On "Time Salvation"

The following are some excerpts from "Chpt. 7 - Time Salvation - A Novel Idea" of my ongoing book "The Hardshell Baptist Cult" (see here)

"Basically, religious secrets involve "special revelation" that the cult, and it alone, possesses. Christians have "special revelation"..."

"Their primary "secret" revelation concerns the doctrine they call "Time Salvation." You have to be trained in Hardshell "dogma" to know all that the words convey. What the Hardshells believe the terminology, "Time Salvation," represents would never cross the average Bible reader's mind. You have to hear it from a Hardshell to be introduced to and informed in the meaning of its theological “jargon.”"

"Hardshells take many "salvation passages," clearly dealing with eternal salvation and redemption, in a limited way and as dealing strictly with timely or earthly concerns. Why the necessity to do this? Because to interpret those salvation passages as dealing with eternal salvation would destroy their "anti-means," "Spirit Alone"teaching."

What the Hardshells have done, with their emphasis on the presumed many occurrences of timely deliverances in the Bible, is to take the occasional use of a word and make it the general meaning of the word, turning things about, upside down, topsy turvy. They do this in many areas of Bible interpretation. I will give some further examples, but first I will deal a little more with how they take the occasional use of the word "save"and make it predominate.

"It will become obvious to most who read this essay on Hardshellism, that these Hardshells, who have historically opposed any thing "new," i.e. "inventions," have themselves, ironically and hypocritically, introduced many new things under the Baptist and Christian name, at least in doctrine.

If one takes the word saved in mostly a timely sense, then one will, of course, do the same with those words that express the opposite idea of salvation, words like Perish Destruction, Damnation, etc. These words too must denote, not eternal punishment, something after this life, but only some temporal punishment. It is no wonder that the Hardshells have been plagued with the heresies of "No-Hellism" and "Universalism," violating such a simple rule of Bible interpretation. Rare and occasional usages of words cannot be made to be the regular use of them. The Hardshells do the same with the words Angel, Heaven, Hell The word does sometimes, occasionally, refer to human messengers, but the predominant meaning refers to that order of beings that are spirits, without bodies, of whom man is said to be "made a little lower." But, you listen to Hardshell sermons and the way they "spiritualize" and abuse all "hermeneutic rules" of sound Biblical interpretation, and you will see that they make angel to nearly always mean human messengers."

In the creation and invention of this "new" doctrine of "Spirit without the word" regeneration, several classes of scripture passages that teach regeneration through the word, had to be interpreted in a non-traditional way...Thus the Hardshell premise became this:anything that the gospel produces in the elect cannot be necessary for their "eternal" salvation When this is narrowed down, the only thing necessary for their "eternal" salvation or regeneration, was a belief in and love for a supreme being!""

"Hardshells see "evidence" of regeneration in the heathen's desire to worship anything! Therefore, Hardshells were forced into illogical, contradictory and unscriptural positions on the nature and necessity of "faith" for salvation."

"Whatever qualities the "faith" produced by the gospel had, the other kind of faith could not have. That became another premise to defend."

"Also, the "life" that a sinner receives in the new birth must be void of those things that the gospel produces.And again, narrowed down, this becomes a bare mystical principle of life, or some strange spiritual deposited "substance" that Hardshells generally call an "inner ability.""

"These are heretical views. In the new Hardshell vocabulary, "faith," "salvation," "regeneration," "new birth," "repentance," etc., all receive new and heretical definitions!"