Category: Historic Trends of Church

Roman water of rebirth.

IS BAPTISM THE WATER OF REBIRTH?

To accept the Scriptures, the traditions of churches and clergy must often be rejected. Paul showed no awareness of the Galilean apostolic commission’s command to baptize in the name of the ‘Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost’. He simply followed Peter’s precedent of using John the Baptist’s rite, even though Jesus had never used it on believers. Later Paul regrets that water baptism had become a distraction, indicating that he would abandon it. The official Jerusalem ascension commission did not command water baptism.

Examine the two Apostolic Commissions: one speaks of water baptism, but the other speaks of Christ’s baptism of fire for believers. Do you have a choice? One is the official ascension commission, the other stands in stark contrast in its disparity between location and content.
Check your Bible yourself.

(1)Mt. Olivet close to Jerusalem: Acts 1; Luke 24, John 20.
(2) An nameless mountain in Galilee 60 miles north. Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:16.
http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/?p=54

THE VEXED QUESTION OF BAPTISM SERIES: (1)

Mt. Olivet’s waterless apostolic commission

THE GALILEAN COMMISSION Matthew 28:20.
“…baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost…”. Though practised since the first Church of Rome in the early 4th century there is no evidence from the baptisms in the book of Acts that this triune commission was ever known to the eleven apostles. Peter, Philip, and Paul baptized merely in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Matthew records this apostolic commission and ascension taking place on an unnamed mountain in Galilee. Yet Luke and John list the events and a separate non-baptismal apostolic commission at Mount Olivet, adjacent to Jerusalem, some sixty miles to the south of Galilee. The church accepts the ascension mount to be the Mount of Olives (Olivet), but there is a choice here between the two mounts and two baptisms: one in water, or the other in fire. The latter, predicted by the prophet John (Matthew 3), was integral to Jerusalem’s ascension commission.

Old Testament prophecy only alluded to Mt. Olivet. In three and a half years of ministry Jesus had not baptized a single person. He even refused John the Baptist’s request for baptism. The contradictory rumour (John 3) was dispelled in John 4. Neither did Jesus, nor any apostle baptize any believer in the three Synoptic Gospels or the rest of St. John. The rumour of baptisms by the Lord, then the apostles, is more likely associated with two of John’s former disciples helping the prophet again, while Jesus was nearby on the banks of the Jordan River.
http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/?p=39

John the Baptist’s baptism:(3 of 9)
Mark 1:4-5.

“John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. (5) And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.”

John’s Disciples.
The link between remission and baptism was initiated under the closing era of the Law before the Kingdom age began. It had been pre-empted in the water of separation that cleansed ceremonial sin. (KJV & 23 other versions)

The rite of confession accompanied John’s water baptism, but affirmation and formal confession in old covenant repentance had no bearing on the kingdom gifts of repentance and the righteousness of faith.

Jesus’ Disciples.
The apostle trainees failed to experience repentance or the righteousness of faith until the resurrection. In spite of their forty months of avowed affirmations, Jesus knew that ten of them would either deny him or forsake him, and another would betray him as the child of perdition.
He knew that their own double- minded faith would fail. When however, they did discover their failure, and went into morbid remorse, they received the enlightening gifts of repentance and saving-faith from Christ on the first day of the resurrection.

Strangely, according to the three Synoptic Gospels, neither John the Baptist, nor the apostles were baptized by Jesus. While Christ submitted to John’s water rite himself, he never thereafter advocated, or used the water rite during the three and a half years before his death. The fourth gospel has one isolated, but confusing incident, however, where the Jews accused Jesus and his disciples of baptizing believers in water. Probably Andrew and John the apostle reverted to helping their old master, John the Baptist, for the short time Jesus was adjacent to his cousin the prophet on the banks of River Jordan.
http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/?p=29

THE DILEMMA OF THE BELIEVER.
PROBLEM ONE
Throughout St. Matthew and St. Mark Jesus or the Twelve failed to baptize believers in Christ’s lifetime. Yet at the very end in the last few verses of each there is a posthumous command from an unnamed mountain in Galilee for the Eleven to baptize believers in water thereafter. This Galilean commission of the first two gospels conflict with St. Luke; St. John; and Acts of the Apostles, wherein no order was given to baptize believers in water at all. The evidence is to the contrary, namely that the ascended Christ’s baptism of Holy Ghost fire would replace the water baptismal rite.

PROBLEM TWO
Jesus’ apostolic command in St. Matthew ordered the threefold baptismal invocation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, in Acts of the Apostles after Peter reinstituted John’s water rite Peter, Philip and Paul only baptize in Jesus Christ’s name. Did the apostles who received the alternate apostolic commission on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives as Christ ascended know of the Galilean command?

PROBLEM THREE
Jesus’ apostolic command in St. Mark not only differs with the waterless ascension commission at Jerusalem, but it is at odds with St. Matthew also. The baptismal command is to be implemented compulsorily at threat of eternal damnation.

