Did Paul Disobey the Spirit in Going to Jeruslem?

QUESTION: Did not Paul disobey the Holy Spirit by going up to Jerusalem against the warning of the Prophet Agabus, who came down from that city and warned him by word of mouth and by an impressive object lesson (Acts 21:10-14) that he would there be bound and delivered into the hands of the Gentiles?

ANSWER: The Holy Spirit did not forbid Paul's going, but loudly revealed the consequences, if he did go. It brought out the true heroism of the apostle to the Gentiles. He could have interpreted the warning as a permission to secure his own safety, in accordance with Christ's command, "when they persecute you in one city flee ye to another," a command which Paul several times obeyed. But he believed that it was God's will that he should go on even if it cost him his life. It was God's way of bringing him to Rome, where he and not Peter organized the church in the world's capital city.

— Steele's Answers pp. 258, 259.

Could God Have Prevented Sin?

QUESTION: Could not God have refused to create the tree bearing forbidden fruit, and in this way have prevented the sin of Adam and Eve?

ANSWER: He could have refrained from such a creation, but in that case there would have been some other way of testing their obedience to their Creator. A test must consist in something which appeals to desire. The good-looking fruit appealed to appetite. It would have been too severe if there had not been a great variety of permitted fruit for their health and pleasure. Every free agent, without intelligence and experience, in attempting to find the line between right and wrong, will probably sooner or later find out by stepping over this fiery boundary and getting well scorched for his daring act. The liability of free agents to sin can be prevented only by suppressing their freedom and converting them into machines, i. e., by uncreating them. It is reasonable to suppose that out of all possible plans of a moral universe God selected that one which he foresaw would involve the least suffering. Therefore we should praise God for creating us with all our moral risks instead of censuring Him for the self-induced failure and suffering of as few perhaps relatively as the prisoners in our State prisons are to the entire population outside.

— Steele's Answers p. 258.

Did God Forsee Sin?

QUESTION: Did God foresee that some men would sin and, refusing the Savior whom He provided, would be eternally punished?

ANSWER: A few good men, such as Bishop Wm. Taylor and Prof. McCabe, say God foreknows only the foreknowable; that the future moral acts of a free agent are not knowable. This would make prophecy impossible. Theologians almost all of them believe that God foreknew that some men would make themselves forever miserable. He could have avoided the misery by refraining from creating persons and by  being satisfied with a universe of things. This would be a dull universe without a single moral intelligence to commune with. God had from eternity just such a universe. I do not blame Him for preferring a chance with all the risks involved in the creation of free agents.

— Steele's Answers p. 257.

What is the Sin Against the Holy Spirit?

QUESTION (1) What is the sin against the Holy Spirit? (2) Must a person have a Christian experience before he can commit the irremissible sin?

ANSWER: Some think it is the culmination of a long period of resistance to the Holy Spirit, a fixity of sinful character towards which all sinners are steadily drifting. When this point has been reached the Spirit abandons the soul (Isa. 63:10). Others say that the unpardonable sin is ascribing Christ's miracles to the devil, a sin which only those who lived when Christ was on the earth would be apt to commit. See Mark 3:29,30. Others think that when after a course of sin some aggravating insult is offered to the Spirit, most sensitive Person of the Trinity, then does he resent it with a justice that knows no mercy. A good illustration of this sin is this: There is a fatal disease for which there is but one cure. One finds the remedy; another compounds it, and the third applies it. Neither of the three will do the work of either of the others. If the sick man refuses to have the remedy applied, but trusts in a general way to the kindness of either of the others, he must die, though the supply of prepared medicine is ample. The same dreadful result would follow, if, because of some great insult to the third man, a philanthropic physician, he should decline to medicate the blasphemer. (2) He need not have been a Christian, though a Christian may commit this sin. (John 5:16.).

— Steele's Answers pp. 256, 257.

The Character of Solomon

QUESTION: Was Solomon a type of entire sanctification?

