TREATISE
on
SALVATION
By Eld. T S Dalton
Additional Comments on
TIME SALVATION
and
THE RESURRECTION
Elder Harold Hunt
P.O. Box 5352
Maryville TN 37802
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF THE AUTHOR
We wish, in the introduction of our little treatise on SALVATION, to give our readers a short sketch of our life, that they can, perhaps, the more readily discern the real cause that has prompted us to send forth this little work.
I was born in Robinson County, Tenn., four miles from Springfield (the county seat), on June 3, 1847. My father’s name was Talbert S. Dalton. My mother’s maiden name was Angeline Mathews. My father and mother had born to them four children, three boys and one girl. I was the youngest of the four. My father died about the time, or just before, I was born; hence I never knew the good of a father. My mother was left with four helpless children and in very poor circumstances, without a foot of land, or anything else much to subsist upon. Hence, we were left upon the cold and merciless charities of the world. My grandfather took charge of us, moved Mother onto his land and looked after our interests, and our dear mother toiled on hard to make a support for her four little orphan children. By her labors and the goodness of Grandfather and our neighbors, she kept us from starving. We had some little advantages of free schools, and we made the best use of them we could. While our educations are very limited, yet I praise God that He has favored me with what I possess. I never had the privileges that were enjoyed by many other children of dressing up and mixing around among other people, for I was not able to dress. I was a grown man before I had a real decent suit of clothes. After I arrived to manhood I went to school and assisted in teaching to pay my tuition, and by this means added some to my little stock of knowledge. I was like all other people, fond of the pleasures and amusements of the world, and had no thought nor care about my future destiny.
But in the midst of our poverty, and while I was in the height of enjoyment in the pleasures and amusements of the world, I sometimes hope that the Lord took cognizance of me in my wild career and brought me to see that I was a poor, guilty, helpless sinner in His sight. Now, my dear readers, I want to give you a short sketch of what I trust have been the Lord’s dealings with me in bringing me out of the dark thralldom of sin and pollution and translating me into the kingdom of His dear Son, and also a short reason for my occupying the place I now do as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I assure you in the introduction that it is not a matter of choice with me, but think I can fully witness with Paul, when he said, “Necessity is laid upon me, and woe is me, if I preach not the gospel.”
As a starting point I will have to carry your minds back to my boyhood, to a time long to be remembered by me, when one evening about a half hour before sunset I was brought to see what a guilty rebel I was in the sight of God; the tears began at once to stream down my cheeks, and I began to wonder, What can this mean? It seemed the answer was ready: “You are going to die;” and I knew full well that if I died in my present state that eternal woe and misery was my doom, and I began to cry in the very anguish of soul, “God, be merciful to me a poor, guilty, helpless sinner.” If anyone had asked me at that time what was the matter I could not have told them for my life; I only knew that I was a guilty wretch before God. I tried to keep this all a secret. I thought it would never do to let my people know how vile I was.
I continued in this frame of mind for about ten months. The very breathing of my soul by day and by night was that God would have mercy on me; yet I could not see how such a thing could ever be.
I never shall forget the day when I left home late in the evening, and as I left the old house, I looked back toward it as long as I could see it. As it went out of my sight, the thought came to me, “I will never see you again; before the morning sun shall rise I will be in eternity.” I wandered around till at last I wandered up to a school house where there was a protracted meeting going on. I stopped and heard them, and when they called for all those who desired the prayers of the Christians to come forward, I thought if there was one in the world that needed their prayers, I surely did, and I went forward.
They prayed for me and tried to instruct me, but it all did me no good, but rather added to my pain, and when meeting had closed I left, more wretched than ever. I thought my doom was sealed forever. I perhaps had gone a half mile, and it seemed to me that I could go no farther, that right here I must die. I got off my horse, and got upon my knees under some little bushes that stood by the roadside and tried, as I thought for the last time, to pour out my soul to God in prayer. It seemed to me that my prayers would not ascend above my head, but that they fell to the ground as empty sounds. I arose from my knees, feeling assured that my case was sealed forever.
Just at this time it seemed that I lost sight of myself, and there were a few minutes that I cannot give an account of; but the first thing I knew I was lying on the ground, and just before my eyes was presented one of the most beautiful and lovely sights my eyes ever beheld. There was Jesus presented to my view, as He hung upon the cross, and the blood trickling from His side, while something seemed to impress my mind with the thought that my sins had nailed him there.
By some means or other I was made to look again, and my mind was impressed with the thought that Jesus died that I might live, and just at this time a bright light flashed all around me. My burden of guilt and condemnation was gone and my whole soul ran out in praise to God for what He had done for me. I started for home full of joy, and verily believed that I was done with trouble forever, but before I reached home the devil told me that I was deceived, and I was ready to believe what he said. From then till the present I have been up and down, sometimes fearing I am deceived, and at other times I rise above my troubles and hope to reach the sky. At that time I felt an impression to go and tell others what a dear Saviour I had found, and to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ to others, but I felt that it was too great a task for me, and so I put it off. After a while I became so concerned and troubled on the subject that I came to the conclusion that death would be a release to me, and I went so far as to make arrangements to take my own life, rather than to expose my ignorance before the world and reproach the cause of my blessed Master.
By some means I was prevented from carrying out my plans. My troubles increased on the subject of preaching, and I still was stubborn and resolved at last to die before I would ever try to preach. My health began to give way; my liver became enlarged, dyspepsia seized hold on me, and it finally grew into inflammation of the bowels. I lost flesh until I was almost a skeleton, and I finally had some kind of spell that would throw me to the earth as a dead man. I finally promised the Lord that if He would deliver me out of that I would do anything He said, and I began to mend.
I was afraid to say “I will not” any more. I commenced trying to preach and have been trying ever since, but I have labored a great deal harder to quit, than I ever did to learn how to preach. Whether or not I have preached the gospel of Jesus Christ, I shall leave my brethren and sisters who have heard me to judge, and I can fully adopt the language of Brother Cayce; he said: “I have heard some brethren say, `I do not know whether my preaching has done any good or not;’ I know mine has, for it has done me good.” Whether my preaching has been any benefit to anyone else or not, it has been a relief to my feeling.
And upon this, my brethren and sisters, I have based my hopes for several years, and the older I get, and the longer I live, the dearer my experience is to me. Were it not for this hope, it seems to me that I would be the most miserable man on earth, but when I received this change the fear of torment was taken away from me, and I have never been afraid of hell or torment since my burden left me that night. I have often feared that I was deceived, and that I was not a child of God, and have often feared that I would do something to reproach the cause of God before I die, but I cannot look beyond death and fear the consequences over there, for the life of me.
And may we now ask of our dear brethren and sisters that they cast the mantle of charity over the imperfections of this little work and peruse its pages in search of truth, and not in search of its imperfections. We could not expect that such a work as this would meet with applause from the world, for the world hates the truth, because the words of Jesus have had no place in them, but we trust that the precious truths herein set forth may find a lodging place in the hearts of God’s humble poor, and that they may be fed, built up and comforted by reading its pages. Hoping that God, by His Holy Spirit, may sanctify this little work to the upbuilding of His children and to the glory of His own great name, it is humbly submitted and hereby dedicated to the cause of God, as believed and maintained by the Primitive Baptists and all lovers of truth.
Yours to serve in the cause of truth,
T. S. DALTON.
Elder Dalton died July 30, 1931.
S A L V A T I O N
CHAPTER I
SALVATION is a term that is often used, perhaps more than any other, and we have often thought that perhaps there were fewer people that understood it than any other term in the English language. What do we mean when we say that a certain person is saved? What is salvation? The majority of people in this our day look upon it as a mere business transaction that a man can attend to or leave undone at his option; if a man wishes to be saved and go to heaven, he can do so just simply by letting the Lord know that these are his conclusions, and then perform a round of conditions, and the Lord at once knows just what He has to do, and He, of course, goes to work and saves the sinner!
This theory necessarily brings God upon a level with the sinner; yea, rather, it exalts the sinner above his Creator, for God cannot do anything for the sinner till the sinner does something for Him, which, of necessity, makes the action of God depend upon the action of the sinner. This we consider blasphemy against God and derogatory to the divine character of heaven; and as for us, we would as soon worship the ancient Molech or a frozen pumpkin as such a God.
This doctrine that places the sinner’s salvation in his own hands denies the Bible, and is therefore untrue, as will appear to all candid, honest, Christians, from the following declaration of God’s word: “Salvation belongeth unto the Lord; thy blessing is upon thy people:” Psa. 3:8.
Again, “But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord. He is their strength in the time of trouble.” Psa. 36:39.
And again, “Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. He that is our God is the God of salvation, and unto God belongeth the issues of life and death.” Psa. 48:19,20.
Again, “Truly in vain is salvation hoped for from the hills, and from the multitude of mountains; truly in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel.” Jer. 3:23.
And we can but call to mind the language of that old servant of God, Jonah. After he had faithfully tried his own strength, he was forced to come forth with the following truthful declaration: “But I will sacrifice unto the Lord with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that, that I have vowed, salvation is of the Lord.” Jonah 2:9.
And that old servant of God, Jeremiah, while writing his lamentations, having in view doubtless the truth of the above declarations of Scripture made use of the following language: “It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.”-Lam. 3:36. But if Jeremiah had lived in this our day of wisdom(?), he would have been laughed to scorn, had he been so silly as to tell poor sinners to “hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.” In this fast age people have learned how to save themselves and don’t have to wait on the Lord! Oh, how strange that people will read such texts as the above, and yet teach the very opposite, and claim that the Bible is their only rule of faith and practice! We have about come to the conclusion that the only use they have for the Bible is for a pretext, to make it sound like religious exercise, and thereby gull more money out of the pockets of their dupes under the cloak of religion.
It does seem to me that any one could see the difference between the teachings of the present age and the Bible. The Bible teaches that salvation is of the Lord, as is shown in the above texts, and the teachings of the present age are that salvation is in the hands of poor ungodly sinners, and they can be saved or let it alone, as they choose, thus ascribing to the sinner the work that Jesus was to do, as will appear from the following declarations of the Bible:
“Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench; he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail, nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his law.” Isa. 62:1-4. And again, “Behold a King shall reign in righteousness and princes shall rule in judgment. And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken. The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerer shall be ready to speak plainly.” Isa. 32:1-4.
All of the above the Lord has promised to do for poor sinners; and for the life of us we can’t see what more the poor sinner will need. And again He said: “For the day of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my redeemed is come. And I looked, and there was none to help (plenty to help in our day), and I wondered that there was none to uphold; therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me, and my fury, it upheld me.” Isa. 63:4,5.
All this the Lord did Himself, and needed not the help of poor puny man, neither does the Lord call on us for help today, and those people who are so anxious about helping the Lord would certainly do well to wait, at least till the Lord invites them. It always did look bad to me to see people rush in where they were not invited, and just force themselves in where they are not wanted. And we remember again that the Lord sent His holy angel, Gabriel, from the courts of glory to bear this cheering intelligence to Joseph when he was mindful to put Mary, his espoused wife, away; “Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife : for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS, for he shall save his people from their sins.” Matt. 1:20, 21.
If Jesus saved His people, He did what His Father sent Him to do. If He only gave them a chance to be saved, then He has failed to do what His Father sent Him to do, and the prophet has testified falsely, when he said, “He shall not fail.” And Jesus Himself has testified wrongfully when He said, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” John 17:4.
