With Our Inquirers by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jun 3, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 23.

With Our Inquirers

By Editor

“If ye will inquire, inquire ye.”

This Inquirers' Department is conducted for the purpose of helping those who are studying the Bible. The answers are oftentimes only suggestive. They are never to be considered infallible, only as they agree with the infallible word. The writer who may answer them does not consider that his opinion is infallible. He will simply give the best that he has, and plead with the inquirer to search the word. Such questions only will be answered which, to the editors, seem to minister to the good of the readers and to the mission of the paper. We can not answer repeatedly in the same volume questions upon the same scripture. The name and address must accompany question, not for publication, but as an evidence of good faith, and that answer may be made by letter if deemed advisable. No letters are answered which do not contain the name of the writer. It is well always to enclose stamp for reply.

2522.—Salvation of the Heathen.

According to the Bible, will the heathen, who, ages ago, did not have the light of the Gospel or any knowledge of the law, or of Christ, be saved in heaven? I understand that those living when Christ comes, who have heard the sound of the Gospel, will be destroyed by the brightness of His coming, and will be as tho they were not. But how about those who have lived ages in the past and knew not of the Christ? T. H.

In the first place, God has given sufficient light to every intelligent, responsible soul in the world; so we read in John 1:9, “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Now to that there can be no exception. God, by His providence, in various ways, will bring light to every soul. So again we read in Rom. 1:20: “For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived thru the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.” We read also in Ps. 19: 1, 2: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.” Every thoughtful, devout soul who desires the light must be impressed with the wonderful power of the Creator, as manifested in His marvelous works, and if one cares enough for eternal living, he certainly would be led to seek after God thru the highest manifestation which God gives. These works speak of God’s power, of God’s wisdom. If He has wisdom and power, He also has love, and having love, He also has mercy. While the soul may not know the name “Jesus,” or “Christ,” or “Jehovah” (the mere literal names are nothing), he may know of the Creator, of that God who is revealed to us by those names, and giving himself to that God will bring to his soul the light which saves from sin.

One ray of light, if followed, will bring us to the Source of light, and that one ray of light will, if allowed to dominate and control our lives, as effectually save as the whole flood of light. It will not develop as strong a character, nor so much knowledge, but it will save. Therefore, we read that “the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him.” 2 Chron. 16:9. God’s power to reach the heathen in this way is also manifested in the history of His own work in the earth. Again and again we read of those in the very darkest of darkest heathendom, who have found the light and the truth by giving themselves to God, and when God could not reveal Himself to them in any other way, He has sent His angels to them to tell them that their prayers are accepted. We need not therefore worry about the heathen. God is caring for them. Nor need we build up a hypothetical future, in which some other plan or modification of the plan of salvation will be open to them, because God in all His works, as well as in His word, has been calling men to Him from the foundation of the world.

The story is told of an out-and-out infidel, who had utterly rejected the Bible, and believed that everything came by chance. While resting one day on the green sward in the state of Texas, he saw growing around him many of the little flowers called the “Texas Star.” He reasoned with himself, if things came by chance, the parts of every flower would not be the same. He began to dissect the flower, to count its petals and stamens. He repeated it over and over again in a number of flowers, but he found in every one the same wonderful design, the same perfection of detail, the same evidences of a great, overruling God, who

is as much at home in the little things of nature as He is in its great things. He therefore turned his face from the little Texas Star to heaven, and said, “Little flower, there is a God.” Of course that led him to the fuller revelation of God in His word. Even so have heathen in the past been led, and so God has gathered them out, despite the unfaithfulness of His own children in the giving of His message.

2523.—The Second Commandment.

I would like to know if it would be a sin to draw birds, fish, and animals. It says in the Bible, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” I am nine years of age, and a reader of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES. P. B.

First of all we would like to ask our young inquirer if he is going to worship the things that he draws. If he is drawing them to make his hand skilful, and to understand better these wonderful things which the Lord makes, that is one thing. If he is making them in order that he may bow before them and worship, that is another thing. The commandment forbids the making of these things to worship. It is an utter perversion of God’s truth to say that we should make none of these things. Human life would hardly be worth living at all if we made no things. The clothes we wear, the houses in which we live, the furniture we use, the very food we may eat, are all images of some other thing similar. This is not that which the Lord forbids. He forbids our making in order to worship.

