QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

From My Perspective - - -

Many have had the experience of an inquisitive child who is posing question after question. A patient parent will try to answer the child’s question as simply as possible. The inquisitive child can keep asking questions to the point where the patient parent becomes either impatient or unable to provide answers – finally responding with “because”!  There are webpages that explore the idea: “Does every question deserve an answer?” Some of the responses allow that if a question is intrusive and/or personal, it should be left unanswered. The expression: “Inquisitive minds want to know” may be applicable in ones learning experience. Sometimes, however, the inquisitive mind is concerned with getting information fodder so it has the ability to gossip about a person or the information they have garnered.

A wise professor would mention to his students from time to time, “The best thing you can know is what you don’t know – so ask!” If he was approached after class, he would either give the answer or suggest a resource where more detailed information was available. He wasn’t dismissive of the questioner or the question. He did have great discernment and teaching experience that allowed him the ability to discern the sincerity of the question and/or the eagerness of the student to further plumb the depths of the subject.

The Bible gives illustrations of Questions that were both asked and answered; Questions that should’ve been asked but weren’t; and Questions that were asked but for which there was no answer that could be given. The first illustration is the prayer dialogue between Abraham and The Lord regarding Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18. Abraham’s appeal is on the basis of righteous people who will be destroyed if God proceeds with His judgment. The Lord patiently goes through the prayer process with Abraham until he arrives at the point of realization that (a) there are no righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah and (b) God is just and right in carrying out His plan for those wicked cities.

The second illustration is recorded in the Book of Malachi where the Lord both supplies the questions that no one was asking and His responses to them. The people were disregarding The Law and the Moral Values established by God. No one was expressing any concern or entering into a dialogue with God. The Lord raises the questions than someone should have asked and He gives the answers to those questions that touch on the major areas where the people have made a mockery of religion and the standards of God. God expresses His indignation about these practices and behaviors. Malachi 4:4-6 underscores that which God has observed and requires: "Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him…lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction."

The third illustration is in the Olivet Discourse, Matthew 24 and 25 where the disciples want to know when the end of the world would occur and when Jesus Christ will return. The question is posed in Matthew 24:3-9, “…the disciples came to him privately, saying, Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?" Jesus summarizes in Matthew 24:36-37, "But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” Jesus adds (Vs. 42), “Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” The fact is that Jesus is speaking of a day of literal judgment coming upon a transgressing nation and world. It is likened to the flood of Noah’s day when only those in The Ark were spared and saved. 

We look around us in this day and realize that (a) “the church” is adrift and compromising with the cultural demands of a degenerate society, and (b) the nations have set aside any core values and their moral equivalents so they can operate at the level of political correctness at a given moment. In Noah’s day, Genesis 6:4-5, the conditions that prevailed were: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. It seems as though we have exceeded in our day that which God saw as repugnant to Him in Noah’s day. Seek the Lord while He may still be found! Consider these things with me!