When is Baptist no longer Baptist?

When?

saturneptune,

I am glad you said, "........it would be nice."

Bartimaeus

 

Sorry, I cannot agree with that. From my conversations with Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, they don't really understand what a Christian is, and they look at me as though I were talking in a foreign language when I tell them that I know the Lord Jesus Christ personally - I don't just know about Him. I really don't see how we can depend upon the cults to determine for us who is or who is not a Baptist.

Not sure what you mean by a "Reformer", but if you mean "someone who believes the "Five Great Alones of the Reformation" (that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, on the authority of Scripture alone) I can assure you that there are many baptists who do believe those things, including myself and (to judge from what they write) a number of others on this Board. So if anyone (not just a JW) calls a baptist a reformer, what is the problem?

Incidentally, I have already replied to this threed, but my earlier answer did not appear. There must be something wrong with it because at the moment the label at the top of each page of the thread says, "This thread has been viewed 0 times"

 

When

Bro Lamb,
I am not sure you understand me or maybe I just wasn't clear in my post.

Simply saying: The JW's have been trained well enough either by their own people "YOU BETTER STAY AWAY FROM THOSE STRONG BAPTISTS" and hunt for the weak ones or...........they have been trained well on the street by a Baptist with a good witness......and they know who Baptists are by what they believe and preach.

If you get into a discussion with them without their prior knowledge of what you are ........and they say "Oh now I know what you are....I can tell by what you are saying........you are a Baptist!", then historically speaking you have been named. You are like all the others who have come before you and have been identified by the enemies of the gospel.

Now if they call you a Congregationalist or a reformer or a whatever, then you have missed the boat. You obviously are called by your name.

They are knowledgable people in this regard and they don't often miss the question.

The fact remains ...we are what we preach.

Bartimaeus

 

(Wrong thread.)

 

Brother Bartimaeus,

I have certainly noticed that the JWs tend to go past our house now - we didn't deliberately drive them away, but they don't seem to be willing to listen to what we have to say concerning our relationship with our living Saviour, in answer to their false doctrines. All those I have come across have brought up the subject of me being a baptist, probably because I have a poster for our church on the door. But what they go on to say about baptists shows that they have no real idea about what it means to be a baptist.

Don't take this the wrong way - I am not trying to offend you, just asking the question, why should we take the opinions of false cults as the benchmark for who is and who is not a baptist?

And you are still saying that I have "missed the boat" if they call me a reformer. I'm still assuming that by "reformer" you mean "someone who believes the "Five Great Alones of the Reformation," as you have not said anything different in reply to my earlier post. Why have I "missed the boat"? Some baptists hold to reformed doctrines, some do not, but they are all baptists.

 

I've had the same experience. No JWs have visited me in Texas, but I used to get them in California. They couldn't respond to any of my Bibilcal challenges the first time, so, as they promised, they came back with someone who had studied the Bible more. That guy couldn't respond to any of my Biblical challenges, so they came back a promised third time with someone who was even more familiar with their BIble. They failed the third time, too, after which they stopped visiting.

 

Answering the title on the thread topic of

"When is (a) Baptist no longer (a) Baptist?"

When he or she spends too much the Baptist Board!

OK, so I'm "Exhibit 'A'"!



Ed

 

LOL! I didn't realize others had that experience with the JWs also! Around here, they visit on Saturdays. I'm usually outside working on Saturdays, so I guess I'm easy prey for that reason. Finally, I took one of their pamphlets. Interstingly, I noticed there was not one Bible quote in it. So I sat down and refuted every one of thier points listed with scripture. When they came back, I handed a copy of my researched list, and said, "I'm sorry I haven't made myself clearer to you before now, but this will tell you why I will never join your church." I never did see them again!

As far as the subject of this thread goes, I think ArcheryAddict sumed it up best, so there is no need for me to repeat it.

Love,

Sopranette

 

Not with intent to hijack this thread, but in reply to sopranette - The man who cleans the windows of my shop is a JW and recently his wife started calling with leaflets etc. I would take them ( not wanting to offend/loose a customer ) and deposit them in the bin. One day, however she kept on until I looked at one of these booklets, and there she pointed out to me the words " Jesus Christ a famous preacher ".................. guess who has lost a customer,and possibly a window cleaner too I have not seen either of them since.

