Question: Who it is that returns and repents in Joel 2:14?
Answer: God, and the blessing He leaves is to be rendered back to Himself as an offering. The desolate wilderness of verse 3 left neither corn nor wine for meat and drink offerings, but on their repentance, God would not so utterly destroy the land, but leave sufficient for them to enjoy, and offer to God.
Question: What is the meaning of “Sinners, of whom I am chief,” 1 Timothy 1:15?
Answer: The word is not “arkos,” a chief or ruler, but “protos,” the first or foremost, a word used constantly, and always rendered “first.” The meaning surely is “foremost as a sinner” that is in guilt. And was it not so? When Christ had just established the infant church on the Rock, the man who undertook to wipe it off the face of the earth, to destroy “the body,” now they had slain “the Head,” was Saul of Tarsus. And yet this was the man who in the wonderful ways of God is the only one to whom is committed the mystery of the church, and who alone fully unfolds the real character of that against which he had sinned so deeply.
Question: How are we to reconcile “This generation shall not pass, etc.” (Matt. 24:34 and Luke 21:32)?
Answer: “Generation” is not literal, for nearly all who heard the Lord’s words would be dead even before the taking of Jerusalem, and even this event only partially fulfills the prophecy. The word is used characteristically, meaning that the same self-will and rejection of Christ should still characterize His people until all these things were fulfilled, that is right up to Christ’s return to Mount Olivet.
Question: Please explain the giving of the pounds in Luke 19:12-27.
Answer: This describes our Lord’s present absence from this world, and the faithful or unfaithful conduct of His servants in this world, to each of which He has entrusted some gift to be used for His glory. It also describes the future rewards for faithful service. The Lord said, “Occupy till I come.”
Question: Can Philippians 3:18, 19 be understood as referring to believers, Demas for instance?
Answer: Verse 19 appears to say more than could be said even of worldly Christians, for their end is not destruction, however much God may chastise them by the way. These would appear to be only professors.