Question Corner

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 25, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 33.

[To Our Inquirers.— (1) The name and address of all who ask questions must accompany questions, not necessarily for publication, in token of good faith, and that we may reply by letter if thought best. All communications will be considered confidential if so desired, and no name will be published unless requested. But we have no time to give to anonymous or unsigned epistles or articles. (2) Let the questions be to the point. Do not say, “Explain Josh. 7:1-8,” but state the thing upon which help is desired. (3) Questions can not be answered immediately in this department. Sometimes it will mean a month or more of waiting. We can not reply to the same question frequently. Read answers to other questions; you may find reply to yours. (4) Members of the Bible Band will kindly enclose stamp if answer is desired by letter. Others will please enclose ten cents. This does not begin to meet expenses oftentimes. (5) “Foolish . . . questions avoid.”]

2917.— Previous to the Law of Constantine.

Did the people of Rome at large keep the seventh-day Sabbath from the resurrection to the going forth of Constantine’s law setting forth Sunday as the Sabbath? How is the 321-years intervention between the resurrection of Christ and Constantine’s law explained away, or is it a part of the lost time question? A. L. B.

Christians in general kept the Sabbath day away down to the fifth and sixth centuries after Christ. Their first apostasy was the keeping of the two days together. Such the church was doing in the fourth century when the Abyssinians were converted, and the Abyssinians regard both days to the present time. Constantine’s law did not set up Sunday as the Sabbath. It made no reference to the Sabbath whatever. Constantine was not a Christian but a heathen when his mandate was given. It simply declared that Sunday ought to be kept. It helped to strengthen those who were endeavoring to introduce Sunday as a religious day, and helped in legislation. But at the same time nearly all the people kept the Sabbath, although apostasy was doing all that it could to wean people away from it. And yet no other than the seventh day was called the Sabbath for a thousand years after Christ, and there have been true Sabbath-keepers throughout all the ages. When men began to keep the first day, it was not kept at all as the Sabbath, and Constantine’s decree shows that men worked upon that day.

2918.— Why Proclaim the Lord’s Message?

If those who are living according to their best light and yet do not keep the Sabbath of the Decalogue, will not be condemned by the law, why should the great threefold message of Revelation 14 be proclaimed? Why call them out of their saved condition if they are saved and still keep the Sabbath not enjoined of the Lord; and what about the time from sunset to 12 o’clock? A. L. B.

Let this one great truth be settled forever, as God Himself has settled it: “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him.” God wants the perfect heart. That is the very first essential in all true Christian living—a heart that is washed clean by the blood of Christ. Then begins the work of enlightenment. Step by step, little by little, God gives His lessons, daily, hourly, weekly, yearly. The Sabbath is not the only thing there is in God’s word. There are other things that we are to learn as well as that. A great part of the Christian world has lost sight of the Sabbath through the great apostasy.

When the Reformers found again the great truth which most of the world had lost, “The just shall live by faith,” God accepted and blessed them, but that was not all. He gave more and more light; and in His great purpose in the last great reformation, all of His light is to come forth from His treasure-house; all the down-trodden truths are to be restored; all the breaches made in His law by apostasy are to be repaired. This does not mean that God condemns those who have not seen the light, and who are living according to all the light they have, but in His plan He wishes to reveal to His children all His light. He will not come until His entire Holy law has been vindicated, until He has set before all the world that plan which would unite all discordant elements in Christianity and make them one, even as Jesus prayed. Therefore, at this time the prophet sees “multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision.”

The light-lovers will follow the light; the light-haters will turn from the light, but the determination as to who is a lover of light or a hater of light rests with God. We may not take our place upon the judgment-seat and decide that this man is saved, or that one is lost. It is our business to follow the light wherever it may lead. It is our business to teach the light to others so that they may have the privilege of following the light; but the ultimate judgment of character rests with Him whose the light is.

Saying that one will be saved who follows the light even tho he may not be keeping all of God’s commandments according to His word, is an entirely different thing from saying that we should not enlighten that soul. God has given us His message to give to the world; that message restores His down-trodden truth, including the Sabbath. See Isa. 58:12, 13. It includes the Sabbath as God gave it, from sunset to sunset. In the light of that message men will see how Sunday is a usurper; how it has within it no intrinsic worth; that it is contrary to God’s law and plan. Yet God in His goodness waits, suffers long, and is merciful; but when probation is closed and God’s message is finished, all those who do not have on Christ’s righteousness and who have not yielded to the light will, according to His word, be cast out.

2919.— Sabbath Observance.

Referring to John 5:9-17 and Luke 6:2-4, had it not been lawful before this to heal the sick? Where is the incident regarding David and the showbread? F. J. S.

When the Jews said to the healed man: “It is the Sabbath day; it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed,” and to Jesus: “Why do ye that which is not lawful to do on the Sabbath days?” they did not have reference to the Decalogue, but to their interpretations of the Decalogue. Or, to put it in other words, their criticism did not apply to the Decalogue, but to their traditions respecting the Decalogue. When the Jewish nation went into idolatry previous to the Babylonian captivity, they gave very little regard to the Sabbath, as shown by Ezekiel 20.

In the restoration from the Babylonian captivity, the Sabbath was strongly emphasized, and a decided reform took place upon it, as we learn from the last chapter of Nehemiah. The Jews, however, failed to learn the true lesson of Sabbath-keeping. Instead of making it a day of spiritual blessing, they made it a day of hard, burdensome observance. They piled up their traditions regarding it. They copied out precepts of the rabbis as tho those precepts were divine, until the day which God gave as a blessing for man became an awful burden and really a curse instead of a blessing. Jesus came to correct this, and He tells us emphatically in Matt. 12:12: “It is lawful to do well on the Sabbath day.” He was not breaking the Sabbath law, He was simply transgressing some of the foolish traditions of the Jews.

David’s eating of the showbread is recorded in 1 Sam. 21:1-6. The Jews excused this unlawful act because necessity demanded it. Surely they ought to have excused Jesus in the healing of poor, suffering humanity.

2920.— The Word “Quicken.”

Does the word “quicken” in both Rom. 8:15 and Ps. 71:20 refer to the future and embrace the resurrection and translation, as the tense indicates? H. M. L.

Romans 8:11 is evidently the verse intended, as “quicken” does not occur in verse 15. The Greek word is the same in Rom. 8:11 as in the Septuagint in Ps. 71:20. It seems certainly to include the resurrection in Ps. 71:20, and yet it may refer also to this life. God who had shown His children “many and sore troubles,” was bringing them down into the very pit of despair, and He would quicken them again and bring them up again from the depths of the earth and increase their greatness.

Certainly the passage in Romans has reference not only to this life, but also to the life to come; not only will God raise up our mortal bodies, but He gives life also in this world to our mortal bodies through “His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” That will be the earnest of the life which is to come. God wants to give just as many of His blessings now as it is possible for His children to receive.

2921.— Fools and Fools.

Please explain Prov. 26:4, 5. F. A. A.

The text is not a difficult one, if one will stop to think over it. “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.” That is, do not answer in his foolish way. If he speaks to you foolishly, do not reply foolishly. Do not be like him in any way. “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit,” is to show him his mistake and teach him the better way. One writer well remarks: “To answer a fool according to his folly, in verse 4, is to bandy words with him, to descend to his level of coarse anger and vile abuse, and in verse 5 it is to say the right word at the right time, to expose his folly and untruth to others, and even, it may be, to himself.” This is best done not by teaching beyond his reach, but by words that he is just able to comprehend.