p. 2 | Question Corner

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 16, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 23.

Question Corner

[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.”]

2862.—Belonging to a Church.

“Must we belong to the church called ‘The Church of Christ,’ in order that we may be saved? I ask this in view of the fact that it says, ‘Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.’”

L. L. P.

We are not saved by any correlation or combination of letters, whatever those letters may spell. “Name” in the Bible does not mean a mere word. It stands for character, and in this case stands for the personal character of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are many instances of this given in the Bible. Therefore when the child of God is baptized into the name of the Father, and into the name of the Son, and into the name of the Holy Spirit, it does not mean the mere pronouncing over them of these words; it means they are baptized into the very character of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit—the Father for righteousness in the place of our sins; the Son for self-emptying, self-denial, self-abnegation, that God may fill us; and the Holy Spirit for service. The Lord is not dependent upon any combination of men to save men. He does not save because we go through a certain particular form; He saves because the heart is yielded to Him, and He can come into that heart and make it His own living temple. “For 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.” 2 Chron. 16:9. “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” Eph. 2:8.

There are differences as to what name a church ought to take. The church is sometimes called in the Bible “the church of God;” sometimes the “church of Christ.” The Jesuits have for a name, “The Society of Jesus.” Why should we not take the name “Jesus” just as truly as that of “Christ”? Really it is more a name than “Christ” is. “Christ” simply means “anointed,” and “Jesus the Christ” means “Jesus the Anointed One.”

Simply calling ourselves Christians does not make us so, and to unite with a church that is called Christian does not make us Christians; and there are thousands and thousands of Christians who are not called denominationally by the name Christian. We need not worry, dear soul, about that at all. The Lord saves us when we give ourselves to Him, and accept of all that He gives us in Jesus Christ by faith. Then of course we will walk in His commandments. We will be baptized, we will obey because we have the spirit and the life of obedience, but that may lead us a long way from those churches which arrogate to themselves the name Christian, while they do not always follow the Master. The apostle Paul has stated the condition of salvation very clearly in 1 Cor. 15:1-5, and we find it stated over and over again in many places, but never do we find it: “You shall take such and such a name in order to be saved.”

2863.—The Thief on the Cross.

Jesus told the thief on the cross: “Verily I say unto thee to-day, shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:43. How is it that you place the comma after “to-day” instead of before as I see you do?

P. G. L.

Punctuation is not a matter of inspiration. The original Scriptures were written not alone without any division of sentences, but without any division of words. Each line was a line of solid letters. First came the division into words; then into sentences, and later on came commas and semicolons, etc. Not all Bibles are punctuated alike, even of the King James Version. And the punctuation itself is merely the understanding of the person who did it.

The explanation of the incident demands the change in the punctuation from what it is given in our Common Version. Let us study the latter. Evidently the thief dying by our Lord’s side had mingled in the crowds which surrounded Jesus from time to time as He preached the Gospel of the kingdom. He had doubtless also been in the judgment-hall, at least a part of the time when Christ was before Pilate. He may have been a Jew and his crime may have largely been a political crime. Being a Jew he may have understood something of the nature of Christ’s kingdom. Notice his request. He did not say, “Lord, remember me when Thou goest into heaven;” but “Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.” Jesus had taught that the kingdom of God was likened unto “a certain nobleman [who] went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.” Luke 19:12. The dying man evidently understood that Jesus was coming again to receive His kingdom; therefore his request. Note also that that request was made to Jesus when in all probability, from a human point of view, Jesus could never receive it. He had been condemned by His own people; had been adjudged a criminal by Roman law, was hanging upon the cross as was the thief himself; and yet the man’s faith pierced all the darkness, swept past the improbabilities, and took hold upon Christ as a Saviour. As a Saviour, Jesus responds: “Verily I say unto thee to-day,”—notwithstanding all the untoward circumstances that surrounded Him, notwithstanding the fact that seemingly He had no power nor would ever have power to answer the prayer of the thief,—“Verily I say unto thee to-day, shalt thou be with Me in Paradise,” or, to take the expression out of its archaic form, as we would commonly express it, “Thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.”

Rotherham’s Emphatic translation reads: “Verily I say unto thee this day; with Me shalt thou be in Paradise.”

What did our Lord mean by “Paradise”? The word itself means “a garden.” We find two other occurrences of it in the New Testament. One is in 2 Cor. 12:4. What the apostle calls “into Paradise” in the fourth verse, he calls “the third heaven” in the second verse; that is, the heaven where God dwells. The word occurs again in Rev. 2:7, “To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the Paradise of God.” By turning to Rev. 22:1, 2, we learn that the Tree of Life and the River of Life will be great characteristics of the new heavens and the new earth,—the River of Life flowing out from the throne of God, and the Tree of Life on either side of the river.

The Paradise, then, to which Jesus promised the thief an entrance, is this earth made new, or Christ’s kingdom which He will take when He closes His work as priest and judge. Moreover, He did not go to Paradise, or to heaven, on that day of His crucifixion. Three days after His conversation with the thief on the cross, He said to Mary: “Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father.” John 20:17. Therefore Jesus did not go to Paradise on the day in which He gave comfort to the dying thief. What, then, are we to conclude? That the adverbial phrase “to-day” modifies not the verb “be,” but the verb “say.” It was what our Lord said on that day which should occur at some future time, and not what should be that day. Simply placing the comma so as to indicate this makes everything clear, makes perfect harmony between this text and other scriptures, and gives hope and comfort to every soul who is looking for the second coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

2864.—Gabriel and the Holy Spirit.

Does the Bible teach that Gabriel and the Holy Spirit are one and the same?

B. S.

Nowhere that we know of. The Holy Spirit is the great, all-embracing life of God, carrying everywhere all the power of God, and manifesting in various forms the presence and power of divinity. The Holy Spirit existed before angels and all other creatures. It was God’s potent agency in creation. Gen. 1:2; Job. 26:13; Ps. 104:30.

Gabriel, the mighty angel, is one of the servants of God. He is mighty because of the Spirit of God within him and upon him; but he is still God’s servant, limited in his personality and power. Dan. 8:16; 9:21, 22; 10:11-13; Rev. 19:9, 10; 22:8, 9. God uses the angels, clothes them by His Spirit, and so in a lesser way He uses men, by filling them with His Spirit. Thus they become channels of the Spirit’s working, but not the Spirit.