With Our Inquirers by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Sep 23, 1908

With Our Inquirers

By Editor

“If ye will inquire, inquire ye.”

[All questions to this department will be answered which to the editors will seem to minister to the good of the readers and to the mission of the paper. The same question can not be answered repeatedly in the same volume. The name and address must accompany question, not for publication, but as an evidence of good faith, and that answer may be made by letter if deemed advisable. It is well always to enclose a stamp for reply.]

2611.—The Experience of Romans 7.

Please explain what is meant in Romans 7, the last part of the chapter. Is this a Christian experience that Paul is describing, or is it an experience of one who is just awakened by the law of God to see himself a very great sinner?

It is the latter. God does not design that His children shall live in the experience described in Romans 7, yet there are thousands living there today, constantly discouraged, constantly cast down. The apostle is telling in detail, what he had already told before in general, of the experience through which the sinner passed, the experience doubtless, through which he himself passed. The law was not sin, the law pointed out sin in him. The law was holy, but he found himself exceedingly sinful; “carnal, sold under sin.” His conscience had been aroused as the Spirit of God had applied the law. He hated that which he did, but he found in himself no power to do the right. Over and over he would try, just as millions of others have, but over and over he would fail. He found himself as it were chained to a body of death, doomed to drag it with him until he himself would be corrupted by its presence, and die. And this wrings from him the agonized plea, “Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” Yet God gave the law to show how sinful is the case; how deplorable is man’s condition, and therefore to lead man away from himself to Christ. “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith;” and therefore when Paul comes to that place where he feels himself to be utterly lost, he gets a sight of the Deliverer, Jesus, and so he says: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” That is the experience of the Christian, continued in chapter 8.

2612.—A Lying Spirit. 1 Kings 22: 18-23.

Please explain 1 Kings 22: 18-23, also repeated in 2 Chronicles.

A part of the narrative is a parable, and that parable teaches us as to God’s dealings with men. When men refuse to hear His prophet and His instruction, the Lord permits the soul who rejects Him to have its own way. In this case the king of Israel refused to hear the prophet of God. He preferred to follow the prophets of Baal, and therefore, Micaiah represents it by this striking parable of his, of the various angels or spirits who came before God. In other words, when Ahab chose falsehood, God suffered him to fall under the falsehood. We are not necessarily to understand that what Micaiah saw was an occurrence which actually took place, but it illustrates very strikingly how it is that when men refuse to hear God’s truth and abide by His instruction, He gives them up to lying spirits who are permitted of God to deceive only those who desire deception instead of truth.

2613.—Story of the Flood.

If the story of the Flood be true, where could the wild animals of America have come from, especially the buffalo?

There are scientists who tell us that the ark was large enough for the various families of earth’s creatures. The buffalo belongs to the ox kind. The difference between these various branches has been the result of years of environment and inbreeding. After the Flood, the animals, of course, multiplied very rapidly and were doubtless crowded off the Eastern continent over the Bering Strait into America. There are those who believe that what is now the Aleutian Islands, a chain of volcanic rocks, was at that time continuous, really an isthmus connecting two large bodies; or that during the cold season the whole region was frozen over, when animals could have crossed on the ice.

2614.—The Two Daniels.

Were the prophet Daniel and Daniel of Neh. 10: 6 identical? Did he return to Jerusalem?

They were not. Daniel the prophet died in the days of King Cyrus. The Daniel of Neh. 10: 6 lived eighty or more years later. The name was not uncommon. One of David’s sons was named Daniel.