Salvation: Eternal and Timely

Where is the similarity, if you will be so kind as to point it out.

Indeed, it is. Eternal salvation is entirely the work of Jesus Christ from start to finish, and finish it He did. Unless you have Scripture to prove that He stood up from sitting at the right hand of power to grant redemption to every person you get saved by your preaching, and then sits down again, then try to study the issue instead of sticking to your pride because when all is said and done, that is all it is, pride. You are unable to entertain the possibility that the mainstream doctrine you have believed, studied, earned a diploma for, got ordained in, preached, and taught for years could be entirely wrong at worst or misrepresented at best.

And indeed the Bible is clear that after Jesus Christ finished His work of redemption there was a need to send out His apostles to reach as many as they can with the good news that they no longer have to go about establishing their own righteousnesses and grope in the dark, but that their righteousness is Christ and therefore they should repent, put their faith in Christ, follow Him, and praise God in the midst of their congregation. That is their timely salvation, they need to work it out with fear and trembling.

Eternal salvation as I have presented it - all of Christ, as well as time salvation or gospel salvation, as I presented it above and in other posts, were both entirely Biblical in its principles and application.
Your contention that for Christ's work at the cross to be effective the individual must put in his contribution of faith and repentance is extra-Biblical and dishonors Christ.

I have long ago understood, even before becoming a Primitive Baptist, that mainstream Christianity was missing a lot of things. Before I became a Primitive Baptist, I have already understood that eternal salvation and time salvation are two different aspects of the same salvation or two different kinds of salvation being taught in Scriptures.

This realization was brought about by mainstream Christianity's own teaching that salvation is by grace through faith, with faith being my faith which just doesn't square with the first statement because my faith, just like everybody else's, often wavers, and if salvation is by grace through my faith, then I can never hope to get to heaven.

Only when I realized that the work of Christ is firmly grounded in Him because He is God's righteousness did I realize that my faith may waver, but my eternal destiny is secure.

So I wouldn't mind not being under your tutelage. It's going to get me nowhere.

 

still waiting for you to point out why "this" is like being an active homosexual and it be ok.

 

I would like to thank you for being civil in this discussion, lbaker, which cannot be said of some on the board.
You still do not really see what i am trying to get at, thougn.
Eternal salvation is not premised on anything we do. Accept it or not, if it was meant for you, then you have it, and the only way you will know you have it is when you get to heaven, because that is the ultimate purpose of why Christ redeemed sinners, to take them to heaven, not to have them stay on earth.
If you will take a look at Ephesians 2:7, among the reasons God saved His people is "That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus".
Likewise Paul states in his letter to the Corinthians that if in this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men miserable.
From these two verses alone we see that eternal salvation is for the eternal glory of God in eternity. We cannot take credit for it, nor partake of it in any way, such as putting in our faith into the mix.
Eternal salvation is all about God, all about Jesus, and all about God's glory.

So whether we have faith or not, our ultimate destination is heaven because of God's will and of His mercy and kindness alone, nothing else.

Now, after having redeemed those He was to redeem, Jesus wants this redemption revealed to as many of His people as His Apostles can get to, teaching them to quit whatever religion they have, and put their faith in the righteousness of Christ. That is when they get time salvation: from this untoward generation, from ignorance, from darkness, etc., and the natural result of obedience is the flow of blessings from the God who loved them before they loved Him, while the natural result of disobedience, naturally, is a separation from this God's blessings. However, not all who were eternally redeemed will experience the benefits of timely salvation here on earth.

What happened is that today's preaching says Christ ONLY is responsible for one's eternal salvation but then proceeds to load this truth with requirements such as repentance, obedience, faith, or whatnot therefore dimming the simplicity that is in Christ. In short, they have mistakenly (I hope) confused eternal salvation with temporal salvation. But my own personal opinion is that this is still an echo of Roman Catholicism's works-based salvation system.

But whatever it is, the bottom line is that our eternal salvation depends solely on the finished work of Christ, predicated upon His mercy and obedience to the Father who wants His people with Him in heaven.

 

Your apology is accepted, and accept mine as well. As for your hating Calvinists, or Calvinism, I will leave that to them. I am not a Calvinist, as you can see despite my adherence to the Doctrine of Grace. Much as I love my Calvinist brethren, there are differences between the way we see things.

Allow me, however, to address a few more misconceptions here.
Just because I believe that when Christ redeemed His people, they were all redeemed, past, present, and future, does not mean that evangelism is out of the picture.

I am against the missionism that has crept in among my people. Primarily because although those who went out to the "mission fields" among my people did not go out to get souls "saved" in the way that Arminians and some Calvinists do, I saw that there was much haste to plant Primitive Baptist churches among my countrymen, the Filipinos, which resulted in some (not all) quick ordinations (which I think went against the Bible) and in converts which were by and large proselytes from other Baptist groups.

