Mountain Removing Faith

QUESTION: Explain Mark 11:28, "especially mountain removing faith."

ANSWER; This is an Oriental proverb for the removal of some stupendous obstacle or the conquest of any appalling difficulty. It is to be symbolically interpreted, and not literally, unless the spirit of God should in a supernatural way inspire miracle working faith for such an object, which he has never yet done. When Christianity went forth from Jerusalem to conquer Jewish opposition, and pagan persecution, faith removed the Alpine mountains which stood in the path of a dozen unarmed, and unlearned fishermen and peasants. This text does not encourage anything spectacular or arbitrary. We are dependent upon the Holy Spirit for a knowledge of what we should pray for. When we know this, it is easy to believe. When God wants us to work miracles he will inspire in us miracle working faith.

— Steele's Answers p. 110.

The Age of the Holy Spirit is Opened!

In that sublime formula of worship, the Te Deum Laudamus, which has dropped from the lips of dying sires to living sons for fifteen centuries, there is found this sentence, referring to the work of Christ in opening the dispensation of the Spirit:

"When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, 

Thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers." 

To make the Church realize the presence of [the Holy Spirit], "The Executive of the Godhead," there must be more praying in the Holy Ghost, more preaching with the demonstration of the Spirit, more singing with the Spirit, and testifying as the Spirit giveth utterance, with the attesting fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, and peace. There must be more faith in the Holy Spirit as "the greatest gift that man could wish, or that heaven can send."

The Executive of the Godhead

For several years our mind has been laboring to invent some concise expression for the sum of all the offices of the Third Person of the Trinity, in the transformation, sanctification, and habitation of souls who fully believe in Christ Jesus. At last Dr. Hodge, [President of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Princeton, N.J. U.S.A.] has struck out with his die the very coin which our own mint has failed to stamp and contribute to the currency of Christian experience and theological discussion. "The Holy Ghost is the Executive of the Godhead." We telegraph our thanks to Princeton. May Dr. Hodge's mint continue to pour out its golden coin into our religious literature for many years more. This clear cut conception and expression of the work of the Spirit is exceedingly beautiful because it is indisputably true. Law emanates from the Father, and mercy and judgment are committed to the Son, while the Executive of both Persons is the ever blessed Spirit. Here we have the three departments of government: the legislative, the judicial, and the executive. Through the Holy Spirit the Father and the Son operate on human souls, reproving, regenerating, witnessing and sanctifying. We now see how a person may honor the Father, and in a measure the Son, and yet fail of obtaining the highest spiritual grace through a failure to honor the Holy Ghost, the blessed Comforter; just as a man may show all proper respect to the lawmaking and law-interpreting departments of our own government, and secure their action, and then miss his purpose at last by ignoring the last link necessary to its realization — the executive officer, without whose agency statutes and courts are ineffectual. We fear that there are many Christians who inadvertently fail in their tribute of respect, faith, and worship to the Holy Ghost, regarding him as an impersonal emanation or influence streaming from God, or as only another name for the Father, who can just as well without Him reach and transfigure their sin-stained souls, through the blood of the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world.

On Hebrews 11:39, 40

QUESTION: Explain Heb. 11:39, 40, "And, these all, having had witness borne to them through their faith, received not the promise. God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect."

ANSWER: The difficulty lies in the meaning of two words, "promise" and "perfect." Promise is here used for the thing promised, the resurrection of the body and the glorification of the soul and body in the likeness of the glorified God-man. This is the perfection for which the heroes of faith recorded in this chapter, "the Westminster Abbey of the Old Testament," are waiting till the Second Advent of Christ and the general resurrection. The souls of the blessed dead are neither unconscious, nor hidden away in some doleful place, but they are in heaven, according to the constant testimony of the New Testament Scriptures, enjoying all that is possible for disembodied spirits. They are in the heaven of glory, "with Christ, which is very far better" than perfect love to him on the earth, while they were subject to the limiting an instantaneous increase and perfection, "when soul and body will his glorious image bear." The history of the saints upon the earth must be finished before the completion of heaven comes on. So it may be very properly said that the patriarchs, prophets and ancient saints are waiting for the completion of our dispensation before their glory will be made perfect by the dawning of the day in which their bodies will live again. Blessed in their present condition, they are blessed also in their anticipation of a supreme and eternal perfection. Thus, the "promise" is the "perfection."

— Steele's Answers pp. 108-110.

Be Ye Perfect

QUESTION: Is Matt. 5:48 a precept or a prediction? We note that the revisors have changed the words, "Be ye perfect" to "Ye shall be perfect," making them a promise instead of a command.

ANSWER: Both forms are mandatory. All the requirements and prohibitions of the Decalogue, except the fifth, are in the indicative form, "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not." This is really in the Greek as strong as the imperative mood. Even though we had no expressed command, we would be bound to realize the highest ideal. This is found in the character of Jesus Christ. "While a better is in sight, we can rest in no good; and the refusal to move onward is to be a traitor to the highest, and so, finally, to the good itself," says Dr. Borden P. Bowne. Indifference in sight of spiritual perfection is a perilous attitude of a free moral agent professing faith in Christ.