If you will read the book of Exodus, chapters 25-40, you will read there how God instructed His children to make a house for His worship, and that, too, was made after a pattern. They were not to worship that house, they were not to worship the beautiful figures of the cherubim which they wove into those curtains, but they were to glorify God in the use of these things which He instructed them to make. So in the temple built by Solomon, it was adorned with various things. The pomegranate, a fruit, was used over and over as one of the adornments. The bell was used as another. Lions and cattle were not to worship, however, but to make beautiful the house of the Lord.

We read in Eze. 4:1-3 of how the Lord told the prophet to take a tile and portray, or picture, upon that tile an image of Jerusalem, and of battering-rams that were to be set against it; and by such illustrations as this, show the people of the judgments that were to come upon the city. All these things show that it is very proper to make things that will be of use, and of use to glorify God, but when we get to worshiping the work of our own hands, that is another thing. We must make nothing whatever, the likeness of anything in heaven or earth, to worship.

2524.—The Child and the Sinner. Isa. 65: 20.

Will you in your question corner please give me some information on Isa. 65:20? I do not think I understand it properly. W. W. P.

Isa. 65:20 is one of the many texts which puzzle earnest souls, the understanding of which does not matter so very much after all. There are so many more important scriptures in the word that it is hardly worth while to give so much attention and thought to some passage of this kind when more important ones are waiting; rather it is better to leave it, and let its meaning come to us thru other scriptures, which frequently is the

case. Some passage that we may puzzle over for years, and still have locked to our understanding, will be opened when we least expect it by light from another scripture.

Verses 17 to 19 of Isaiah 65 are a description of the glorious new heavens and the new earth; when former sufferings shall not be remembered with sorrow, or weigh upon the heart; when God’s people will rejoice in the New Jerusalem, and where He shall joy in His people; and where no more shall be heard the voice of weeping, and the voice of crying.

Verse 20 then declares, “There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days.” That is true of the cities of this world. That will not be true of the eternal city of God. Then He tells us why. If we will read in connection with this the 20th chapter of Revelation, it will give us a better understanding of the text in question. When the new heavens and the new earth are spread out before God’s people, the judgment will have taken place, and all who have identified themselves with sin will have been destroyed with the sin. In the second resurrection at the end of the thousand years, the wicked are raised; they come up before the city which descends from God, led by Satan in an endeavor to take it. For “a little season” they are permitted to be deceived by him. This “little season” may be the hundred years which is mentioned in Isa. 65:20. During that hundred years, the wicked manifest that they have no desire to be saved in God’s way, and those children who have reached the age of accountability before dying also show that they themselves are linked with the wicked; consequently, the sinner being a hundred years old, or living during that period of the hundred years, shall be accursed, and the child also shall die in that same period.

That will close all such conditions as that to all eternity. No more from that time will there be any death of sinner or child, but “they shall build houses, and inhabit them, and plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of the tree shall be the days of My people;” that is, the days of the tree of life. God’s children will live forever. That hundred years of the closing of judgment, that “little season” after the second resurrection, will demonstrate to all the ages, in all the worlds, that God’s judgments are just and right; that God’s salvation was sufficient for all, and that those who have rebelled against Him, and who perish in their sin, and because of their sin, have received the wages for which they have labored.

2525.—Times of the Gentiles. Luke 21: 24.

Please answer thru the SIGNS OF THE TIMES the latter clause of the 21st chapter of Luke, verse 24, “until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” G. S.

The “times of the Gentiles” here named are evidently the times referred to in the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning the Gentiles, during which the kingdom was taken from God’s people, as it was in the captivity of Babylon. The prophet Ezekiel tells us, in the twenty-first chapter, that it would be overturned three times after that, and would be no more under the control of the Lord’s people, “until He come whose right it is; and I will give it Him.” The times of the Gentiles are the times when Gentile power shall dominate God’s heritage, the earth; and when those times are fulfilled, then no longer will God’s city be trodden down, but His people will be taken to the New Jerusalem, where there will be no more sorrow or trouble or affliction. The times of the Gentiles reach to the second coming of our Lord.

2526.—Baldness. Amos 8: 10.

Is baldness to be a sign of the last days? Amos 8:10. W. G. W.

We do not know that it is any more than any other physical deterioration. There are several passages of Scripture which indicate that baldness was not uncommon in the centuries before Christ.