Martin Prins

“I-I-I don’t know,” I answered, “Nobody knows.”

“I do,” she said confidently. "Sixteen years ago, I came to know the Lord Jesus as my personal Savior and I received eternal life.” She then got out her Dutch Bible. Together we read...

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 Baptism

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Is going to the doctor a sign of a lack of faith?

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Ron Mills' Story - At the age of 22 I started to consider suicide as an answer to feelings of hopelessness. By the time I was 23 I would get brief periods of wondering “is this all there is to life?" I remember going to night clubs after drug use and drinking and just standing amongst hundreds of people and feeling very alone and tired of life. There had to be more to this Life (more...)

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Eric Walberer

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 The Two Roads Chart

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What the bible says about loaning money to family

There are some Biblical principles about lending money to friends, family, fellow-believers and business accociates.  First, a general principle about debt is "The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower becomes the lender's slave"(Proverbs 22:7)." TARGET="_blank">Proverbs 22:7).  In a family, people should be treated as brothers rather than masters.  Perhaps you could avoid straining a relationship with a family member by getting money from a bank instead of a family member.

Loaning Money to Unbelievers

In the Old Testament, the law prohibited the Jews from charging money to each other.  "You shall not charge interest to your countrymen: interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest" (Deuteronomy 23:19)." TARGET="_blank">Deuteronomy 23:19). You may charge interest to a foreigner, but to your countryman you shall not charge interest, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land which you are about to enter to possess" (Deuteronomy 23:20)." TARGET="_blank">Deuteronomy 23:20).

Collecting Bad Loans

Christians should be willing to release money if the loan goes bad.  Ask your questions BEFORE loaning money.  What is the loan for?  How will it be paid back?  Is there a guarantee collateral?  Once the money is out of your hands, you no longer have control of it.  With a Christian relationship on the line, the Bible says "Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints?" (1 Corinthians 6:1)." TARGET="_blank">1 Corinthians 6:1). We are told that it is better to be defrauded than to lose our witness by suing one another (1 Corinthians 6:7)." TARGET="_blank">1 Corinthians 6:7).

Christian Attitudes toward People

The Christian standard of exacting money shows our attitudes toward relationships. People are more important than possessions and relationships with others should be preserved even at the loss of personal belongings.  

Luke 6:34" TARGET="_blank">Luke 6:34: "If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, in order to receive back the same amount."

Luke 6:30-31," TARGET="_blank">Luke 6:30-31, "Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. And just as you want people to treat you, treat them in the same way."

A gift as an alternative to a loan

If your friend or family member is asking for a loan and has a legitimate need, that means he needs help.  A loan is a nice way of giving people short-term help in a real way.  However, if you have a healthy relationship that you don't wish to put into jeopardy, consider giving him a gift instead.  Philippians 2:3" TARGET="_blank">Philippians 2:3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.

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Is there any good ground for the change, advocated by some, of the word “virgin” In Isaiah 7:14" TARGET="_blank">Isaiah 7:14 to “young married woman” or “young woman of marriageable age”?