I had the impression that the reason for their going out on the mission field was primarily to spread PB doctrine instead of disseminate the good news of a finished salvation to people in a country under the grip of Roman Catholicism. If you've ever been to parts of South America, you would know what I mean.

Evangelism is preaching the gospel and the gospel is good news of a FINISHED salvation done by God for His glory alone. As it is, and please take no offense, your idea of why evangelism is to be done is to get souls eternally saved when they put their faith in Christ.

When the gospel is preached and people respond to it, these people responded to it because they were already redeemed and alive (regenerated) in Christ, and the Lord's purpose is for these souls to be discipled.

Someone asked: Does a person’s ability to understand the message of the gospel determine whether or not he is really redeemed? Does perception determine reality ?

The gospel is to dispense information and instruction, not to effect eternal salvation which alone is the work of Christ, and that is what evangelism is: a dispensation of information and of instruction.

It is when someone says evangelism should result in the eternal salvation of souls that I have problems.

 

It is prevalent, but not common. There are those who do oppose this doctrine among the PB's, but when I take a look at their oppositions, they appear to me to be "knee-jerk" and without a clear understanding of the principles and concept behind the doctrine, like standingfirminChrist's sarcasm and knee-jerk mockery of it and of Calvinist beliefs.
Here are a couple of links, one of which is anti and the other pro, assuming of course that the question was done in honest inquiry, and you are interested to know exactly what this thing is.

time salvation (anti) and

pbpage (pro).

The reason I am pro is because I believe and understand from Scriptures that while eternal salvation was planned, authored, and executed by God alone, it is His purpose in the preaching of the gospel to reveal Jesus Christ to a world that did not know Him at that time, and even now, just as Jesus Christ revealed the Father to the Jews who were under the grip of religious Judaism and whom He called out to be apostles and disciples.

Thank you for your inquiry, and again, I repeat, the Scriptures may be referring to two kinds of salvation, or to two aspects of one salvation.
I am not saying that the Bible definitely teaches two salvations.

 

No offense meant, Amy. It's just that I've had people ask me that in a mocking way, not only on BB but other boards, and when I point them to references, they don't even take time to read and try to understand what is being said, but go right back to sarcasm.
I thank you once more for your honest inquiry.

Disagreeing or agreeing with me is not going to have any effect on Christ's finished work for you, or me. But, thanks for disagreeing in a kind way.

I would suggest doing that when you're not really busy because the second link is in pdf form (which I hate, I much prefer html or webpage form) and rather long.

 

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I am a member of a Primitive Baptist church, not of the Primitive Baptist church, because there exists no such entity. As far as I know, almost every Baptist church member's church on this board claims descendancy from the New Testament church that Jesus Christ founded.

And many times on this board, I have stated that personally I do not believe that there is any church existing right now on this earth, Baptist or otherwise, who can trace its origins back to the first New Testament church founded by Jesus Christ Himself.

The church of which I was a member traces its roots only as far as the Welsh Baptists, and no further. In your haste to look for loopholes and mud, kid, you forgot that each Baptist church is autonomous, and no one church speaks for and in behalf of the other.

How about I say you have the same viciousness, irrelevance, callousness, and ignorance as Fred Phelps because he is a Baptist and you are a Baptist, and you therefore belong to the same group ? I am sure you will counter with "no way, our church does not agree with him", and being a Baptist I know what you are saying, and will think twice or thrice before I even began to say such statements.

Yet you don't use discretion, and you don't use your shiny head, kid.

I wonder if you think that the Savior has a special niche for you and your kind up there in heaven, assuming you are indeed heaven bound by God's grace, where He would tell you: Well, done, standingfirminChrist (or whatever your name is), stay here right by my side. You have triple crowns waiting for you because you have been such an enemy of your other brethren.

Do you really honestly think that what you believe against what others believe will get you quicker to heaven ? Discussions are for learning, kid, not for putting others down, like you looove to do with Calvinists, and now Primitive Baptists.

What you and I believe on this earth won't matter an ounce of dung when we get to heaven, because like I've said and will always say: Christ did not redeem anyone on the basis of their doctorates, masterals, bachelor's, or associate's degrees, or on the basis of their being rabid anti-Calvinists or anti-Arminians.

So now, let me ask you, kid, what does your church say about its succession. Does it teach you also descended from the New Testament church, or doesn't it ?

 

Again, the points to consider is that eternal salvation is entirely dependent upon the mercy of God on the sinner, not on his faith, obedience, or knowledge.
We need to be able to see the difference between eternal salvation and temporal salvation.
I would think of temporal salvation as a believer having preached the gospel of a finished redemption and have someone approach him and say he was convicted with what he heard and would like to learn more.
What should the preacher do ?
Tell this person to go home and pray about it ?
Or take this person under his wings and disciple him, in accordance with the instructions of the Lord.
If the second step is taken, and this person professing conviction is truly a regenerate child of God, then he manifests faith (if he belonged to another religion or creed he turns away from his faith on that false god to faith in the true God), repentance (which has the same fruits as faith), and obedience (perhaps he gets baptized, or keeps on attending church, and getting discipled).

