QUES. 26.-We are told in the Word that Jesus died, was buried, and the third day rose again. But He said to the thief, " To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise." Will you kindly explain how this can be?

ANS.-Death ends existence on earth, but not in the world of spirits. Every man, saved or unsaved, continues to live on in that world when dead to this one (Luke 20 :38). And if this be true of mere men, how much more of Him who " is the true God and eternal life" (1 Jno. 5 :20). None of His attributes and great offices were interrupted by His body lying in the grave. He died before the converted thief died, and He was in Paradise-the "third heaven" (2 Cor. 12:1-4)-to welcome that convert the moment he parted from his body on earth.

QUES. 27.-Is the passage in 1 Cor. 1 :17, "For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel," intended to set baptism aside altogether ?

ANS.-How could it be so construed in the light of all Paul's practice and teaching? One might get such a thought by considering that passage alone-apart from all the rest of his teaching and practice-but when seen together, that is impossible.

Paul was entrusted with more than what was committed to the Twelve. They were to disciple the nations into " the kingdom of heaven," bringing them as subjects into it (Matt. 28:19) ; he with the dispensation of the Church, the body of Christ, a heavenly thing altogether, formed by the Spirit out of the true subjects of the kingdom (1 Cor. 12 :13). One is not baptized with water as a member of the body of Christ, but only as a subject of the kingdom. Baptism therefore is linked with the ministry of the Twelve, and not with that of Paul. But Paul's ministry did not deny that of the Twelve. It did not set it aside. It is going on now as well as in their day. Nor did it separate Paul from the Twelve. If Paul's special ministry was union with Christ, that of the Twelve was subjection to Christ, and surely no right-minded Christian would divorce these things from each other. Paul did not. And lest (because of his special mission and the greatness of the blessing at Corinth) he should be thought to be forming a party of his own, he did not himself baptize his converts there, but he saw to it that they were baptized (Acts 18:8). The union of the wife to her husband, above all other relationship as it is, does not set aside her subjection to him. Let us then not be one-sided, but give all truth its due place.

Some, inflated by Paul's special ministry, have belittled that of the Twelve, and denied the indwelling of the Spirit to such as knew little or nothing of Paul's-the great mass indeed of Christians-but the Spirit of God sealed believers under the ministry of the Twelve as well as under that of Paul. Let us hold fast to the whole Word-to baptism as part of it, not shrinking from the subjection to our adorable Lord which it calls for. Then let us also drink into the depths of grace and the heights of glory unfolded by our own special beloved apostle Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles.

QUES. 28.-Should there be any restrictions in addressing either the Father or the Son in our meetings for the remembrance of our Lord?

ANS.-We know of no question to which we could more deliberately and strongly answer:No, none whatever. Any such restriction on one side or the other could only be grief to the Holy Spirit. We praise and worship the Son for having given Himself for us, and we praise and worship the Father for having sent His beloved, His only Son. "That all should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father"-not one above the other.

QUES. 29.-It was taught where I once was-and the people seemed to accept it-that the soul of a Christian was given its spiritual or new body immediately after the death of the natural body, and he was thus complete. Does not this do violence to much scripture?

ANS.-Yes, it does. It annuls the resurrection itself, which in Scripture is not the impartation of a new-created body, but the quickening [making alive] of that same body in which we have lived, and transforming it into a body like that of our Lord- suited to heaven (Rom. 8 :11; 1 Cor. 15 :51-53; Phil. 3 :20, 21).

It denies also the time of our resurrection, which is at Christ's coming (1 Cor. 15 :23). No more complete exposure of the fallacy of such teaching can be found than the passage in 1 Thess. 4 :15-17.