I believe “virgin” can be shown to be the true rendering, along several lines of proof. It is significant that those who propose this change are mostly of Modernist tendencies. Such men deny the miraculous in general, and would gladly get rid of the Virgin Birth of our Lord, and create a discrepancy between Matthew 1:23" TARGET="_blank">Matthew 1:23 and our verse. Gesenius, the well-known author of the Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, a man with a strong Modernistic bias, says, “The true meaning of ‘almäh, (“virgin” in Isaiah 7:14)" TARGET="_blank">Isaiah 7:14) is a girl of marriageable age, with no special reference to her unspotted virginity, which is expressed,” he affirms, “by another word, bethulah”; but that moral purity is surely taken for granted, unless definite proof is alleged to the contrary. He adds, “almãh is used of a youthful spouse recently married”; but the only place he quotes to prove this is the verse in question, Isaiah 7:14," TARGET="_blank">Isaiah 7:14, where he wants to rule out the other meaning, and thus begs the question. He also
quotes Canticles 6. 8 to prove his point, but as virgins (‘almöth) are distinguished there from wives and concubines, we may ask what they do stand for, if not for unmarried girls of unspotted character? Gesenius admits, moreover, that his word bethfflah is sometimes clearly used of a woman newly married, e.g., in Joel i. 8. If that word had been used in Isaiah 7:14" TARGET="_blank">Isaiah 7:14 he might still have found a loop-hole, and have quoted Joel to show that even “bethfflãh was not conclusive. God, however, has raised up to oppose Gesenius a man of equal scholarship, namely, Dr. S. P. Tregelles, of humble evangelical faith, and also of European reputation as a Hebraist. He translated Gesenius’ Lexicon from the German, and has added notes in brackets to neutralise, where necessary, the bias of the Lexicon. The following note by Dr. Tregelles occurs under “‘almãh”: “Gesenius’ object in view in seeking to undermine the opinion, which would assign the signification of virgin to this word, is clearly to raise a discrepancy between Isaiah 7:14" TARGET="_blank">Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23." TARGET="_blank">Matthew 1:23. Nothing which has been stated (i.e. by Gesenius earlier in the article) does, however, really give us any ground for assigning another meaning.. . . ‘Almãh in the Punic language signifies virgin.
The absolute authority of the New Testament is, however, quite sufficient to settle the question to a Christian.” We may refer here to the words of Matthew 1:23" TARGET="_blank">Matthew 1:23: “Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is by interpretation, God with us.” The Evangelist uses the ordinary Greek word, “parthenos,” for “virgin,” used too in Luke 2:27," TARGET="_blank">Luke 2:27, of the Virgin Mary. The Greek Version, the Septuagint, does sometimes translate the word “‘almãh” otherwise than by “parthenos,” but here in Isa. 7. 14," TARGET="_blank">Isa. 7. 14, where as Tregelles points out “it must to their minds have occasioned a difficulty,” they translate by the same word that we have in the Gospels. We may suppose these learned Jews—the translators of their own Scriptures—knew at least as much of Hebrew and Greek as Modernist scholars. Matthew does not appear to have quoted from the LXX, so is an independent witness. We do not, however, in any case, need even the authority of God-fearing scholars. This is a question in which “a wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err.” Let us look at the other occurrences of the word, “‘almãh,” in the Old Testament. It is used in Genesis 24:43" TARGET="_blank">Genesis 24:43 of Rebecca—the prospective wife of Isaac. The other word, “bethülãh, occurs in verse i6, as we might say “virgin” or “maid” indiscriminately. Miriam, in Exodus 2:8," TARGET="_blank">Exodus 2:8, is called an “‘almh,” and she was clearly not a young married woman, but a maiden. This suits, too, in Proverbs 30:19." TARGET="_blank">Proverbs 30:19. Canticles 10:3 seems to demand the sense of virgins, as also chap. 6. 8, as we have seen. Psalm 68:25" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 68:25 we may take as neutral; we cannot affirm the damsels to be virgins, though they might have been. Then there is another consideration. The name to be given to the child—”Emmanuel,” “God with us”—goes a long way to justify the translation of “virgin” by our Translators and Revisers, as such a birth demanded extraordinary concomitant circumstances. The context, too, favours the same conclusion. Jehovah had offered Ahaz any sign he might choose to ask—”in the depth or in the height” above, that is anything comparable with the drying up of the Red Sea or the Jordan, or on the other hand, with Joshua’s long day. When Ahaz refused, the prophet replied, “The Lord Himself shall give you a sign. “Behold a* (literally “the”) virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.” Clearly God’s sign would be something extraordinarily arresting. How else would the Eternal Son of God enter into manhood except in the womb of a Virgin? The birth of a son to a young married woman, far from being an arresting sign, would not be a sign at all, but the most atural of events.

W.H.

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PRAYER TO THE LORD JESUS
Is it scriptural to pray to the Lord Jesus Christ continually in a Breaking of Bread meeting, and for a believer to confess privately to saints that he does not believe in praying to the Father in such a meeting, seeing that we gather there to remember the Lord?

