The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Is water baptism to be practiced today?

Good afternoon Pilgrim. Just got home for work. Very busy day. I hope your day has gone well.

Before I look at what you wrote, please understand a person is saved by faith.Now doing what you talked about, looking at the whole word of God, which is the correct thing to do, I ask you, by what type of faith? I believe it is taught from scripture that it is an obedient faith, which I will look at next time. You believe it is a dead faith, which leads me to James2.

The only scripture in the word of God that mentions faith only is James 2:24 and it says " not faith only". Again I will get into that later.

Now let's look at your verses you gave and what I want to do is add the word "only" since it is not there.I am not going to write out the entire verse, but you will get the idea.

And Abraham believed only God and it was reckoned unto him for righteouness. What happened to repentance? So it should say " believe only and Repent". Anyways you just gave up on repentance.

Now let's try this since you want to add words.
The demons believe only and it was reckon to them as righteousness....

How about this...in Acts 2:37 the Jews believed only and it was reckon to them as righteousness, but they hadn't repented yet nor been baptized. Later in the verse Peter tells these believers to " save themselves".

How about Cornelius? A devout man who feared God...his prayers ascended to God....was his faith counted as righteousness? Here is a believer. So according to you here is a man who was reckcon as righteous and yet Peter had to tell him words to which to be saved by.

How about Saul? Here is a man who believed, and now we add your word "only". Was his faith only accounted as righteousness? yet three days later he is still in his sins. He was told to " arise and be baptized and wash away your sins>"

Lastly, John 1:12 and again we will add your word "only". But to all who received him, who believed only in his name, he gave POWER TO BECOME CHILDREN OF GOD." So here are believers who are reckon as righteous and God gives them the power to BECOME children of God.

The verses I accept as written without you adding the word "only". I have said from the beginng we are saved by faith. Just not a dead faith like you believe. NONE OF THESE VERSES MENTION REPENTANCE...so now you have lost that also.

Jesus said in Matthew 7:21 " not everyone who says Lord,Lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who DOES THE WILL OF MY FATHER who is in heaven". God the Father told Jesus what to say while on earth and Jesus said " he that believes and is baptized shall be saved". So those are God's words and yet you have stated that a man can refuse to obey God and not be baptized and still go to heaven. Is that what the 99% of you call faith?

Have a great night and next time I will show you what type of faith saves......

Hello Ac, good to talk with you again.

you are correct, you are not mocking me with the word of God for I haven't seen any scripture yet. Not trying to be mean, just haven't seen any scripture.

You say " the bible is dealing with.......and you go on, but where is the scripture to prove your point?

Lastly you say" I don't think the bible is clear that you have to be an adult professor to be baptized in the name of Jesus"... I didn't say that. You have to be a believer, you have to repent, confess or you are wasting your time in getting baptized. Yes Grace through faith.....Grace is Gods part/ faith is mans.

Really not sure where you are going with the children. I will give you something to think on....a child is safe...like a person who is standing by a river....as this child grows and can understnd what the good news is....he is now the person who fell into the river and was pulled out and now he is saved.

You have a great night, talk with you later.

There is no doubt in my mind at this point, especially after reading your reply to AC, that you are a Campbellite.

Secondly, you are obviously incapable of comprehending much of anything we have written to you nor the Bible, either due to your deep association with the Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ or some other variant of the Restoration Movement churches, or you simply don't have the mental faculties... perhaps a combination of both? But, for whatever reason, you have chosen to ignore the plain teaching of Scripture in the matter of the doctrine of justification, you deny the doctrine of original sin, and doubtless other core doctrines of the Christian faith.

Thirdly, you evidently cannot or will not respond to questions in a cogent or even logical manner. One could conclude that you have been deceived both from without but even more sadly, from within; self-deception.

Lastly, due to all of the above, and the fact that you are in violation of the Board Rules, to which I did provide a link, I can see no reason to allow you to retain an account here.

BigD

I was going to stay away from commenting on this thread, mainly because I don't think too many participants helps.

However after you said What you have failed to realize is that the 99% that you are referring to do not believe in a "dead faith". Yes we believe as the Reformers did in "faith alone". However, we also believe that we are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone.
If works do not follow faith, then chances are true faith wasn't present in the first place.

Tom

Tom,

Why have you wasted your time answering someone who cannot respond back? I am assuming, of course, that you skipped reading through ALL the replies in this thread and thus out of ignorance wrote this to BIGD, not knowing he has been banned.

