Conditional Statements

God, it appears, wrote the Bible in a very generic fashion. What I've come to understand as conditional statements. This simply means that words like All, they, these, them, Israel, Judah, Jerusalem, my people etc. are conditioned by the rest of the Bible. In other words the context of a verse should be the deciding factor on the overall meaning.

Consider the following:

I have a basket of three types of fruit: 10 apples, 10 oranges and 10 bananas. Let's assume the apples are eatable. The oranges are rotten and should not be eaten and the bananas have some good ones and some bad ones.

If I said to you: I've got a basket of fruit and they're all good. Is that a true statement? It's true if I'm only talking about the apples and false if I include the other fruit. What if I said the following: This basket that I'm holding; these are some bad fruit. True or false? Again it can go both ways. My last statement: Some of my fruit are good to eat. True or false? The answer is true only if I'm talking about the apples and some of the bananas. Get the picture? In order for us to understand these statements, we have to know the condition of ALL the fruit in that basket; otherwise we may come to the wrong conclusions about these fruit in the light of the above statements.

The Bible is written the same way to a high extent. This is a significant technique the Lord uses that could highly impact how we understand His Word. To understand individual statements, we have to have an overall understanding of the rest of the Bible. The words ALL, These and Some in the above statements are conditioned by the state of the fruit in my basket.

Some Examples in the Bible:

In the above passage, we know God has to be talking about the true believers because the Bible teaches elsewhere that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). The unsaved do not come into His Glory. At the beginning of the tribulation, believers were among the tares and from the standpoint of a corporate body, God is calling everyone "heathen". True believers, however, come back to the Lord as He separates them from the rest of the Body.

Lord willing, I'll be sure to add other scripture references where God uses conditional statements as they come to mind. If you can think of some, please don't hesitate to share.