Redemption for the Fallen Angels?

QUESTION: Why did God not provide a scheme of redemption for the fallen angels?

ANSWER: It has not pleased God to reveal much of his dealings with the different orders of angels. We do not know that provision for the restoration of the fallen angels was not made. It is highly probable, yea, certain, that God would be as merciful to them as to the fallen human race, and that some of them failed to accept the redemptive scheme devised by him, and that many accepted it and have attained a confirmed loyalty rendering them infallible.

— Steele's Answers, pp. 230, 231.

On Mark 13:32

QUESTION: Sidney Collett, in "All about the Bible," says that Mark 13:32 should be rendered, "Neither the Son if not (or but as) the Father," Christ thereby asserting not his ignorance, but his Deity, being one with the Father. Can this translation be substantiated?

ANSWER: No. The Greek language has two kinds of negatives, the objective, which, because it denies directly in plain terms, never coalesces with "if"; and the subjective negative, which is used in suppositions and is so weak as very often to coalesce with "if," making a new word, meaning unless, except, save, as in this text. It is often translated "but" in the sense of "identification with," as Collett has rendered it in defiance of all classical and Hellenistic usage. The word "alone" or "only" is sometimes pleonastically added, as in Matt. 24:36, "but my Father only." See also Matt. 17:8; 21:19; Acts 11:19; Phil. 4:15.

— Steele's Answers, pp. 230.

Jonah in the Belly of the Fish

QUESTION: Having heard a Methodist preacher make the statement from the pulpit recently that Jonah was dead in the belly of the whale three days and nights, I wish to ask if, in your judgment, there is anything in the Bible to back up such a statement, and if there is, does it not prove that the Roman Catholics are right in their claim that we have a chance to get right with God after death? If God gave Jonah the privilege of repenting after he was dead, have not we a right to expect the same privilege?

ANSWER: The day after this question was laid on my table, my daily paper of May 17 reported that a vessel called the Octopus, sunken near Newport, R. I., was raised, after a submergence of twenty-four hours, the whole crew of fifteen men being found alive and as well as they ever were. They voluntarily went down in a water-tight submarine war vessel, well supplied. with food and fresh air condensed in vaults which they let out from time to time after expelling that which had become foul. They testify that they could have been very comfortable several days. If men using only natural means could prolong life under the sea, could not God, who has both the natural and the supernatural at his command, keep a runaway preacher alive in the Octopus, which he prepared for him in the Mediterranean Sea? The sailor at masthead cries "There she blows," when he sees a stream of spray arising from a whale expelling the foul air from his lungs, preparing to inhale several cubic yards of pure air. So you see, there was a good chance for Jonah to live without any great draft upon the supernatural. Moreover, we have a historic proof that Jonah did not die, in the fact that he made a long prayer, in answer to which he was permitted to go ashore without a gang plank. Judging by the length of their prayers, Jonah was more alive than Peter was, who had only breath enough to say, "Lord, save me." Jonah dead is a very shaky foundation for the Romish doctrine of a post-mortem purgatory, with its back door opening heavenward. But it is the best they have. There is but one purgatory, for sin, the blood of Jesus Christ (I John 1:7), applied in this life.

— Steele's Answers, pp. 228-230.

Too Conscientious?

QUESTION: Can a person be too conscientious?

ANSWER: There are persons who are morbidly conscientious. This is very often a form of insanity. I once heard a good woman say she could not set her tea table without sinning, or buy a dozen eggs without sin, for she instinctively picked out the biggest. The alienists say that quite a number of forms of disordered mental action involve the moral sense. Nervous diseases frequently take on this characteristic. Hence the need of charity for many, who, through an affection of the nerves, dwell in the border land between sanity and insanity. "God knoweth our frame."

— Steele's Answers, pp. 228.

Kingdom of Heaven and Kingdom of God

QUESTION: Do the expressions "kingdom of heaven" and "kingdom of God" mean one and the same thing?

ANSWER: Yes, also "the kingdom of Christ," "the kingdom of Christ and of God" (Eph. 5:5), "the kingdom of David," the ancestor and type of the Messiah (Mark 11:10), and "the kingdom" (Matt. 8:12). They are all synonymous, signifying the glorious reign of Christ in the hearts of believers. This definition the enemies of the Messiah did not like. Hence they crucified him.

— Steele's Answers, pp. 227, 228.

Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit?

QUESTION: Which is the correct translation of the Greek, Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit?

ANSWER: Both are correct, but Holy Spirit is  preferable,  because the word "ghost" has in modern times suffered a degradation. You would be shocked to hear John 4:24 quoted thus, "God is a ghost." Hence the American Revision invariably says Holy Spirit. The English were more conservative. Probably they thought it would spoil too many good hymns, such as Bishop Ken's Doxology, to let the term ghost go out of religious use.

— Steele's Answers, p. 227.

