SCRIPTURE QUESTIONS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · April 8, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 15

SCRIPTURE QUESTIONS.

57.—BAPTISM OF FIRE.

What are we to understand by the baptism of fire in Matt. 3:11? S. C. C.

Ans. Competent critics read the passage thus: “He [Christ] shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost or with fire.” The passage would then bring to view two classes; namely, the righteous and the wicked; the one class the subjects of the operation of the Spirit of God, who will thus be made meet for a place in his kingdom; the other, cast at last into the lake of fire, thus being baptized with fire, in the second death.

58.—THE 1335 DAYS.

What time and what work is referred to in Dan. 12:12: “Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days”? W. C.

Ans. The 1335 days commenced with the 1290 of the previous verse, in 508, and consequently ended in 1843. The blessing to be received at the end of those days was a blessing upon the living, and not upon the dead; for it was to him that “waiteth,” that is liveth, or cometh, to the termination of that period.

The blessing referred to, we think, was involved in the great light which was then going forth respecting the second coming of Christ, and the closing up of this dispensation. As a parallel see Matt. 13:16, 17.

59.—THE HOUR OF TEMPTATION. REV. 3:10.

What is meant by the hour of temptation, spoken of in this verse: “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth”? W. C.

Ans. This is addressed to those who have kept the word of Christ’s patience, probably the same time and work of patience mentioned in Rev. 14:12. The hour of temptation must, therefore, be some period of especial trial through which the world is to pass in connection with the close of its history; and this trial, we think, will be brought upon them by the wonderful work of spiritualism, which is to bring fire down from heaven upon the earth in the sight of men, Rev. 13:13, to be accompanied with “all power and signs and lying wonders,” 2 Thess. 2:9, and to be so powerful as to “deceive, if it were possible, the very elect.” Matt. 24:24. Those only will then be saved from the power of this delusion, who have stood fast in the truth of God’s word.

THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF REVELATION.

We published a week ago the last word of candid Unitarian scholarship as to the authenticity of the Gospel of John. Professor Ezra Abbot, of the Harvard Divinity School, the most competent scholar in America in the matter of Biblical criticism, gives it as his judgment, after the most thorough study of the German, Dutch, and English critical writers and of the patristic authorities, that the objections made to the Johannean authorship of the Fourth Gospel have no validity. There is no higher authority on this subject in America than Professor Abbot. There is no more competent scholar in Germany. He is candid, and not prejudiced by dogmatic considerations. Simply the literary considerations, the historical evidences, convince him that John, the beloved disciple, wrote the Fourth Gospel.

It is equally certain, settled now by the best authority, that a number of the so-called Pauline Epistles must have been written by Paul. This even Rationalism now has to concede.

Now what follows? It follows that the latest and best criticism now decides (what was said a few years ago to be doubtful) that Christianity as it has come down to us is the Christianity of Christ and his disciples. Our Christianity is not a mythical growth of centuries; but it is fact. What we read in the Bible as the supernatural story of Christ and his revelation is actually what the companions of Jesus believed to be fact, and themselves wrote down as fact. They actually believed in the miracles; declared that they saw them. They actually believed that Jesus Christ rose from the dead after his crucifixion. They said so. They wrote so. They preached so. They suffered death for the testimony of it.

On their testimony of this glorious supernaturalism, and on our recognition that the revelation is worthy of such testimony of miracles, we can accept it still, as we have been taught to do, and be glad that reason and evidence are on its side. God has given us a revelation, and that will stand firm in its historical evidences. No matter what opposition has come from enemies, who have tried to prove that because it is wonderful it must be mythical; no matter what criticism may come from those who find, or think they find, here and there, minor errors; the grand fact of revelation stands firm. God has sent his Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins, and rise again for our justification. On that rock the church can stand till the world shall end, as it has stood for eighteen hundred years.—The Independent.