3628 — How to Get Religion
By Editor
Will you please explain how to get religion, and make it plain as can be? I have tried for twenty-five years in all the ways I know. I believe there is a God, and that the Saviour died for our sins, and rose again. I believe He is just, and nothing is impossible with Him. I love Him with all my heart, soul, and mind. What can I do? I am just sin-sick. When I hear His Word I tremble. Yet I am a sinner. It seems to me there is something about it I can not understand. Inquirer. It seems to us that "Inquirer" has more real, true religion than she is willing to acknowledge. She declares that she loves the Lord with all her heart and soul and mind. That is all that God asks of us. She declares that she believes that Jesus died for our sins. Well, that "our" includes her, and there is life in that. Then, having faith and having love, why not let faith and love be manifest in willing obedience to all God's precepts? God's law points out our sins, His Spirit impresses upon our heart the force and power and condemnation of that law, not to destroy us, but to show us that we are sinners. (See Rom. 7:7, and other scriptures.) Christ Jesus died to save us from our sins, the sins which the law condemns, and all He asks us to do is to believe, whatever our feelings, whatever the sins of the past, to believe and accept Him as the Saviour from all these sins. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9. If we believe that God is "faithful," if we believe that He is "just," we must believe, if we have confessed our sins, that these are forgiven, that the unrighteousness is cleansed away. We know the lies which the flesh will tell, and which the devil will seek to have us believe; but God's Word is truer than all our fears, and stronger than all the powers of darkness. Believe, rejoice that it is so, thank God that His Word is true. And now He wants us to go on. He wants the law of "life in Christ Jesus" to make us "free from the law of sin and death" which is in our members. Rom. 8:1-4. And He does this in order that the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. The flesh will again clamor for the mastery. It has been master in the past; it wishes to be master again. It will rise up again and again in the endeavor to lord it over us; but by simple faith lay hold of the scripture, "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus." Rom. 6:11. Take home to your heart by faith this truth: "For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace." God no longer condemns; He looks upon us with favor. As our members have been yielded to sin in the past, yield them now to righteousness. If our tongue has spoken evil words, let it speak good words. If our eyes have been wont to look upon the things that are evil, turn them, by His grace, to the things that are good and pure and lovely. If our ears have been prone to catch that which is low and base, turn them to Him; let faith attune them to the music of the voice and truth of God; let us listen to Him. If our taste has been perverted so that we love the things which weaken, and destroy, and bring us under bondage to the power of appetite, give these up, and educate our fleshly appetite to love the things that are good. And so with every sense and every member. We may make blunders in the doing of it; we may make mistakes; we may fail. But the kind Father who has started us in the way, has also told us that, while He writes to us that we sin not, yet "if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." Pray, pray earnestly. Have times when you come before the Father, and tell Him all your needs, all your cares, all your trials, all your sorrows. He has an open, listening ear to all His children, and is never too hurried to hear your prayer. Read His Word; feed upon it, day by day. Let the Spirit of God transmute it into your life and character. And rejoice in Him. Tell others of His goodness. You say you tremble when you hear His Word. That is good. Know that that very thing is the evidence of God's love to you, and of your relationship to Him. Here is His own Word for it: "Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool: . . . but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at My Word." Isa. 66:1, 2. And then note the promise that He makes, and that is that joy will come to those that tremble, and those who oppose them shall know shame. What "Inquirer" seems to need more than all else is to rest in God's promises. There are some people who never lie down to rest. They hold themselves, while they are on their bed; they do not just simply yield themselves to that bed. They seem to feel that the bed itself will not hold them unless they are nerved up and hold themselves tense in some way. What they need to do is to relax. Let "Inquirer" rest right down on the promises of God, just like a child in its mother's arms. Jesus is not afar off; He is near to every one that trusts Him. Is it a sin to eat bacon, in the case of sickness, when the doctor says it is good for tuberculosis? H. C. B. By bacon, of course, is meant pork. In the first place God forbade His children's eating swine's flesh. This is shown in Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14, and elsewhere. He did not do this arbitrarily. That is, He did not take certain classes of