ANSWER: No. He was a very good young man, but in his middle age and down to the day of his death he was a worshiper of his many wives' idols. If there ever was a carnally minded man on the earth it must have been he who had 700 wives and 300 concubines, two new honeymoons a month all his married life of forty years; a pretty type of sanctification! Yet some have tried even to make out that he was a type of Christ! "There is every evidence," says Dr. A. Clarke, "that he died in his sins. His crimes were greatly aggravated; he forsook the Lord who had appeared to him twice. There is not a single testimony in the Old or New Testament that intimates that he died in a safe state." His father said in I Chron. 28:9, "If thou forsake the Lord, he will cast thee off forever," as if he had a premonition of his son's awful destiny. There is more hope of Judas, who tried to undo his sin. There is no proof that Solomon even tried to repent.

— Steele's Answers pp. 255, 256.

Lodge Membership

QUESTION: Is it wrong, according to the Scriptures, to belong to a secret lodge?

ANSWER: I do not think it wise or expedient. I find no Scriptures specifically condemning it, unless it be this. "Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers."

— Steele's Answers p. 255.

A Woman with Two Living Husbands

QUESTION: Can a woman having two living husbands be holy?

ANSWER: If she has procured a divorce from her first husband for a scriptural cause (adultery), she can be, as many interpreters of Christ's words teach. 

— Steele's Answers p. 255.

Why Did Christ Not Know "That Day and That Hour"?

QUESTION: How can we reconcile Christ's ignorance of "that day and hour" with His Deity? See Matt. 24:36; Mark 13:32.

ANSWER: The union of the Divine and human in Christ is more inexplicable than the union of soul and body, solely because it occurs but once and has no analogy. His humanity was neither infinite nor omniscient. He grew in stature and in wisdom. Hence while on the earth there were facts unknown to Him. Had there not been, we should doubt the reality of His humanity. His ignorance of the date of His second coming, or of the destruction of Jerusalem, was a part of His humiliation as the Redeemer of the world. 

— Steele's Answers pp. 254, 255.

Changing the Sabbath

QUESTION: If the Lord Jesus wished to change the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first, why did he not himself do it?

ANSWER: The day before he died he said (John 16:12), "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. When the spirit of truth is come, he shall guide you into all the truth." Everybody will admit that the treatment of the Sabbath was the most ticklish subject Christ had to deal with in all his intercourse with the Jews. Again and again did he rebuke their impracticable misconceptions, making it the most dreaded, distressing and awful day of the seven. If he had desired to divest it of the severities with which it was loaded down, he could not have done it without changing the day; and he could not change the day without breaking down the confidence of everyone of his apostles and disciples. Hence he left it for the Holy Spirit to teach, who did thus teach so that they immediately began to keep the first day. (John 20:19, 26; Acts 20:7; I Cor. 16:2; John 1:10, on the Dominical Day, i. e., Sunday). As the result the whole Christian world, except a little handful, keeps the first day. To cure this handful get them to go eastward round the world, and when they get home they will all be keeping the first day, having gained a day. Perhaps Carnegie or Rockefeller can be persuaded to pay the bills in order to rid the Christian world of this senseless clamor against it of a few discordant voices.

— Steele's Answers pp. 253, 254.

The Unjust Steward

QUESTION: How could the Lord, in Luke 16:8, commend the unjust steward who had perpetrated a series of frauds?

ANSWER: Note that the word lord does not begin with a capital, which always is the case when Jesus is spoken of. Note, that in the Revision it is "his lord." This makes it still more plain that it refers to the master of the steward, whose acuteness and forethought in feathering his own future nest, and not his rascally way of doing it, his master praised, probably with a laugh, exclaiming, "Isn't he a cute fellow?" Another explanation is that the steward had overcharged the tenants and pocketed the surplus; so that marking down of the debts of the tenants was really a righting of fraud against them. In this case the master was not the loser. In either case he was a bad man. But his cunning, not his rascality, is approved.

— Steele's Answers pp. 252, 253.