You try to use Luke 1:41 and your own logic to defend false manmade doctrines! Do the scriptures say John the Baptist was baptized when he leaped in his mother’s womb? So now, what good is your logic and manmade beliefs? They are no good, for they go against the Word of God.
Again, this is before baptism or circumcision, you have no defense! You speak about a prophet of God before baptism or anything, and you think this proves water baptism to infants!
I believe in the written Word of God, the written Word of God speaks of John the Baptist being filled with the Holy spirit from his mother’s womb, so why would I not believe that!
According to the false Catholic teachings, they try to use scripture to go against other scriptures; they use their own logic, which is no logic. Was John the Baptist baptized while in his mother’s womb? NO. Was John the Baptist circumcised while in his mother’s womb? NO. So stop trying to use those scriptures to defend your false beliefs.
John the Baptist was a man sent from God, John 1:6.
32 They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house
Do infants have the word of the Lord spoke to them? No.
The Baptism debate
Discussion in 'Other Christian Denominations' started by The Biblicist, Jul 25, 2012.
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The Biblicist Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
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The Biblicist Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
However, why couldn't the Word be spoken to them without baptism and God save them.
Moreover, look at his sole example in John the Baptist. John was made to understand and filled IN THE WOMB not in circumcision or baptism!!!!
His doctrine is not merely unbiblical but completely irrational and inconsistent with itself. -
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The Biblicist Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
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The Biblicist Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
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The Biblicist Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
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See my comments above regarding John the Baptist. God can do some really miraculous things in infants, my friend![/QUOTE]
He can -- because He is God. But God doesn't operate at the behest of man; He cannot be summoned by man pronouncing a formula over an infant and applying water to same. "The Spirit bloweth where it listeth", not where man listeth that it should blow!
And in case you missed it, this article destroys every argument for infant baptism: http://www.founders.org/library/malone1/malone_text.html -
So, a literal reading and interpreting of the scripture by the paedobaptist, or a total mangling of it? Obviously the latter. -
Neither the Bible nor the earliest churches know anything of infant baptism. As the stream got further from its source -- the apostles and their writings -- superstition crept in, and people started baptizing their infants. Superstition, fear, and ignorance created infant baptism -- nothing else. -
God can save during infant baptism AND He can save, if He chooses, while an infant is in the womb.
The point is: God can save whenever He wants to. He doesn't need to wait for an adult to make a free-will decision and He doesn't need to wait for baptism to save a infant.
The reason we bring our children to baptism is that God has commanded us to do it.
God can save whenever He wants.
You Arminian Baptists/evangelicals believe that God needs your assistance to save you. He needs your "decision".
That is a doctrine of works which you got from Mother Rome!
The example of John the Baptist is proof that your doctrine is false. Many of you say that John was a "special case".
John the Baptist was either God or a man. If he was a man he was born with original sin, that required atonement. The Bible says that he was filled with the Holy Spirit when he left his mother's womb. That means that God had already saved him, at that moment that he left the womb, and at that instant gave him, as an infant, repentance, belief, and faith.
Without faith, belief and repentance there can be no atonement. There is no way John could receive the Holy Spirit unless God had already made him righteous.
God has and does save infants. He gives them the faith, belief and repentance. Just because they can't tell you they believe, doesn't mean that God can make it happen.
Just because the infant John the Baptist couldn't tell anyone he was filled with the Holy Spirit, and just because it wasn't logically or rational to believe that an infant could have the Holy Ghost, does that mean that it wasn't true?
No. The case of John the Baptist blows the Baptist/evangelical doctrine that God can only save adults to smithereens! -
Second, John the Baptist was either a man, subject to all the same conditions for salvation as every other person who has ever walked on earth or he was a god. Which one was it. There is no such thing as "something special inbetween God and man." -
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The Biblicist Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
You misunderstood my words. I do believe in original sin. I simply said that Christ removed the eternal consequences (not temporal) of the Adamic sin so that no person stands in judgement for the individual act of Adam but only for his own works - Jn. 1:29 - He simply removed the LEGAL eternal consequences for that individual act of Adam without removing its temporal consequences.
Don't you think you are being a tad bit irrational? How can you possibly compare John to the NORM! Is every person the fulfillment of the return of Elijah????? -
The reason we believe that God saves in baptism is because he says so. He can save whenever he wants, without our decision to be baptized or your decision to make a "decision" for Christ.
