p. 5 | Question Corner by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 11, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 15.

Question Corner

By Editor

1799.—The Lord and Samson.

How could God be with Samson when he told lies and did other things that were not right? F. H.

The writer of Hebrews places Samson among the great examples of faith. The Lord was not with Samson because he told lies or made mistakes or blunders; He was with him despite those things. Samson believed, as did David and other men of all ages, that it was perfectly proper to use deception with one's enemies. The highest standard would be to tell the truth at all times. Samson evidently did not see the sinfulness of the things that he was doing; he did, however, see the importance of serving God and freeing God's land from the power of the Philistines; and the Lord accepted the rough, uncouth, uninstructed faith of the man; but this does not mean that he endorsed all that Samson did. Abraham made a mistake in wedding Hagar. The Lord accepted him despite his mistake. There are thousands to-day who are breaking God's law weekly; He accepts them, not because of their transgression of His law, or because of their substitution of men's traditions for an essential part of that law; but despite their errors, He accepts them. It is the perfect faith that God asks, and he who has the perfect faith will be led on to more and more perfect conduct.

Question Corner.

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1804.—God's Loving and Hating.

Will you please explain Rom. 9:11-14, why God loved Jacob and hated Esau before they were born, having done neither good nor evil? L. R.

In the first place the terms love and hate, when used of God, must not be confounded with such terms when used by men, since man is not normal, and his love has more or less of the elements of selfishness in it, if not wholly so, and his hates are wholly selfish, unless he is regenerated of God. It may be said that God hates with love. He bears no vindictive spirit, no evil thought, against the greatest sinner. His own words are, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, . . . and He will abundantly pardon;" "as I live, saith Jehovah, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his evil way and live;" and yet for the very safety of the universe, in justice to the loyal, and in mercy to the wicked, God must cast those who are incorrigibly so in the oblivion which they choose. He hates sin, and if man will choose sin, he makes himself a part of that very thing; so when the Lord speaks of characters like Jacob and Esau, He speaks of them not merely as individual men, but as characters; and the character of Jacob He loved, and the character of Esau He hated. Jacob's character was manifest in that he would do anything in order that he might have the birthright of God and the blessing of God. Esau so despised it that he was willing to sell it for a mess of pottage. The Lord chose for the progenitor of those through whom His truth was to be given to the world, a man that prized the gift and the blessing of God, and set aside the man who despised these things, knowing that the character of each would, to a greater or less extent, be perpetuated in his descendants. Again, the election spoken of did not forbid the salvation of Esau. God chose Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for the channels of the chosen seed. He rejected Ishmael and Esau for that purpose, but that did not cut them off from God if they were willing to seek Him in His appointed way.

1805.—Souls Under the Altar. Rev. 6: 9-11.

Will you please explain Rev. 6:9-11, about the meaning of that scripture? I have never heard this text considered. M. Z.

The passage comes in the prophecy of the seven seals. The opening of the fifth seal probably took place about the close of the twelve hundred sixty years of papal persecution, indicated in the previous verse. John is given a vision of something of the awful work that had been done. He saw that these crimes cried to God for vengeance. That does not mean that these souls were actually thus crying. Many of them had gone down praying for their murderers, as did Stephen, but justice demanded that the awful crimes should be remembered in high heaven, just as the Lord said to Cain, "Thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground;" not that the blood had a voice, but the crime he had committed demanded punishment as truly as tho the blood had cried. Gen. 4:10. So we read in Hab. 2:9-11 of a house built by fraud and oppression, that the stone shall cry out of the wall and the beam out of the timber shall answer it. Not that these inanimate things speak, but that the oppression that had been exercised in the building of the house, in the putting in of the stones and timbers, demanded it. So the awful persecutions of the Dark Ages and the destruction of souls, demanded that the Lord should avenge His children, just as if they were actually crying out for it, seemingly before the time. Then the Lord, in His goodness, assures His living people that, tho to man's blinded eye He seems to pay no attention to these things, yet after all He remembers them. He will vindicate them, as indicated by the white robe, and bids them rest until all persecution shall be past and all His children enter upon their reward. These dead ones are personified, so to speak. Justice is represented as crying through them, because they were the ones that suffered by the injustice and persecution.