger

I am an infidel, but I take the “Signs” in order to read both sides of the question. I believe the “Signs of the Times” to be the most consistent Christian paper published in the West, but I do not believe the Bible. It seems to me that the God of the Bible is given to anger and revenge and crimes, much like the rest of us, and that He was “no better than the people who created Him.” He was so angry at the Israelites that He wanted to destroy them, but was influenced by the petitions of Moses, and repented of the wrong He had intended to do. A. E. F.

There are some things in the Bible which are hard to understand. We were once where our inquirer seems to be to-day; but we have learned, in the reading of that Word, that God's anger is not man's anger, and God's wrath is not man's wrath. He has revealed His will to us through the very best channels that were at His disposal always. Sometimes the instrument has been an unworthy instrument. Human instruments are, at the very best. Some of the soft, sweet tunes and lullabies that our mothers sang would not sound so sweet to us if they were sung in some harsh voice, or played on a bagpipe, but they would be the same tunes and the same message still; and when the Word expresses the feelings, or sentiments—if we may use that term—of God, it must use the language in which human people think, and that language is not capable of expressing the divine things in their fullest sense and beauty. There are African tribes which have been discovered, having twenty words for murder and none for love.

Truly, God had cause to be justly angry with the Israelites; but in the instance to which our inquirer refers, was it not, after all, a test with Moses? A large number of people who had been in the depths of Egyptian idolatry were to be carried through to a promised land, the inhabitants of which had been given up wholly to the lowest and basest kind of wickedness. They needed a shepherd, one infinitely tender, and God chose Moses. He was not only educating and instructing a people, but He was developing a character which would be an inspiration and instruction to all the world from that time forward, namely, Moses. He was testing Moses.

Let us read these expressions in the light of stronger, clearer expressions of God's character, such as “His mercy endureth forever;” “I have loved thee with an everlasting love:” “As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; . . . turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” This must be a striking thought to our correspondent, as it has been to others,—that notwithstanding the fact that Israel itself has been condemned repeatedly in the Scriptures, they have preserved the Scriptures which condemned them; which shows very clearly that they did not create in their own minds, or by their own theories, the God of the Bible, but that He was, considered in every way, above and beyond them. And thus does He always reveal Himself in that word as the one God, having, of course, all the faculties of infinite perfection, which are expressed in fallen humanity in finite imperfection; forced also, in the very nature of the case, to endeavor to express Himself to that humanity through imperfect human channels. Repentance on God's part is a human expression showing God's infinite sorrow because men have turned from Him. It is endeavoring to give the poor, fallible human an idea of the awfulness of sin. At the time of the Deluge, God repented that He had made man. If that had been the end, certainly there was reason for repentance at that time. And so God uses it to mean at that time, as showing how seemingly futile were God's plans and purposes. But out of all the evil, of which there was sorrow of heart on the part of the Infinite at the time, God will bring eternal and future good. While sorrowing for the sins of men, He does not change His plan. That is eternal. He does not repent or regret the standard of character that He demands of the world, does not regret the sacrifice which Heaven made to win men back, does not regret the lavish gifts which Heaven has poured out to win man to Himself,—“the gifts and calling of God are without repentance,”—but His sorrow of heart is because of the persistency of man in sin.

Let us make this suggestion to our infidel brother. Take God's word and read it from the beginning. The things that you do not believe, pass by; the things that you do believe, mark. Read, as far as possible, without prejudice. Read with a desire to know just what the Book itself teaches. Read as a mortal being longing for a Saviour from death, a sinful being longing for a Saviour from sin, as one who sees the injustice of this world longing for a world in which justice is done. Ask, as you read, if the plan and the conception of that plan in its general whole is not reasonable. Was it not a proper way, in starting mankind upon the earth, to have them all spring from one family? After man had sinned, and God's plan itself seemed thwarted, could any more be done than God did do in giving the choicest Gift of heaven to save men, not in sin, but from sin?

These are only crudely suggested questions. Let us ask our doubting reader again to mark the passages which seem good and wise and right and reasonable, and leave the others for a time. Search the Word for the good that is in it, rather than for the seemingly bad or obscure that is in it; and let us hear from you again.

4076 — Was Jesus a Mason?

There are some who tell me that Jesus was a Mason, and they think they can prove it. I. O.

We do not know any better words to prove that our Lord was not a Mason, and belonged to no secret society, than His own words. In the very nature of the case, our Lord would give special instruction to His disciples. He could not educate the great mass, but He could educate a few. He instructed them in the great things of the kingdom of God. But He did not do this in order that they might keep it among themselves, to form some secret society in which His instruction should be sealed. This is His instruction to His disciples: “What I tell you in the darkness, speak ye in the light; and what ye hear in the ear, proclaim upon the housetops.” Again, when He was arraigned before the Sanhedrin, the high priest asked Him of His teaching, and Jesus answered him: “I have spoken openly to the world; I ever taught in synagogues, and in the temple, where all the Jews come together; and in secret spake I nothing.” John 18:20. Certainly this seems to be very clear.

Regarding the question of our Lord's whereabouts between the ages of twelve and thirty, we would say that God has given us all that is necessary concerning that, as to both whereabouts and conduct, in Luke 2:51, 52: “And He went down with them [that is, His parents], and came to Nazareth; and He was subject unto them: and His mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” He was not serving as priest or prophet at this time. He was simply living the life which was to prepare Him for future service, and that life was a life of righteousness before God, and of proper submission to parental authority,—just the kind of life that every youth ought to lead. That is all that it is necessary for us to know. That He did not go away to India, or some of the mystic centers of the world, is clearly evident from the simple record that is given.

Regarding the further question asked, “Did not Christ become our Advocate, our Saviour, until 1844?” Jesus has been our Advocate all the way through. In a special sense, of course, He entered upon the judgment work in 1844, which did not begin until that time; but during all the past He has been our Advocate. He has been our High Priest from the time that He entered into heaven immediately after His death. When He died, all sacrifices ceased.

4077 — Like God

Did not man become more like God after he had sinned?

A. B. M.

Surely not. He was made in God's likeness in the beginning. This we are expressly told. Satan told him that if he would partake of the forbidden fruit he would become like God, and that is one of the baleful lies which Satan made the race believe in the beginning, and has led them to believe more or less all the way through; and one of the attributes of Deity which they are claiming on account of that is immortality. He was told that he would know good and evil. Of course he did learn it by sad, fearful experience. God wanted him to learn the difference between good and evil from His own word. Satan wanted him to learn it in experience, and so become evil; and man learned the evil and failed of the good. Otherwise he would have learned the experience of the good, and known of the evil by what God said. Man only becomes like God now by being converted to Him through our Lord Jesus Christ.