S. Hassell On PB Perils

Elder Sylvester Hassell (1842-1928)

"The Danger of Applying All Scripture to the Children of God" 

The Gospel Messenger-February, 1894

"This most pestilent innovation upon Primitive Baptist faith is perhaps the youngest and weakest of all the errors launched upon us in this conceited and degenerate and unbelieving age; I myself never heard of it nor read of it till three years ago. It is the child of Presumption and Philosophy, treats with equal contempt all the religious views of former generations and the most pointed declarations of the Inspired Scriptures, makes black white and white black by a dexterous system of expository legerdemain, and either makes the Bible a huge lie or inevitably leads to one of these three false and monstrous results-universal salvation, or universal damnation, or universal annihilation. It seems almost incredible that any sane and reverent mind can for a moment be so captivated and deceived by Satan as to believe that Cain, and Balaam, and Judas, and all the most horrible and diabolical criminals that ever lived on earth, were the children of God; that the elect and the non-elect, the penitent and the impenitent, the believing and the unbelieving, the loving and the hating, the obedient and the disobedient, the saved and the damned, are the very same persons; that election, and repentance, and faith, and love, and obedience, and salvation, as well as their opposites, are nothing but empty names; that words have no meaning; that the universe is only a delusive phantasmagory, containing nothing but shadows and dreams. Such false and ruinous systems of interpreting the Scriptures seem to me far more becoming to a lunatic asylum than a Primitive Baptist pulpit."

If Hassell could see just how far the PBs have gone in the errors he condemned in the above words, he would turn over in his grave! He would also be disappointed that his writings in 1893, filled with such warnings as the above, had little effect in stopping the downhill slide of his denomination into the theological perils he described.

Do today's Hardshells not generally do as Hassell warned against? Do they not make characters like Cain, Baalim, Judas, the heathen, etc., into children of God? Have I not, like Hassell, decried this "false and ruinous system of interpreting the Scriptures"? Have we not recently shown how men like C.H. Cayce (Hassell's time) and Ronnie Loudermilk (present day) are guilty of this very thing that Hassell condemned? ("Them That Are Lost" Are Saved?)

Hassell continued:

"In regard to the parables of Christ, I am well aware that a few of our wisest brethren have, for a generation or so, somewhat differed in their views of some of the characters therein mentioned, and of course latitude may be allowed in such matters; but as for myself, I have no confidence in the greatly superior enlightenment of this pretentious century, and I decidedly prefer the plain old paths in religion to the misty new ones, and the old-fashioned, unsophisticated ways of interpreting the Scriptures to the new subtle ways; and I feel satisfied that there is a radical and essential distinction made by Divine grace between the humbled and penitent and returning younger brother and the angry, unforgiving and pharisaic elder brother, in the parable of the prodigal son; {Lu 15:11-32} between the good-ground hearers on the one side, and the wayside, the stony-ground, and the thorny-ground hearers, on the other side, in the parable of the sower; {Mt 13:1-23} between the wheat and the tares, in the parable of the tares; {Mt 13:24-30} between the good and the bad, the just and the wicked, in the parable of the draw-net {Mt 13:47-50} --"the kingdom of heaven" in verses 24 and 47 is plainly the visible and not the spiritual church; between the five wise and the five foolish virgins, in the parable of the virgins; {Mt 25:1-13} between the five and the two talent men, on the one hand, and the one talent man, on the other, in the parable of the talents; {Mt 25:14-30} just as there is certainly such a distinction between the sheep and the goats, the blessed and the cursed, in the description of the last judgment; {Mt 25:31-46} between the believing who are to be saved and the unbelieving who are to be damned; {Mr 16:16} between the elect, and living, and believing, and loving, and obedient children of God--the vessels of mercy of Paul's epistle to the Romans--on the one hand, and the non-elect, and spiritually dead, and unbelieving, and hating, and disobedient children of the flesh--the vessels of wrath--on the other hand, who wilfully, greedily, and inexcusably sin against God, notwithstanding the light of nature which every intelligent and responsible human being has, suppressing and falsifying even the natural evidences, everywhere around them, of the being and perfections of God (read with especial care the first chapter of Romans, and compare it with 2Ti 3:1-5; Ac 14:15-17; 17:22-31; Job 12:7-10; 38; 39; Ps 19:1-4; Isa 40:26), and who shall at last stand justly condemned and silenced before God {Ro 3:19} --with one and a half exceptions (within the last three years) all our writing ministers have always thus explained the first chapter of Romans (by "a half" I mean that this minister applies the 18th and following verses of that chapter to both the elect and the non-elect--only one minister applying these verses entirely to the elect, and severely condemning all who do not agree with him in this novel view); between those who are washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God, on the one hand, and the unrighteous, fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, abusers of themselves with mankind, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, and extortioners, excluded from the kingdom of God, on the other hand; {1Co 6:9-11} between those in whose hearts shine the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, on the one hand, and the lost and unbelieving, who are blinded by the god of this world, on the other hand; {2Co 4:3-6} between the beloved, believing, and obedient servants of God, on the one hand, and the false, and covetous, and adulterous teachers, who, after a vain and transient profession of godliness, relapsed into the sins from which, like the filthy dog and sow, their inward natures had never been cleansed, and whose last state, like that of the man out of whom the unclean spirit voluntarily went only for awhile, was worse than the first, on the other a hand; {2Pe 1:1-11,14; 2; Mt 12:43-45} between the righteous and holy, the blessed, the saved, who are written in the Lamb's book of life, the servants of God, having His name in their foreheads, delivered from the curse, entering into the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, and walking in its light, and reigning for ever and ever on the one hand, and the filthy and unjust, the false, dogs, sorcerers, whoremongers, murderers, and idolaters, shut out of the Holy City, on the other hand. {Re 21:22} The fundamental and eternal distinction made between these opposite characters--the elect and the non-elect---by the grace of God, should never for a moment be forgotten or ignored. {Mal 3:17; 1Co 4:7; Ec 3:14; Ps 138:8; Php 1:6}"