 

When?

Bro. Lamb
I have started a forrest fire that may not be able to be put out. I did not want to run a rabbit with my post and no offence to anyone who has posted on the subject of the JWs.

I see your point and I will try to answer it the best I can. The name Baptist is only a partial name. Whatever it was before ie..annabaptist, anti-baptist, on and on, those names were attributed to those who were baptizers of people who had had infant baptism. Those names were also given by those who hate the gospel. They were romanists, reformers, ect,ect. Even in America, we have as Baptists suffered because of the subject of Soul Liberty which the reformers in America have hounded, stripped and beaten and jailed. Baptists in America have lost their land and property at the hand of the reformers.

The question you ask is valid. Why should we allow a cult to decide the definition? I only revert back to ages past when it was a cultist who gave us the name in the first place.

Bartimaeus

 

Well, let me take a stab at the OP.

This is not an all-inclusive list, but one place to start is how one views baptism.

If one believes sprinking, pouring or any mode other than immersion is baptism, he is not Baptist.

If one believes that baptism has sacramental value, he is not Baptist. (That's baptismal regeneration for short).

If one is baptized by one who holds the above views, and believes he has been scripturally baptized, he is not Baptist.

Then we can add:

One who believes you can lose your salvation is not Baptist.
One who believes Jesus is not God in the flesh is not Baptist.
One who believes that Jesus' death on the cross was not substitutionary is not Baptist.

 

If this is true, then we have a number of non-Baptists posting in the Baptist-only forums.

 

I have to admit that I've led a very sheltered Baptist life, reflective of the Southern Baptist culture I have lived in in Western Kentucky and West Tennessee. Some of the beliefs espoused on this board, I have never been exposed to before.

My perception is that the problem we have is not that many churches deny the basic doctrines, or create new ones, but neglect the historical Baptist principles. I see this particularly among the seeker-senstive and CGM churches.

I have read the doctrinal statements of some of these churches and they are quite orthodox. They simply are not taught or preached in many cases.

 

I'm afraid you're right. I grant anyone on this board the right to hold different views from me. But intellectual honesty demands that at the very least, they ought to call themselves something other than Baptist.

I suspect that at the heart of your comment is the ME issue you have debated extensively. You have the best of that argument, I think, but either way, it is not something the majority of Baptists have always held.

Having said that, I don't consider eschatology a test of Baptist fellowship. But it is a strange position to me.

 

Good observation!

 

Thank you for writing such a polite and reasoned answer - an example to myself, and maybe to others. For myself, at least, I can assure you that I took no offence at all from your posts.

Yes, I agree it was originally a term of disparragement, bestowed on people who dared to believe that marking a baby's forehead with the sign of a cross, using a finger dipped in supposedly "holy" water is not what the bible means by baptism. So if someone who has been through such a "ceremony" as a baby is converted to Christ later in their life and is baptised in a baptist or baptistic church, it isn't really a rebaptism at all.

I am not sure about the people who first used the name "baptist" being cultish. Some may have been, but others (in England at least) were themselves Christians, but they were paedobaptists. I have tried finding out a bit wore precisely who first nicknamed us "baptists", but in vain, I'm afraid.

Thanks again.

 

Surely you don't mean to say that the reformers hated the gospel do you?
Romanists yes, but not the reformers.
It looks like from your post you are saying that Martin Luther was a hater of the gospel, which of course is not true.

 

When?

Dale,
My definition of the gospel does not include the "TUB". When a group or a man states that his "gospel" includes baptismal regeneration he is a heretic.
Secondly, history is rife with factual examples of circumstances that show that refromation activity was murderous. The senate in Zurich (1526) passed a decree that the penalty for anabaptism would be death.
Lastly, please be careful about making an inference and then declaring a wrongdoing. Since Luther was a reformer, and I believe he was a baby-dipper, then I would say he was wrong on his gospel.

Would you say that the reformers who were involved in Baptismal-Regeneration had it wrong?

Bartimaeus