Posted on 03/31/2014 9:59:29 AM PDT by JoeProBono
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
A California man was feared dead after he was swept out to sea during a beach baptism on Sunday, officials said.
Benito Flores, 43, was helping his cousin — Pastor Maurigro Cervantes — perform the religious ceremony on a man at Guadalupe beach when a hellacious wave toppled the trio, KCOY-TV reported.
“A big wave came and took Benito,” Cervantes, of Jesus Christ Light of the Sky, told the news station.
“I tried to take him out. He was heavy and then another big wave came.” The current pulled Flores away from the shore at the Rancho Guadalupe Dunes Preserve — about 70 miles north of Santa Barbara — and hasn’t been seen since.
Rescue crews were expected to return to the scene on Monday to search for the missing man.
Cervantes told the Santa Maria Times that about 25 people were at the ceremony, which he said he performs about two or three times a year.
Oh, dear.
That was my first thought too. What an insensitive twit. Of course, he has never seen a baptism, has no idea what it means nor any interest in learning.
I believe they would.
Nice, Joe, really nice. Perhaps someone can show up at your wife's or child's funeral and crack jokes too.
Why do people think that baptisms in a sea/ocean would be more scriptural than a baptismal or even a stream or river? I don’t recall John the Baptist or Christ baptizing ANYONE in the Sea of Galilee or the Med.
I often wonder if relatives and friends of the deceased will ever see those threads. You just know that at some point, they will do a Google search and likely our threads will come up and they will see us cracking wise about the circumstances of their loved one's untimely death. Something to think about.
I try not to participate in those threads but on occasion, I have been guilty of contributing a pithy comment or two with respect to "Darwin Award" candidates.
I guess in a nation of 317,785,000 people and a planet of some 7,046,000,000; it's easy to become desensitized to the pain and suffering of those who share the planet with us. I guess it's hard enough just keeping up with those in our immediate social circles so when we hear about some surfer in Hawaii getting eaten by jellyfish or some poor soul floating out to sea during a baptism, there is adequate distance for most of us to make light of it in some way.
I think another factor is the Internet. Somebody dies in an usual way and it goes viral. Suddenly hundreds of millions of people across the globe are reading about how that person died. Think about that. When I was a kid in the 1970s, there was almost no way to know what happened to regular people that wasn't printed in your hometown paper.
In 1977, one of my classmates was run over by a train because he was "playing chicken." A Darwin death for sure. But nobody outside my school ever knew the circumstances and even the hometown paper had just had an obituary and left out the details out of respect for the parents. The Boston papers did print a story about a child getting run over by a train but they did not print his name so unless you lived in my town, you would not be able to put 2 and 2 together.
Such a different world today.
looks like sybil
Part of the problem here are these so-called “hip” baptisms performed primarily by pastor this and pastor that. Everyone plays the role of “pastor” these days. This is the same nonsense that occurs on these “Easter Sunrise” services where its all a song and dance. This is the mingling of New Age and Christianity. The solution is quite simple. Go to a local Catholic Church and be baptized by a real priest or better yet, a Franciscan monk.
Uh - Steve was merely quoting the article...
That being said, one might consider the story of Elijah who was taken to Heaven in a chariot of fire.
We should not assume that God was somehow caught by surprise by this rouge wave. It may be that like Elijah, the Lord chose to take Benito home. For me personally, to be taken while being baptized?! What a way to go!
As believers, we should not cling too tightly to this life. As The Apostle Paul said "...to live is Christ - to die is GAIN!"
As they say, “the verdict is in.”
There has never been a more scummy lead line.
The Daily News should be ashamed.
Don't they have that little birdbath in the front of the church were they just sprinkle, not immersion like the original Greek indicates? :)
Sometimes things just don’t work out as expected. There is risk in every breath we take.
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