If Jesus has finished the work His Father gave Him to do, and that work was to save His people from their sins, then why tell the sinner that He cannot be saved without performing a long round of conditions in order to influence the Lord to save him? Can you not see that in such expressions you deny the plain teachings of the word of God?
As for us, we would rather live our days out here as a poor vagabond, in rags and in want, and die at last, knowing that we had tenaciously contended for what the Bible says, than to live in pomp and splendor, and go through the world in affluence and rank among those whom the world would call good and great, and at last come to press a dying pillow and there be annoyed by an aching conscience, because we had denied the plain teaching of God’s word for the sake of popularity. Salvation is deliverance, and to this end Jesus gave Himself that He might deliver us from this present evil world, etc. He took upon Himself all of our sins, all of our obligations to the law, and met them in our stead and then died upon the cross that we poor worms of the dust might have life; and He was buried and arose again the third morning from the grave, and ascended home to the right hand of His Father, and sent forth His Holy Spirit to give us a knowledge of these things, and this loosens our stammering tongues and enables us to sing the sweet lines of the poet:
Oh! for this love let rocks and hills
Their lasting silence break
And all the harmonious human tongues
Their Saviour’s praises speak.
CHAPTER II
The issue on the subject of salvation is, whether it is conditional or unconditional. Thus far our object has been to show that salvation is the work of God; now we shall endeavor to show how God saves, whether He does it on account of something the sinner does, or whether it is the gracious act of God, without the performance of conditions on the part of the sinner. We propose to affirm that it is unconditional, because it is not of works, in proof of which please read Rom. 4:1-8:
“What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh (well, what about him, Paul? He is sure to be saved if he works, is he not?) is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.”
We can but conclude that if Paul has here told the truth (which we cannot doubt) that a man would do well not to work in order to gain salvation, for if his reward for his work is reckoned of debt all the time, the quicker he quits work the better it will be with him; but let us hear the rest of Paul’s language on the subject; “But to him that worketh not (well, what about him, Paul, he is lost is he not? Arminians teach that he is, and of course they know better than Paul), but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”
Oh! how different are the teachings of our day! In this our day of wisdom (?) it is the man that works that possesses the faith that is counted for righteousness.
There is a problem in the above language of Paul that we want some of our Arminian friends to solve for us; that is, if belief is a work, as they teach, tell us how a man can believe and not work. Paul says:”To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”
Will some expert Arminian try his hand on it? But let us trace Paul further: “Even as David describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness (how, for his works? No, sir) without works, saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.”
The above quotation from Paul is enough, of itself, to forever put a quietus to this everlasting Arminian work-mongrel system. But we have plenty more. Please read Eph. 2:8, 9: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves : it is the gift of God : not of works, lest any man should boast.”
If salvation is not of works, and Paul says it is not, then why tell the poor sinner that he must do certain works in order that he may obtain it? Can you not see, my Arminian friend, that you flatly contradict the Bible? God forbid that I should be so wedded to a creed that I am necessitated to deny the plain teachings of the word of God in order to sustain it. But let us quote again:
Titus 3:5-7: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
It does seem to us that the above is plain enough that men might run and read and understand, and yet our college-bred preachers will tell poor sinners, “you can’t have salvation unless you work for it.” Let us read some more Scripture:
2nd Timothy 1:8, 9: “Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner; but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God; who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”
It seems, from the reading of the above text, that Paul must have known that there would be professed ministers of the gospel who would deny God’s plan of salvation and substitute one of their own. He therefore took particular pains to tell us how God saved the sinner, and then in immediate connection tell how God did not save them, and yet as minutely as Paul has described it, strange to say, nine-tenths of the so-called preachers are teaching that they are saved in the very way that Paul says God does not save them.
Paul says, “It is not of works.” The preachers say, “It is of works, and if the sinner does not do something he is sure to be lost.”
CHAPTER III
Our next proposition is that salvation is unconditional because it is by grace, in proof of which we will call your attention to Acts 15: “And certain men which came down from Judea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.” That is to say, they taught a conditional system of salvation—that sinners could not be saved unless they did something, and the brethren not having been accustomed to hearing that kind of doctrine, at once began to dispute with them, and they at once determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of the brethren should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this question; and when they arrived at Jerusalem and began their consultation about this new theory, there arose one of the sect of the Pharisees (that is, one of those conditional preachers), who by this time had added one more condition to his theory; he said, “It is needful that we should circumcise them, and command them to keep the law of Moses or they cannot be saved.”
At first they only wanted to circumcise them, but now they want to bind upon them the burden of keeping the law of Moses also.
But Peter rose up and wanted to know why they were going to bind a yoke upon the neck of the disciples that neither they (the disciples) nor their fathers (the prophets) were able to bear. “But we believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.” And we are glad to say that we believe just what the apostles here set forth in this article of their faith, that by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ poor sinners are saved yet, and not by the performance of stipulated conditions, as is taught by our Arminian judaizing teachers of today.
Again, Paul said, Titus 2:11: “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.” Not the grace of God that brought an offer of salvation, but brought salvation. From this text we learn what it is that brings salvation to men. Now we have only to learn what brought grace, and the mystery is solved. John says, “The law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”
Now we have it; Jesus Christ brought grace, and grace brought salvation; therefore the sinner’s works had nothing to do with it. Paul says again: “By grace are ye saved.” And many other passages we might quote in support of this proposition, but space forbids at this time.
Let it be distinctly understood that upon grace and grace only, rests our hope of life and salvation beyond this vale of tears, and we hope through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to be permitted to praise Him in that world of bliss and glory, and there among the redeemed throng to join in that sweet chorus which angels cannot sing, which is, “Worthy is the Lamb that hath redeemed us.”
Our next proposition is, “Salvation is unconditional because Christ redeemed the sinner from all iniquity, and this redemption is eternal.”
In proof of this, please read Titus 2:14: “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” If Christ hath redeemed us from all iniquity, how much is there left for us to perform conditions in order to be relieved of ? And again, if Christ has redeemed us from all iniquity, and any of us are lost, what is it that condemns us? It cannot be iniquity, for we are redeemed from all of that; hence, if one of those for whom Christ died goes to hell, he must go there without iniquity, for he is redeemed from that.
Again, Gal. 3:13: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” Now we have the sinner redeemed from all iniquity and from under the curse of the law. Now the question arises, what more does the sinner need to prepare him for heaven and immortal glory? Surely, people redeemed from all iniquity and from the curse of the law never can be sent to torment.
Again: 1st Peter 1:18,19: “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,” etc.
Now, let us notice what we have: Sinners redeemed from all iniquity, from the curse of the law, and also from the vain conversation received by tradition from their fathers, and yet lost to all eternity because they would not perform certain conditions! Surely no sensible man could believe such an idea. “0, well,” says the Arminian, “if the sinner fails to perform certain prescribed conditions, his redemption will have an end, and Jesus will withdraw his redemption and send him to hell, because he would not accept the terms and do the work.”
Now, that would sound very well if the Bible did not contradict the idea, but Paul in Hebrews, 9:12, says: “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” Now let us sum up. We have sinners eternally redeemed from all iniquity, eternally redeemed from under the curse of the law, eternally redeemed from the vain conversation received by the tradition from their fathers, and at the same time eternally damned!
Now, we ask, in all candor, can any sensible person believe such doctrine? How anybody on earth can believe that a sinner redeemed eternally from all the above named evils is not yet saved because he will not perform conditions, we must confess that we are unable to divine, and we are confident that no other man on earth can explain.
CHAPTER IV
Our next argument is, “Salvation is unconditional, because the sinner is not able to perform conditions,” in proof of which please read Rom. 5:6: “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
What can a person do without strength? Suppose that salvation were dependent upon the condition that the sinner would perform the smallest act that the mind could possibly conceive of, how can the poor soul perform the act without strength? Now, my Arminian friend, if you can think of something that a man can do without strength, that must be the condition of salvation. There is nothing that a person can do without strength; therefore salvation is not conditional.
Let us have some Scripture; Jer. 13:23: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.”
If the negro can turn himself white, then can the man that is dead in sin, and led captive by Satan, release himself, and perform conditions in order to his eternal salvation. The negro cannot turn himself white, neither can the leopard change his spots; therefore, the man that is accustomed to do evil cannot learn to do good.
From the force of the above language we are reminded of the doctrine as taught by Paul in Romans 3: “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one; there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God, They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes.”
The above surely represents the sinner as being in rather a bad condition to perform conditions in order to his eternal salvation. Now if the Ethiopian can change his skin, and the leopard his spots, then the above-described persons can cease to do evil and learn to do well. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, therefore the above-described persons cannot perform conditions in order to bring about their eternal salvation. And to require it of them is simply to shut heaven’s doors to all of Adam’s apostate race.
But Paul draws this conclusion from the above premise, “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall be no flesh justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus : whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.”
But in this age of wisdom (?) men have ceased to declare the righteousness of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and are declaring the righteousness of the poor sinner, that if he will do certain things that are right in the sight of God that God will remit his sins and give him salvation; and then if he will persevere to the end in faithfulness, God will give him eternal life and the joys of heaven because he has done it. And yet they will lean upon the Lord and say salvation is all of grace. That God requires good works of His people the Bible abundantly teaches, which we propose to show at the proper time, before we shall have closed these articles, but the burden of this will be to prove that God does not require of thorns that they bear grapes, or of thistles that they bear figs. Jesus says they cannot do that and then tells us what He means by saying, “The evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that which is evil, and the good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that which is good,” and for us to require an evil, sinful mortal to perform good deeds in order to secure His eternal salvation is simply to expect that which Jesus says cannot be. Therefore, we conclude that our eternal salvation is not based upon creature conditions but alone upon the righteousness, mercy and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We feel willing therefore to trust all in His hands, and take shelter under His righteousness, as the “shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”
CHAPTER V
Our next argument is, “Salvation is unconditional because the saints and not the ungodly sinner are required to perform the conditions of the Bible,” in proof of which please read Col. 3:1-4: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.”
Now, my friend, suppose that we should teach that poor ungodly sinners must seek those things which are above in order that they may arise with Christ. Can you not see that we have contradicted Paul? Surely the blind could almost see that. Does any person teach poor sinners to seek those things which are above in order that they may arise with Christ? Yes, all conditionalists teach that.
Well, do they not contradict the Bible? Of course they do, and get mad with us because we do not join with them in denying the Bible. Suppose, again, we were to teach that seeking those things above was the condition upon which we are killed to sin and made alive to God, can you not see that we contradict Paul again, for Paul says “ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God”—not will be if you seek, but this is already the condition of those who seek those things which are above. And to show the condition of those that have arisen with Christ please read Eph. 2:4-6: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
Hence, the man that has arisen with Christ has been quickened into life and saved by grace, and raised up with Christ, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ. Now, my friends, this is the character of persons commanded in Paul’s language to “seek those things which are above.” And to apply such language as the above to poor ungodly sinners is to do violence to the word of God and teach poor souls a great error, and yet all who teach a conditional system of eternal salvation do this, and we had much rather it was they than we.
We do hope and pray that God will refrain our tongue from this erroneous doctrine of conditional eternal salvation.
