Question Corner

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 13, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 19.

“IF YE WILL INQUIRE, INQUIRE YE.”

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 The name and address must accompany question, not for publication, but as an evidence of good faith, and that answer may be made by letter if deemed advisable.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

4067 — Ended His Work, Gen. 2:2

What is meant by “God ended His work which He had made”? Gen. 2:2. Did God do any work on the seventh day? If so, what was the nature of His work? Some claim that God worked part of the seventh day. F. E.

No, God did no part of the literal work of creating the world on that day. The thought of the text is, And God ceased His work,—He did not carry it over into the rest-day with Him. And yet on the other hand, there is a sense in which God worked on that day; that is, He made the Sabbath day on that day. He had His plan of work for that week. Each day He did something, and the seventh day He rested. But His very resting upon that day was to make it a perpetual memorial of His creative work, so it could be said that on the seventh day God made the Sabbath, fitting it forever to be a blessing to man. We may therefore settle that the Lord did not do any material work such as He had done the other six days, but that He did rest upon that day, and so made it a Sabbath day for man.

4068 — The Child and the Sinner, Isa. 65:20

Please explain Isa. 65:20. It seems to be talking of the new earth, but it says, “The child shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed.” It does not seem to correspond with the rest of the chapter. C. A. T.

Note the object of the chapter, the promises in the context. Verse 17 declares that God will create a new heaven and a new earth, and that when they shall inhabit that new earth, the former shall not be remembered, nor come upon the heart. Verse 18 tells them to rejoice because He is going to do that very thing; and verse 19 declares that He will rejoice and joy in His people, and that in Jerusalem there will be no more heard the voice of weeping and the voice of crying, because all these things have gone forever. “There shall be no more thence,”—that is, from that time forward, from the time that God establishes Jerusalem,—there will be no more thence an infant of days, children dying young. There will be no more thence an old man that must pass away, or that has not filled his days. “The child shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed.” All that is passed away, and then afterward, “They shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them.” The “hundred years” is what puzzles many. It seems to us that this is that little period of time intimated in Revelation, the 20th chapter, the last clause of verse 3, and verses 7–10, from the time that the wicked dead are raised until they are utterly destroyed. That will be God’s last judgment and the execution of that judgment. The child which has died responsible to God will live through that period and die, and so also will the sinner who has been raised at its beginning. Their former years are not taken account of. They will see all of God’s wonderful work for His people and the demonstration of all His mighty truth in its triumph, and then they will die; and then His children will go on forever, not knowing sin or sorrow or weeping.

4069 — Delivering Up the Kingdom, 1 Cor. 15:24

Please explain 1 Cor. 15:24 in the “Question Corner” of the “Signs.” Does Christ turn the kingdom over to the Father when all is finished? A. F. H.

The kingdom referred to in this scripture has reference to the kingdom of grace, where Christ sits a King-Priest. To get an understanding of verses 24–28, we should study in connection with it Ps. 110:1; Zech. 6:12, 13; Rev. 3:21. Perhaps we can do no better in explaining it than to give a paraphrase of it: “Then cometh the end [of Christ’s reign as a High Priest upon the throne of His Father], when He shall deliver up the kingdom [of grace and as priest] to God, even the Father; when He [the Father] shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He [Christ] must reign [according to Ps. 110:1], till He [the Father] hath put all His [Christ’s] enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be abolished is death. For, He [the Father] put all things in subjection under His [Christ’s] feet. But when He [the Father] saith, All things are put in subjection, it is evident that He [the Father] is excepted who did subject all things unto Him [Christ]. And when all things have been subjected unto Him [Christ], then shall the Son also Himself be subjected to Him [the Father] that did subject all things unto Him [Christ], that God may be all in all.” This, it seems to us, is very plain. Jesus now sits at the right hand of the Father as Priest (Heb. 8:1),—a King-Priest upon His Father’s throne. When the end of probation comes, the end of God’s work for man comes, Jesus Christ rises up from this throne and turns it over to the Father, and then takes His own throne, beginning that reign in the holy city, New Jerusalem; and when the problem of sin is finally solved, and all sin is banished from the universe, then it is that the 28th verse will be true; and God will be all in all.

