17
A.
Because it was not offered in faith:
“By faith Abel offered unto God a more
excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he
obtained witness that he was righteous, God
testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead
yet speaketh” (Heb. 11:4). On the other hand,
Abel, in faith, looked forward to the offering
that God would provide, and which had been
promised in the declaration of Genesis 3:15.
He recognised that “without the shedding of
blood there is no remission” of sins (Heb.
9:22), and being conscious of sin, he carefully
sought out what God required of him. Cain did
not do this, but apparently felt that God
should be well-pleased with the religious
worship he condescended to give unto Him. If
it were otherwise, he would not have become
jealous of his brother and would not have mur-
dered him. He did not mind shedding blood
when it came to satisfying his own feelings of
anger, but did not see the need to do so in
offering to God. There are many in the world
like Cain today.
“The spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:18-20)
Q.
Peter says that Jesus by the spirit went
and preached unto disobedient spirits,
and he links this disobedience with the days of
Noah. Who were these disobedient spirits?
A.
The Scriptures never refer to disembod-
ied spirits; it refers to the angels as
spirits and to men as spirits. In 1 John 4:1 John
tells the believers to try the spirits because
false prophets were in the world. Here,
clearly, is a reference to teachers of wrong
doctrine or “seducing spirits” (1 Tim 4:1).
Now such were both disobedient and in prison
(or in bondage to sin - Romans 6:16) just as all
in Adam are in the “bondage of corruption”
(Romans 8:21) and “through fear of death are
all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb
2:15).
Christ came to “preach deliverance to the
captives, and the opening of the prison to
them that are bound” (Isaiah 61:1). Not, of
course, to enter into prisons and release male-
factors and evildoers, but to bring salvation
from sin and release from death. Did Christ do
this in Noah’s day? Christ did not exist then,
except in the purpose of God, nor does Peter
say that he did. Peter says, “By the spirit
Christ preached”. Since Christ could not
personally preach to disobedient men of
Noah’s day, either during his ministry, nor
during his three days in the heart of the earth,
not after his ascension, there must be an
analogy between Christ’s preaching and Noah’s
preaching.
Noah preached, but his generation were
disobedient spirits and perished in the flood.
Christ preached and his generation were
mainly disobedient - they were scattered, sold
as slaves, and finally died an eternal death.
The same spirit was the witness to the disobe-
dient in both ages.
“Present with the Lord” (2 Cor 5:8)
Q.
Do Paul’s words in Corinthians support
the teaching of an immortal soul? “We
are confident, I say, and willing rather to be
absent from the body, and to be present with
the Lord.”
A.
Peter says that Paul wrote “things hard
to be understood” which may easily be
misunderstood (2 Peter 3:16). Misunderstand-
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