Please read again, John 14:15: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” Suppose we were to teach that ungodly sinners are required to keep the commandments of the Lord in order that they might love Him, can you not see, my dear readers, that we have taught contrary to our blessed Saviour? You surely can see that. Does any person teach that men are required to keep the commandments of the Lord in order to love Him? Yes, sir, every denomination on earth that teaches that the eternal salvation of the sinner is dependent upon conditions for him to perform, teaches that God has commanded certain things and if the sinner will do those commandments that God will love him and shed abroad His love in the sinner’s heart, and thereby cause the sinner to love God because he has done these things, which every candid reader on earth can see is a positive denial of the Saviour’s language, and a reversal of His saying; He said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments,” and they teach “keep the commandments, and thereby learn to love the Lord.”
Let us next learn the condition of the person that loves the Lord, and then we will know the character of persons the Lord calls upon to keep His commandments, and in order to learn this please read I John 4:7, 8: “Beloved let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” From this we learn that the persons Jesus called upon to keep His commandments are those that are born of God and know God.
Hence, to teach poor ungodly sinners who do not love the Lord, neither do they know the Lord, to keep the commandments of the Lord in order that they may love the Lord is (to say the least of it) teaching things contrary to the Bible, and causing many poor souls to be deluded and led away from the truth, for which these false teachers will be held personally responsible, and their blood will God require at the hands of these teachers of error.
That God has laid down certain commandments for His children after they are made new creatures in Christ Jesus we fully believe, but that those commandments are to be obeyed by poor ungodly, unborn sinners, the Bible positively denies.
The law of commandments was never delivered to Israel until after they had been brought out of the land of bondage and darkness, and they delivered from the hands of their enemies, and their pursuers had been swallowed and drowned in the sea, and all Israel had drunk of that spiritual Rock that followed them, which Rock was Christ. And they had by then sung the song of deliverance, and had started on their journey through the wilderness, and had come to Mt. Sinai. Here Moses, their leader, was commanded to go up on the mountain and receive the law of commandments and deliver them to the children of Israel.
Now, for men to teach that these commandments were given for them to perform as conditions of their deliverance from Egyptian bondage is (to say the least) sheer nonsense, and too much after the order of children’s play to be believed and taught by men of sense and talent.
But that these commandments were to be obeyed as conditions upon which they were to overcome their enemies and live under the continual smiles of God, and at last possess the fruitful land of Canaan, is a Bible truth, and should be taught and believed by all lovers of God and preached by all ministers of the gospel everywhere.
God says, “Ye must be born again,” but nowhere does He lay down conditions for them to perform in order that they may be born. We can imagine that if we were to start out teaching that literal children had to perform certain conditions in order that they might be born into this world that even the rankest Arminian on earth, who believes the most fervently in conditions to be performed by the sinner in order that he be born again, would be willing to sit on a jury to condemn us for a lunatic asylum; and yet it is just as simple to require the poor unborn child, spiritually, to perform conditions in order to his birth as it is to require an infant to perform certain things in order that it be born into this world; for it is simply requiring them to act in a sphere in which they do not exist, and it is just as easy for an infant to act in a sphere in which it does not exist as it would be for one five hundred years old, for both would be absolute impossibilities. It does not seem to us that any reasonable, sensible man would teach such things. Conditional salvation belongs to the children of God; those that are born again; and unconditional salvation be longs to those dead in trespasses and sin. Let us strive to “rightly divide the word of truth,” and let us lean upon the arm of Jehovah, which is girded with omnipotence and fully know that He doeth all things well. In so doing, we will enjoy the blessings, and God will receive due praise and glory.
CHAPTER VI
Our next argument is, “Salvation is unconditional because it is the work of God that we are in Christ Jesus,” in proof of which read I Cor. 1:30, 31: “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord.”
From the above we learn that it is the work of God (not in part but in whole) that poor sinners are in Christ, and all Bible readers must know that out of Christ there is no salvation. Now the question is, What can poor sinners do to influence the Lord to do this work for them? Should it prove true that God did not eternally purpose to do all that He does do for poor sinners, then God must purpose to do it after the sinner does something to influence Him to do it.
If God begins to purpose after the sinner acts, then God must change. If God changes, then the Bible is untrue. If the Bible proves to be untrue, then we are left without a guide. The Bible is true; therefore Malachi was right when he said, “For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” And James was correct when he said, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” God being unchangeable, He never began to purpose to do His work. God having never begun to purpose what He would do, His purpose must, therefore, be eternal; His purpose being eternal, it could not be founded on conditions performed by sinners, for there were no sinners in eternity to perform conditions, which must, of necessity, make the work of God unconditional; and if the work of God be unconditional, the eternal salvation of the sinner must be unconditional, for the eternal salvation of the sinner is the work of God. “For it is of God that ye are in Christ Jesus.” A man in Christ Jesus must certainly dwell in a different element to those who are not in Christ.
Now, my Arminian brother, suppose you wanted to change the element of the little fish, which God has elemented to live in the water, what would you do first? Or what would you tell the fish to do? Would you preach to it? and then get around it and sing Psalms and hymns to it? and pat it on the back, as though you could beat a different element into it, between the shoulder blades? Would you tell it to believe and it will be changed in a moment? Remember, my Arminian brother, that it would be much easier to change the nature of a fish, so as to element it to live in the air, than to change the nature of a poor sinner, who is elemented to live in nature (or sin), to live in a spiritual element, for in the case of the fish it is only changing from one natural element to another natural element, but in the case of the poor sinner it is changing from a natural element to a spiritual element. And the process has never been reached in medical science by which they can change the nature of the fish to live in the air, or the child to live in water.
We all admit that it takes supernatural power to perform such work as this; but when it comes to changing the sinner from a natural to a spiritual element, we will get around them like a set of wild Arabs and begin to sing Psalms and hymns, and shout with wild enthusiasm, and beat them in the back and tell them to believe and the work will be done in a moment; and soon the poor, deluded soul gets fully under the influence of the wild fire, and he arises to shout with the rest.
He then starts out to mingle with the world and soon finds he loves the world and its amusements and desires to be back where he was, but it will not do; “I have joined the church, and I must hold out faithful;” hence the poor soul is lying on Jeremiah’s bed, “And the bed was too short, they could not stretch themselves on it; and the cover too narrow, so they could not wrap themselves in it;” and, poor things, they remain on this uneasy bed of profession until about Christmas, and they freeze out and go forth in the world hardened infidels, because they have been deluded by this wild enthusiasm which surrounded them, and they conclude that if this is Christianity they don’t want any of it. And the preacher will go off and write a long sketch of his work and have it published in his denominational journal and report so many souls in Christ, so many souls elemented to live in a spiritual world, and the poor deluded soul gets the paper, reads the report, and perhaps curses the preacher for deceiving him. The next fall the preacher returns and finds all of his work to do over again, and yet they will report great work done for the Lord, and the people are simple enough to be deluded by him again next fall.
All of this grows out of this doctrine of conditional offers of salvation. Paul says, “But of him (God) are ye in Christ Jesus.” If people would believe the statements of Paul on this subject and pay less attention to what men say, we would be nearer together than we are; but as long as men go forth in the world preaching conditional offers of salvation, just that long will there be division in the ranks of the professed religious world, for God said He “will never leave himself without a witness;” and just as soon as all turn out to witness that God offers salvation to men on condition of their doing certain things, then God is without a witness in the world.
But, perhaps, someone will ask, Does not Paul say that we are baptized into Christ? Therefore baptism is the condition upon which we get into Christ. Now, that is true; and if there were no other baptism than water baptism, then this theory would do, and it could be proved that baptism possessed creative power, for Paul says; “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” If we are created in Christ Jesus, and water baptism does not possess creative power, then the baptism that brings the sinner into Christ is not water baptism.
But people, anciently, were baptized with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit possesses creative power; therefore the baptism that creates the sinner in Christ Jesus must be the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and to this agree the words of Paul in Romans 6, for he fully sets forth the idea of two baptisms in Rom. 6; first, baptism of the Spirit; and second baptism in water.
He says, “Know ye not, that so many of us as were (past tense) baptized into Jesus Christ were (past tense) baptized into his death? Therefore we are (present tense) buried with him (not, into) by baptism into death,” etc., which shows to every unprejudiced mind that the baptism of the Holy Spirit comes first, and is preparatory to water baptism. It, therefore, being the baptism of the Holy Spirit that brings the sinner into Christ, it must, of necessity, be the work of God that we are in Christ Jesus; and if the work of God, it cannot be the work of God and the sinner jointly; for James says, “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth.” Therefore Paul was correct when he said, “It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.” And again he said: “It is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Therefore we conclude that the eternal salvation of sinners is not dependent upon conditions for them to perform, but alone upon the mercy and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; hence we sing:
Of merit now let others speak,
But merit I have none;
I’m justified for Jesus’ sake,
And saved by grace alone.
But this strait and narrow way doesn’t suit the carnal mind of men; therefore, they, as the poet says, “complain it is too straight.”
If Self must be denied,
And sin forsaken quite,
They’d rather choose the way that’s wide,
And strive to think it right.
Oh, that God in His goodness and mercy may open sinners’ eyes and show them the beauty there is in His plan of grace and mercy in the salvation of the lost. May God open the eyes of His poor, deluded children who have been gulled away from the truth and made to deny their own experience, and confess a conditional theory instead, and bring them back to the ancient land marks, that they may rest in the truth of God’s salvation by grace alone.
CHAPTER VII
Our next proposition is, “Salvation is unconditional because Jesus finished the work His Father gave Him to do, which was to save sinners,” in proof of which please read John 12:1-4: “These words spake Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou has given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the earth : I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.”
In the above quotation the Saviour first tells us what the work was that His Father had assigned Him to do, and then tells us that He has finished the work. He first tells us that His Father had given Him power over all flesh, and surely if He has power over all flesh He will not allow any flesh to prevent Him from doing what His Father has assigned Him to do. We feel sure that if we possessed power over all of the people in this country, we would never suffer any of them to prevent us from carrying out our will, and we cannot think for a moment that Jesus would be more careless in carrying out the will of His Father than we would be in executing ours.
Therefore, we must conclude that Jesus possessed power over all flesh to the intent that nothing should prevent Him from doing the work that His Father had assigned Him.
To say that Jesus did not do the work that His Father gave Him to do, is to say that He did not possess power to do it, or else He was careless and did not exercise the power He possessed. To say that Jesus did not possess the power, is to deny His own statement; to say that He had the power and was careless and would not exercise it, is derogatory to His divine character, and charging God with that which alone can be imputed to man.
The object for which Jesus was put in possession of power over all flesh was that He should give eternal life to as many as His Father had given Him. If Jesus failed to do what His Father gave Him power to do—if He has failed to do the work—then He has made a false statement, for He said “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” If Jesus has done this work for the poor sinner, then why should we tell the sinner that God requires him to perform certain conditions in order that this work may be done for him?
The angel that was sent from heaven to Joseph when he was mindful to put Mary, his espoused wife, away, said to Joseph, “Fear not to take unto thee Mary, thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.” If Jesus has done this work for poor sinners, and He says He has finished the work which His Father gave Him to do, then why tell poor sinners that they must do certain things in order that they may be saved?
Now, if the Bible had said anywhere that Jesus came to try to save, or that he came to offer salvation to men, or that He came to make a way by which men could be saved, we would be as ready to teach a conditional theory as any other man; but as long as Jesus continues to tell us that He Himself has done this work for sinners, just that long we shall fight against this idea of a conditional eternal salvation.
Paul says, again, in Heb. 10: 14; “For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” This Jesus did when He offered Himself upon the cross without spot to God— perfected His people forever. Then we would ask what conditions must the sinner perform in order that he may be perfected forever? If a sinner be perfected forever, will he be lost if he does not perform conditions? Can a man be perfected forever and lost at the same time?
