p. 3 | Question Corner

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 28, 1896

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

Question Corner

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

No. 347. Question on Immortality.

PLEASE explain 1 Tim. 6:16, first part. Do the holy angels have immortality? Did Adam have it before he fell?

E. T. C.

(1) “Who only hath immortality,” the first part of the text referred to, has evident reference to inherent immortality. God has immortality of himself and in himself, apart from all others. Others can have it only as they obtain it from him in his way. (2) Immortality is incorruptibility, that which can not be corrupted. It is God’s stamp of an incorruptible character under test. This test the holy angels have doubtless borne, and can not die. See Luke 20:36. (3) Adam was neither mortal nor immortal, but a candidate for immortality. He had eternal life—the life of God—which he held by faith. If by faith he had endured every test, he would have developed an incorruptible character, and God would have placed upon his physical being the stamp of incorruptibility—immortality. If Adam had been created immortal,—incorruptible,—he could never have sinned. If he had been created mortal, he would have had a sinful nature, for mortality comes of sin. He was created holy and without blame before God in both body and mind. He could choose sin, corruption, and death, or righteousness, incorruption, immortality. He chose the former; but, praise God, the latter is still obtainable through Him who gives power to overcome all sin.

No. 348. What Is the Soul?

WHAT is the soul? What becomes of it at death?

J. W. S.

The word “soul” has reference to different things in the Scriptures. Sometimes and primarily it refers to the whole person. “Man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7); “And all the souls that were therein he utterly destroyed,” that is, all the persons (see Joshua 10:35, 28, 30, 32, 37, 39); “eight souls were saved by water” (1 Peter 3:20); “every living soul died in the sea” (Rev. 16:3). It refers to the animal life in man, the life common to all, to the thoughts, the emotions, etc. See Gen. 27:4; 35:18; Deut. 4:9, 29; 1 Sam. 26:21; Mark 8:36, 37. What its meaning is must be determined by the context. But it is never once called in the Bible “immortal soul,” or “never-dying soul,” or “deathless soul.” It is never said to be an independent entity or being which can exist apart from the body, even when used as life. As life it came from God. As life it returns to the great Fountain of life.

No. 349. Baptism, Circumcision, Sabbath Offerings.

(1) SINCE there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” is not the baptism of the Gospel commission the baptism of the Holy Ghost? (2) In Col. 2:10–12, in what respect are we circumcised in him? and should not the baptism of verse 12 be considered in the same sense as having been done for us in Christ, and therefore spiritual burial in baptism? (3) Christ sent Paul not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel, and Paul thanked God that he had baptized none of the Corinthians but Crispus, Gaius, and the household of Stephanus. (4) Paul directed the Corinthians to “lay by them in store,” that there be no gatherings when he came. Why should temporal matters of money for the work be discussed on Sabbath, and collections taken in Sabbath schools? (5) How is it that David was a man after God’s own heart, except in the matter of Uriah, when many other sins are recorded?

E. G. W.

1. We should understand Eph. 4:4, 5 to refer to one baptism of a kind. Whether it refers to water baptism or not, it does not exclude water baptism. The commission which Christ gave to his apostles and church for all time, even to the end of the world, contained the injunction to baptize the disciples in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This certainly must have reference to water baptism, the only baptism which man could perform, and by which Christ, our Example, was baptized. Matt. 28:19, 20; 3:15. God alone baptizes in Holy Spirit. The baptism administered by man is the outward marriage ceremony of the union formed by the Spirit of God. See Rom. 6:3–5; 7:4; Gal. 3:27. We could as truly ignore the Lord’s supper, because, after all, the only true feeding is spiritual. It would also make the baptisms of the church, when enjoying the fullness of the Spirit, works of supererogation, which we know was not the case. See Acts 2:41; 8:12, 36–38.

2. We are circumcised in Christ by “putting off the body of the sins of the flesh,” by the crucifixion of the “old man” “with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed.” See Rom. 6:6; Deut. 10:16; 30:6. It is a change of heart; and of this change baptism is the outward symbol. The “putting off” is getting out of, and away from, as one would defiled garments. The Revised Version has “the body of the flesh,” the carnal man. See Gal. 5:24; 1 John 2:16. The spiritual circumcision in Christ is the death of sin and the giving of a new heart, as before explained. Deut. 30:6. On “burial in baptism,” Vincent, a Methodist, after giving the Greek, en to baptismati, or baptismo, says, “The article the baptism points to the familiar rite, or may have the force of your.” Buried, dead to sin, and risen to a new life, the life of faith in the power or working of God manifest in the resurrection of Christ, of which water baptism is a symbol, is the thought carried still farther in Col. 3:1.

3. Paul was sent not merely to baptize, not to carry out the mere letter, but to preach the Gospel, to which baptism was an adjunct. That is, Paul’s mission was not to go around to baptize people into the church, so as to form factions, but to preach the Gospel as Christ directed. Why he thanked God that he had not baptized more in the Corinthian church is stated in 1 Cor. 1:15.

4. Temporal matters should not be discussed on the Sabbath. But this need not preclude an exhortation to liberality, one of the Christian graces (2 Cor. 8:4–7), and it should not compel any one to come before the Lord empty-handed. His word says, “Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts.” Ps. 96:8. Double sacrifices were offered on the Sabbath anciently, and the people of the Lord brought offerings to his house on that day.

5. A man after God’s own heart is to be understood as regards David’s humility, integrity, and steadfast purpose to do God’s will. His sin in numbering the people was not pursued to the end. His multiplying wives evidently did not come home to him as transgressions. Whatever he saw as God’s command he did, save in the exception noted.