[Uriel1975]

Let's just cut to the chase: the practice of infant baptism came from the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that the church had displaced Israel as the people of G-d. As male babies were brought into the covenant via circumcision, so infant baptism was used as the means to bring the newborn into the Church.

This presumes that Infant Baptism was not practiced until the rise of Papal Supremacy.

As (Messianic Jewish) Presbyter Steve Schlissel points out, this is not the case. In fact, Schlissel argues that if the children had been included in the Sign of the Covenant for 2,000 years, a specific commandment demanding their exclusion from the Sign of the Covenant would have been expected by the Jewish Church, if the children were now to be excluded from the Sign of the Covenant.

Yet no such command of exclusion exists in the New Testament.

Down to cases. If a person who presupposes discontinuity goes to the New Testament for guidance on the subject of infant baptism, he will be looking for a specific commandment to baptize infants. Not finding any, he will conclude that it is contrary to God's will. When a Reformed person, that is, one who presupposes a basic continuity between the covenants, goes to the New Testament for guidance on this question, he knows that for two thousand years before Christ, covenant infants had been the recipients of the sign and seal of covenant entrance by Divine decree. Thus, the very silence which convinced Mr. Discontinuity that it is inappro­priate to administer the covenant sign and seal to infants, that very silence proves that it remains God's will for covenant babies to receive that sign.

Furthermore, he will see in Peter's Pentecost sermon the confirmation of his presupposition of continuity: "Repent and be baptized...The promise is for you and your children (Acts 2:38,39)." The household baptisms hold no problem for him, whether there are infants or not. (See Acts 10:48 (cf.11:14); 16:15, 33; 1 Cor. 1:16) Mr. Continuity will understand that if, after two thousand years of having their children included in the covenant, the fulfillment of that Covenant in Christ now meant the exclusion of their children from the covenant (for if they are in fact members of the covenant, to withhold baptism would be to exalt the sign above the reality signified), if they were now excluded, that would not only be regarded as covenant regression, it seems reasonable to assume that quite a ruckus would be raised over that very point and would have needed to be addressed in the early church. So again, silence is what Mr. Continuous expects and finds.

The Covenant is Visible and One.

[fortheDeclaration]

Who the heck is Steve Schlissel? His allusion to Acts 2:38-39 had nothing to do with 'infant baptism' it had to do with the prophecy made in Joel 2:28-29 and cited in Acts 2:17!

This was Peter thinking the 2nd advent was going to happen and the Kingdom be set up (Acts.3:20) which would have happened had not the Jews rejected the offer of the Kingdom a second time (Acts 7)

Where is infant baptism in any of this?

How do you Reform guys make this stuff up? (Mk.7:9)