I believe the custom referred to, though doubtless many godly persons are addicted to it, is due to a defective view of what the atoning death of Christ entailed on the other Persons of the Godhead. It is true that our Lord Jesus alone suffered directly for sins on the cross. There the Divine judgment fell on Him; there He was forsaken of His God. But who can estimate what it cost the Father “not to spare His own Son”?—nor should we forget that it was “by the Eternal Spirit that He offered Himself without spot to God.” It seems clear that to limit our worship, or nearly to limit it, to the Lord Jesus is to come short of His definite purpose, communicated by Him in revealing the Father. Far from desiring that His own should concentrate on Him their worship, He indicates the contrary. “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.” (John 4:23)." TARGET="_blank">John 4:23). By so doing we do not set the Son on one side. “At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” (John 14:20)." TARGET="_blank">John 14:20).

Again, to maintain that we ought only to worship the Lord Jesus, because we are gathered to remember Him, seems to embody a fallacy, Does not the very act of breaking the bread lead us to the Father? As the Son is revealed to our souls in His love and preciousness, we adore the Father for such a gift; “Through Him we both (i.e. believing Jews and Gentiles) have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Ephesians 2:18)." TARGET="_blank">Ephesians 2:18). One of the greatest needs of our hymn books to-day is, I submit, that God would raise up Christian poets, to add to them more hymns of the type of our departed brother Deck’s, “Abba Father, we approach Thee.”

W.H.

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Is it right to assert that our Lord died of a broken heart, in accordance with the words of Psalm 69:20" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 69:20?

It is surely very important “rightly to divide” the Psalms, as the rest of Scripture, distinguishing what may represent the actual experiences of the Psalmist, from what goes much further either to those of the future faithful remnant of Israel, or to our Lord Himself. Such a Psalm as Psalm 38" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 38 would apply all through, one would judge, to the faithful remnant, and perhaps in parts to Christ, but it is truly a shocking misapplication to attempt, as has been done sometimes, to interpret such words as are used in vv. and 7 of our Holy, spotless Lord. Even in the most clearly Messianic Psalms, a serious mistake is made in applying, or attempting to apply, everything to Christ, e.g., such verses as Psalm 40:12," TARGET="_blank">Psalm 40:12, and Psalm 69:5" TARGET="_blank">Psalm 69:5 (“Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me... they are more than the hairs of my head,” and “Oh God, thou knowest my foolishness and my sins are not hid from thee”). It is blessedly true that He bore our sins, but they were “ours” all the time, not His. “He suffered once for sins,” but it was also as “the just for the unjust,” for even as the sin-offering He was most holy (see Leviticus 6:29)." TARGET="_blank">Leviticus 6:29). There was never any confusion between Him, the guiltless, Holy One and those for whom He suffered—the guilty and defiled.
As for the special verse in question, I regard it as quite erroneous to maintain that our Lord “died of a broken heart,” even though some medical authorities have asserted it; but doctors differ here as elsewhere. How can it be possible to apply the ordinary diagnosis to One whose side had been pierced, since death, with a spear? Any symptoms might occur, one would think, under such circumstances. Above all let it be remembered we are speaking of One who strictly speaking did not “die of anything”, but laid down His life. He did not gradually collapse, as an ordinary dying man; “He dismissed His Spirit” (Matthew 27:50," TARGET="_blank">Matthew 27:50, lit, translation). He died “too soon” in fact, as all testified. He did not die of shock or heart attack, for as He died, He cried with a loud voice and uttered two memorable, articulate sentences: “It is finished,” and “Father into Thy hands I commend my Spirit.” But this being said, I see no difficulty whatever in applying to our Lord the words in question, “Reproach hath broken my heart.” They are clearly used in a figurative sense; for the verse runs on: “I am full of heaviness and I looked for some to take pity but there was none.” Is it not evident that our Lord continued to live after His heart was “broken” in this sense? Heart- breaks, as some know, are not always physical, but moral, and they may not be less poignant for that. But this is quite distinct from the sentimental and mistaken view combated above, that our Lord died in any sense from a broken heart.
W.H.

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