Bottom line my Baptist/evangelical friends: We can continue arguing this point for YEARS, and never get anywhere.
If Mormonism and JW's were so easy to discredit from Scripture why are tehey growing in leaps and bounds? It is because they have created a false doctrine and found an answer "from the Bible" on every possible rebuttal trinitarian Christians can throw at them. Does that mean they are right?
No, of course not!
Orthodox Christians, such as Lutherans, can base our belief system not only in "our" inerpretation of Scirpture but also with historical evidence from statements from early Christians. That is how I know our doctrine is correct.
You Baptists and evangelicals have no more proof than the Mormons and
JW's to support your beliefs:
You believe that your interpretation is correct and you believe that God (the Holy Spirit) tells you that you are correct.
The Mormons and the JW's believe the exact same thing. None of you have any concrete evidence to prove your position!
Show me one early Christian who states that the only purpose of baptism is an adult "profession of faith" ONLY and I will convert tomorrow!
Sorry, Biblicist, but I don't accept your revisionist history and conspiracy theories. If there were "Baptists" during the first six centuries after Christ there would be some record of it somewhere, even if it is on the wall of a cave!
Wittenberger
www.lutherwasnotbornagain.com -
BTW: Lutherans believe that Baptists and evangelicals believe false doctrines, but we still consider you Christians, brothers and sisters in Christ.
Lutherans believe Mormons and JW's are cults, their baptisms are not in the name of the Trinity, they are not Christians. -
God tells us how He saves us and when. God says for us to believe and repent. God who knows our heart will give us the Holy Spirit when He accepts us, those who obey. See Acts 5:32 and 15:8.
I do not believe God needs my assistance. I have to obey God.
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The Biblicist Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
You have to completely ignore my response about John the Baptist in order to sustain an appearance of argument. -
No, it surely does not. No Baptist and no evangelical believes that God can only save adults. You really should stop posting untruths.
I don't brand myself as an evangelical, but, concerning what I have said, I believe believers' baptism proponents would agree that for those who are mature enough to understand, faith is required for salvation; for those who are not, if they should die, God saves them all. In any case, water baptism in NT times was reserved for those who had been regenerated as evidenced by their profession of faith. Water baptism did not produce the regeneration in them, nor did it produce regeneration later in infants when people started baptizing them out of superstition, fear, and ignorance. Man cannot control or summon God by word or ritual. The Spirit blows where it wills, not where man wills that it should blow!
You have absolutely no ground to stand on with your views about infant baptism, as has been shown. Even what you said about John the Baptist destroys your own argument concerning infant baptism because whatever God did for him in the womb, it certainly was not by water baptism! And do you suppose that John the Baptist would have been saved if he had not continued to follow God?
You are one confused individual. Earlier you were making unfounded charges against Baptists as you were calling them Calvinists; now you are doing the same as you are calling them Arminians! You have failed in your arguments and posted untruths in both cases!
What is blown to smithereens is the unbiblical doctrine of infant baptism and that a ritual and incantation can cause the Spirit to move simply by virtue of the words and actions of men. Want to talk works-base salvation? There you have it in a nutshell. Baptists are about as far away from "Mother Rome" as it's possible to get. Magisterial Protestants are not, in many areas, as can be clearly seen.
One more point: The very early "Didache" talks about baptism but does not mention infant baptism; that silence is deafening. This is one proof of the truth of what I said and the Quakers originally said: The stream is purest at the source; the further you get from the source, the more corrupted and polluted the stream becomes. Infant baptism is a prime example. It arose because of superstition, fear, ignorance, and a wrong view of original sin. It did not exist in the NT or the earliest Christian communities; it's only foundation is the tradition of men, as the Catholic Encyclopedia admits, and a Catholic priest and archaeologist proved. -
The bible does not implicitly endorse infant baptism. The Bible does not implicitly forbid it, either.
The point is that John the Baptist is an example where God gave the Holy Spirit to an infant, without waiting for that infant to become an adult and make a decision to believe.
Your side insists that ALL men, OT and NT, must first believe and repent as older children or adults before God considers them righteous or saved.
John the Baptist is proof that your insistence that ALL men follow YOUR patter of salvation is not correct. Just saying that John the Baptist was special case does not change the fact, unless you believe that John the Baptist was a God: he still needed faith and repentance before being declared righteous and receiving the Holy Spirit.
The only way that could happen is if God gave the infant John the Baptist faith, belief and repentance at his birth, thereby declaring him righteous.
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