you keep under handing them to me and i’ll keep hitting them out of the park ( i just hope i remember all the points that need to be made )
- “my Church” yes, it is His Church ( singular ) because He established it in His Blood and it is His Body. Jesus is so connected to His Church that anyone who persecutes the Church is really persecuting Jesus ( Acts 9:4 )
- Jesus statement that He would be with us always even until the end of the age WAS NOT CONDITIONAL ON THE FIVE THINGS YOU LISTED. I notice you missed His command in John 17 that His followers be One, so the world may know Jesus was sent from the Father. Wonder how you missed that one, strange huh?
- you use a term that the Bible never does, namely “ water baptism” anywhere the Scriptures speak of baptism, it only says “ baptism” , it NEVER SAYS SOMETHING CALLED “WATER BAPTISM”. Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:5 there is ONLY ONE BAPTISM, yet there were false teachers who arose in the 16th century with a NEW teaching unheard of before that , that there are “two” baptisms, something they called “spirit baptism” ( another unbiblical term ) and “water baptism”
why do you use the made up term “water baptism”?
- the Church received the practice of baptizing by either pouring, sprinkling or immersion from the Apostles. the Didache testifies to do this. in what river or lake was Paul immersed in according to Acts 22:16?
- you state “ baptism is an external testimony as a public declaration........” WHERE DOES THE BIBLE TEACH THIS??
it doesn’t. no one was ever told to be baptized as an external testimony as a public declaration, NOT ONCE!
the NT is crystal clear, baptism is for:
1. the remission of sins
2. receiving the Holy Spirit
3. being placed “into Christ”
this external testimony teaching is a 16th century tradition of men, unheard of before then.
- St Augustine was a great theologian and used mightily by the Holy Spirit to build up the Church, but he did not invent the concept of the Universal Church. Since there is only ONE LORD, THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE CHURCH, SINCE THE CHURCH IS HIS BODY. St Ignatius, who learned at the feet of St John and who would be martyred in Rome for his faith, was the first to use the term Universal or Catholic Church at the end of the first century.
- you say infants are precluded from baptism, the Church teaches it received the practice from the Apostles. now, if today, a Baptist minister were to baptize an infant, it would cause quite a stir in his congregation and he would lose his job. DO YOU THINK IT WOULD BE ANY DIFFERENT IN THE FIRST OR SECOND CENTURY? who was the first person to teach and practice infant baptism and what great controversy developed??? THERE WAS NONE RECORDED IN ALL CHURCH HISTORY, BECAUSE THE CHURCH FROM THE TIME OF THE APOSTLES, BAPTIZED INFANTS. even Luther and Calvin admitted this.
- you asked where Jesus said the Church would always be here, Matthew 16:18.
- “faithful assembly of saints” i guess “faithful” means agreeing with your unique take on the Scriptures, so that would mean there were NO CHRISTIANS before the 16th century.
- searching wikipedia for any non-Catholic groups that ever existed that have nothing in common with the Baptist beliefs, is not the same as having an unbroken line of faithful men and women who have kept to the Apostolic Faith and practice for 2,000 years now.
- reading Acts 15 is one thing, understanding it is something else. The Apostles did have AUTHORITY over the local church at Antioch, and this AUTHORITY does pass on by the laying on of hands as the Church received from the Apostles. The Church recieved this authority directly from Jesus in Matthew 28 and the AUTHORITY to teach and baptize is meant to last until the end of the age. If the Church has the AUTHORITY to teach, we have the OBLIGATION to learn.
- salvation is something you commit to? sounds likes “works” to me! every Baptist i have ever met has claimed you are “saved” the moment you accept Jesus as Savior, no matter what you do after that. sounds like you have a different understanding, of course, this is the CONFUSION you get when everyone reads the Scriptures and decides on their own what they mean. the Holy Spirit has led the Church for 2,000 years into the way, the truth and the life.
finally, the subject of BAPTISMAL REGENERATION......this is why you so arrogantly assert mr. sherlock is still lost because he believes as Peter teaches in 1 Peter 3:21 that “ baptism now SAVES you.....”
