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L I G H T ON PUZZLING PASSAGES and PROBLEMS By R. A. TORREY
Are Mary, the sister of Lazarus, and Mary Magdalene the same person? John l l :2 shows that it was the sister of Lazarus who anointed Jesus, and the closing verses o f the seventh chapter o f Luke is the description of Mary Magdalene, and I can not get these two accounts to agree only on the supposition that Mary Magda lene was the same as Mary the sister o f Lazarus. No, Mary Magdalene and Mary the sister of Lazarus were two entirely different per sons. The anointing of Jesus described in John 12:1-8 is an entirely different anoint ing from that described in Luke 7:36-50. They occurred at times quite remote from one another; that in John occurred in Judea, that in Luke, in Galilee. The cir cumstances of the two anointings were dif ferent ; they were for entirely different pur poses. The people present were entirely different; those who did the anointing were different. Furthermore, there is no reason whatever for thinking that the anointing described in Luke 7 was done by Mary Magdalene or any other Mary. Mary Mag dalene is not mentioned in Luke 7, but in Luke 8, and in Luke 8 she is mentioned in an entirely different connection from the anointing described in Luke 7. The woman who did the anointing in Luke 7 was an out cast woman and is not named. There is not the slightest reason for supposing that Mary Magdalene was an outcast. She had been demonized, and the Lord had cast seven demons out of her: but demon pos session and immorality are two entirely dif ferent matters. We hear .many people speak of abandoned women as Magdalenes, but there is no warrant for this and ’it does a gross injustice to Mary Magdalene. As for Mary the sister of Lazarus, she
certainly was not a woman of the character of the woman who did the anointing in Luke 7, but one of the finest characters in the Bible. She understood the words of Jesus, and understood Jesus Himself, as almost no one else. ' Has the prophecy in the n th chapter of Daniel been fulfilled, or could it be applied to the present war? There are a number of prophecies in the 11th chapter of Daniel, and some' of them may have been fulfilled. But certainly some of them have not as yet been fulfilled. For example, the prophecy in Daniel 11:36 and following, has not been as yet fulfilled. We find the same person and his work described in 2 Thess. 2:4-8, and that cer tainly has not as yet been fulfilled. This prophecy certainly could not be reasonably applied to anything that has as yet occurred in the present war. What this war may lead to no one can tell. Of course, in ’such times as these, amateur interpreters of the Bible, and freak interpreters of the Bible, always arise with all sorts of fantastic interpretations of the prophecies. A woman came to me the other day who was sure that Psalm 68:13 was a prediction of the aeroplane,-and so was also (in her opinion) the locusts in the Revelation. She was greatly grieved that I would not accept her crazy interpretation and do everything in my power to make this great discovery of hers widely known. A friend of mine declared in public a while ago, that all can did students of the Bible held that “the chariots with flaming torches, and jostling in the streets, mentioned in Nahum 2:3, 4, were the automobiles (many of the Sev enth Day Adventists formerly- held that they were the locomotives). Of course, this kind of absurd and fantastic inter-
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