p. 699 | Question Corner by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 18, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 44.

Question Corner

By Editor

WE can not answer repeatedly in the same volume questions upon the same scripture. The name and address must accompany question. It is well always to enclose stamp for reply.

4219—RENTING PROPERTIES AND OWNING STOCK

Is it right for a seventh-day keeper to own residences, shops, stores, and other buildings or property, to rent them to Sunday keepers, and thus take a profit from the rents? Is it not just as right to own shares of stock in corporations which pay dividends from work that is done in part on the Sabbath?

There is quite a difference between the two propositions. When an individual leases a house, or business property, or farm, or anything of that class, to another individual, he practically sells that property to him for a specified time, and during the time of this lease the actual owner of the property has no moral or legal rights in the premises so long as the renter is faithfully fulfilling his contract. You have, to all intents and purposes, sold your property for a specified time, and the renter has full moral and legal control of it, so long as he carries out the terms of the contract.

On the other hand, there might be corporations that it would be perfectly proper for us to own stock in; but as a general rule, corporations make the Sabbath day one of their big days for earning profits, and in owning shares of their stock we are reaping dividends directly from Sabbath work. But so long as we are in this world, which is so completely out of joint with the moral law of Jehovah, there will have to be questions of this kind that each individual must settle between himself and God. If we are wholly sincere in our determination to follow God and do right, no matter what the cost, nor how much the apparent loss in temporal gain, we will find it always the case that His Spirit and His word will combine to make duty perfectly plain to us. And in these matters, if we can not get another brother to see things exactly as we see them, we should not insist upon being his conscience, but, rather, let each pray for the other, that you may come to see eye to eye, not on what may be man’s opinions, but upon that which is God’s great truth.

4220—AN ALLEGORY AND THE NEW COVENANT

Gal. 4:22-24 says these are an allegory. I thought it really meant as it is written in the old Bible. Then why do they call it an allegory? Please also explain to me what is meant by the covenant mentioned in Heb. 8:8-13.

Close attention to just what the apostle says in these verses in Galatians, together with the verses that immediately follow, will make it quite clear what he is talking about. He speaks of the two sons of Abraham, the one that was born of the bondmaid and the other of the freewoman. The son born of the bondmaid was “after the flesh,” but the son born of the freewoman was “by promise.” These things are an allegory, or, as in the Revised Version, they contain an allegory. Then he continues to say that they are the two covenants, one of them from Mount Sinai, “which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar”—the Greek form of the word “Hagar,” the bondmaid, who was the mother of Ishmael. The twenty-fifth verse says that “this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is,” that is, the Jerusalem which existed in Paul’s time, “and is in bondage with her children.”

There would be nothing difficult in this passage whatever, were it not for the strained interpretation that some men have placed upon this scripture in order to make it appear that God had abolished His ten-commandment law which was given at Sinai. But there is a vast difference between the ten-commandment law given on Sinai, and the covenant which the children of Israel entered into at Sinai to keep that law.

This ought to be made clear by referring to the scripture in the second part of your question. You ask for an explanation of the covenant mentioned in Heb. 8:8-13. The text there says plainly: “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put My laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people.” Whatever men may think in regard to what may be in the new covenant, or what may not be in it, it is perfectly clear, from this text, that the new covenant means the writing of God’s law upon the mind and in the heart of the believer.

Space in this department would not permit us to present the evidence which clearly shows that all who are saved, from the days of Adam to the end of time, are saved under the terms of the new covenant, which is established upon the strong and unfailing promises of God. The old covenant stands now, and always has stood, on the promises of men,—men entering into agreements to do deeds of righteousness that their carnal natures render them powerless to perform; while the new covenant rests wholly upon God’s great promises and upon His power to enter the life of the individual and enable him to perform that which in his weakness he can not do of himself. If we study the covenants in an effort to get rid of the conviction that we should keep God’s law, and especially His holy Sabbath, we can wander into the depths of spiritual darkness. If we study the covenants in the light of His plan of salvation, we will find in the subject the beautiful lessons of the gospel of Christ. We will find the power that can enter into the life and cleanse the soul temple from the defilement of sin.

4221—JOEL THE SON OF SAMUEL

Please explain Joel, chapter 1, verse 1. Is this prophet Joel the son of Samuel? If he is, what is meant by the word “Pethuel”?

No, Joel was not the son of Samuel. He was the son of Pethuel, just as the text says. The best authorities agree in placing Joel at least two hundred years this side of the time of Samuel, and some good critics affirm that he lived six hundred years this side. “Pethuel” is a proper name, the same as “Joel,” “Isaiah,” or any of the rest of the proper names of the Bible. There is no special significance attached to the name itself.