The Key Question

Predestination. Regeneration. Conversion. Justification. Sanctification. Perseverance. Faith. Repentance.

All of these doctrines get redefined when one adopts the conditional time salvation scheme. Predestination becomes limited, thus making free-will the first cause of those things not ordained of God. Regeneration becomes a changeless experience. Conversion becomes an optional Arminian transaction for the “elect within the elect”. Justification "by faith" isn't necessary, thus allowing for many unbelievers to be accounted righteous. Like conversion, sanctification becomes optional as well. Perseverance is denied and exchanged for preservation, when in fact both are taught in the Bible. And different kinds of faith and repentance are invented where one “kind” is necessary and the other is not.

There. That’s a pretty good summary of the hatchet job done to God’s Word by this teaching. While a correct understanding of just one of these points of doctrine is enough to begin to deliver someone from this heresy, I have always felt that a reminder of the basics is very helpful when considering God’s Word. Anytime we adopt a way of looking at the Bible through certain lenses but end up denying some basic fundamental teaching central to the Christian faith, we should know that we have erred at some point. I firmly believe that one of the key “baby” steps needed to be taken by those ingrained in this system is a return back to the very basic question that the overwhelming majority of Christendom unhesitantly answers in the affirmative, and would probably be shocked at the suggestion that someone feels otherwise. Towards the end of his sermon Re-thinking Conditional Time Salvation Elder Thomas Mann was quite wise in posing this question to his audience, hopefully stirring their minds to see that in adopting this scheme they were challenging a question which many Christians including myself would deem as “kindergarten” in bible study.

“Will all of God’s children believe in Jesus?”

Mann responded:

“And the answer in the Bible is unequivocally yes.”

Amen. One has to go to great lengths and many scriptural perversions to deny this clear teaching in the Bible. How anyone can read the Gospel of John, or the Roman and Galatian epistles, and deny that all of God’s elect will know and believe in Christ is astounding! The extreme version of conditional time salvation must maintain this however. It is a testimony of just how far certain ones have departed from the faith when this primary point of the Christian experience is being denied. There are of course many more implications in believing this doctrine, such as unorthodox views of some of the doctrines mentioned at the top, yet coming to understand that faith in Christ is guaranteed to the chosen of God would be a good first step in being delivered from a damnable heresy.

May God open the eyes of those who object, that they might see the truth.