Paul said again, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” We are not disposed to dispute with Paul, that it is “worthy of all acceptation; that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
But if Paul had said that all accept it, we should have been compelled to dispute with him for there are very few that accept it. If Jesus came to save sinners (and Paul says He did), and He has finished the work He came to do (and He says He has), then why tell poor sinners that they cannot be saved unless they perform certain conditions? One of the strangest things to us in the world is, that men professing to believe in Christ Jesus and religion will boldly and fearlessly deny what He has said in His word, simply to sustain their creed, while Jesus says He came to save sinners, and says He has finished the work.
The people go over the world telling the people that Jesus is anxious to save them and will do it, if the sinner will let Him—a plain, positive, palpable contradiction of the Lord’s word; and yet they will say, “we believe in Jesus and His teachings; we believe His word is true.”
When Jesus hung upon the cross, and had suffered the tortures of hell itself for the space of three hours, to pay the debt due to the crimes of His people, and had drunk of the bitter dregs of the cup, He bowed His head and said, “It is finished.” Surely we are to understand from this that the work that His Father had assigned Him was done; the sinner was saved; He had perfected him forever, and nothing now remains only for the poor sinner to be put in possession of the fact that Jesus has done this work for him. The only reason that every poor sinner represented upon the cross by Jesus Christ is not rejoicing now in hope of heaven and immortal glory is that they have not been put in possession of the fact that Jesus has died for them, and by the offering of Himself has perfected them forever. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, as Paul said, “Whereof the Holy Spirit is a witness unto us.”
And here is where many of our conditionalist friends make their grand mistake; they think, and teach, that the Spirit’s work is to save sinners, but the Spirit never has saved a sinner, nor never can, for that was not His mission in the world; but He can and does witness to those whom Christ has saved, and gives them the blessed assurance that Christ has met all the demands of the law for them, and has died upon the cross for them, and has thereby perfected them forever. The poor soul is enabled thereby to rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, and begins at once to inquire as did Peter, “Why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which we nor our fathers were able to bear.”
It is strange to us that saints, people of God, will sit down around their firesides with their children, those they ought to love, and doubtless do love, and relate to them their experience, in which they will tell that they saw themselves lost and undone, and tried to perform good works so as to gain the favor of the Lord, and all of their efforts only carried them farther away. They tried to pray but could not pray; they tried the prayers of others but all to no avail, and they at last gave up all, and conscientiously believed that eternal destruction was theirs, and they felt, and were made to confess, the justice of God in their eternal condemnation, because they could do nothing to appease His wrath. Just at this terrible moment in their history there was an unseen hand that relieved them, and their souls ran out to God in everlasting praise, because “He took them out of the mire and the clay, and placed their feet on a rock, and put a new song in their mouths, even praises to his name,” and they were made to cry out, as did old Nebuchadnezzar, “How mighty are his wonders.”
Like one of old said, “Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou king of saints.” At this moment they can see a sufficiency in the finished redemption of Christ, and can see how good and merciful He has been to them in giving them an evidence of their salvation through the merits and blood of Jesus Christ, when they were unable to perform conditions and then they will tell their children that “God has but one way to save sinners, but if you do not perform conditions you will be lost forever. I could not perform them but you must, or else be lost to all eternity.”
“Oh! consistency, thou art a jewel.” Such teaching as we have never portrayed, as is taught by parents to their children in this fast age of wisdom (?), is flooding the world with infidels and hypocrites and causing children to lose confidence in parents and in Christianity. Even now we can hear young men say, “I once thought that Father and Mother were all right, but now I see that their doctrine and their experience are not in harmony. Their experience teaches that salvation is unconditional, and their doctrine teaches that salvation is based upon conditions; hence, there is no consistency in it, and therefore it is all a farce; and they are trying to bind a yoke upon the neck of their children that they themselves could not bear.”
Oh, that God may open the eyes of Christian parents to these grand truths, and enable them to “lean upon the Lord, as a stronghold in the day of trouble,” and as a covert from the impending tempest.
CHAPTER VIII
Our next position is, “Salvation is unconditional because Jesus purged our sins before He took His seat in glory,” in proof of which please read Heb. 1:1-3 “God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” To admit the truth of Paul’s teaching in this passage is to deny every theory that presents conditions for sinners to perform in order that their sins may be purged.
Suppose there was a man in our country that had been guilty of some very bad crime, and was brought before the court and condemned and was ready to be executed to pay the penalty due to his crime, and some good friend steps in and takes the place of the guilty, and in the eyes of law becomes the guilty party, and pays all of the demands of the law, until the law acknowledges satisfaction. Is not the real guilty person purged from his guilt? Can the law punish him then for the same crime? Surely not. This is what Jesus did for the poor sinner before He ascended home to glory. He assumed the guilt of the sinner, and in the eyes of the law became the guilty party, and the law inflicted upon Jesus just what would have been put upon us; and in His sufferings and death He met all of the demands of the law for us. When Jesus expired upon the cross the law was satisfied; that is, it held no further claims, and could therefore demand no more.
Through this medium Jesus purged our sins, and then ascended home to His Father, and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, and now says, “I give unto them eternal life.” Paul says, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
And now for us to go forth into the world telling poor sinners that Jesus is offering eternal life to them, is simply to deny the Bible and to confess that we do not believe in the Lord at all ; for it would be useless for a man to tell me that he believed in me, and loved me, and then go all over the country disputing what I had told him.
The Bible says that Jesus purged our sins before He sat down in glory. Men tell us that our sins will be purged if we will perform certain conditions. Now, the question is, which shall we believe? If we accept what the Bible says about it, we become unpopular and looked down upon with disdain and are accounted by the religious (?) world as hard, narrow, contracted and SELFISH, opposed to the spread of the gospel, and setting the sinner down on the stool of do-nothing, teaching the doctrine of “let us do evil, that good may come.” Should we deny the Bible, and fall into the ranks with what the world would call good and great, we become popular, and are extolled to the skies by the world; but the anathemas of heaven are against us, and we feel the force of that declaration of the blessed Saviour, “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets;” and again, “He that would be the friend of the world, is an enemy of God.”
Hence we can but conclude that the best method is to deal honestly and shun no part of the counsel of God, and receive the frowns and scorns of the world as so many evidences that our mission is of the Lord, for Jesus said, “Behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves; be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” And again, “Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake; rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven.”
Therefore, with these blessed promises of our dear Saviour, we are willing to bear the frowns and scoffs of the world, and be counted the off-scouring of creation, and go forth under the direction of the Holy Spirit, and contend for that precious truth that Jesus PURGED OUR SINS before He took His seat in glory, and has therefore never sent out men to prescribe CONDITIONS for poor sinners to perform in order that their sins be PURGED.
Well might the apostles be bold in declaring that salvation was of GRACE. Well might Paul say to his Ephesian brethren, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast.” And again to Titus, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
And again, Paul said to Timothy, “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”
Oh how beautifully this corresponds with Heb. 1:3: “When he had by himself purged our sins.” He “hath abolished death and brought life.”
Now for us to go out into the world professing to be servants of God and impressed to preach His truth, and then in the face of these Scriptures teach that God requires the sinner to do certain things in order that his sins be purged, or that Christ bring life to him, is (to say the least of it) a contradiction, and for us to believe that God has impressed a man with the duty of preaching His truth, and then sends him out to deny what the Bible says, we cannot. Paul says, “When he (Jesus) had by himself purged our sins, forever sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high,” that is, He had no one to assist Him in doing this great work, but He did it by Himself.
This beautifully corresponds with what the prophet Isaiah said, 42:3: “I have trodden the wine press alone, and of the people there was none with me;” and again, verse 5. “And I looked and there was none to help … therefore mine own arm hath brought salvation unto me, and my fury, it upheld me.”
If Jesus had only lived in this day of conditionalism He would have had many helpers, for we can hear them call upon the brethren to come up to the help of the Lord; that is, they say, come up and help the Lord, as though the Lord were dependent on us for the accomplishment of a work that Paul says Jesus did before He sat down in glory; and besides this, the Lord has never called for the aid of poor puny man to help Him in the accomplishment of His divine purposes. That we continually need the help of the Lord, is true; but that the Lord needs us to help Him, no sensible man can believe. Hence, when Paul told his brethren to “come up to the help of the Lord,” he did not mean for them to help the Lord, but come where the Lord would help them.
The Bible tells us that Jesus has purged our sins, and has ascended home to the right hand of His Father, and is expecting that His enemies be made His foot stool; and we are told again, “what the Lord doeth shall be forever; none addeth to it, and none taketh from it; this he doeth that men may fear before him.” We can therefore fully adopt the language of Zacharias, when he was filled with the Holy Ghost at the birth of his son, John the Baptist; he said, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began; that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; the oath which he sware to our father Abraham, that He would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life.”
All of this Zacharias said the Lord would do for us, and failed to say a word about what the Lord would require of us as conditions upon which this work would be done; therefore we conclude that if the Lord had suspended these blessings on conditions for us to perform, Zacharias surely would have said so in this connection somewhere. But he did not; therefore, we conclude that it is all UNCONDITIONAL.
Grace first contrived the way
To save rebellious man,
And all the steps that grace display,
Which drew the wondrous plan.
CHAPTER IX
Our next argument is, “Salvation is unconditional because Jesus met all the conditions of the law for us, and we are saved by His obedience,” in proof of which please read Romans 5:18, 19: “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”
In the above text we have the eternal salvation of the sinner clearly set forth. None will dispute, we presume, that through the disobedience of our foreparents sin has entered the world, and death with all of its concomitant evils are but so many evidences of the entrance of sin through the disobedience of Adam and Eve; sin and death with all of their evil consequences have passed upon the whole progeny of Adam; none are exempt from its evil seductions, and through this medium all are brought under the condemnatory sentence of God’s holy and inflexible law. Hence all are upon one common level, and by nature are just alike, “the children of wrath;” the baby, the idiot, the benighted heathen, and the sane adult all are placed upon a level, and are justly condemned in the eyes of God’s holy law. Adam stands as the head and representative of all of his natural offspring and in the loins of Adam we all became equally involved with him in the transgression, and we therefore came forth into the world in a state of condemnation, and “go forth from the womb speaking lies in hypocrisy.” The only difference between the infant, idiot heathen and the sane adult sinner is the extent and magnitude of development. The same grace is required to save a baby as that required to save an old man of gray hairs; it takes the same process to erase the poison from the fangs of a little rattlesnake as it does from an old one. The poison is precisely of the same nature, and its effects are the same. They differ only in the extent of development.
Therefore, we conclude that Paul was correct when he said: “By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners;” not by the disobedience of the many, but one (Adam); and as he stood as the head and representative of all of his line or progeny, even so Christ Jesus stood as the head and representative of all of his line or spiritual offspring. For us to say that Christ Jesus stood as the head and representative of all of Adam’s long line, and obeyed the law for all of them is to acknowledge universalism to be true, for the text affirms that all for whom Christ obeyed “were made righteous,” which would forever destroy the truth of the language of Jesus in John 6:37,38: “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.”
If God the Father gave Him all of the progeny of Adam, why use the words “all that my Father hath given me shall come unto me”? Jesus surely knew more about language than to use qualifying terms where none were necessary, and if all of Adam’s race were given to Christ Jesus, and He raises up all that His Father gave Him, at the last day, then please tell us where those others came from that God says, “shall go away into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels”? And again He says: “The smoke of their torment shall ascend up forever and forever.”
