Questions and Answers By R. A. TORREY
ther down in the chapter we have a picture of the Great Tribulation that precedes the coming of Christ to the earth, but Christ is coming in the air to receive Hj£ Church to Himself (1 Thess. 4:16, 17) before He comes to the earth and He may come in the air for His people at any moment as far as we know. But the present war is no reason for stating positively that He will come this year or next or next. The believer’s attitude is to be watching and waiting and longing, but it is a snare of the Devil when he undertakes to predict positively that the Lord will come within any certain period of time. It is not for us to know the times nor the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power (Acts 1:7). Days such as we are now passing through are days when we should “lift up our heads because our redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:26-28). But they are not days when we should undertake the part of a prophet to the extent of pre dicting what is not predicted in the Scrip tures and setting times which we are ex pressly forbidden in the Word of God to do. Why was the Jewish Sabbath, fixed by, the law of God, changed to the day which the heathen emperor Constantine fixed, and was the change in accordance with the law of God who says that not one jot or tittle of the law should pass away until all be fulfilled? The Jewish Sabbath was not changed. The Jewish Sabbath is still the seventh day of the week, but Christians are not Jews and observe the Lord’s Day, because they are on resurrection ground, and God has expressly commanded us in His Word not to judge one another in regard to “Sab bath days” (Col. 2:16). Furthermore, the first day of the week as a day of Christian observance was not fixed by the emperor Constantine. It was observed by Christians
How is it possible for one who knows his Bible and what is predicted in the Bible about the wars that shall precede the com ing of our Lord to respond to President Wilson's call to prayer and pray for peacef While any one who really understands his Bible knows that there are to be wars up to the end of this present dispensation, and that this dispensation is to end in the most terrible war of all, it does not follow that there must be war all the time. While it is true that abiding peace will not come until' the Prince of Peace Himself comes and takes the reins of government, there may be periods of peace. The present war is not the final war predicted in the Scrip tures.- There will be an entirely different alignment of forces in that war, and the center of that war will be Jerusalem. -O f course, it is possible that that war may grow out of the war now on, but this present war is not that represented in the 19th chapter of Revelation. Furthermore, it is possible for the intelligent student of the Bible who believes in the coming of our Lord as the only solution of all our political, commercial and other problems to pray for peace, for in praying for peace, he is praying for the soon coming of Him who is the Prince of Peace, just as we can pray for God’s kingdom to come, knowing that the kingdom cannot come until the King comes. It does not. Our Lord says distinctly in Matthew 24 :6, “And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet." He went on to say that nation should rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places. All these things are the “ beginning of sorrows.” Fur Does not the present great war prove that the Lord is coming at once?
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