King's Business - 1911-09

or accountability for full six thousand years, with no other end in view than to give mankind a thorough experience of the natural results of evil doing. 3. The time of this first general proba- tion of men individually is set for the Mil- dennium, the " s e v e n th thousand y e a r s ," when man's past experience in sin will, it is supposed, serve as a deterrent and spur him to take the most favorable op- portunity of the Millennium to do well. 4. Most offensive is his definition of resurrection. He belittles, almost elimi- nates, the bodily resurrection of the Scrip- ture, and he interprets the word as a rais- ing up of man to Adamic perfection, through the favoring influences of the thousand years to follow the return to earth of the generations of men now dead, or extinct, as he makes out. 5. In all this conglomerate doetrine of being, life, death, resurrection, it is evi- dently impossible to establish any iden- tity of being and personality between man's first and second existences; yet this Curious A minister preaching recently or on, John 21:22, " If I -will that Serious he tarry till I come what is that to thee?" commended serious in- quiry but condemned curious prying into the future, and puzzling, but profitless questions as to Bible statements and Christian doctrine. toricity of the Book of Jonah, we could not agree with him. There are few more seri- jous questions than the historicity of Scrip- ture statement«. The preacher thought it enough to learn from Jonah that the gos- pel is to be preached among the Gentiles; and that if you run away from duty you will get into trouble. But Jonah says, "The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai," etc. If this is not Jonah But when he included among prof- itless questions that of the hist- f l o t es

does not trouble Mr. Russell at all. An extinct memory,' an extinct conscience, an extinct personality, no kind of resurrec- tion, not even a recreation, can restore. The very term resurrection pre-supposes unbroken identity, an unsuspended intel- ligence, conscience and personality. 6. AH ordinary meaning of " j u d g- ment, " as a moral settlement of account- able acts, he entirely expunges and re- places with the idea of a mere discipli- nary training in this coming probation, by which the way of self-perfecting by grad- ual degrees during the thousand years will be made easy. So bewildered is the heart of many that this mess of heresy finds welcome, encour- aging men carelessly to say, " L e t us eat and drink, for tomorrow we d i e " (be- come extinct, to be given another and better chance later on to mend our ways and inherit everlasting life). (To be Continued.) historical the word of the Lord did not come to the son of Amittai; and if so why should we believe that it came to any other son of man who says it did? If the book is fiction what authority has its teaching? Paul held it a great mys- tery supernaturally unveiled that the Gen- tile should have the gospel preached ;to them (Eph. 3:1-7). Did some allegorizer of the 9th century B. C., or later if you please, reach this conclusion by a shrewd guess that gave him authority to say, " I am allegorizing but what is that to thee? follow thou m e ? " The historicity of a biblical doeument is a vital object of investigation. Jonah is well proven his- tory, and is true, every word of it. The Good referred to the Atonement. We Minister can not explain it, and should not attempt it; "What Is that to thee?" Trust to the Christ of the Cross. Way.

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3 . IK. Sammis

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