4070 — 2 Kings 8:26; 2 Chron. 22:2

Please explain the seeming contradiction between these two verses. G. M.

The one text gives twenty-two years, the other forty-two years, for Ahaziah’s age. The “Bible Companion” suggests this,—that the forty and two years old could be rendered as it is literally,—“a son of forty-two years,” that is, of the house of Omri, on account of his connection with it through his mother. In 2 Kings 8:26 Ahaziah’s age—twenty-two years—is given when he began to reign in 790 B.C., during the two years of his father’s disease. His father, Jehoram, was thirty-two when he began to reign with Jehoshaphat, two years before the latter’s death. 2 Kings 8:16. This was in 796. Jehoram therefore was born in 828. Ahaziah his son, being twenty-two years old when he began his co-regency, was therefore born in 812, his father being sixteen years old. It is also suggested by others that there was a mistake simply in the copying of the manuscript, in which one Hebrew letter used for numbers could be easily mistaken for another. It certainly is very obvious that some such thing as this occurred, but the Bible is the freest of books from them.

4071 — Adam and Eve

Did Adam and Eve repent before their death, and will they be saved in the new earth? F. L.

We think so. We think that they repented when God made His promise to them, when He pronounced the sentence upon Adam, and when that implied promise was spoken that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head. Eve’s repentance and faith is shown in the fact that when Cain was born she thought that the promised Seed had come then,—“I have gotten a man from the Lord;” as rendered by some, “I have gotten the God-man.” But she was sadly disappointed. The one who she thought would be their Saviour proved a destroyer, and Abel was killed. But she and Adam were not hopeless. The next one that was born was Seth, and his name means “appointed,” and so she said, “God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel,” and through that seed came our Lord Jesus Christ. So it seems clearly evident that, sinning though they did, and as they did, they still had hope in that Seed that was to come through their descendants, the Lord Jesus Christ.

4072 — Salted by Fire, Mark 9:49

Please explain by letter, or in your paper, the text in Mark 9:49. Q. F. F.

The text reads, in our Common Version, “For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt.” This last, of course, is a statement which is made in Lev. 2:13,—“Every sacrifice shall be salted with salt,” salt standing for life. “Every one shall be salted with fire” evidently has reference to the context, what comes before. The wicked will be destroyed in the unquenchable fire, but the righteous shall be preserved. When the glory of the great God appears, it will be the same glory to both classes; but the righteous will endure it because they are filled with the power and presence of God within. “Who among us can dwell with the devouring fire?” asks the prophet; “who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?” and then he gives the answer: “He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from taking a bribe, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from looking upon evil.” In other words, the consecrated, converted man, the one in whom Christ dwells, will not feel the burning glory; but he who has not known Christ, will be consumed by that glory. The fire will try every man’s work, of what sort it is. 1 Cor. 3:13. All then will receive of that baptism of glory that will change the righteous to immortality. It will destroy the wicked. That glory is the fulness of expression of the life of God, just as salt is a symbol of life, and the fulness of God’s life in the dead wine-skins of self-righteousness, of sin, will destroy the wine-skins. And therefore the apostle urges, Have salt in yourselves, have life in yourselves, let the life of God dwell within, and it will not harm from without.

4073 — Food in the Wilderness

Please explain what was the food for the flocks and herds of Israel while in the wilderness. O. F. F.

This is one of the questions in which the Lord does not satisfy our curiosity. Let us first say, however, that a wilderness does not necessarily imply a desert. We know that they drank of the water which God gave,—the water which came out of the rock, the herds drank of it. There were various valleys, or wadies, or canyons, along the wilderness way, more or less, in which doubtless green things grew and green food was gathered. Not only that, but when they stayed in the wilderness so long, they must have gathered around some fertile part where the flocks and the herds could be cared for. Certainly this is learned,—that the two and a half tribes that stayed on the thither side of Jordan had large flocks and herds which had increased during the time of their journeys. In these ways the life of the cattle may have been preserved. And still further, the Lord may have fed the cattle and herds just the same as He did the men. Certainly we know that He kept them.