— Steele's Answers pp. 108.

A Deeper Death?

QUESTION: Does the Bible teach that after we are wholly sanctified there is yet a deeper death?

ANSWER: This question has the odor of Plymouth and Keswick, and of Geneva, the home of Calvin. Many good people cling to the doleful doctrine that sin is necessary to this present life and that it must continue till physical death in the case of the normal Christian, and that a perfectly holy man is something abnormal. The Bible teaches that Christ came into the world to destroy the works of the devil. Sin is the devil's masterpiece which the Lamb of God came into the world provisionally to destroy through the efficacy of faith in his blood. He has opened a fountain for sin and all uncleanness, not in the article of death or after our last heart-beat. Paul certainly contemplated a period of life after dying unto sin once for all, when, in answer to our question, in a slightly changed form, he quired thus: "We who died to sin, how shall we live any longer therein?" It is not a process, "are dying," but a completed act, "died." Strictly speaking, there are no degrees of death, although we hear men in the street using this phrase, "deader than Julius Caesar." Crucifixion, Paul's favorite word for the cessation of the self-centered life, is a decisive act admitting of no degrees, or "dying deeper down," "our old man was crucified" (aorist) subsequently explained by Paul's reference to his own experience in Gal. 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer that I live" (American Revision). He did not need to die deeper down. The fact that he kept his body under by holding in check his innocent animal appetites, like those of Jesus Christ, does not prove the need of a deeper death in the one case any more than in the other.

— Steele's Answers pp. 107, 108.

On Luke 11:41

QUESTION: Explain Luke 11:41, "But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and behold, all things are clean unto you."

ANSWER: The exegetes are about equally divided, some saying, "By acts directly contrary to rapine and wickedness, show that your hearts are cleansed, and these outward washings are needless" (Wesley); and others assert that Jesus ironically describes the error of the Pharisees, "Give alms, forsooth, and make compensation for your extortions and cleanse of all your guilt." Jesus does not often use irony, but I think he uses it with good effect here. He casts no slur on almsgiving, but upon using, it as a cover for sin.

— Steele's Answers p. 106.

On Mark 16:17, 18 (The Snake Handling Verses)

QUESTION: Is Mark 16:17, 18 to be taken in its literal meaning? If so, have not all believers the power to cast out devils, to heal the sick, to drink deadly poisons and handle rattlesnakes without harm?

ANSWER: The Revision informs the reader that the last twelve verses of Mark are not in the two oldest manuscripts, and that some authorities have a different ending to his Gospel. Most of the experts regard it as "an apocryphal fragment" (Meyer) and that "the internal evidence is very weighty against Mark being the author." (Alford.) No less than twenty-one words and phrases occur in these verses, and some of them several times, which are never elsewhere used by Mark. For this reason I have for more than thirty years conscientiously refrained from quoting any part of this passage as a proof-text of any doctrine. It is thought that either he left his Gospel unfinished, having died in the middle of a sentence, or what is more probable, that the last part of his manuscript was accidentally torn off before any copies were made. In India a favorite method of annoying the missionary preaching in the open air is to bring him a cobra, whose bite is fatal, and ask him to handle it in proof of the truth of his sacred books. The grave doubt of the genuineness of this passage affords him a good reason for declining this test. We look in vain in the Acts of the Apostles for any instance of drinking poison or picking up snakes to demonstrate the divine origin of Christianity.

— Steele's Answers p. 105, 106.

Cartoons & Theological Controversy

QUESTION: Is the cartoon a proper instrument of theological controversy?

ANSWER: Some have thought that Paul used it for imparting religious instruction in Gal. 3:1 "before whose eyes Jesus Christ was depicted as crucified." It is better to understand Paul as saying that Christ crucified was vividly portrayed in his preaching. The comic cartoon was very early used as a weapon against Christ by pagans. Recently a wall of the barracks of the Pretorian guard, with which Paul was acquainted in his imprisonment at Rome, was laid bare, showing a rough cartoon of a cross to which a man with the head of a donkey was nailed. Beneath it a soldier is kneeling and these words are written, "Clovius worships his god." If the cartoon continues to be used, let the enemies of Christ have a monopoly of it. Let not professed Christians use it against one another.

— Steele's Answers p. 104, 105.

Is Accepting Christ Necessary?

QUESTION: Which is correct: "All will be saved except those who reject Christ," or "None will be saved except those who accept Christ?

ANSWER: Aside from infants and pious pagans living up to their best light in total ignorance of the Savior, my preference is to say, "Christ has begun to save the fallen race and he will save every one who will receive him as both Savior and Lord." Many sinners say, "I am not conscious of rejecting Christ," while they cannot say, "I am conscious of receiving Christ." This is the reason for my preference.

— Steele's Answers p. 104.