To Correspondents by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 25, 1860

To Correspondents.

By Editor

J. H. L., of R. I. In reply to your query how it is known that the ten commandments and no more were on the tables of stone, we refer you to Deut. x, 2, 4. After Moses had come down from the mount and broken the first tables in view of the idolatry of the Israelites the Lord told him to hew him two other tables like the first, and come up to him again into the mount; and he adds [verse 2], "I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables which thou breakest." Here is a promise to Moses from God that he would write upon the second tables the same words that were upon the first tables, no more and no less. Now if we can find what he did write upon the second tables we have proof positive of just what was there to the exclusion of everything else. Verse 4 of Deut. x, then, reads thus: "And he [God] wrote on the tables, according to the first writing, the ten commandments which the Lord spake unto you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly." This language, in connection with verse 2, confines the writing on the tables, to the ten commandments. What is found in the second verse of Ex. xx, is not a commandment, and could not therefore be included. That is merely the language in which God orally introduced himself to the Israelites and in which he urges upon them peculiar reasons for gratitude and obedience.

From L. A. B. of Mich. : 1. "Does the silence in heaven, spoken of in Rev, viii, 1, occur when Jesus comes with all the holy angels with him?" Matt. xxv, 31.

ANSWER.—We think not; inasmuch as the silence of Rev. viii, 1, takes place under the seventh seal, and the coming of the Lord occurs under the sixth. See Rev. vi, 12-17.

2. "Is the word archangels [plural] found anywhere except in the Episcopal prayer-book? Is not the archangel of the Scriptures, Jesus?"

ANSWER.—Whether this word in the plural is found elsewhere than in the Episcopal prayer-book or not, it is certain that it is not found in the Scriptures. The word means chief angel, or ruler of angels, and undoubtedly refers to Christ. Paul in his first letter to the Thessalonians [iv, 16] tells us that at the resurrection of the dead the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel &c.; and from John v, 28, we learn that it is the voice of the Son of God which the dead hear when they come forth.

3. "In 1 Pet. iv, 11, where it says, If any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth, does it mean to give of our means, or that those who go forth to preach should proclaim the truth with the ability they have?"

ANSWER.—The word there rendered minister is defined by Greenfield as follows: "To minister to another's necessities, relieve, assist, or supply with the necessaries of life," &c.