Notice that Hassell will not allow any to be called "elect" or saved who was not a believer and who was no hypocrite. Also, he condemns the view of Loudermilk and other of today's Hardshells that those "blinded" by the god of this age are children of God! Hassell and I agree that those described by Paul are not children of God!

And, not only do the Hardshells greatly err by making so many unbelievers and wicked men into "children of God"  but they also greatly err, according to Hassell, in

"APPLYING ALL THE SCRIPTURES TO PRESENT EXPERIENCE"

Wrote Hassell:

"This is a most lamentable perversion of the Scriptures, similar to the foregoing, and has been born among us in the present generation. (Notice that - "in the present generation" - that being the second generation of Hardshells, and takes in the last part of the nineteenth century - SG) If carried out to its full extent (It has since Hassell wrote these words - SG), it blots out all the past and all the future. If we are to believe nothing but what we have experienced, we will deny all the literal truth of Scripture history and Scripture prophecies of all the events that have not yet taken place, including the creation of the world out of nothing, the destruction of the world, first by water, and then by fire, the resurrection of the body, and the eternal realities of heaven and hell. It was exactly this species of heresy--pseudo (or false) spiritualism--that the Apostle Paul condemned in Hymenaeus, Alexander, and Philetus, {1Ti 1:19-20; 2Ti 2:16-18} as gangrenous and ruinous. These wise philosophers applied all that the Scriptures said about the resurrection to the mere spiritual rising of the soul from the death of sin, in present experience, and declared that the resurrection was already past--in other words, they, like the ancient Hindoo and Greek heathen philosophers regarding matter as the source of evil, denied the resurrection of the body, and with this denial, they overthrew the whole system of Christianity. {1Co 15:16-23} And in the latter part of the apostolic age, the same spirit of heathen philosophy, considering matter essentially evil, denied that Christ came in the flesh, or was literally incarnate, but represented His birth, and life, and death as unreal and visionary, and this heresy was denounced by the Apostle John as antichrist. {1Jo 4:3} In the self-same manner heathen philosophy in the Primitive Baptist church today seeks to turn all the literal truths--especially all the future eternal truths--of the Scriptures into fables. Under the magic wand of a pretended spiritualization, the tremendous realities of the final resurrection and judgment, the everlasting happiness of the righteous, and the everlasting punishment of the wicked dissolve into the illusory and fleeting picture of the present momentary life. Such a pernicious system of interpretation is but the echo of the voice of Satan in the Garden of Eden, giving the lie to the word of God. {Ge 2:17; 3:4}"

Now, that is a tremendous warning against the state of the PB denomination at the end of the 19th century! Has that state improved by the standard used by Hassell? No. It has gotten much worse! The truth is, excepting Hassell's error on the use of means in new birth, Hassell was quite sound and he would, if alive today, be more in fellowship with us here at The Old Baptist Test blog than with most of those today who call themselves "Primitive Baptists."