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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
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This Rock
Volume 3, Number 7
 July 1992 
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Chocolate-Covered Locusts, Anyone?
Q: John the Baptist lived in the desert and survived on a diet of "locusts and wild honey," right? Since locusts are winged insects, how does this square with God's prohibition against eating insects in Deuteronomy 14:19 ("All winged insects, too, are unclean for you and shall not be eaten.")?
A: The Lord's outdoorsman cousin wasn't breaking any rules by eating locusts. The prohibition in Deuteronomy is clarified in Leviticus 11:20-23: "The various winged insects that walk on all fours are loathsome for you. But of all the various winged insects that walk on all fours you may eat those that have jointed legs for leaping on the ground; hence, of these you may eat the following: the various kinds of locusts, the various kinds of grasshoppers, the various kinds of katydids, and the various kinds of crickets. All other winged insects that have four legs are loathsome for you." (This is a good example of why we must not be satisfied with looking at only a single verse.)
Q: What are some good Bible verses I can share with a Protestant friend who claims to be "Bible believing," yet insists that abortion is allowable under certain circumstances?
A: Although there's no single verse which explicitly condemns abortion, there are scores which condemn murder--the taking of innocent life (precisely what abortion is). Some examples: "You shall not kill" (Ex. 20:13); "Accursed be anyone who accepts a bribe to take an innocent life" (Deut. 27:25); "Only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds; if each of you deals justly with your neighbor, if you no longer...shed innocent blood...will I remain with you" (Jer. 7:5-7); "You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, 'You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgement'" (Matt. 5:21).
The following verses demonstrate that abortion is the murder of a human person (not an "unviable tissue-mass"): "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" (Jer. 1:5); "Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. I give you thanks that I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are your works. My soul you knew full well; nor was my frame unknown to you when I was made in secret" (Ps. 139:13-15); "He [John the Baptist] was filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb" (Luke 1:15); "For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears the infant in my womb leaped for joy" (Luke 1:44). Since only persons can be filled with the Holy Spirit or experience joy, the Bible teaches that unborn children are persons.
Q: I'm at a loss to know how to answer an argument I recently heard a Fundamentalist coworker use to refute the Catholic claim of apostolic succession. He said apostolic succession is not biblical because, as he demonstrated from Acts 1:21-22, the apostles considered as a replacement for Judas only those who were eyewitnesses of Jesus. By the end of the first century all such candidates would have been dead, thus slamming the door on any possibility of apostolic successors. I'm afraid to say that this argument seems logical.
A: Although it seems reasonable at first glance, this argument fails upon closer biblical scrutiny. First, your friend misses the point that the principle of apostolic succession is proved by the very passage he quotes. The apostles handed on their authority to someone who would take the vacancy left by Judas: "His bishopric let another take" (Acts 1:20, KJV). Although the apostles specified that "[i]t is necessary that one of the men who accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus came and went among us...become with us a witness to [Jesus'] resurrection" (Acts 1:21-22), this requirement was not a perpetual one.
We know this because Paul, who (so far as we know) never laid eyes on Jesus in the flesh and was certainly not one who accompanied the Lord, was called as an apostle (Rom. 1:1, 11:13; 1 Cor. 1:1, 9:1-2, 15:9; 2 Cor. 12:12; Gal. 1:1; Eph. 1:1; 1 Tim. 2:7). Some might argue that Paul fulfilled the rubric in Acts 1:21-22 by "seeing" Christ in a vision on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3-9). This dodge is shaky because the passage doesn't say Paul "saw" Jesus, only that he heard Jesus speak.
Timothy, a young bishop (1 Tim. 4:12, 2 Tim. 1:6) and companion of Paul (Acts 16:1-3), and Silvanus, also Paul's traveling companion (Acts 36-41), are identified as apostles in 1 Thessalonians 2:7. Paul begins the epistle by greeting the Thessalonian Christians in the name of Silvanus, Timothy, and himself, and continues his message using the pronouns "we" and "our," emphasizing the role Timothy and Silvanus had in exhorting the Thessalonians (cf. 2:3, 4:1). Paul adds, "We were able to impose our weight as apostles of Christ" (2:7), thus identifying these two as sharing his own apostolic authority to teach, exhort, and govern (cf. Acts 16:4, 1 Tim. 4:6, 4:11-16, 6:2).
The biblical evidence available on Timothy and Silvanus suggests that neither ever saw Jesus. One clue is that Timothy seems to have been a young man when Paul wrote him around the year 60: "Let no one have contempt for your youth" (1 Tim. 4:12). If Timothy were, say, 30 when Paul wrote to him (some commentators think he may have been younger), he would have been no more than three years old when Jesus was crucified, too young to have been a disciple of Christ's.
Q: Are Elijah, Elisha, and Elias one and the same person or three different people?
A: Actually, neither--they're two different people. Elijah (Hebrew: 'Eliahu [Yahweh is my God]; Greek: Elias) was a major Old Testament prophet whose history and achievements are recorded in 1 Kings 17-22 and 2 Kings 1-2. Elisha, his spiritual son and disciple, was present when Elijah was assumed into heaven in the fiery chariot and followed in his footsteps as prophet to Israel, after receiving a "double portion" of the spirit of Elijah. His story is found in 1 Kings 19-22 and 2 Kings 1-13.
Q: How can you deny that Constantine was the first pope and that he personally instituted the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Nicaea (where he also invented the unbiblical doctrine of the Trinity)? It's a matter of historical fact.
A: We deny it on the excellent ground that it isn't true.
Flavius Valerius Constantinus (275-337) reigned as the Roman emperor between 306 and 337. He never was pope--he wasn't even baptized a Christian until he lay on his deathbed. He attributed to Christ his winning a decisive battle in Rome at the Milvian Bridge.
Legend has it that a large cross appeared in the sky over his troops, and superimposed on the cross were the words In hoc signo vinces, "In this sign you conquer." As a result of his victory, he promptly lifted the empire-wide ban on Catholicism (Edict of Milan, 313). Although he didn't make Christianity the state religion, it achieved that status by the end of the century.
In 325 the Emperor convoked the First Council of Nicaea to deal with the Arian heresy. The pope at the time of the Nicaean council was Sylvester I; reigned from January 1, 314 to December 31, 335. He was the thirty-third bishop of Rome (and therefore pope), which means Constantine hardly could have been the first pope.
The charge that Constantine invented the doctrine of the Trinity can be disproved by studying the writings of the Church Fathers. They taught the doctrine and even used the word "Trinity" as early as the year 181. (For citations see "The Fathers Know Best," This Rock, July 1991, 23-24).
Q: A friend insists that anyone who doesn't accept Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior is doomed to hell, even if he is invincibly ignorant of Christ and has lived a holy life. I know his position is incorrect, but how can I prove it to him?
A: Your friend agrees with you, and you can prove it by asking him what happens to infants who die. Your friend will agree that, whether an infant will die through abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, or death after birth, he is utterly incapable of making a conscious acceptance of Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior. Such an acceptance can come only after one achieves the age of reason. Almost all Evangelicals and Fundamentalists answer that the infant goes to heaven because he has done nothing deserving of hell. (A few, disagreeing, say it's just too bad for the infant--it's his tough luck that he must go to hell because he never aged enough to commit himself to Christ.)
If infants go to heaven, according to Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, why should adults who die equally ignorant of Christ go to hell? What about an adult who is in the state of grace but has never accepted Christ because he has never heard of him (or who has heard of him but hasn't comprehended what was being told him)? Their own logic undercuts them. (See Romans 2:12-16.)
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