Featured If a medical condition hinders baptism

Brother Smyth, I'm not following what you mean here. I agree the Sabbath law is not a moral issue.

First it sounds like you are saying one man's legalism trumps another man's legalism. Who gets to decide that? But then you say it's not legalism to want to obey Scripture (with which I agree). But if baptism is immersion, where is the obedience of sprinkling?

Exactly. Baptism is a symbol. It is a positive institution, not a moral law. Why insist on it, especially in a mutated form that destroys the symbolism?

How would you feel about following the church option Brother Glen mentions above?

 

Aaron, I suppose I am willing to "adjust" baptism for mercy's sake in a different way than you are. I agree that both the shewbread are rites. They are positive institutions of God and lose there important outside of that consideration. In the case of David and the case of Jesus & the disciples, one rite was not substituted for another rite. Eating was substituted for a strict observance of the rite. Something related to the very nature of things -- hunger -- "overrode" the rite. Feeding the hungry, healing the sick and helping the poor were merciful things that Jesus did that were more important that keeping the rites of the law (and in many instances it was the Pharisees interpretations of those rites more than the rites themselves). But substituting sprinkling for immersion is substituting a rite of our devising for a rite commanded by God. A person may think he or she is more acceptable to God because they were sprinkled, but are they really? Might it not just be better to show them that God accepted them according to their faith if they truly cannot perform what God has instituted?