But the questions are: will all preachers of the gospel reach every single human being on this planet as they live or die ? Obviously the answer is no. If the answer is no, and our belief is that there has to be active manifestation of faith before any actual redemption takes place, then the work of redemption becomes dependent on the ability of gospel preachers and missionaries to reach human beings, and it no longer rests on the finished work of Christ at the cross, and if He accomplished nothing at the cross without His work being preached, accepted, and believed in here on earth, then the Bible is not trustworthy because that Bible says He died once for all and obtained eternal redemption for us all . And you know what Scriptures I am referring to.
And in that same book, Hebrews, it tells us that He sat down (a figurative way of saying "rested") at the right hand of power. But what rest is there when nothing has been accomplished ?
Which is why I say "eternal redemption" is finished, whether the redeemed knows it or not, has faith on it or not, because his redemption is for heaven and not for earth.
On the other hand, there is still a need to go and preach the gospel, because it is God's will that the Son be revealed to as many as those that limited human preachers can reach, because their limitations in their presence is no hindrance to the Holy Spirit who is everywhere, and by the time they are where they have been called to, the Holy Spirit Himself has prepared the hearts of those for whom the gospel is intended.

Another question is: are all gospel preachers preachers of the true gospel ?
Were Roman Catholic missionaries of past centuries preachers of the true gospel ? Are Mormon missionaries preachers of the true gospel ? Are JW's preachers of the true gospel ? Are SDA's preachers of the true gospel ? Is Fred Phelps a preacher of the true gospel ? Moses David, or David Berg of the Family, was a Baptist preacher, then he founded the promiscuous "Children of God", but I understand previous to that, he was a missionary, was he a preacher of the true gospel ?
There are many other numerous examples.
What are we going to do with those whom these people reached and converted ahead of the preachers of the true gospel, conclude they are damned because of their circumstances ?
But God is above all circumstances, and He will not fail His people whom He had promised redemption to, and He did not fail when Christ went up on that cross, because He knew each and everyone of His own, after all He is the owner of the Book of Life, and those whose names were written there had their names written there BEFORE the foundation of the world, how then can He turn back on His word that "none shall be lost but the son of perdition".

Again, this person was redeemed at the cross here in time, irrespective of his knowledge, faith, creed, location, or politics. God's people are scattered all over the earth, divided and separated geographically, politically, by creed and religion, tongue, circumstances. If their eternal salvation and subsequent regeneration were dependent on the limited ability of a human being to be everywhere all the time, unlike the Holy Spirit, then the Lord will have no one among the most remote tribes of this earth, and if being born a member of a remote tribe equals eternal damnation, then God is no longer just.
As it is, since the Bible tells us that God's redeemed shall come from all tongues, all nations, and all kindreds, then that can only be true if the redemption done by Christ at the cross were independent from the temporal nature of blessings brought about by obedience, faith, and repentance as a result of hearing the true gospel, and of obeying it.

The problem is that we are pitting benefits against benefits, and therefore losing sight of God's glory.
The purpose of redemption is, alpha to omega, God's glory. Ephesians tells us this.
God had no obligation to save anyone, as I am sure you will agree, but TO HIS GLORY (just emphasis, not yelling) He did save many, because He is a merciful God.
Having obtained eternal redemption for His people, the purpose of gospel preaching is to (1) reveal Christ to His people. We need to see the religious and cultural context at the time when Christ sent out His apostles. There was NO NATION on earth which knew of the One True God, and of His Son Jesus Christ, yet the redemption which the Triune God authored encompassed all generations, all nations, and all kindreds (the world, if you will) where He had His people.
(2) to instruct and edify. Clearly indicated in the Scriptures.

The temporal salvation that results from obedience to the gospel, and from removing oneself from the error of his religion, brings blessings to the child of God as a natural consequence of obedience, but at the same time brings, in some cultures then as today, persecution and afflictions.

Either way, it brings glory to God, and that is the ultimate purpose, whether one experiences both eternal and timely salvation.

 

The difference is that the Bible speaks in two dimensions. The eternal, and the temporal. The heavenly, and the earthly. The first Adam, which is earthy, and the second Adam, which is heavenly. We have a heavenly body, and we have an earthly body. There is a church in heaven, and there are churches, on earth.

So with justification, and sanctification.

The blood of Christ justified us before the Father, in the heavenly or eternal sense.

Our faith in Christ justifies us before men.

So you see, all the redeemed are justified in the eternal sense because of Christ's blood and finished work, but those who obey the gospel, here in time, are justified in the sense that you are speaking of, in their faith in Christ before men.