Sometimes we tend to measure success in spiritual teaching by the number of people that are baptized. And while there is certainly some cause of precedence established for this in the book of Acts, the number of people baptized during any given effort or season of time is not a great indicator of good done. Why would I say this? I say this because we can baptize people all day long, and it wont make them a Christian. You see baptism is an act of obedience where God does the work of changing a dead person into a living person. But it is predicated on one conditional control--the belief of the sinner being baptized. So may I suggest that if you want to speak in terms of the impact of gospel preaching and the results of our labors in the vineyard, that perhaps a better reflection of true value would be to speak of how many souls have been brought to follow the Lord. The great commission tells us to go and make disciples in every nation (baptizing them) into the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If one hasnt made a change of heart that they will follow Jesus, as Marshall Keeble use to say you can baptize them till the bullfrogs call em brother, and it wont make them a Christian. And amen. So as exciting as it is to report that so many people have been baptized (and at one meeting in the Philippines I know of a couple years ago, they had 21 baptisms during the meeting), the real question is how many have been made disciples of Jesus. Amen.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 13:41:01 +0000
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