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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Dec 16, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 35, No. 20.

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[All questions to this department will be answered which to the editors will seem to minister to the good of the readers and to the mission of the paper. The same question can not be answered repeatedly in the same volume. The name and address must accompany question, not for publication, but as an evidence of good faith, and that answer may be made by letter if deemed advisable. It is well always to enclose a stamp for reply.]

2673.—Joining Outside Organizations.

Would you please give reasons, if there are any, why a Seventh-day Adventist should not join a farmers' organization such as the "Grangers"? C. E. S.
It is not a matter of denominationalism; it is a matter of Christianity. It may be proper for a Christian to join some organizations; but there are two principles involved in the question, which should be taken into consideration.
(1) Every organization requires its members to subscribe to certain rules, regulations, constitutions, or by-laws. Often these are on a wholly selfish basis or involve principles to which the Christian can not subscribe. No Christian could indorse such principles or make himself a partner with others in prompting them or upholding them. He could not, for instance, join others in antagonizing his fellow men for whose souls he was laboring and praying. He could not indorse many of the various movements, such as involve church-and-state union, as almost every organization under the sun has been solicited to do, and many have yielded. He could not indulge in the dancing and drinking, the tricks of trade, and the unwholesome pleasure which some organizations indulge. In other words, he could not lower the Christian standard for any benefit whatsoever which he might receive in so doing.
(2) Nearly all human organizations are for the purpose of protection or benefit. Not fully trusting or trusting at all the great Father in heaven, men hope to save themselves by combinations, federations, organizations, and many know no other way and no other trust. The Christian, every Seventh-day Adventist Christian, ought to have a personal faith in God, a faith which would lead him to trust God in all his business, in all affairs of life. Any society or organization which would lessen this perfect trust, or say to the world that God could not be depended upon, a Christian should have nothing to do with. These are important principles. Our querist must apply them in his own life, and answer to God for them in the last day. Read Isa. 8:9-15; 30:1-3; 31:2.
★ ### 2674.—The Beast and Image. What are your views of Revelation 13? Is the pope the man, and is his number 666? What is the second beast mentioned in this chapter? What is the mark of the beast? Do the trusts and combines and unions, secular and religious, answer to the image and mark of this secular beast? C. M. D.
It is impossible to give any kind of an adequate idea of Revelation 13 in this department. See "Bible Students' Library," No. 130, for fuller expression. In brief, we understand that these beasts represent systems. The great Babylonian system is represented by the beast with seven heads, each head a different phase of the system. The one particular head which was to continue forty and two months, or literally 1,260 years, being the papal head. That system puts man in the place of God, places man between the Creator and his Saviour, in almost every phase of religious life. At the head of this system is the pope, of course, but we do not understand that the "name" pertains to any particular pope or to the pope as an individual, but rather to the system itself as represented by the pope.
The claim that the papacy makes, and upon which everything else is based, is that the pope is "the vicegerent of the Son of God;" in Latin, "Vicarius Filii Dei," the numerical value of which is 666.
The second beast mentioned is the development of the union of church and state in America. The mark of the beast is the man-made sabbath enforced by law. See SIGNS OF THE TIMES of July 22, which gives a much fuller expression of it than can be given here.
Specifically as to trusts and combines, etc., we do not understand that they are individually engaged in the making of these images, tho doubtless all will be combined in one great trust or combination, confederating together to uphold human laws and purposes in contradistinction to the law of God. See the last part of the 8th chapter of Isaiah, and also the 18th chapter of Revelation. All the various combinations of earth will yet be brought into that relationship to the beast power so that it will be said that all the world shall worship it.
We wish especially to refer our inquirer and others to larger expositions of this subject as published from time to time in our periodicals, and also in our lists of books.
★ ### 2675.—The Second Coming of Christ Not at the Destruction of Jerusalem. Was the second coming of Christ at the destruction of Jerusalem? I. L. B.
It was not. Language would be without meaning if all the events foretold as signs of Christ's coming could be made to apply to the destruction of Jerusalem and the events preceding it. Take the darkening of the sun and moon and the falling of the stars. See Matt. 24:29, and verses following. John uses these very signs as precursors of the great day of God's wrath in Revelation 6. Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70. John wrote Revelation in A.D. 96. This clearly shows that they were not signs of the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred twenty-six years before John wrote.