In What Sense Was Jesus Tempted?

QUESTION: If, as one writer puts it, there was no tinder in Christ for the devil to strike fire into, then in what sense was he tempted in all points, as we are?

ANSWER: Like us he was free to stand or to fall, otherwise his obedience was necessary, mechanical and no more praiseworthy than a good clock is for being an accurate timekeeper. None but a free agent can be an example for a free agent. Yet there was in the divine mind a perfect certainty that Jesus would resist temptation foreseen by infinite wisdom and foreknowledge. There are two kinds of sins, one of the flesh — sins finding expression through the body, and sins of the spirit, which are mental and independent of the body, such as pride, selfishness, unbelief, malice, etc. In respect to both of these classes Jesus was tempted beginning with the selfish use of his supernaturalism to satisfy his hunger, and ending with the suggestion to avoid the cross and become king immediately by a stroke of state. The fact that there was in him no hereditary bent toward sin makes a seeming difference between him and us. But it may be that the influence of the Holy Spirit more than compensates us. Jesus stood alone as a man assaulted by Satan unaided by his own personal divinity, and by the Holy Pentecostal Spirit, who was not yet given. Delitzsch insists that the words "without sin" limits the phrase, "in all points like as we are," except an innate proneness to be led astray. In so doing the writer of this epistle "brings out more clearly the unlimited similarity in all other respects." The tempter found him without sin and left him sinless. 

— Steele's Answers, pp. 226, 227.

On Hebrews 9:28

QUESTION: Please explain Heb. 9:28, showing who the waiting; persons are and what is the salvation waited for: "so Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart from sin, to them that wait for him unto salvation."

ANSWER: The Jewish high priest had to make his offering again and again (verses 6, 7, 25), but the superior efficacy of Christ's offering is proven by the fact that it was made once-for-all (one word in Greek); after which he pleads in heaven for us presenting his offering, and securing the constant three-fold offices of the Paraclete (John 16:7-11) till his second appearing to raise the dead, to judge mankind, and to glorify believers, dead and living, who are in expectancy of this completion of their eternal salvation, soul and body wearing the glorious image of Christ. Says Bishop Ellicott, on Phil. 3:20, 21, "It seems wholly unnecessary to restrict this merely to the living," since every moment the true Christian in this world and in the interval between death and the resurrection is waiting in joyful expectation of this glorious consummation. That professed disciple of Christ who is not expecting with strong desire "the fashioning anew of the body of his humiliation, to be conformed to Christ's glorified body," is a false disciple. This text cannot be legitimately used in proof of the conversion of sinners at or after Christ's future advent. Such a doctrine is nowhere taught in the New Testament.

— Steele's Answers p. 225, 226.

A Defense of the Pentecostal Cleansing Theory

QUESTION: A holiness evangelist who has been very useful in the past tries to prove that the Apostles were cleansed before Pentecost, and ridicules the idea of the Spirit's agency in applying the blood of Christ to cleanse the following dilemmas:

(1) It makes the penitent sinner accept the Son of God to save him from the guilt and death of sins that are past, and it requires that the regenerate believer shall accept the Holy Spirit to save him from the pollution and inbeing of sin in the flesh.

ANSWER: In the interest of clearness of thought we say that salvation requires (1) a work done for us, pardon: and (2) a work done in us, purification. The atonement makes it safe for God to offer pardon to all penitent believers, and it also procures the Holy Spirit to purify initially in the new birth, and to purify wholly through the Holy Spirit, whose agency is appropriated by faith. Here is no dilemma. Both works depend on the blood of Christ, the first directly and the second indirectly.

(2) If the Holy Spirit is the agency in applying the blood for the entire sanctification of the believer,  why not the same method for the sinner?

The Purpose of the Church

Guest blog by Bishop Jesse T. Peck (1811 – 1883):

We have numerous organizations for the improvement of society — for the production of wealth — for the gratification of ambition — for the relief of human suffering; but only one for the promotion of holiness. We know of no other that professes to "purify the heart." What strange infatuation, then, it, must be to secularize this system! — to bring it down from the lofty purposes to which it was consecrated, and appropriate it to the service of worldly glory, and force it to gratify a lust for power. Wherever this has been done, it cannot be deemed strange that "blasting and mildew" have followed in the train. Indeed, nothing is easier now than to explain the slow progress of Christianity, the feebleness of its disciples, and the reproach which has so often fallen upon the church. Would that all Christians might be agreed upon this one thing — to consider Christianity as set apart to the work of purifying the hearts and lives of men. For all other purposes there are associations enough, while in the range of human thought there is no other that has the slightest claim to adaptation to produce this result. Precisely this is the desideratum of the times; and not until it is supplied shall we see the church shining in her own pure light, and moving on in the greatness of her strength to the conquest of the world. Happy is he who contributes, even in the smallest degree, to this glorious result.

— The Central Idea of Christianity.