The First-Born of the Dead

QUESTION: In Rev. 1:5 Jesus Christ is called the first-born of the dead. What does this mean?

ANSWER: It means that he was the first who arose to die no more. In this sense he was "the first fruits of them that slept." It also signifies prominence; he is the chief of all risen from the dead, and leader of the resurrection.

— Steele's Answers pp. 262, 263.

Salvation and Baptism

QUESTION: Explain I Pet. 3:21, "which also after a true likeness (antitype) doth  now  save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ."

ANSWER: We are saved from sin which deluges the world and destroys all who are not in Christ, the ark, symbolized by baptism, "not indeed the bare outward sign, but the inward grace enabling us to seek successfully a conscience reconciled to God." "Answer" in the A. V. is "interrogation"; in the R. V., a craving, a seeking after earnestly.

— Steele's Answers pp. 238, 239.

Pentecost and the Founding of the Church

"Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth: for he shall not speak from himself; but what things soever he shall hear, [these] shall he speak: and he shall declare unto you the things that are to come He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall declare [it] unto you" — John 16:13, 14 (Revised Version).

This intimate identification of the Spirit's mission with the person of Christ and the success of His work was because in the wisdom of God it was seen to be necessary to the establishment and universal spread of His kingdom. There is truth in the argument that the existence of the Church as the visible exponent of Christ's kingdom is the great proof of the resurrection and divinity of its Founder. This is true. But our contention is that the Church which was not organized when Jesus Christ, its living head, ascended, would not have had a beginning on the earth without the Pentecostal gift. This idea has found expression in that beautiful and inspiring formula of worship, the Te Deum Laudamus, called by Canon Liddon "at once a hymn, a prayer and a creed," in these sublime words,

"When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death,
Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers."

The Pentecostal Attestation

Pentecost is the final, indispensable and standing attestation of the Lordship of Jesus Christ and of the truth of all His declarations. In other words, the gift of the Paraclete, not merely as a solitary event, but as a perpetual dispensation of grace and power, is absolutely necessary to the perfection of the Christian evidences. The resurrection of Christ, according to Paul in I Cor. xv. and all Christian apologists, is the fundamental proof of His divine mission. It is my purpose to show that this greatest miracle, taken by itself as an isolated event, without the standing and perpetual attestation of the Pentecostal dispensation as a predicted sequence, would have been insufficient for the establishment of Christianity against the universal opposition of Jews and Gentiles, including ten imperial edicts of persecution and extermination beginning with Nero, A. D. 64, and ending with Diocletian, A. D. 313. Much less would it have been sufficient to perpetuate the gospel eighteen hundred years as a system dominating the world's best thought and keeping in advance of the progress of the ages. We mean to say that the empty tomb without the tongues of fire descending from generation to generation on Spirit-baptized believers would have been inadequate to the permanent enthronement of Christianity over mankind. If "another Comforter" had not succeeded Christ, His mission, with all His miracles, including His victory over the tomb, would have been a failure, and His sermons and parables would long since have been forgotten. This idea is beautifully expressed in the first verse and the last of President W. F. Warren's hymn.

"I worship Thee, O Holy Ghost,
I love to worship Thee;
My risen Lord for aye were lost
But for Thy company.

"I worship Thee, O Holy Ghost,
I love to worship Thee;
With Thee each day is Pentecost,
Each night nativity."

— The Gospel of the Comforter, Chapter 9.

Natural Religion Fails in the Face of Death

In all minds which have not been spoiled by sophistry or puffed up by false philosophy and self-conceit, there is a spontaneous shrinking back from treading alone the unexplored continent of religious truth and a crying out for a guide."Who will show us any good?" Socrates, pronounced by the Delphic Oracle the wisest man of his generation, to whom we shall again refer in the present discussion as the best representative of the entire heathen world, on the day of his death, sitting upon his bed in his prison, when about to enter upon his argument for the immortality of the soul, exhorted his friends "to supplicate the gods for help while we take hold of one another's hands and enter this deep and rapid river." Deep and rapid indeed is the river of theological inquiry without the aid of revelation. Who feels competent, without supernatural light, to give a satisfactory answer to that solemn question which arises in every sober mind:

"Soon as from earth I go,
What will become of me?"

The Post-Resurrection Christ

QUESTION: (1) Why did not the disciples know Christ when he arose from the dead? (2) Did he have a glorified body?

ANSWER: The visible presence of supernatural power produces an instinctive chill in the spinal column, such as the sudden appearance of one known to be dead and buried, entering the room without opening the door, probably bloodless and pale as a ghost (see Bengel on Heb. 12:24,) in mysterious robes. This would startle the most courageous men. In the case of two disciples it is said "their eyes were holden (restrained) that they should not see him." (2) We do not know when his body met with the change called glorification. It is probable that it took place after his ascension. The only one who has since seen him was Saul near Damascus. The vision of dying Stephen and that of John in the Revelation were subjective, or in a trance. Christ's glorified person is too dazzling for mortals to see. It almost killed Saul.

— Steele's Answers p. 157.

Purgatory?

QUESTION: What do you think of the following: "If a man will not let the Holy Spirit burn his selfishness out of him in this life, it will have to be done in the next"?

ANSWER: This is the doctrine of the Roman Catholics, who have borrowed from Grecian paganism purgatorial fires for curable sinful souls. It is also the teaching of modern Universalism that all the souls unfit for heaven when they leave the body will be purified by a limited punishment and will then be admitted to the life everlasting. The Scriptural basis for this doctrine is lack­ing. There is not the remotest hint that the work of the Holy Spirit in the sanctification of believers can be done after death, nor is there anywhere in the Bible any intimation that saving faith in Christ, followed by the new birth, is possible after the spirit becomes disem­bodied. There is positive proof that the sentences on the day of judgment are final and irreversible. It is equally certain that repentance and regeneration do not take place between death and the resurrection, for Christ says, "they that have done evil shall come forth unto the resurrection of damnation." The idea that good men will arise from bad men's graves implies the possibility that wicked men may arise from graves in which righteous men were buried! This is preposterous. The extension of probation till the day of judgment might solve some theological difficulties, but it would greatly weaken, if not destroy, the motive to repentance in the present life. Nothing that we have here said con­tradicts the possibility of a believer aspiring after perfect purity finding on his death-bed. All persevering believers belong to the new covenant which insures not only heaven but a fitness for heaven as the gift of God in probation.

— Steele's Answers pp. 122, 123.

Accounts of the Resurrection

QUESTION: In the account of the resurrection of Jesus, Matthew and Mark say that there was one angel, or rather "an angel," but Luke and John say there were two. Please harmonize.

ANSWER: There is no discrepancy here, nor in the number of Marys at the tomb — two being mentioned by Matthew, Mark and Luke, while John speaks of Mary Magdalene alone. Similar instances are the demoniacs of Gadara, and the blind men at Jericho; where, in both cases, Matthew speaks of two persons, but Mark and Luke mention only one. Something peculiar in one rendered him more prominent than the other. When Lafayette revisited America in 1824, he was everywhere received with joy and much was said about him in the daily papers; some of which did not mention his son, who was with him, eclipsed not by the shadow of his father, but by his glory as a Major General in Washington's army. This is the sound rule of interpretation in such cases: "He who speaks of the larger number includes the smaller; he who mentions the smaller does not deny the larger."

— from Steele's Answers pp. 44, 45.