★ ### 2676.—Called to Preach. How will one as a layman know that he is called of God to preach the Gospel? Must that call come through the church militant, or by the Spirit of Prophecy, or direct, or how? M. H. K.
It is impossible for the SIGNS OF THE TIMES or any other one individual to say just how God calls an individual. He has not followed any special way of doing this; He has not had some formula for calling men into the ministry; He has called some in one way, and some in other ways. We have no particular evidence that He called Isaiah as He did Jeremiah, or Jeremiah as He did Ezekiel. Certainly He did not call Paul as He did Peter, nor Nathanael as He did John. Every soul has his own individuality, his own temperament, his own disposition, which the Lord knows thoroly; and when souls are consecrated to God, and God sees they can be used of Him in His work, He knows best how to call them. Sometimes He does that by the voice of His church; sometimes there are discerning men in the church who see the gift that the Lord has, by His Spirit, placed upon the humble worker. Sometimes the conviction comes to the worker himself in such an overwhelming way that it is impossible for him to throw it off. It is for the individual to put it to test with God. One of the sure tests of that work is, Can he win souls to God? can he give proof that his call is from God, or is it simply ambition on his part?
These are questions which the individual must settle with God. They stand between himself and the One who calls him, and it is not for others to judge another man's servant, nor must that servant judge others, if they do not see his calling at first. God gives us different gifts and different discernments. It is always well for young men, inexperienced men, to take counsel of those who are older. That does not mean that we should give up our God-given convictions for anything others may say, but we may learn that what we supposed was a call to speak for God was simply an ambitious desire on our part to do something greater. Almost invariably when the Lord calls men to preach His Gospel, they have shrunk from it; they have felt that the burden was too great, and the call too responsible. These and still other considerations which may occur to the well-instructed, must be weighed carefully before one should give himself to a work which calls for the fullest co-operation of the Spirit, and which without the Spirit of God will prove utterly worthless.
★ ### 2677.—Why the Sabbath? Please explain why the Sabbath is still observed by your church, when it has the very same commands given as to duration of time as for all the ceremonial laws and statutes which ceased as soon as Christ had fulfilled every jot and tittle which was prophesied of Himself and was typical of Him. Matt. 5:17, 18. Yet every word of the old law was kept until after His death and a new covenant proclaimed. See verse 19, also Matt. 3:2, 3; Mark 1:44. Jesus said it was easier for earth to pass away than for anything prophesied of Him to fail to come to pass. When He died He said, "It is finished." John 19:24, 28, 30. Every jot of Old Testament law had to be kept to be saved, neither Decalogue nor ceremonial law excepted. Gal. 3:10; Isa. 1:8; Deut. 27:26. M. A. M.
Our inquirer seems to misapprehend the nature of the laws of which he speaks. Moral law is in its very nature unchangeable, and its compendium or summary God was pleased to put in the Decalogue. All these principles are eternal, and antedated sin. The Sabbath was not typical of something future, but a memorial or sign of God's power to create and save, and it existed before sin blasted the fair earth. Gen 2:2, 3. All the typical laws ended at the cross, expired by limitation. They were "forever" only in the sense of being for that age. But God's moral law is "forever and ever," for the ages of ages. Matt. 5:17-19 includes both moral law and prophecy, and the "till" includes both, as John Wesley clearly points out. The force of the expression is that till all predicted by the prophets is accomplished, one jot or one tittle of the moral law should in no wise fail, and that is never, for the prophets prophesied of the eternity to come, in which God's Sabbath should still be observed. Isa. 66:22, 23.
It is easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one moral principle or precept of God to fail; for it is His character.
"It is finished," did not mean that God's moral law was done away; that were preposterous; but that Christ's sacrifice had reached its culmination in death, and the infinite price was paid. Our inquirer does not see that if his efforts to do away the Sabbath were successful, it would carry with it all the law. Then what did Paul and James mean? Rom. 3:31; James 2:8-12. See tract "What Is Done Away?" price, two cents, at this office.
★ ### 2678.—The Commandments of Christ and of the Father. John 15:10. What are Jesus' commandments, and what are His Father's commandments? C. K.
All the commandments of God may be summed up in the Decalogue. That is the compendium of all righteousness. Every duty is comprehended in it. It was the constant teaching of Jesus to call men's attention to this. He did not come to teach His own will, He ever and again declares (for instance, in John 4:34; 12:48), but to teach the will of the Father. His injunctions are over and over again to His disciples to carry out the will of the Father. He declares to them that they should believe on Him whom He had sent, that they should love one another, even as He loved them. The whole sum and substance of His teaching may be comprehended under the one constantly expressed thought, that they should do the Father's will, that they should accept the Father's messengers.
★ 2679.—Mark 13:13.—The "great tribulation" refers to the suffering and trial of the people of God during the Dark Ages.