QUES. 3 -Will you please explain the second verse of John 15? Does this mean mere professors, or true children of God? I know that it does not mean that a sheep of Christ can ever perish; but does it mean that one of His own, dishonoring Him continually, and bearing no fruit, He will take out of the world, that they be not a hindrance to others? Please explain it simply, as to a little child. I have wanted to understand this so long. God bless yon, and reward you, is the prayer of a sister in Christ.

ANS.-Your question reaches us as our February number is about to go to press. It has already been put by another, as you will see, and we trust our answer to it in January number will make all clear to you. We only add that verse 6 of the chapter forbids the explanation you suggest. "They are burned" after being taken away, and this could not be said of children of God.

QUES. 4.-I have been taught that no signs are to be looked for before the rapture of the Church as described in 1 Thess. 4:14-17; but do not the dreadful catastrophes which happen so frequently of late, increasing in severity,-the most appalling of all now in Sicily,-compel us to think most seriously of such predictions as Matt. 24:7, where "famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places," are given as proofs of the end being near ?

Are we not also, in the present "labor" conditions, strangely near the order of things described in Rev. 13:17, when "no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name''?

ANS.-You have been rightly taught. If yon read carefully the epistles of Paul, you will find that along with the gospel which brings immediate salvation to the souls of them that believed it, he taught at once those who had, believed to look for the coming again of the Lord Himself. See 1 Thess. 1:9, 10; 1 Cor. 1:7; Titus 2:11-13, and a host of others.

The Church, which is the body of Christ, is a heavenly thing. She is liable to be removed from the earth and carried up into heaven at any moment of time, without the least warning or sign -just like Lazarus, suddenly raised out of his grave by the voice of the Lord, and, like the Lord Himself, caught up suddenly from the top of mount Olivet. All the signs and terrible happenings are in relation to God's earthly people (Israel) and the other nations of the earth, especially the nations of the restored Roman empire.

You cannot fail to see this if you read carefully Matt. 24, throughout which there is not one word applicable to the Church, save the exhortation at the end, which has no less moral weight with us than with them. Yon can easily see there the opposite to ourselves :Noah, the righteous man, is left for the blessing of earth ; the wicked are taken away by the judgment of the flood. With us, the righteous are taken away from this earth into heaven – the home of the Church, the bride of Christ – and the unbelievers left for the awful judgments which follow, and sweep them into everlasting perdition.

But the taking away of the Church from the earth is what brings Israel to the front again. It lets loose the flood of judgments upon the earth ; and as God usually has preliminaries to His great doings, so, no doubt, He has in this, and you are therefore quite right in associating in your mind the oft-recurring and appalling calamities of the present "time with the judgments of God which are to close the actual dispensation of grace, and usher in the millennial one. As dark clouds betoken a storm, and the shades of evening announce the night, so these famines and earthquakes declare the nearing wrath ; the covered apostates which still hide themselves under the names of Christian Science, Higher Criticism, Millennial Dawn, and what not, announce the prophesied open apostasy of Christendom ; the "labor" conditions prepare men for that solemn hour when none can buy or sell unless he owns the "beast" as God ; and the stir among the Jews to recover their land and nationality heralds the nearing time of their getting them. The end is surely near. Eternal joy to ns who have submitted to the Lord Jesus ! but oh, how dark and dismal the prospects of the rest! How important that our character and ways equally differ from theirs!

QUES. 5. – Will any who now have the gospel preached to them be saved during the space of time between the rapture of the heavenly saints and the appearing of Christ with them in the clouds of heaven ? I see that the Jewish Remnant will suffer persecution, and will not deny Christ ; but will any of the Gentiles do the same?

ANS. – The passage in 2 Thess. 2:8-12 definitely settles the question. It says that "because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved . . . God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie :that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Of course God alone knows who they are in Christendom who have reached such a degree of responsibility. But is not this already manifested in part in such delusions as we have mentioned in our answer to the question before yours? Who could be carried away with such a delusion as "Christian Science," for instance, but such as have come in contact with truth and have not loved it? Having not loved it, they take up with a lie ; and they love that greatly, and do anything to spread it.

Rev. 7 :9-17 shows plainly that a remnant of the Gentiles-' a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues"-will, as well as a remnant of the Jews, refuse the mark of the "beast," and confess Christ.

QUES. 6.-Will you kindly explain the narrative given in Matt. 20:29-34 ; Mark 10 :46-52 ; and Luke 18 :35-43? Were there three blind men, or only two? Luke says, When He was come nigh unto Jericho; Matthew and Mark, When He was leaving Jericho.

ANS.-We have no doubt at all that the threefold narrative refers to the one and same incident. Matthew mentions two blind men ; Mark and Luke, only one of the two-that part only of the incident being used by the Spirit which suits the character of each Gospel. The only difficulty is that in Luke it seems to put the meeting before entering Jericho, whilst the others plainly state it was upon leaving it. A careful reading, however, shows there is no definite statement in Luke. The Lord is on His way to Jerusalem ; it is the engrossing subject, from chap. 9 :51. He has now reached the parts of Jericho, and here are the incidents which happened there, regardless of the time when they took place :A blind man is made to see; a Zacchaeus is made to rejoice; and a testimony is borne that before the kingdom can appear, the King, rejected by blind Israel, must go "into a far country to receive for Himself a kingdom, and to return." When He returns, Israel, still in the place of malediction, will experience what these incidents relate, and then will the kingdom appear in glory.
It is the moral of the incidents we are called upon to enjoy here. The time of their happening is therefore left purposely indefinite.