I am a Baptist!

Depending on who you say that to, it could be offensive. Without raising points and issue, I wanted to share something I read tonight that I appreciated very much. I will preface it with a quote from Arthur Pink. Feel free to comment...it is a bit long.

Arthur W. Pink wrote, "This is the name which God gave to the first man who He called and commissioned to do any baptizing. He named him ‘John the Baptist.’ Hence, real Baptists have no reason to be ashamed of or to apologize for the Scriptural name they bear." "The Churches of God" Studies in the Scriptures (Dec., 1927). Page 5.



During the past hundred years there has been a growing effort on the part of some professional Baptist scholars to redefine the Baptist faith and Baptist history. Beginning from Enlightenment, anti-supernaturalistic presuppositions, reading the Bible and church history through the spectacles of a "critical/scientific" methodology, influenced by the prestige of worldly religious establishments and their own ambition for authority and respectability, many modern Baptist scholars have hypothesized a complete dichotomy between the teaching of Scripture and the facts of history.

As a result the public has, once again, been "assured" of the findings of scientific investigation, that is, we have been assured that modern Baptists are a "post-Reformation" novelty and have absolutely no connection with the Anabaptists of the Reformation era or the older, pre-Reformation evangelical movements. Operating from this perspective many modern Baptist historians decided several decades ago that Baptists were really just another form of Protestant that arose during the Reformation era.

While we should appreciate the genuine dedication of serious historians as well as their discovery and use of physical evidence in historical studies, we should not forget the ever-present "personal bias" of every historian, the "unavoidable limitations" of the scientific method and the ultimate authority of God’s Word. Above all else, Baptists dare not forget that the Word of God cannot be held hostage by human historiography! The most basic premise of every Bible believer is the existence and sovereignty of the Supernatural God and the ultimate authority of His Word over all things.

This Biblical authority calls upon us to form a world-view, to get our ideas of origins, of the universe, of God, of man, of life and of time (past, present and future) from the revelation contained in God’s Word. Hence, our over-all understanding of world history (and thus of church history) must be ultimately controlled by the teaching contained in the Bible. All academic historical study must therefore be judged by Scripture and not vice versa. Unless we accept the secular, liberal view of the Bible, which divorces what the Bible records from all historical reality, then Baptists are called upon by their own view of ultimate Biblical authority to make a decision - either we must interpret history in the light of what the Bible teaches OR we must interpret the Bible in the light of a secular theory of history and its interpretation of available physical evidence.

We believe that the truth of God’s existence, of the Gospel, of Christ’s resurrection, the Holy Spirit’s ministry, and the continual existence of Christ’s churches throughout history does not depend upon the discovery of historical, physical evidence or the opinions of religious scholars. These things are true regardless of the possession or non-possession of physical evidence and despite all scholarly opinion to the contrary. These things are true because they are clearly revealed in Scripture. Hence, our views of the nature of Baptist identity, Baptist history and the Baptist heritage must be shaped Biblically and Theologically. The foundations of both Christian Theology and Christian History are built upon the exegesis of Scripture.

We do not define Baptist identity by what we see around us in the world today nor by what we see in the historical record of the past. If Scripture is the infallible standard by which truth is established, then Baptist identity is defined by what we see in the person, principles & practice of the first Baptist, the one first commissioned to practice Christian Immersion, and by what we see in those who came to his baptism, i.e., the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles. The Scriptural examples of these first Baptists is that by which all other ideas of Baptist identity are to be judged. All that history can do is provide some evidence as to how true or how false modern Baptists have been to that original Biblical identity.

http://www.standardbearer.org/Content.aspx?ID=3

 

And this means what?

 

Well, I was asking what TC meant by quoting that Scripture. But I had to reply to your post because I get the impression that you believe Christ is depending on people, what you call shifting sand people, for the foundation of His Church? Say it ain't so!

 

Nope. The principles beginning with John's baptism that got him called "the Baptist" because of the mode of baptism by immersion has been practiced from that day until now, but not by all. The introduction of infant baptism, et. came later.

 

Amen! :jesus:

 

How do you know? Not that I disagree, because I don't know, but where did you learn this?

 

Does this mean to you that the advance of the Gospel in the world depends on people?

 

That's not what I asked. Here you refer to the means, but I am asking, basically, on whose shoulders rest the advance of the Gospel, God or men?

 

Tis why there are a doctrines of baptisms...but we are referring to water baptism.