[whispering out loud]

"You ignorant fool."

You should read Matt 5;22

"Put down the Chick tracts and open your mind to the fact that we (a)don't worship Mary and (b) do not worship saints. You may have Catholic friends, but if they're telling you that these things go on...they're far from Catholic."

"chick tracts"? anyway Why are people bidding thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars on oddities with "the virgin Mary" somehow imprinted on them? sounds like worship to me. And what of these medals of the saints?
"Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, or likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Once again sounds like worship to me.

"Why the hatred?"

I have no hatred for you or your faith, I just find fault with anyone who claims exclusive right to discern the scriptures, If you deny that then you need to go back and reread this thread.

"What is your real deal? What exactly do you claim to follow? That is, Where do you go to church? Bubba's Community Bible of BFE Arkansas?"

My real deal is I'm tired of Catholics claiming exclusive right to the scriptures, and the foundation of the church.
I follow Jesus Christ, and I currently attend a Southern Baptist Fellowship, and shock shock, we claim no exclusivity to the Word of God, nor Christ himself, but we do claim him as Lord of our lives, and our savior.

[AlaninSA]

At least you admit that you're a Baptist. That's more than many can handle. Perhaps you can ponder these things about the Baptist faith:

Does the Bible Explicitly Mandate Immersion Baptism?

No. Nowhere does the Bible specifically say that one must be baptized by full immersion. The only Scriptural mandates about the form of baptism are that baptism with Water is necessary, and that baptism is to be conferred in the Triune name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Interestingly, when the Lord gave the apostles specific instructions on how to perform baptisms (Matt. 28:19), He said nothing at all about the necessity of full immersion versus pouring or sprinkling. Obviously, then, the question of immersion versus infusion is an optional and relatively unimportant matter to the Lord.

Now we shall ask ourselves if the Baptist arguments for immersion baptism are founded on faulty inferences alone, or are they based on explicit proof-texts?

But Doesn't the Word 'Baptizo' Always Mean "to Immerse"?

Baptists claim that the only meaning of the word 'baptizo' in the original langauge is "to immerse" (e.g., the Southern Baptist tract "Baptizing them in the Name," Nashville, LifeWay Press, 1999). This is simply untrue.

According to the Liddell-Scott-Jones lexicon of Greek, the verb 'baptizo' can mean, "to immerse," but it can just as readily mean, "to dip," or even "to draw wine by dipping a cup in the bowl". One who is baptized, in the passive sense of the verb, can be drowned, drunk with wine, deeply in debt, or just in trouble. In Biblical Greek, the verb 'baptizo' can mean "to purify by washing," as when Naaman, at Elisha's direction, "went down and washed ['ebaptisato'] himself seven times in the Jordan" (2 Kgs. 5:14 [Reg. IV 5:14], Septuagint Greek Old Testament). It can also signify a ritual cleansing of eating and cooking utensils (Mark 7:4, 'baptismous'), and other ritual washings established under the Old Covenant (see Hebrews 9:10, 'baptismois').

Most significantly, however, we have in the New Testament a crystal clear use of the verb 'baptizo' in a context that signifies only a partial washing of the body, as opposed to full immersion. In Luke 11:38 the verb 'baptizo' refers to a ritual washing of one's hands before eating: Jesus went to dine with a Pharisee and "the Pharisee was astonished to see that he had not first washed ['ebaptisthe'] before dinner." With this Biblical proof-text as our guide, we can readily see that in the New Testament the verb 'baptizo' signifies a ritual cleansing without any necessary reference to the idea of full immersion.