Unbelief and Rejection of the Gospel
Not the Cause of Condemnation
Zion's Advocate, Vol. 42, No. 6, June 1903.
The proposition we now propose to treat is, of course, a denial that unbelief and rejection of the gospel is the cause of condemnation. This denial we are sure can be proved, and so we enter upon the task before us with the confident expectation of proving it.If unbelief and rejection of the gospel is the cause of condemnation, then no sinner can be condemned who never hears the gospel, for it is impossible for one to reject and refuse to believe what he has never heard. Countless millions of the human family have died who never heard the gospel. None of these are condemned if condemnation is the result of unbelief and rejection of the gospel. Wherever the gospel has been preached many have disbelieved and rejected it. If their unbelief and rejection of it is the cause of their condemnation, then it would have been better for them if it had never been preached to them, for in that case they would never have been condemned. It is thus clear that the theory we are now opposing charges the gospel with being responsible for the condemnation of the finally condemned. Instead of the gospel being a real favor to the nations that have it, it is the greatest curse that could be sent upon them if a disbelief and rejection of it is the cause of condemnation.
It is the teaching of many popular churches that an offer of salvation is made in the gospel to every sinner. That means, of course, that such an offer is made only to those to whom the gospel is preached. This implies that those who accept the gospel and believe it will be saved, while those who reject the gospel and disbelieve it will be damned, the salvation of the former being caused by their acceptance and the damnation of the latter by their rejection. We ask, If that be true what becomes of those who die without ever having heard the gospel? This class is a very great majority of the human family even if we admit that all is gospel which is preached for gospel. They can't be saved if this theory be true, for they have had no offer of salvation to accept, and they can't be damned for they have had no chance to reject it. If neither saved nor damned where do they go?.
Mr. Charles T. Russell, of Allegheney, Pa., a great religious (?) leader of the present day, seeing the unavoidable perplexity into which Arminians are thus plunged, has attempted to escape it by assuming that after the resurrection, in what he calls the Millennial or Golden Age, the whole human family will be given an opportunity to hear the gospel, that those who accept it may be saved from the second death, and that those who reject if may be finally damned. He shows the failure of the common idea that God proposed to save all he can through the proclamation of the gospel during the gospel age. Reasoning from the basis of facts and figures he shows that if this Arminian notion be correct God is an utter failure and is thoroughly incapable of the work he has undertaken to do. "According to some good reckonings," he says, "the percentage of Christians every year is decreasing, the births of heathen lands so far outnumbering the births of Christian lands-- even counting all born in Christendom as Christians." If Mr. Russell believed the whole truth himself he might strike Arminianism a death blow by showing that their theory implies that the gospel is only resulting in the damnation of those who reject it, and is, therefore, the gospel of condemnation. But this would kill Russellism, as well as all other phases of Arminianism, for he carries his "gospel chance" beyond the resurrection.
T. M. McWhinney, D. D., L. L. D., author of a number of works, has recently written and published a work on the "Chinese Problem," in which he shows the utter failure of modern missionary efforts to convert the heathen. He is a believer in the theory that God has left it to us to "convert" the heathen, but declares that the failure of the plan pursued for a century proves it to be the wrong plan. According to facts gathered by him the Church Missionary Society (Church of England) has a yearly income of $2,000,000. It costs $129,000 to collect this money. $79,500 is paid for the administration of the affairs of the Society, and $27,160 is paid to nineteen clergymen as association secretaries. With this prodigious outlay of money this great Society has only 35,640 converts in India after more than a century's work which now has a population of 350,000,000. Many of these converts are only babes of converts, but admitting them to be true converts to Christianity there would still be 349,964,360 left of the inhabitants of India, who are damned for rejecting the gospel, if it be true that rejection and unbelief of the gospel is the cause of damnation, who could not have been damned if they had never had the chance of hearing the gospel. Mr. McWhinney declares all this missionary work to be "the most colossal fraud the angels ever witnessed," and we agree with him. He is an Arminian Doctor of Divinity, but he has sense enough to see this enormous sham and honesty enough to acknowledge it.
In Collier's Weekly, for May 2, 1903, is found the following statement:--
"General Adna R. Chaffee, a man of plain speech, caused some stir among foreign missionary agencies in a recent speech, whose tenor was that among the educated Chinese the effort to propagate the Christian religion had been a failure. One reason alleged was that while China has one religion, the foreign missionary brings many and confusing varieties of sect and doctrine, to such an extent that the identity of the true Christian religion is exceedingly obscure."
A list of the missionary societies operating in China is given under this statement, numbering fifty-seven! Sure enough, the identity of the true Christian religion must be as obscure in China as it is in the United States! Now if the doctrine of all these missionary societies be true, that the rejection of their preaching is the cause of condemnation, they are causing about all the educated Chinese to be condemned, and countless numbers of the lower class. How appalling this is!
If no gospel sermon had ever been preached, condemnation would have rested upon the whole human family. It is no more the cause of condemnation than light is the cause of darkness. Paul proved that all, both Jews and Gentiles, are under sin (Romans 3:9.), but he did not try to prove that unbelief of the gospel caused that condition. The gospel is not in any sense responsible for all having gone out of the way, for all having sinned and come short of the glory of God. By one man sin entered into the world, not by the gospel. This was before the least intimation of the gospel was given, even by promise. Death came by sin, and it passed upon all men because all had sinned, not because they had rejected the gospel.
