p. 3 | Question Corner

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 16, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 28.

Question Corner

“Enquire, and make search, and ask diligently.”

No. 374. Soul and Spirit.

PLEASE explain Gen. 35:18, compared with 1 Kings 17:21. How can these scriptures be in harmony with Ps. 89:48 compared with Acts 2:27–31? A SEEKER FOR TRUTH.

All these passages will be plain to the inquirer if he will but remember that the term “soul” is used in different senses. It sometimes means the whole man or person: “Eight souls were saved in the ark.” 1 Peter 3:20. “Man became a living soul.” Gen. 2:7. It sometimes means the affections and emotions, as in the text, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Ps. 103:1. Sometimes its meaning is simply life, as in these texts under consideration. “And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing” (Gen. 35:18), that is, her life, breath of life was going out. So also in 1 Kings 17:21, “Let this child’s soul come into him again,” that is, the breath of life (see verse 17). The same thought is expressed in Ps. 89:48. Mortal man has no power over the grave. No man can deliver himself from the power of the grave. So in the Psalms, quoted in Acts 2:27, 31, Christ, speaking through David, says, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.” That is, his person, his being, was not given up to the grave. There is nothing whatever in any of these texts that would indicate that the soul is an independent, separate entity, capable of existence as such apart from the body. In Gen. 35:18 and 1 Kings 17:21 it is simply life. It came from God as life; it goes back to him as life.

No. 375. Multiplying and Replenishing the Earth.

In Gen. 1:28 man is commanded to multiply and replenish the earth. First, in what respect did Christ obey this command when he was here in the likeness of sinful flesh? Second, in what respect should we obey it as his followers? H. H. S.

1. We must not get the idea that every particular command that God has given to man sometime in the past, must be obeyed in just that way in the life of Christ. He gave Eve to Adam for a wife. The moral principle involved in that is involved in every true marriage relation from Adam down. But the particular obligation which devolved upon Adam, could not, in the nature of the case, come to others. Adam was told to dress and keep the Garden of Eden. It is impossible that those who lived after him, or that Christ while here upon the earth, could dress the Garden of Eden and keep it. But every moral principle involved in the command was wrought out in Christ. To man in his sinless state God gave the command to “multiply.” After he had sinned, God told the woman, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.” These came in the natural order of things, not only the multiplication in the raising of children, but the sorrow with it. The original design was

that the products of man’s multiplication should be holy and righteous before God. Sin perverted the law, and those who are born of man come into the world with fallen natures. Jesus Christ came to restore what man had lost, and to beget again in the divine nature, those who should be born children of God by the Spirit. And thus is he meeting all that God gave the first man the privilege of doing,—gathering out a seed which shall inhabit the regenerated earth, a seed which shall be holy and without blame before God.

2. We also, his followers, should labor to do as he did. The object of the first command to Adam in Gen. 1:28 was the filling of the earth with a holy seed. That was Christ’s object in coming into the world,—the carrying out of God’s original plan. That should be the object of every one of his followers. The particular way in which all this is to be done is left for each one of us to learn from God’s precious word. That the begetting of children is involved in the command to Adam is true, and this is in harmony with God’s word, and is proper and right; but the higher question is most important, and that is not the mere rearing of physical children, but the development of eternal characters.

No. 376. Double Prophecies.

PLEASE explain Eze. 37:26. It would seem from it that the people of God would multiply on the new earth. C. G.

As the SIGNS OF THE TIMES has stated many times before, we can only understand the prophecies which God has given in the past, in the light of clear and later promises. In speaking of the Gospel to God’s people, Paul says, “Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the Gospel.” We must also understand these promises which God has given to ancient Israel in the light of the conditions so clearly set forth in Jer. 18:7–10. If Israel had fulfilled the mission which God gave them, God would through them have wrought all his work, and fulfilled his promises, even to the renewing of the face of the earth and the multiplication of the holy seed. But this they failed to do, and the work must now be accomplished in the way set forth in the New Testament Scriptures. We do not mean by this that there will be any different principles used, or that salvation can be had in any other way than through Jesus Christ; but Israel as a nation will not be used to accomplish God’s work, simply because they would not be used.

Jesus Christ says that in the coming kingdom “they neither marry nor are given in marriage.” But the work of regeneration begins not with the earth, the home of man, but with man himself; for whom the home is prepared. And such ones, gathered out of every language, people, nation, and tongue, God will multiply, so that they will far outnumber anything which was ever seen on earth as a nation. We may not be able to understand or to see this now, but in that great day when Christ shall come, and the people of God are raised from the dead immortal, and the living changed to immortality, then will be demonstrated the multiplication which has been wrought through the power and Spirit of God throughout all the ages.

In these double prophecies, parts of which apply in the past, and all of which are to a greater or less extent predictions of the future, we must always remember that the Lord used language which was plain to those who lived in the time of the prophecy, to convey to us a knowledge of the future events. So he used the terms David, Jacob, and Israel, those who were true servants of God and true people of God in times past, to designate the true servants and true people of God in the future. Remembering these principles,—that some of these prophecies were conditional, that many have a double application, and that they must be understood in the light of later and fuller revelations,—we will not go astray in our understanding of them.