Considering the facts as stated above, we can but conclude that the old prophet was correct when he said (Isa. 53:10-12), “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied; by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”
To say that God the Father gave Him (the Son) all, is simply to dispute his own word; and to confess that He did not give Him all, is to acknowledge that He is not the representative of all, and therefore saps the foundation of every principle of Arminianism, and is an acknowledgement that God’s sovereign election and choice of His people in Christ Jesus to eternal salvation is true, and that the elect are the many referred to in the text that are made righteous by the obedience of the one (Christ Jesus).
We conclude that if a man is made righteous by the obedience of Christ that this alone is sufficient to qualify him for heaven and immortal glory; and that Jesus Christ did this is clearly set forth in the language of the text above quoted, “Even so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” God said by the mouth of His prophet, that “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.” And for us to believe that God will be satisfied, and one of those for whom Jesus obeyed the precepts of the law suffering the vengeance of eternal fire, we can not, neither can any other man, if he will just stop for a moment’s reflection. Just think for a moment; Jesus sitting in the glory of His Father satisfied, and some of His children, those for whom His soul has travailed, suffering under the fire and vengeance of God’s wrath forever, and the smoke of their torment ascending up throughout all ages of eternity! And not only so, but Jesus Himself has misrepresented the matter to His Father, for He at last came up before His Father and said, “Father, here am I, and the children which thou hast given me.”
But if this doctrine of conditional salvation were true, He should have said, “Father, here am I, and all that I could get.” But we rejoice to know that we believe what the Bible says, and are willing to accept it even if it cuts us off at last and assigns us our portion with hypocrites and unbelievers. “What God does is right.”
We love to believe that Jesus came into the world as a sin-bearing Saviour. We love to believe that God in His goodness and mercy “laid upon him our iniquities.” We love to believe that Jesus, “who knew no sin, was made to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” We love to believe that Jesus came and obeyed the precepts of the law for us, and then imputes His obedience to us or places it to our account; and we rejoice in the thought that the law looks upon us as perfectly guiltless, through the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence, through this medium we can behold ourselves as righteous and the subjects of God’s grace and love, made heirs of God and inheritors of a rich inheritance in glory, and suited for the enjoyment of the sweet presence of God and His Son Jesus Christ, and with the Holy angels forever to vie around the throne of God in shouting and singing His divine praise.
CHAPTER X
Our next position is, “Salvation is unconditional, because Jesus sanctifies and cleanses the sinner Himself,” in proof of which please read Eph. 5:25-27; “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, nor wrinkle, or any such thing; but, that it should be holy and without blemish.”
Surely, if the Lord does all that is mentioned above for the poor sinner, he will never need more to prepare himself for heaven and eternal rest. Paul affirms that the Lord will do this work for His church, and he failed to say a word about what the Lord would require of the church as conditions upon which this work would be done; therefore, we conclude that the Lord does not require of sinners the performance of certain stipulated conditions such as are prescribed by our Arminian teachers, else Paul would have mentioned it. Somewhere in this connection Paul states the cause of the Lord’s doing this work for the church, but no account of their obedience to any prescribed law, or the performance of conditions, but rather His love for His people is the only cause mentioned in the Bible.
“Even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.” If there is any other cause for Christ giving Himself for the church, we have thus far failed to find it, and if some other apostle or prophet has given a different cause (or reason) why Christ gave Himself for His church, then the infidel is right in his rejection of Bible, for it is made up of a mass of contradictions, one apostle telling one thing about it, and another contradicting it, and telling it some other way. Then surely we are left to guess, and wonder if any of them has told it correctly; but we are fully persuaded that all the rest of the apostles and prophets fully corroborate the statement of Paul in the above text. Therefore the reason, and only reason, that Christ gave Himself for the church was that “he loved them.”
To accept this is to deny all Arminian conditions; and to deny it is simply to say that Paul was not a competent witness in the case; and to say that Paul was not a competent witness is to deny the inspiration of the Scriptures; and to deny the inspiration is to acknowledge infidelity; and to confess infidelity is to do away with this modern idea of getting religion; and to deny the idea of getting religion is to destroy the very foundation of every Arminian sect in the world.
And as love was the cause of Christ giving Himself for the church, we will next consider what He accomplished by giving Himself, or to what intent He gave Himself— “That he might sanctify and cleanse it (the church) with the washing of water by the word.”
Now there is one question to decide, that is, whether He did that work for the church or not. Paul says in I Cor. 6:11: “And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”
Paul first tells us that Christ gave Himself that He might cleanse, sanctify and justify us, and then says in another place that He did do it. Now the question is, what more do we need? Can it be that a sinner can be sanctified, justified, cleansed and purified, and yet lost forever because he will not perform certain conditions? Surely not. Hence, we can but conclude that after the Lord has done all this for His church the full end will be carried out as stated by Paul in the 27th verse : “That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blemish.”
Therefore we now propose to close our series of articles on the subject of eternal salvation with this blessed assurance that Jesus has sanctified, justified, cleansed and purified His church by the power and efficacy of His own precious blood, without the performance of stipulated Arminian conditions, and will by the agency of the Holy Spirit bring every one of His chosen family to a knowledge of this glorious fact in time, and will preserve them by His power and grace through all the trials and vicissitudes of this sin-cursed earth, until He shall come again, the second time without sin unto salvation to call His jewels home, when He will present the church complete unto Himself, a glorious church without spot, wrinkle or even a blemish upon their garments, but when all of the redeemed family of God, clothed in robes of spotless white, can unite their perfect and unshattered voices in sounding the sweet notes of that precious hymn:
Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me,
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
Yes, dear brothers and sisters, that grace is amazing, and we often wonder why we should be one of the favored ones, if so be that God has ever bestowed that grace on us, and we know full well that it could not be because of the good there is in us, for we can fully adopt the language of Paul: “For in me (that is in my flesh) dwells no good thing; for when I would do good evil is present with me.” And we are often made to cry as did our beloved Brother Paul: “Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” And then we are made to adopt the words of Paul again: “I thank God through Jesus Christ; so then I with my mind do serve the law of God, and with my flesh the law of sin.”
Therefore, we feel certain that heaven never can be our home, unless we are found among that number spoken of by the Lord when He said: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: naked, and ye clothed me: sick and in prison, and ye visited me.”
And they answered, “Lord when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or naked, and clothed thee?— or sick, or in prison, and visited thee ?” They did not know that they had ever done anything good in all of their lives. Oh, how well this suits my case, yet the Lord told them that they had. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these my little ones, you have done it unto me: enter thou into the joys of thy Lord.”
Therefore, we are persuaded that this character of persons are the only ones who ever will be permitted to enter that glorious kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world, while, on the other hand, there were many that came up telling the Lord the many good things they had done: “Lord, have not we prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? But the Lord says: Then will I profess unto them. I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” ‘ Here we have a plain contrast. One of those classes believed in a conditional eternal salvation, and thought they had performed the conditions, and the Lord was therefore under obligation to let them in, and they missed it. The other class never had performed any conditions, but had depended solely on the grace of God, and believed in unconditional eternal salvation and they were admitted into the kingdom, and wondered why the Lord had done it.
Now, dear brethren and sisters, among this happy throng I hope at last to be found, washed and made white in the blood of Jesus, and fitted by the work of the Holy Spirit to spend an eternity in shouting the divine praises of God, Who has done so much for me; where, dear saints, I hope to join you in chanting the sweet anthems of praise to God for His redeeming love, a song which angels cannot sing.
TIME SALVATION
CHAPTER XI
In our previous articles we have treated at considerable length on the important subject of eternal salvation, showing that it was solely the work of God, independent of the performance of any stipulated conditions, and we feel sure that we have proved beyond successful contradiction that this is a work that God does for us. We now propose, in a brief article, to consider that work that God requires of us, and what we gain by obeying the Lord’s commands. That God requires certain duties of His children after they are regenerated, or born again, the Bible clearly teaches. That God has promised certain blessings, on condition of their obedience to His commands, is equally clear; but we should ever be careful not to blend the work of God and the work of Christians together, which shows the necessity of our obeying the injunction of the inspired apostle to Timothy, his son in the gospel: “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
The term salvation is often used in the Scriptures without any reference to our deliverance from sin. For instance, on the day of Pentecost, Peter said to those that cried out and said, “What must we do?” “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call;” and with many other words did he exhort them saying, “save yourselves from this untoward generation.”
All the above Peter told them to do, not in order to get the Lord to save them in heaven, or from sin, but the final result, or that which was to grow out of their obedience to what Peter taught them in the above lesson, was salvation from that untoward generation, which salvation they enjoyed just as soon as they gladly received Peter’s words and were baptized; hence they did not have to wait till they died, were buried and resurrected and ascended home to God to enjoy the privileges of this salvation, but they enjoyed it just as soon as they did what God, through Peter, commanded them to do; therefore, we call it a time salvation. Had those Pentecostians refused to obey what Peter taught them, we have no evidence that they could have enjoyed that salvation. Hence, the supreme necessity of the church is, and ever has been, absolute obedience to God’s commands. We are certain that the first and last thing in the prosperity of a church, and the enjoyment of their privileges as such, and their salvation in time from the errors and delusions, false signs and lying wonders, which lie in wait to deceive the people of God, is obedience to what God commands.
Where a church, or an individual member, ceases to obey, they cease to live in the enjoyment of their Christian privileges, or time salvation. Jesus never has required of us to keep His commandments in order that we might love Him, but He makes obedience a test of love. He says, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” And again, “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.” Obedience to God’s commands is the very best evidence one can give of a renewed heart. We cannot depart from His commands without feeling that we have proved false to ourselves and false to Him. On the other hand, disobedience, throughout the Bible, is threatened with God’s chastisements, insomuch that no Christian can disobey the Lord without fearfully looking for the judgments of God to be visited upon him.
A very important lesson may be learned from the case of Moses. Upon Moses rested the blessings of heaven, and to him were granted many privileges. He was favored of God and was a type of Christ. Yet Moses, at one time, was decoyed off and disobeyed the Lord. When the congregation of Israel had gathered about him, and were begging for water, God told Moses to speak to the rock, but Moses disobeyed the command of God, “and lifted up his rod and smote the rock twice,” and for this seemingly “little” transgression, this good man, Moses, was not permitted to enter the land of Canaan and enjoy that time salvation promised to the children of Israel if they would “be willing and obedient;” but that Moses was permitted to enjoy the blessings of heaven, and the eternal salvation of God, is too clearly set forth in the Scriptures to be denied, we presume, by any. When Jesus was transfigured upon the mount, Moses was one of them that appeared from the glory land to witness the scene, and the apostles wanted to build a tabernacle for him. Surely if Moses had been eternally lost for his disobedience he would not have been present on that memorable occasion.
Another very striking instance of God’s abhorrence of disobedience is found in the case of Saul, the king of Israel, who was commanded to go and slay Amalek and utterly destroy all they had, and to spare them not, but “slay both men and women, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” Saul went contrary to the divine command and preserved Agag and the best of the oxen, sheep, etc., and when the prophet came to inquire after the matter, his reasons did seem good. It does seem that if a person could be excused for disobedience at all, Saul surely could, for he said he had reserved them to sacrifice to the Lord; but Samuel let him know that “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.”
God let him know, “Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.”
This man failed to enjoy the time salvation in consequence of his own disobedience.