animals that were all equally wholesome food, and set some over on one side as unclean, and the others on the other side as clean. Those that were set aside as unclean were in their very nature unclean. And those that were set aside as clean were much more favorable than the others that were called unclean. It was an abomination to offer the unclean to the Lord. The clean could be offered for sacrifice, and their flesh could be eaten, altho this is not the best food. The Lord showed that by giving His children manna to eat instead of flesh foods, and in the very beginning of man's career upon this earth no flesh was given him. We can not understand how a doctor could prescribe bacon as good food for tuberculosis. We never heard of any such thing as that before. We have heard of their prescribing meat, or flesh food, in the form of beefsteak, scraped meat, and such foods as that; but the one thing which is usually the first prohibited in case of sickness is pork. It is hard to digest. It does not assimilate readily. The swine has within him potencies of disease, and especially scrofula. It is the testimony of thousands upon thousands who had all sorts of outbreaking humors in their blood, that when they gave up swine's flesh entirely, all those passed away. It is the testimony of many that in the days when they ate swine's flesh a wound would not heal readily; it suppurated. But after giving up swine's flesh, all bruises and wounds healed immediately, "by first intention," as the physicians say; that is, there was no suppuration, no pus, no matter flowed from the wound, or exuded from the sore. Some physicians who have had excellent success in treating tuberculosis cases advise legumes, such as beans, peas, lentils, etc. Others who have had great success advise the use of milk — milk alone, some advise, all that can be eaten, good, fresh cow's milk. And there are remarkable testimonies of its efficacy in the treatment of consumption. These essentials are quite evident in the treatment of the disease: first, that there shall be not too much exercise, only sufficient; secondly, an abundance of fresh air — the same night and day; and thirdly, a superabundance of food, so that the system shall be fed beyond the power of the disease to consume. If we were afflicted as the question indicates, and the doctor told us to eat bacon, we would want to have consultation with another physician. 3630 — Praying for the Soul
The scripture declares that he prayed for the soul. "O Jehovah my God, I pray Thee, let this child's soul come into him again." Verse 17 is a cue to the understanding of it. His sickness was so sore that there was no breath left in him. The breath of life had departed, that which God gave to man in the beginning (Gen. 2:7). Elijah simply prayed that that breath of life, or soul, might be returned again; in other words, that the child might live. He did not pray that an entity — a separate being, one that could exist, and think, and live separate from the body — might come back, but that the life which the child had lost might be restored to that child again; and God answered. And that is all that the simple narrative teaches; no more, no less. Eccl. 12:7 teaches the same truth, in its reverse, — that when man dies, the spirit goes to God who gave it; in other words, that breath of life which God gave in the beginning (Gen. 2:7) goes back to God when man dies; and when man lives again, that life is returned to him. The whole difficulty lies in treating the soul as an entity in those cases in the Bible where it simply means life. Read the verse previous, in connection with verse 24, as in the American Revised Version: "And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calleth you, who will also do it." The message is to those who live when the Lord shall come. And the Lord is able to save complete at that time all those who trust in Him. See also 1 Cor. 1:7-9: "So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye be unreprovable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord." God is faithful to do all that He has promised for His children. Please explain 2 Sam. 12:23. Does David refer to the resurrection when he says, "I will go to him"? O. H. Evidently not. Just as long as the child was alive, David was pleading that he might live; but when the child died and was at rest, he stopped his fasting and weeping. He could not call the child back, but he himself could die and be at rest. Possibly he may have looked forward to the resurrection, when he would be with the child there. But then in that case he would not be going to the child, because the child had not had a resurrection; he would be raised together with the child. He evidently referred to rest, in the sleep of death. Yes, Bible foreordination. It tells us, "And as the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the Word of God; and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed." "The New Testament Critically Emphasized," of Rotherham, renders it, "Now the Gentiles having heard, were rejoicing and glorifying the Word of the Lord, and they believed — as many as had become disposed for age-abiding life." We have not space in the Question Corner to enlarge upon the matter of foreordination, of election. See the tract on Bible Election, "Bible Students' Library," No. 67. Price 2c.