CONDITIONALITY (Time Salvation)
Elder Sylvester Hassell,
It cannot be denied by any informed and honest man that such Scriptures as the following are conditional:
“If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it” (Is. 1.19-20).
“If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them” (Jn. 13.17).
“If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8.13).
“How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” (Heb. 2.3).
“If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1.7). . . .
Not only is it certain that these Scriptures are conditional, but it is equally certain that the condition, introduced by “if,” necessarily precedes the conclusion, which would not take place unless the condition took place first. If the conclusion in these sentences means eternal punishment, then Arminianism is true; but either the text itself, or the context and other Scriptures, prove that the punishment or chastisement threatened in case of disobedience is temporal and corrective, and not eternal and destructive, for God gives His children eternal life and they shall never perish, and though their voluntary sins separate them from His face, nothing present or future can ever separate them from His love.
The conditionality of time salvation is just as certain as the truth of the eternal word of God [my emphasis – Ed.]. Baptists have always heretofore understood it so; nearly all Baptists understand it so now; and this truth is in perfect accordance with Christian experience. [From an article, “Another Unprofitable and Deplorable Strife of Words,” published by Elder R. H. Pittman, and reprinted by Elder C. H. Cayce in EDITORIALS, Volume IV] Submitted ny Elder Mark Green