[Dr. Eckleburg]

Until a person is able to decide what is right and wrong and to understand the need for salvation, how can they believe, repent, confess, or understand the need to be baptized? Only when a person can make the decision themselves, are they subject to the need for salvation. This does not make baptism "flexible", it is just common sense.

God does not put us to any temporal tests or oath-swearings in order to be saved. That's for the secret societies of men to require.

Because all men are fallen and dead in sin, we cannot know righteousness. Because of Adam's fall, our hearts are dead to God. Like Lazarus, we cannot raise ourselves to life again.

It is only by God's grace that we receive salvation through Trinitarian faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And that is all His doing, ordained by God from before the foundation of the world.

"We love him, because he first loved us." -- 1 John 4:19.

Or else He's not God, but only an eternal scorekeeper who's playing the game along with the rest of us.

[justshe]

"Or else He's not God, but only an eternal scorekeeper who's playing the game along with the rest of us."

Or as someone else said to me once, He has one mighty big eraser....writing and erasing and writing and erasing....