There is no part of God’s word that sanctions disobedience in the very smallest of His requirements; but, on the contrary, there are abundant passages that teach the displeasure of God for such disobedience, which we can find by following the path of the children of Israel from the Red Sea to the land of Canaan. God had promised them temporal, or timely, salvation from all of their enemies which surrounded them, and from all the plagues incident to temporal life, on condition that they obey the law given to them through Moses upon Mount Sinai. But He had told them that if they rebelled, He would let their enemies in upon them, and they should devour them. Israel soon waxed fat and rebelled against God’s law, and began to say “The ways of the Lord are not equal.”
No sooner than they began to rebel, God began to visit them with His chastisements, “and there fell in one day about three thousand souls.” All of these failed to enjoy the time salvation, because of their disobedience. When we consider the fact that ancient Israel was a type of spiritual Israel (or the church of Christ), should it not stimulate every power we possess to try to obey the injunction of the woman at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, “Whatsoever the Master sayeth unto you, do it.”
That there is a time salvation to be enjoyed by God’s people in consequence of their obedience, or lost in consequence of disobedience, is clearly set forth by Paul in Philippians 2:12,13, “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
These obedient children of God at Philippi were careful to observe all things that the Lord had commanded them, not only when Paul was there present with them, but they were more careful when he was absent; and Paul, knowing this fact, exhorts them to continue this course and work out their own salvation by obeying what the Lord commanded.
Paul would not have them suppose for a moment that their eternal salvation from sin and their home in heaven depended upon their work, for he had just taught them that this was by grace and not of works, but he would have them know that their time happiness, and time salvation, depended, not in part, but in whole, upon their strictness in the observance of God’s commands.
Jesus says, “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” He does not say you shall be saved from sin and hell if ye do them, but the man that knows what God has commanded, and refuses to do it, cannot be happy if he is truly a child of God.
Therefore, we would, exhort all who have a little hope in Jesus not to wait for a more convenient season, not to wait to get a larger hope, but to go now and obey the Lord and enjoy the blessings that, grow out of obedience to God. We have heard some say to such characters, “Stay away just as long as you can, and if you can keep from obeying the Lord at all, do it,”
Now, my brethren; this is all wrong. If you were to come to my house and tell my children not to obey me just as long as they can possibly keep from it, I would certainly tell you to get away from my house as soon as possible, and never come there again: I cannot believe that God has sent out His servants to tell His children not to obey Him if they can possibly keep from it. Instead He told them to “Teach them to observe all things whatsoever
I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.”
CHAPTER XII
Obedience to God is one of the absolute essentials to Christian life. A most beautiful lesson is taught us in 2nd Peter 1, in which Peter first sets forth the work of God in giving us ALL THINGS that pertain to life and godliness, such as faith, repentance, remission of sins, and a blessed assurance that we shall at last be delivered from the power of sin into the glorious home of the blest. Then he changes the subject by saying, “besides this,” which shows very conclusively that there is something else separate and apart from the work that God does for us. “Besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith (not add faith, but add to your faith), virtue.” One of the most beautiful Christian graces that ever adorned one of Adam’s fallen, apostate race is living virtuously to the Lord as our only husband.
Suppose that I, for instance, were married to a lady, and I leave her and go into a far country to prepare for her a home, and after I had been gone for sometime, I at last return and inform her that all preparations are now made, and I am now ready to carry her to that beautiful home I have prepared for her, and, lo and behold, she has married several other men while I was gone.
Would you think she had added virtue to her pretended faith in me? Methinks you would say “no,” and we doubt not that you would, AT ONCE, enter suit for divorce, and never live with her again on earth. Now, my brethren, let us remember that Jesus, our husband, has gone to prepare a place for us and said He would come again and receive us unto Himself, that where He is there we should be also. Now suppose when He comes He finds us (his bride) married to every little institution in the world, instead of devoting our whole life to Him and endeavoring to show forth His praise, can we expect to receive His smiles?
Can we expect Him to bestow upon us His precious jewels? Surely we cannot expect it. What else could we look for but to receive the chastenings of His hot displeasure? Could we expect Him to bestow upon us the great blessing of temporal, or timely, salvation? Surely we cannot expect it. Were it true that Jesus was a changeable being, as we are, He would sue for divorce and have us to sink down to irretrievable woe and misery; but blessed be His holy name, He is not as one of us, for He declares, “Though my children forsake my laws, and keep not my statutes, then will I visit their transgressions with a rod, yet my loving kindness will I not utterly take from them nor suffer my faithfulness to fail.”
Therefore, seeing the great and unchangeable love our husband and Saviour has for us, oh, how diligent we ought to be to obey all of His commands, and observe all of His precepts, and not go out of the church into the world and join the institutions, and marry and intermarry with all the abominations of earth. For when we do this we show our disregard for our husband.
Should you wish to observe the rules of a Masonic or other fraternity, observe the rules Jesus has laid down for the government of his church, and you have it in full. Should you wish to be a temperance man, observe the laws of the church of God, and you have all there is in any temperance institution.
Therefore, we can see no need of a church member’s joining any secret order in order to do good in the world, or to enable him to let his light shine, for if he does what the Lord commands him as a member of His church, he has all that is claimed for any secret order on earth. Therefore we would say, as did Peter, “Add to your faith, virtue,” and don’t stop here, but add “to virtue, knowledge.”
Suppose we were to leave our wives and go into a far country, and before we left we write a long letter, giving them full instructions about how we wanted everything attended to while we were gone, and after we were gone they should lay it away in the desk, and never take it down to read and see what we instructed to be done while we were gone, but would depend on some one else to read it and tell them what to do. They do not know whether they have told them correctly or not, but they will depend upon them and do as they say, right or wrong, and we return and find everything different to what we instructed, and we ask, “Did you `add knowledge’ to your faith?” “Well, no; I didn’t have time to read your letter of instructions, but I let one of our neighbors read it and tell me how to do, and I did as he said: I thought that would do.”
Do you suppose that we could smile in love upon them and say, “well done, my love”? We imagine that almost any of us would fly into a rage and perhaps discard our companions, because they had no more respect for us than to treat our letter of instructions with such disregard.
Jesus has left us a book (or letter) of instructions and has commanded us to search it while He is gone, and thereby to “add to our faith knowledge.” Shall we treat it with disregard, and lay it aside and follow our own notions, or conscience, instead; or shall we hire a preacher to read for us and tell us what it says, and then let him tell us what to do, and do as he says, right or wrong, or shall we obey the command of our Saviour and husband, and search it ourselves, and thereby “add knowledge” to our faith, and show our regard for His word and live under His continued smiles, and save ourselves from the lash of a guilty conscience?
As for us, we would join with Peter in saying, “Add to your faith knowledge, and to knowledge temperance,” not by joining some institution, but add this as one of the Christian graces that should necessarily grow out of a renewed heart. “Add to temperance patience;” that is, learn to be patient in whatsoever condition of life you may be placed, realizing that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
Therefore, we ought to “glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.”
Therefore, let us “add to our faith patience, and to patience godliness,” that is, to be God-like in our everyday deportment.
And to godliness “add brotherly kindness;” that is, should we see a brother overtaken in a fault, or in an error, let us not take him by the throat and demand full payment of all that he owes, but let us treat him with brotherly kindness, and try to restore him in the spirit of meekness. And to brotherly kindness, “add charity,” for if we see a brother have need, and shut up our bowels of mercy, and not administer to his necessities, how dwells the love of God in us? Therefore, let us consider that one of the important features in working out our time salvation is to “add to our faith charity.” “For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.”
Oh, how often we hear Christians say, “I am so dark and gloomy. Surely it can’t be that I was ever purged from my old sins. If I were a Christian it would not be thus with me.” Now, my brother, you have only failed to add to your faith the above mentioned Christian graces, and therefore have failed to enjoy the time salvation that God has promised on condition that you do these things.
“Therefore you are blind, and have forgotten that you were purged from your old sins.” Then Peter came forth with his exhortation, “Wherefore, the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure, for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall.”
You will observe that he does not tell them to elect themselves or call themselves, neither to act in a way to get the Lord to elect them or call them. Neither are they to make it sure to the Lord, for He knows all about it already, but make it sure to yourselves and to your brethren by adding all of the above named Christian graces, and if they do these things “they shall never fall.” He is not talking about falling from grace, but the Christian that does all of these things is never to fall into these dark and gloomy places in which we are so often found, but by doing these things we enjoy the blessings of this time salvation and live in the enjoyment of the sweet presence of the Holy Spirit, rejoicing continually in hope of heaven and immortal glory at God’s right hand. And not only so, but Peter says, “For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”
From this we draw the conclusion that the obedient Christian, that is, the one who has been diligent in “adding to his faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity,” will, when he comes to press a dying pillow, have a more abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of God than the one that neglects these things. We have heard some say when they came to meet death that “I have but one thing to regret; that is, I have not done my duty while I lived; I look beyond death, I have nothing to fear, but on this side, I have not added to my faith as I should have done.”
Therefore, the obedient Christian has the more abundant entrance. Let us, then, endeavor to discharge our whole duty as followers of the Lord in this life, that we may enjoy the sweet blessings of the time salvation, and when we come to die, we may have that abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of the Lord.
CHAPTER XIII
A very striking lesson is given us in the epistle of Jude. He begins the epistle with this language: “Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called. Mercy unto you, and peace, and love be multiplied. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”
This, Jude spake to his brethren in view of the fact that none could enjoy this common salvation except those who strictly observe and contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints. Not that Jude would teach that every one must believe the same doctrine here in order to be saved in heaven, but this common salvation grew out of their strict observance of the truth of the faith (or doctrine) which was once delivered to the saints.
And to this Paul had reference when he said to Timothy, “Take heed unto thyself, and to the doctrine; continue in them; for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee.”
Of course, Paul would not teach Timothy that he was to save himself with an eternal salvation, neither was he to save his hearers with an eternal salvation; for Paul had just taught him differently. He said to him, “Be thou therefore not ashamed of the testimony of the Lord, nor of me his prisoner; but be thou a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God, who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.”
And surely Paul would not now turn and teach Timothy the very reverse of that, and tell him that by giving heed to himself and to the doctrine, that he would thereby secure to himself the very same salvation which Jesus worked out for him while here on earth. We presume that none will believe that; therefore, we must conclude that Paul had reference to time salvation when he said, “Take heed to thyself, and to the doctrine; continue in them, for in doing this thou shall both save thyself and them that hear thee.”
And none of us would presume for a moment that Timothy was a saviour and could save his hearers with an eternal salvation, for we have shown in our previous articles that this is alone the work of God. And Paul says, in Ephesians 4:10-14, “He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and more, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ; till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ : that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.”
All of the above Paul wrote as the purpose for which God gave His ministers, and not a single word is said about their saving sinners with an eternal salvation, but a great deal is said about their tenaciously contending for the true faith which was once delivered to the saints, that God’s people might be built up and established in the true faith of the gospel, and no more be as children tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. Hence the preaching of the gospel, and their strict adherence to the faith, was to save them from the many lying wonders and false signs and cunning traps set by men of design to ensnare the poor unsuspecting child of God.
Oh, how necessary, then, that the ministers of the cross of Jesus be particular about what they preach, lest they teach some erroneous doctrine and thereby cause some dear little child to be entrapped by some false theory, and in that event come short of the enjoyment of this time or common salvation. We are living in a fast age, an age in which we have many “lo heres” and “lo theres,” and if there ever was a time in the history of the world when God’s ministers should deal in plain, simple matters of fact, it is now.