But I am going to take this opportunity to share with everyone what this lost soul wrote to me in an e-mail so that his hardness of heart, spiritual deadness can be clearly seen:

---

I guess you couldn’t answer could you? I guess you don’t like someone challenging your doctrine which is easy to expose. I welcome your challenge. You add to the word of God to get your doctrine and take away in other spots. This is what I learned from you.

1. Mark 16 doesn’t mean what it says….it really means “ he that believes only can be baptized if he wants”.
2. Baptism saves you in 1 Peter means “ baptism does not save you.
3. Add the word “only”
4. You can tell God the Father to jump in the lake and refuse to be baptized and you will still go to heaven
5. You are clueless on works
6. You are clueless on 1 Cor.1
7. You don’t even know what “faith only” means for you include repentance. Let me tell you guys what it means…to the EXCLUSION of everything else.
8. You believe the demons are saved
9. You believe liars will go to heaven
10. You believe you can love God and not keep his commandments
11. And you don’t have the guts enough to stand up for what you believe.

You know, I challenge one of your guys to a debate once. I know several gospel preachers who would tie you up in knots…..but like you, he was a coward.

---

So Tom, instead of posting frivolous replies to someone who no longer exists here, perhaps you will take some time to pray for this man's lost soul. May God's infinite mercy and grace in Christ be given to him to the glory of God.

thanks for sharing that Pilgrim, very telling...

and to quote you:

&


I humbly admit that I am guilty of posting when I actually don't have time to read all the posts.

Concerning praying for this man's soul, I definitely will. However, that should be something we should be doing anyway.
But it doesn't hurt to get a reminder of this.

Also, thank you for posting BigD's e-mail to you; I agree with you.

Tom

I suppose I can find ONE sense in which water baptism is "essential:"

Salvation may be said to be

PAST: I WAS saved from the PENALTY of sin (upon regeneration and conversion to Christ;

PRESENT: I AM BEING saved, day to day, from the POWER of sin (sanctification), and

FUTURE: I WILL BE saved, when He returns, from the PRESENCE of sin.

Since sanctification results in obedience and depends on faithful submission to His word, it is therefore "necessary" to obey the Lord's command to be baptized if one is to be saved from the power of sin in sanctification. An unsurrendered rebel, even if a believer, is "NOT SAVED" from the power of sin in his own heart and mind until he yields in obedience to the Lord.

Most of us see this part of salvation as a process rather than an event, in which we are gradually transformed in the inner man, from glory to glory, as we learn His will and are transformed by the renewing of our minds in His word.

This is not to say, however, that one who is never baptized in water is somehow disqualified from justification (which is by faith ALONE), not from his or her inheritance of eternal life in the next world.

-Robin

Hey Robin,

I highly respect your opinion. We agree that water baptism in and of itself does not save.

Do you see my point that in the Bible we are dealing with first generation Christians. If I had a friend who was Muslim and converted to Christianity I would share the Gospel and if he turned to Christ I would encourage him to publically declare and embrace his newfound faith via joining a body of believers and to be baptized. I would also encourage him to have his family baptized including his children since they are now part of the covenant of grace. They are now children of the promise and are under the preaching/ministration of the Gospel.

Obviously children born into the church are not automatically saved when baptized but they will be under the means of grace which is salvation to all whom repent and believe.

As a Credo-baptist are their any hard and fast rules as to when a person can be baptized and how are these distinctions made?

I believe you can be sola scriptura and still hold to infant baptism. I don't think you are compromising your faith in God and His Word by doing so.

Peace,

AC

I'm not a credo-baptist either (anymore), but the only "hard-and-fast rules" that were followed in the credo-baptist churches I was in were:

1. - That no one was baptized unless they could articulate their faith, confessing acceptance of Christ as Savior and professing conversion to the Christian religion, and

2. - That immersion was the only valid mode of baptism.

One of them had abandoned a rule which in which baptism - even after verbal confession of Christ and by immersion, was nevertheless invalid if not performed by a Southern Baptist minister. They called that, "alien immersion." I don't think that rule is followed anywhere anymore... at least I hope not!

Like you, I hold that both believer's baptism and covenant baptism are Biblical. I also believe the mode of baptism is not restricted to immersion only.

-Robin

thanks Robin! Hey, how's Dennis these days. Tell him I said Hello!

AC

Haven't heard from him since the old board closed. And I'm away for weeks at a time, largely out of touch completely. Using a borrowed computer today, still on the road.

-R

Stay safe on the road!

AC