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::R0936 : page 7::

IN DUE TIME

“He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned [condemned].”

“That whosoever believeth on him might not perish, but have everlasting life.”

A Brother wants to know whether these two texts are not contrary to our teaching. We answer, No, they are in exact harmony with our teachings, and in opposition to the general views of Christians. We teach that no man will be saved without faith in Christ as his ransom; but with Paul we believe that our Lord Jesus Christ gave himself a ransom for ALL, and that it must consequently be testified to all in “due time.” To some the testimony is given in this age, but they, compared to all, are only a few. The vast majority must therefore hear the testimony in the coming age during which God declares, The knowledge of the Lord shall fill the earth, and all shall know him from the least to the greatest. Those who in “due time” [in this or a coming age] hear, believe and accept of our Lord, shall be saved; and all who reject, will perish.

It is those who claim that all infants and the mass of the heathen will be saved without believing, that do violence to these texts and not we. Sticking to a theory, a tradition of men, that probation is limited to the present existence and ends with death, they are blinded from seeing the plain scriptural teaching of a blessed age to come. And in order to satisfy reason and yet hold to their traditions, they are forced to their position in contradiction to the Master’s words quoted above, claiming that babes and heathen can be saved without believing in the only name given under heaven and among men.

But will faith be possible for the world, when it sees its salvation actually beginning? We answer, Yes, they must believe the testimony then given, that this salvation which they will then see begun (for the awakening from death is only the beginning of the salvation or restitution which will be completed within the limits of that age—a thousand years,) has been brought about, not by any merit of their own, but as the result of the ransom—the death of Christ—which secured for all, the right and privilege of a second, an individual trial.

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— May, 1887 —