Look around you, dear reader, and see how many you can call to mind that you have every evidence to believe are children of God who are ensnared in the clutches of Arminianism, and are thereby failing to enjoy the blessings of that time salvation. What is the matter? Is it true that God sent them there? Surely it cannot be true that God by His Holy Spirit has influenced one of His dear children to disobey Him and join in with some other sect, and is now calling for them to come out.
He says: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins.” And He commands us again to touch not, taste not, handle not the unclean thing, which is to perish with the using. Surely God does not influence His dear children to go contrary to His commands. Nay, but some of us have got so straight that we are like the Indian’s tree; we lean back a little, and instead of exhorting God’s people to a full discharge of their duty, we have rather told them to “stay away from the church just as long as they can,” and never come to the church and discharge their duties as long as they can possibly keep from it, and many of the dear saints have been discouraged by such talk as this and have gone to other sects, because they thought the Old Baptists did not want them.
Now, my dear brethren, this is wrong; we are not thereby contending for the faith which was once delivered to the saints, but are, rather, denying the doctrine taught by Christ and His apostles, and causing many of the dear saints to fail of the enjoyment of the blessings of this time salvation. Therefore, we fail to save ourselves and them that hear us. Oh, my brethren, let us be careful how we teach; let us be found faithful in exhorting God’s people “to love and good works;” let us endeavor with the ability that God gives us to show them the blessings that grow out of our obedience to the commandments of our dear Lord.
God says by the mouth of His prophet Malachi: “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house; and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open to you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground, neither shall your vines cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of Hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed, for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of Hosts.”
No sooner had God spoken those grand truths than His people heard it, and began at once to obey. “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another; and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name.”
Oh, how needful then that everyone should obey the Lord, and what blessings are enjoyed by God’s people when they are diligent in obeying the commands of their dear Saviour. God rebukes the devourer and their fields never fail to yield their fruits. Their vineyards never cast their fruits before their time; everything is prosperous, and the fields yield abundant harvest. Everybody is merry and happy, and God’s church is building up in every quarter and is enjoying the refreshing seasons from the presence of the Lord, and is living continually under the precious smiles of the heavenly Master, hence enjoying the time salvation.
Oh! how needful, then, my dear brethren in the ministry, that we should turn neither to the right nor to the left, but take a straight forward course and earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints; and should we see the enemy trying to make inroads upon the flock, let us rally to their relief, let us beard the lion on the spot, and fight valiantly as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. In the strength of Elijah’s God we shall always conquer the foe, and save our brethren from being ensnared by the enemy of God, and we will ever feel that sweet whispering in our hearts, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joys of thy Lord.” Only the obedient enjoy the blessings of time salvation.
Hence John said, “Blessed and holy are they that do his commandments, that they may have a right to the tree of life, and enter in through the gates into the city.” The tree of life we understand here to represent the blessings that are to be enjoyed by the obedient children of God, and none have a right to these blessings except those that do His commandments. Then, my dear brethren and sisters, how needful for us that we do those things that our King and Lawgiver has given in His holy word.
In view of this grand truth James says, “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, for the doers of the word are justified.” There is a sense in which we are justified by works; “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac?” We answer, he surely was; but the question is, was he justified in an eternal sense?
We answer, No. For Paul said, “If Abraham were justified by works he hath whereof to glory.” Abraham was justified in an eternal sense by the merit and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, we see that a man is not justified by faith only. James says, “ye see then, how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.”
From this we learn that faith justifies a man; hence the two justifications cannot be the same.
Suppose we were to enter a drug house and call for a remedy to cure chills, and the druggist should hand us down Smith’s Tonic. We ask him, “Will Smith’s Tonic cure the chills?” He answers, “Yes;” we ask again, “Will Smith’s Tonic, only, cure chills?” He would at once answer, “Oh, no, quinine will cure chills also.”
Therefore, we see how that Smith’s Tonic will cure chills, and not quinine only; hence we can discover the difference between the words “only” and “alone.” Should you ask, “Is a man justified by faith alone?” we would answer, “Yes.” Should you ask, “Is a man justified by works alone?” we would answer, “Yes, but not by works only, for faith justifies a man also.”
Therefore, we see that there is a sense in which a man is justified by faith, and there is a sense in which a man is justified by works. Abraham was justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar. And just so we are justified by works when we obey the blessed commandments of our dear Saviour.
And James says again, “Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him, let him know that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and hide a multitude of sins.”
Notice he is not talking about the ungodly sinners, but brethren; hence, if one of our brethren should be drawn off into error, and therefore fails of the enjoyment of the blessings of the time salvation, it is our duty to labor with him, and do all we can to convert him from the error of his way, and we thereby save a soul from death and hide a multitude of sins— not that we save him from an eternal death, for Jesus alone can do that; but we save him from death to the enjoyment of his privileges in the church of God; we save him from that error in which he has been ensnared, and thereby enable him to enjoy again the blessings of the time salvation.
CHAPTER XIV
Peter, after having set forth the work of God in choosing His people according to His foreknowledge through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, and also having shown that God had begotten us unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled and that should never fade away, and that they were kept by the power of God unto salvation ready to be revealed at the last time, then comes down to the thirteenth verse and says:
“Wherefore gird up the loins of your minds; be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance. But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. Because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy. And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourn here in fear. Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from the vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who by him do believe in God, that raised him from the dead, and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth, through the Spirit, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: being born again (not in order to be born again, but because ye are born again), not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof fadeth away. But the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.”
All of the above Peter gives as the reasons why we should obey the Lord, because He had done so much for us, and not in order to get Him to do something for us. By obeying the truth we would purify our souls unto unfeigned love of the brethren, and, as a matter of course, would enjoy the sweet fellowship of the saints, and thereby be partakers of the benefits of the time or common salvation.
Another very striking lesson is taught by Paul in Hebrews 4: “Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest; although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works. And in this place again, If they shall enter into my rest. Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preach entered not in because of unbelief…. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God….Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.” This Paul spake in view of what was lost by the ancient Israelites in consequence of unbelief and disobedience.
God had long since made promise to Abraham saying, “I will make thee exceeding fruitful; and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee, And I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”
No doubt the time had been in the history of this toiling nation when they believed that God would fulfill this promise, but after so many years that God had entirely forgotten them, but “God is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness.” Hence He still remembered His promise to His chosen people as a nation, when they had gathered on the banks of the Red Sea.
This vast moving throng, numbering perhaps not less than two millions souls, could now behold the fulfillment of the glorious promise of God to their father Abraham, “That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying, I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is on the seashore.” But when they heard the grating of the chariot wheels, over the rocks, of Pharaoh’s host in hot pursuit of them, no doubt they still felt that they would never be able to reach that long-promised land, and Moses commanded them to “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.”
God commanded Moses to “stretch forth his rod,” Moses obeyed the command, and the waters of the great sea were divided, and the Israelites were enabled to see the almighty power of God displayed in their salvation. As soon as this was done, God told Moses to “speak to the children of Israel, that they go forward,” and they passed through the sea, a redeemed and happy people. The particular point we wish to rivet upon the minds of our readers is that God never commanded them to go forward till after they had seen the “salvation of the Lord.” We are sure the first and last thing in the prosperity of the church is obedience. The whole duty of the church is to “fear God and keep his commandments.” For “obedience is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” When a church fails to obey the commands of the Lord, they fail to enjoy the blessings of the time salvation. Therefore, it behooves us to labor, as Paul instructed, to enter into rest, for many of this nation who started from the land of Egypt fell in the wilderness on account of disobedience and unbelief.
“Is it conceivable that the great God could possibly lend the sanction of His authority to that which is nothing but emptiness? or that He would command us to do that which might well be left undone? Does disobedience of any part of His law make no change in our relations to Him? A mere form is an insignificant thing and unworthy of respect. Has God commanded anything that is insignificant or unworthy of respect? Is any part of His law contemptible? The soul takes fright at the very thought. God’s commandment is exceeding broad; each part of it is zealous of every other, and each is invested with the majesty of all.”
There is no part of God’s word that sanctions disobedience in the very smallest of His requirements, but on the contrary there are abundant passages that teach the displeasure of God for such disobedience. Lot was commanded to leave the doomed city of Sodom; he at once obeyed the command of God and fled. Abraham was commanded to go out into a land that God would show him; he immediately started and journeyed, “not knowing whither he went.” And God told Moses, when he was about to build the tabernacle, “to see that he made all things according to the pattern shown him in the mount.” Oh, how minute in detail was that pattern, yet all important, which clearly proves to us that God has commanded no non-essentials. To teach that there are non-essentials in the gospel is not only insulting to Jesus, but dangerous to men. Therefore, it behooves every true servant of God to “teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” and then command every heaven-born soul “to go forward” in the discharge of his or her duty.
Our ways may often seem hedged, and we can see no way of escape, but the command of God, “go forward,” still stands, and so sure as we obey the command and press on in duty, so sure will God open the way and strew our path with the rich blessings of heaven. Jesus says, “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them,” not that you are to be saved for doing them, but you are to be happy in doing them. And again James says: “He that looketh into the perfect law of liberty, being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, that man shall be blessed in his deeds;” not saved because he does it, but blessed in doing it.
Therefore, my brethren, it behooves us to go forward in the discharge of all our Christian duties, and not stop to enquire what we are to gain by it. When the Master says, “fill the water pots to the brim,” let us not stop to enquire what He is going to do, but let us go forward and fill the measure of our duty as humble followers of the meek and lowly Jesus, remembering that it is ours to obey, and God’s to bless. Oh, that the time may come when we can see all of God’s dear saints obeying the commands of the Lord, and when we can hear all the ministers of Christ lifting up their voices together, “speaking to the children of Israel, that they go forward.”
Just so sure as God’s dear saints go forward in the discharge of their duties as the humble children of God, so sure will they enjoy the blessings of the time salvation. Hence, we find that there is a rest that Jesus gives, and there is also a rest that we are to find, and we find it only in the path of obedience; therefore, it is our duty, as the dear saints of God, to labor to enter into that rest. Therefore, it is needful, my dear brethren, that we should fear lest a promise being left us of entering into His rest, some of us “should seem to come short of it.”
We feel sure that we say truthfully that many of God’s dear saints have come short of this rest by disobedience, but when their work is done on earth they enter that eternal rest that Jesus has prepared for them, and spend an eternity of bliss with God. By their disobedience they have failed to enjoy the time salvation, but this does not affect their eternal salvation when they come to die. All of their works are burned up and they suffer loss, but they themselves, are saved, yet so as by fire.
Another very striking lesson is taught us in John’s report of the seven churches of Asia. Only one out of the seven had strictly obeyed the commandments of the Lord and all of the rest God had something against. God called upon them to repent and do their first works, or else He would come and remove the candlestick (church) out of its place. That is (we understand), He would remove the church from them and plant it somewhere else, and they should no longer enjoy the blessed privileges that they then were enjoying. He did not mean by this that He would send them to torment but they should enjoy the time salvation. We will not give this in detail, but will ask that our readers read Revelation and draw their own conclusions. May God help us all to labor for the blessings of this rest.