Baptismal Regeneration is probably one of the clearest and easiest to understand doctrines taught by the Scriptures and EVERYONE for 1,500 from Peter up until the Baptists arrived on the world scene in the 16th century believed it.
your “precise” translation of Acts 2:38 has many problems, but i notice the cultists is always trying to attack the Scriptures and say the “Greek” really says something else. The Jehovah Witnesses like to play your game as well.
the first problem you have is NO ONE WHO TRANSLATED THE BIBLE AGREES WITH YOU. Not the Catholic, Protestants ( including the leading Greek scholars of the 16th and 17th centuries who worked on the Authorized Bibles including the KJV ) or Greek Orthodox ( who i suspect may know Greek better than you, but i could be wrong! )
the next problem you have is LOGIC. to read your “precise” translation, the verse makes NO SENSE. “repent” is a future event, “be baptized” another future event, you then do a 180 and say “on the basis of forgiveness of sins” which would be a PAST EVENT and then receiving the Holy Spirit would be another future event. DON’T YOU BELIEVE ONE RECEIVES THE HOLY SPIRIT AT THE SAME TIME ONE RECEIVES THE FORGIVESNESS OF SINS?? if yes ( and every Baptist i know believes they happen AT THE SAME TIME ) then your “precise” reading is WRONG and the Catholic, Protestant and Greek scholars are CORRECT.
the last problem you have with your “precise” Greek gymnastics is it doesn’t match with what the rest of the Scriptures teach about baptism. maybe the scholars were also not “precise” in translating Acts 22:16, Titus 3:5 and 1 Peter 3:21 just to name three verses.
NO ONE READ ACTS 2:38 AS YOU PROPOSE FOR 1,500 YEARS. and of course, the Apostolic Faith the Church received as evidenced by every Church Father that wrote about baptism, tells us that baptism is FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS, just as Peter preached.
i am anxious to hear what you have to say about the AUTHORITY to set the canon of Scripture, does anyone have Authority to set the canon infallibiliy or are we not sure we have the total and complete Word of God?
I'm tired of this, because you struck out a long time ago. I think I'll collapse your tent right now.
(1) The Lord Jesus Christ, who baptizes some with the Holy Ghost, and others with fire, baptized one hundred and twenty souls with the Holy Ghost on the 50th day after His Resurrection, regenerated these repented/believing disciples, including His birth mother, to/for whom all previous sins were confessed and abandoned by Him and them, who were cleansed by His Blood, and there was not one smidgin of water involved.
(2) He continues to do so likewise when with foreknowledge, The God instantaneously through His Unmerited Grace saves more totally committed disciples through their complete trust in The Faith of His Beloved Son, apart from any humanistically ritually applied external fluid to their bodies.
(3) NOW, these saved and in the same twinkling Spirit-baptized believer-priest-progeny, as their first step into discipleship, obediently confess and abandon any further errors the Holy Ghost has brought to they mind, then submit themselves for a display of their new role as a bondslave of The Christ, for a visible consent and verbal witness (Apostles' Creed?).
==========
Since you resist the particularity of water baptism, I think I can assure you that Baptism in the Lake of Fire, of which The Lord himself partook, the Baptism of Violent Death, had little, if any, contact with Adam's ale or any other.
Neither did the Baptism into Moses, prefigured by the baptism in the cloud and the sea.
In fact, there are seven baptisms accounted for in the NT; and eight, if you recall the mikvah wet-down for the ritual purification customary for the Jewish culture, which prepared them for the plunging in a stream followed by John (at Aenon), Jesus, His disciples, and Philip.
Now, whatever you think of the age at which baptism ought to take place, there is no certain time in ante-Nicene history that paedobaptism was forbidden (though Tertullian counseled against it), only that Scripture shows it would have no effect upon a being that was not conscious of sin, for which The God does not impute sin to the child not aware of and responsible to the Law, written on vellum or in its heart; nor held by Him as guilt-ridden.
"For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law." (Rom. 5:13)
Also, if you are counting that in 1 Pet. 3:21a "The like figure by which baptism doth also now save us ... ", the verb isin the present tense, which means 'constantly,' or 'continually,' or 'continuously,' or 'persistently,' and thus implies action in progress. So it is not in the aorist tense, not punctiliar. It's not going to mean what you'd like; but more, it is a figure of speech, hot an actual hose-down.
The arguments you propose have no force, they are just unprovable assumptions, mostly. Certainly not by proper exegesis. Salvation comes by faith, not by soaking. Baptism in one spirit, into one body (the local autonomous church), and made to drink into one Spirit (not baptistry water, I hope) in a figure of speech. Salvation came to Noah not in the water, but on it. Q. E. D. (1 Pet. 2:20)
So much for now. Probably no more on this, either.