“Understanding the Holy Spirit and His works” #54 “WATER BAPTISM” Dear Friends When should one be baptized? Although that it`s needful for one to know why there is the need for salvation in the first place. But based on what the Bible has made known to us, so someone who has received Christ Jesus as his or her Savior can be baptized directly without wasting any time. Now let`s see what the Word of God says about this: 37 “Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? 38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.39 For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.40 And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation.41 Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:37-41). 36 And as they went on their way, they came unto certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? 37 And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. 38 And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him. 39 And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing (Acts 8:36-39). These are just some of the few places where the instance baptisms have taken place. But we have to be very cautious, why? It`s good to notice the difference here. Yeah, we must follow and obey the Bible, but the difference here is that there is awareness of who the Sovereign God of Israel was then in the Jewish society unlike the pagan nations. So we have to understand that within the Jewish society there was much anticipation of the coming of the “Messiah” as we can see from these texts: 24 And they which were sent were of the Pharisees. 25 And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elijah, neither that prophet? (John 1:24-25). And by supporting our argument with another point we could see here that even the Ethiopian eunuch was reading a portion from the Scripture, and that was from the book of the Prophet Isaiah chapter 53, but could not understand what he was reading just before the Holy Spirit was able to send Phillip to go and expand the text for him. 26 And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. 27 And he arose and went: and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, 28 Was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Isaiah the prophet.29 Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. 30 And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? 31 And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. 32 (Acts 8:26-31). We do hope that when say that before someone should be baptized that the person must first pass through the discipleship classes. It wasn`t in act of disobedience to the words of God, because we have seen much evidence from the Scriptures that as soon as someone receives Christ Jesus, then, the next thing was that the person was instantly baptized. So many people would like to buy it from here, rather than giving a second thought just as we have proven the difference between the Jewish society and the pagan nations. Why do we have to come back to repeat this again? The answer is based on what I have witnessed. I have seen people who were claiming that they were called by God; but they were unable to belong to any local Church for the sole purpose that they do not want to pay anybody their tithes. So they were moving around visiting different Churches, and people with the same view like them were been lured to be baptized by them without any pre-knowledge of repentance. They may be right or wrong so we leave it in the hand of God. But for you who may judge right we think that if any pastor or Church leader will simply obey the Word of God, and carries out his or her ministry. The gain of training people will end up being that those who were trained are going to train others. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also (2Timothy 2:2).
Posted on: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:14:32 +0000
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