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TO CORRESPONDENTS

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 16, 1876

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 47, No. 11.

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TO CORRESPONDENTS.

By Uriah Smith

What is the meaning of John 11:26: “And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die”? J. KOONS.
Ans. Christ is speaking of the time of the resurrection, and what will take place then, “He that believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live.” Verse 25. When? At the resurrection. “And whosoever liveth [at the time of the resurrection] and believeth in me, shall never die.” That is, those who are alive and believe in Christ when the resurrection takes place, shall not die, but be translated into the kingdom of God.
A. J. BREED: See explanation of 1 Pet. 3:19 in the work “Man’s Nature and Destiny,” published at this Office. 1 Pet. 4:6, asserts simply that the gospel was preached (past tense) to them then that are [now] dead. It was preached to them while they were living.
J. C. T.: We think Amos 8:11, 12, refers to a famine for the word of the Lord, yet to come. There was no such search for it in the Dark Ages. To your second query, “Why was the Saviour called the Son of man?” we reply, Because of his having taken upon himself our nature. He “was made flesh.”

THE RESURRECTION.

The objection you refer to, raised by a D. D. against the resurrection of the body, because the particles may become component parts of other bodies, reminds us of a joke once played upon a scientific Society in England. They were called upon to explain why a basin of water containing a live fish weighed no more than the same basin of water without the fish. They went into profound dissertations to prove that the fish, having power to suspend himself in the water, would not add to the weight of it, &c. &c. But their wisdom was put to an ignominious discomfiture, by a fellow of a practical turn who thought he would test the matter by weighing the water, to see if it was true that it would weigh no more with the fish than without. He did so, and found that the proposition they were trying to prove was wholly false; the water with the fish weighed more than the water without, just as much more as the fish weighed! Just so with this objection against the resurrection. It is without foundation. It is a physical impossibility for two bodies to become so mixed up that the same matter would be essential to them both, unless we can suppose that God would work a miracle to defeat his own purposes. Let a man be eaten by cannibals; (and they would not consume more than one-half of him by weight); let those cannibals be struck down in death within twenty-four hours, a month or a year; and we challenge any man to show that even then (and this is the extremest case possible) all the essential particles of the eaten man might not be restored to him without affecting the identity of those cannibals, and that, too, by a power no greater than that which is pledged to bring up the dead from the dust of the earth. This objection is neither scientific nor philosophical. We brand it as a skeptical cavil, D. D.’s to the contrary notwithstanding. Any doctor of divinity who will use it needs himself to be doctored. See chapter on the resurrection in “Man’s Nature and Destiny.”
B. F. TERRY: For an explanation of the expression, “Where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched,” see “Nature and Destiny of Man,” published at this Office.
“Is there any assurance in the Bible that there never will be any more war in Heaven? If so, where? An infidel asks this question.” R. C. KING.
Ans. There is the strongest assurance in the declaration that there shall be no more death. Every incorrigible rebel against God and his government, past or future, must die. The wages of sin is death. And when the present rebellion, which began with Satan’s fall in Heaven, is closed up by the destruction of all who are in opposition to God, “root and branch,” the devil and all sinners, Mal. 4:1, then there shall be no more death. This scene of rebellion, and consequent and well merited destruction, will never be repeated.
“What kind of a law does Ps. 19:7, refer to?” T. PRITCHARD.
Ans. The moral law, the ten commandments. The word is from the Hebrew tohrah, which occurs in the Old Testament 217 times, and is translated law in every instance. Why the translators have put in the margin, “doctrine” is unaccountable.
ANSWERED BY LETTER. E. R. Jones, H. Edson, Richard Asbury, J. E. Hoemes, W. C. Irish. U. S.