APPENDIX
CHAPTER XV
We feel that in sending forth this little treatise again to the reading public we would prove derelict to duty, were we to pass unnoticed some charges that have of recent years been brought against the people with whom I stand identified, by those holding the Arian heresy. And in order to make myself well understood, I will give some quotations from their records, that the reader may know to whom we refer as Arians. Here is a quotation from a circular letter published in their minutes, 1848. In referring to the church of the Lord as a city, they say:
“This city has her origin in God; `I saw,’ says John, `the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God, out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband’…. She came from God, and came out of heaven. With such an origin as this, can she but be holy? But she came to earth, and is she not likely to have her beauty marred, and her comeliness effaced? No! For her God came with her, and will not leave her. He hath desired it for His habitation. Here will I dwell, saith the Lord. Her provisions all came from heaven her native clime.”
Again they say, “When Christ died and lay in the grave three days and three nights, there was not a living saint in heaven or earth, during that time….Christ will not come a second time to this world.”
Because we will not endorse the above sentiments we are stigmatized as Arminians; but as for myself, they call me by any name they choose. But I want it distinctly understood, and generally known, that I stand in direct opposition to the sentiments set forth in the above extracts, for I am assured that they stand arrayed against the teachings of the Sacred Volume. Why should Christ come to earth to save His people, if His people were already with Him in heaven? Why all of His toil, and sufferings, to save a people that were never lost? And surely they were never lost, if God was with them all the time, and came with them from heaven when they came, and staid with them all the time they were here, and took them back with Him to heaven when He went back; then they were never lost. Therefore when the Sacred Record said, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost,” it was said in vain, for they were never lost! They were ever in eternal, actual vital union with Him, and as old as God Himself ! And they owned heaven by right of possession, whether Christ died or not!
And to say that while Jesus lay in the grave there was not a living saint in heaven or earth is too preposterous to be believed. Truly the hope of the saints went with the dear Saviour into the grave, and they were not well versed in the doctrine of the resurrection, and of course were very despondent. They felt, doubtless, that the whole would be a failure. But there is a grand difference between being cast down and full of darkness and doubt, and not being a living saint. This is simply an effort to show that there is no change in the man in regeneration, no imparting of divine life to man, and while Christ was dead, His saints were dead also.
They were still His children, and they still loved Him, as was evidenced by their going to the grave to anoint Him; and John says, “Whosoever loveth is born of God.” If they were born of God, they surely were living while Jesus lay in the grave.
The idea that Jesus will never come to the world again is too foreign to Bible teaching to be believed by any thinking mind, for the angel said to His disciples, as they stood steadfastly looking at the body of Jesus as it ascended up into heaven, “Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, whom ye see ascend up into heaven, shall in like manner come again.” So, if I must deny the words of the angel to have fellowship, I feel that I would prefer to live alone in the world. There are too many Scriptures telling us that Jesus is coming back to earth, just as He went away, for us to accept this theory.
I will now proceed to give you some extracts, showing what these Arians accuse our people of believing. They say we teach that “The choice of the church was in prospect, not an actual choice; that the election was of sinners of Adam’s race,” and they say, “Springing from this theory, that the soul is born again.” And they charge us with believing “that the soul in that new birth is changed from the love of sin to the love of holiness.”
They also charge us with believing the man born again “has undergone a change in his feelings, sentiments, and nature, which is exemplified in his life throughout.”
Again, we are accused by them of believing “That the same identical individual that was born, is born again; that existed, exists again. Therefore without contradiction, a change is wrought, and not the creation of what before had no existence.”
Again they charge us with teaching, “Now to be a man he must have been born once of the flesh, and this is to be born the second time, or again, and it is the same man that was born the first time, that is born the second time.”
They also charge us with teaching, “Now as these two elements, or principles, are contrary the one to the other …. it follows that they that are in the Spirit [and] have undergone a change; that they differ from themselves formerly, as well as from those who are yet in the flesh.”
Again, “It is obvious that the apostle had not in his eye eternal created spirits when he wrote, as he begins the chapter (Eph. 2) with the affirmation, that they who were dead in sins …. had been quickened. The quickening and creation is of the same people (Adam sinners), and relates to their salvation in time, and has no reference to their existence in Christ.”
Again, “The warfare about which so much has been written is between that part of man which is prepared in regeneration for glory, and the part that is left in its natural state to be prepared in the resurrection.”
Again, “The changes wrought in them by which they are qualified to dwell with God, are performed in the regeneration, and the resurrection. All that is necessary to make them fit for heaven in their mental powers, is done in regeneration; the necessary changes in the body will be made in the resurrection.”
Now I want to be put upon record as pleading guilty to every count in this indictment. If we must deny the doctrine contained in these extracts in order to have fellowship with any people on earth, please allow me to say that the gulf is impassable, and we will certainly remain separated. For if it be true that God’s children came from heaven, that is, eternal glory, I never was there; and I have tried to get those who claim to have been there to give us the geography of the country, but they seem to be as ignorant of its geography as I am; therefore, I conclude that they have never been there.
But that there is a change in this Adam sinner, by which he is raised up from a state of death to a state of life, we most heartily endorse. The Bible says, “If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature (or new creation); old things have passed away, and all things have become new.” Again, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Paul speaks to the Corinthians about having been fornicators, adulterers, etc., and then says, “And such were some of you; but ye are washed; but ye are sanctified; but ye are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” Now surely if they came from heaven with God, and He dwelt with them all the time they were here, they would not have become so contaminated as all that; but this was true of God’s people then, and we presume is true yet. So it is evident that the change wrought in them is the work of Jesus and the Spirit. And therefore the idea of eternal children falls to the ground.
We will close here this phase of the subject and devote the next chapter to the sweet consoling doctrine of the resurrection of the bodies of God’s children, which we are accused by the Arians of believing.
THE RESURRECTION
CHAPTER XVI
Insomuch as we, as a people, are accused in the pamphlet referred to in the preceding chapter of this work of believing in the resurrection of these vile bodies of ours from the grave to a state of life and immortality, and that it is the same body changed and not exchanged, we want to be understood especially as pleading guilty to this indictment also. And as so many wearing the name of Old Baptists in this Eastern country have arrayed themselves against this soul-cheering doctrine, I want to put myself and my people on record as standing where the prophets and apostles stood upon this glorious God-honoring truth.
There is no question but that the subject of the resurrection of the dead is one of the most sublime subjects known among men. The patriarch David saw this doctrine hundreds of years before Christ was born, and rejoiced in the sweet hope of the resurrection through Him which gave rise to this expression: “As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness.” Psa. 17:15. I am fully aware that there is something about this doctrine that seems mysterious to the carnal nature of man, and for this cause many are disposed to doubt it. But Paul said to Agrippa :”Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?” Acts 26:8. We know that all the combined powers of earth cannot raise the dead, neither can they assist in such a work; but God can, for there is nothing impossible with God.
Isaiah said: “Thy dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs; and the
earth shall cast out the dead.”-Isa. 26:19. From this we learn that the prophet Isaiah believed in the resurrection of the dead bodies.
Some claim that all the resurrection there is pertains to the raising of the spirits of men from their bodies; but it is certain that Isaiah did not so understand the matter, for he says, “Together with my dead body shall they arise;” and he speaks of the bodies of men.
Ezek. 37:12: “I will open your graves, and cause you to come out of your graves, and bring you into your own land.”
As the spirit does not go to the grave, it seems reasonable to argue from this that the body was meant. The grave is the receptacle of the body only. “The body returns to the dust, and the spirit to God who gave it.” As another evidence that the soul or spirit does not die and go to the grave, the Saviour said, “Fear not him that can kill the body, and hath nothing more that he can do, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” It is the body that dies and goes to the grave, and is the victim of the grave that is to be raised in the resurrection at the second personal coming of the Saviour; therefore, the body is to be raised in the resurrection at the last day.
Let us hear from Daniel next: “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Dan. 12:2. In this we see perfect agreement with the other prophecies quoted and with our view of the subject, for he says we are to come out of the dust of the earth, and as the spirit or soul does— not go to the dust, but the body does, therefore he must refer to the resurrection of the body.
Hosea says: ” I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. 0, death! I will be thy plague. 0, grave, I will be thy destruction.” Hosea 13:14.
What child of God can read this precious promise and not have some feeling of joy in their souls? What a dear promise this is! And it has cheered the hearts of God’s dear people for, lo, these many centuries; and now to have it taken from us, and the thought thrust upon us that the sweet doctrine of being “ransomed from the power of the grave” is all myth, would to me be unbearable; but let others think as they please, I shall still rejoice in the sweet sentence, “0 death! I will be thy destruction.”
Last, but not least, by any means, we will introduce Job; hear him: “For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand upon the earth at the latter day; and though after my skin-worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself. Mine eyes shall behold him, and not another, though my reins be consumed within me.” There is no doubt in my mind but Job refers to the second personal coming of the Lord at the last great day, when He will call forth the sleeping dust of His saints and fashion them like unto His own glorified body; then Job felt that he would see Him, and be like Him. This is my hope today, and I feel perfectly willing to be accused of it, and I trust the time may never come when our dear people will yield this sweet doctrine for the sake of fellowship with those who deny it.
Notice, dear reader, he does not say “in spirit I shall see him,” but, “In my flesh I shall see him.”
We now turn to the New Testament. Jesus said to Martha, speaking of Lazarus, “He shall live again.” Martha said, “I know he shall live again in the resurrection at the last day.” If there were no resurrection at the last day, the Saviour would have corrected Martha on the spot and said “Martha, you err, there is no resurrection at the last day.” Surely He would not have passed such a gross error unnoticed, if it be an error; and as He did not correct it, He led me to believe that there is to be a resurrection at the last day when He comes to make up His jewels, and in this resurrection will be the bodies only of the saints, for their spirits are already with Him in the glory world, or else Stephen was in great error when he was being stoned to death, for he looked up into heaven and said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
Jesus was the first to arise from the dead, and was the sample resurrection, and He said to the disciples after He arose, “Handle me, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have.”
From this we learn that Jesus had flesh and bones after His resurrection. He had the nail prints in His hands, and the pierce of the spear in His side, for He told Thomas to reach forth his hand and feel them, and surely He was not deceiving His disciples in making these statements; therefore we conclude that He came out of the grave with the same body that went into it, and He said it was a flesh and bone body. Therefore we conclude (as He is the sample) that God’s children will come out of their graves with the same body that goes into it, and I think Paul taught this same idea when he wrote in I Cor. 15:42-44, where he said: “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.”
From this we get the idea that it is the same “it” in every instance; therefore, the same body comes out of the grave that went into it, and the change is not this body for another, but this body changed from natural to spiritual, but still remaining a body. We all know that a body is composed of parts and matter. It occurs to us if this is not true Paul should have said, “It is sown a natural body, and raised a spiritual spirit,” which we all know would be simple and foolish.
But some one may want to ask, Can it be spiritual and not be a spirit? We answer, Yes. Spiritual means partaking of the nature of the Spirit. So you just as well ask, Can fruit partake of the nature of the sugar, in the preserving process, and not be sugar? For we all know that it remains fruit after it partakes of the nature of the sugar and is preserved. So our bodies will remain our bodies, even after they have partaken of the nature of the Spirit, and will be the same body, changed from a natural to a spiritual body.
Then the same person who labored and suffered and toiled here, in the great struggle against sin and its concomitant evils, will praise God in eternal glory.
In view of these facts Paul said: “So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. 0, death, where is thy sting? 0, grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This has been my faith for many years, and if you could take this from me, I should be, as one of old, ready to say “Ye have taken away my Lord.” This has been the hope of God’s saints in ages past, and I feel now to say, like Paul, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.”
Therefore, we conclude this chapter with the stanza written by that grand old poet, Longfellow :
Life is real, life is earnest,
And the grave is not its goal:
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
THE END