It is supposed that God would not be justified in condemning sinners if he did not offer them a chance of salvation by the gospel. But David confessed, "I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clean when thou judgest." God needed no excuse to pass judgment and condemn, for the reason that sin had been committed.
It is supposed that all are merely diseased and will finally die if they refuse the remedy offered in the gospel. This is false. All unregenerated sinners are already dead, and the gospel is not in the least responsible for it, because condemnation and death preceded the first hint of the gospel. Sinners are often falsely represented as ready to sink into death, but the life-line being thrown out to them, they have a chance of escape. Their refusal of the life-line is, therefore, regarded as the cause of any perishing. If this were a true representation of their condition, that would be correct, but it is not. Lost sinners are wholly unable to believe the gospel. Their inability arises from their depraved and condemned state, just as the inability of the dead to walk arises from their state of death. How absurd it would be to say that the blindness of the blind arises from their refusing to see, or that the death of the dead arises from their refusing the offer of life! Refusing food by one who is not hungry is not the cause of his not being hungry.
J. R. D.
Unbelief and Rejection of the Gospel
Not the Cause of Condemnation
Zion's Advocate, Vol. 42, No. 7, July 1903.
"He that believeth not shall be damned," is quoted by Arminians as supposed proof of their idea that damnation is the result of unbelief. It is argued by them that the Saviour teaches by this declaration that those who hear the gospel preached and do not believe it will be damned for not believing it. They contend that the present tense of the verb "believe" and the future tense of the verb "shall be damned" shows the act of damning to be subsequent to the unbelief and consequently the direct result of it. Now to say that he that believeth not now shall be damned in the future does not imply that he is not already damned. The fact is the one who believes not the gospel when he hears it preached was in a lost and condemned state before he heard it, is condemned while he hears it, and will continue to be condemned forever unless that condemnation be removed. Believing and not believing, on the part of their hearers, were to be evidences to the disciples of saved and unsaved characters. They were sent out into the world to preach to the people, and this sign was given them by which they might know who in their audiences were the children of God and who were not. Those of their hearers who disbelieved the gospel they preached had not been born of God and consequently were in a condemned state.
Paul says, "But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost." II. Corinthians 4:3. He does not express in this statement a doubt about its being hid, but merely reasons from a supposition laid down as a hypothesis. That is, he takes it for granted that the gospel is hid, regarding this as an indisputable fact, and draws the conclusion from this premise that it is hid to them that are lost. He shows by this plain process of reasoning that they are already lost, the gospel being hid to them proving that fact.
In further description of them he says, "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." He thus reasons that their unbelief was not the cause of their blindness but the evidence of it, their blindness being the cause of their unbelief. In all cases where this cause was removed the persons believed, which was true of all who were ordained to eternal life (Acts 13:48) and were born of God (I. John 5:1).
Jesus said to the unbelieving Jews, "Ye believe not because ye are not of my sheep." This shows that the cause of the unbelief was that they were not his sheep. Again he said, "He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." This is relied upon by Arminians with great confidence as proving that unbelief is the cause of condemnation. We want to examine it, therefore, with care. The Saviour declares, first, that the believer is not condemned. Now one of two things must be true; viz., believing liberates from condemnation and is the cause of being freed from it or it is the evidence of being freed from it. In John 5:24 it is recorded that Jesus said, "he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." Three things are here declared of the believer: He has passed from death unto everlasting life, he hears the Saviour's word, and he shall never pass back into a condemned state. Nothing can be plainer than that his believing is the evidence of his having passed from death unto life. The state of death here mentioned is synonymous with the state of condemnation. Therefore believing is the evidence and not the cause of freedom from condemnation.
The Saviour also says in the text we are examining, "He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." As believing is the evidence of having passed from condemnation, unbelief is the evidence of condemnation. The disciples were to know who were still in that state by their unbelief. Unbelief and rejection of the gospel, on the part of any who hear it proclaimed, is a sign of their lost and condemned state. We are to know they are condemned because they do not believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
Says Jesus again, "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." The coming of the light did not make their deeds to be evil, and could not have been the cause of their being evil. Their loving darkness rather than light was caused by their deeds being evil. Hence their love of darkness and rejection of the light was not the cause of their deeds being evil. Their evil deeds would have been evil and they would have been in as great darkness if the light had never come. To be in darkness and guilty of evil deeds is to be in a state of condemnation. The conclusion is that unbelief and rejection of the gospel is not the cause but the effect of condemnation. The sinner, while in a state of condemnation and death, must of necessity be in a state of unbelief, for he is wholly unable to understand and receive spiritual things. For this reason sinners can never be saved from condemnation and death by preaching the gospel to them. It takes the creating work of the Holy Spirit to deliver them and make them new creatures in Christ. Repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ grow out of the new life given to the regenerated soul, and obedience to the gospel requirements if the evidence of this repentance and faith.
Repentance is the gift of Jesus, who was exalted to give it, and faith is the fruit of the Spirit, and these graces spring from the divine life which is implanted in regeneration. The fruits of all this gracious work are drawn out and developed under the favorable environment of the gospel just as the living plant is made to grow and bear fruit by the refreshing rain and the heat of the sun. Those who hear the gospel preached and give no signs or evidences of these fruits are evidently dead in sin and condemnation. It is in this way that the living and dead are both manifested by the gospel.
J. R. D.
Copyright c. 2005. All rights reserved. The Primitive Baptist Library.
