A New Heart

QUESTION: When is this prediction to be fulfilled, Ezekiel 36:26; "A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you"?

ANSWER: This seems to be a type of the rich blessings of the Gospel dispensation under the imagery of the happy condition of Israel after restoration from captivity in Babylon.

— Steele's Answers p. 260.

The Fiery Trial - 1 Peter 4:12

QUESTION: What is the fiery trial in I Pet. 4:12, "Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you," etc.?

ANSWER: This epistle was written in A. D. 64, the date of the imperial edict of Nero authorlsing and commanding the persecution of Christians. It is natural that Peter should forewarn the churches he had founded in Asia Minor of this trial of their faith, which would put them to the test as the furnace tests and purifies gold. Yet it may mean an actual suffering by literal fire, called the fire torment.

— Steele's Answers pp. 259, 260.

Churches That Oppose Holiness

QUESTION: Is it right for a person professing sanctification to remain in a church where they oppose holiness?

ANSWER: "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." Do not let Christian perfection get the bad repute of being schismatic, a thing that Satan very much desires.

— Steele's Answers p. 259.

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.