To Correspondents by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 3, 1859

To Correspondents.

By Editor

H. Grover. Remember that the promises and threatenings of the Lord are always conditional. The following general rule on this point is found in Jer. xviii, 7-10. God says,

"At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have proclaimed, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them."

Apply this rule to the threatening against the Laodiceans, and there is no trouble. They are to be rejected of God, only on condition that they do not repent. On this account, therefore, they are counseled to be zealous and repent; and those who heed this counsel, and overcome, have the promise of sitting with Jesus on his throne.

In regard to the 144,000, it is only by connection with corrupt churches that persons become defiled in a spiritual sense. But the church of God is a pure church. It is to be presented to God, "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing." Eph. v, 27. None need be afraid of a connection with this church.

A. Pierce. Events in the antitype must take place in the same order that they did in the type. If then, the plagues of Egypt are typical of the seven last plagues; and if the deliverance from Egypt, is typical of a deliverance of the people of God, down here, it must be of our final deliverance from earth, after the pouring out of the seven last plagues. But these plagues are yet future; consequently we cannot now be occupying a period, corresponding antitypically to the forty years' sojourn of Israel in the wilderness.