REVIEW OF BASICS:
Mark 16:7. Galilee: was the unofficial alternative ascension commission sixty miles north of Mt. Olivet where Christ ascended. Before ascending to heaven Jesus omitted any command to baptize. See footnote: Matt.28:20

Mark 16:9-20. This is the only place in the New Testament that any Bible book’s author claimed Jesus had made baptism a compulsory condition of redemption.
However, a cross section of eminent Bible scholars think this last half of Mark 16 had been lost and replaced during the 4th century AD. This was the same period in which the first Latin Bible was scribed by Constantine’s scholars. The most complete ancient Greek Bible manuscripts today originated in the 4th century. There are only two: the near complete Codex Vaticanus, is now in the Vatican at Rome. The other is the Codex Sinaiticus in the British Library, which is the only complete copy of the New Testament in existence.
http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/?p=26

Did Paul cease baptizing after Corinth?

Romans 6:4-6. Paul takes Christ’s death, burial and resurrection and makes it analogous to the new birth of the believer. Crucifying and dying to the old-self; burying the old-self in the tomb with Christ; and finally the regenerated new-self, rising into a newness of life by the quickening of the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the grave.

The double-minded faith of the old-self is crucified as vain religious effort, when the righteousness-of-faith is given by grace in the miracle of repentance which changes remorse into godly sorrow: 2 Corinthians 7:10.

In Romans 6:3 Paul uses the word baptism figuratively, as also in First Corinthians 10:2, and Colossians 2:12. Though Christ did not baptize in water he nevertheless, used baptism figuratively in Matthew 20:22-23; Mark 10:38-39; and Luke 12:50.

Furthermore, Peter spoke of baptism figuratively in First Peter 3:20-22, a significant change from his previously borrowed the Old Testament’s priestly water of separation.

Though John the Baptist, (whom Peter quoted at Pentecost) belonged to the era of the Law, John the Prophet did not apply water as remission to those he baptized, it was the confession of sins evidencing heartfelt repentance. Albeit, those sins were to be re-confessed by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement each year until the blood of the new testament was shed on Calvary by Christ, the paschal lamb. Peter suddenly without warning reinstituted John’s water rite (Acts 2:38) and with it the same call to be baptized for repentance, but not remission, for in his second sermon (Acts 3) he makes quite clear that the blood alone cleanses sin. Neither he, nor Paul propounded the old covenant’s water rite as sin’s cleansing.

In a Roman trial (Acts 22:16) Paul told the Jews that Ananias of Damascus had uniquely used the unmodified old water rite, which ceremonially cleansed sin’s contamination: Deuteronomy 19:9.
Water washing away sin is found in the KJ Version & twenty three other English Old Testament versions.

KEY SCRIPTURES: biblegateway.com
Ephesians 4:5. One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
1 Corinthians 12:13.

For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.

Galatians 3:27.

For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Further study on the new birth
Titus 3:5; 2 Corinthians 5:17; John 3:3; Ephesians 2:8.

http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/?p=22

Your Prayerful Road to Calvary.

The title of this short work already presumes that you want to know more about the Calvary Road which Jesus trod, or you are curious about prayer and its function or effectiveness.

Your spirit.

Your spirit (of life), is given by God before one’s birth and is retrieved by God at death. Yet your spirit is not God’s spirit. His spirit is the Holy Ghost and you can only possess it at the new birth, called regeneration.

Adam and his human descendants retained interest and curiosity about the spirit world of the unseen dimension. This is very evident in the primitive and civilized populace of the earth. Whether they are the animists of New Guinea’s remote tribes or the peoples of first world advanced nations there is an insatiable quest to worship something or somebody.

The philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists have a most difficult time refuting this inborn desire to worship. Many theologians and clergy mistake this propensity to worship as prayer, or a natural godly proclivity. Many evangelical Christians have sidestepped original sin and the curse. They falsely claim with Rome, Pelagius, and Jacobus Arminius that the human race universally retained the image of God, the Creator, and the ability to pray.

However, the Scriptures describe the worldling’s natural desire to worship as a warped activity of a cursed species whose very prayer is sin itself, and upon whom the wrath of God is exercised every day. The prophets and the apostles of Christ wrote of the inner iniquity universally endemic in humanity from birth. They also described in holy writ the degenerate volition, soul, conscience and mind of humankind. The saga of biblical history in the early books of the Bible confirms their veracity.

Eve, the first mother, in her wayward innocence preferred to talk to the spirit underworld about an alternative to the Tree-of-Eternal-Life rather than her Creator. Innocence was not original righteousness as the deviants of Scripture and the Counter Reformation claim. Adam had no original righteousness though his reflective mind, conscience, and spirit was created in the image of his Creator. As such both he and his wife could hear the voices of God and the spirit world. Until their deadly choice to rebel Adam obeyed the instructions of his Maker, yet his verbal intercourse was not prayer.

End of Part 1: Your Prayerful Road to Calvary

Pelagius got it right about our first two parents, but got it wrong about the rest of the human race, his descendants, because he overlooked the curse of sin.

Adam and Eve were created naturally without virtue or vice until they sinned against God’s prohibition. This was a state of innocence. They chose the short term benefits of deadly knowledge rather than the long term benefits of eternal life. In so doing they lost access to the Tree of Life.

The innocence of Adam was short lived indeed. Though he was created in innocence this was not possible in the generations of descendants that populated the earth afterwards. The curse of sin upon man, the climate and the earth changed everything.

The first man was created with a living soul, but the rest of the race only had an active body and the breath of life, called the spirit within him. His soul was dead in sins and trespasses. The whole human race was blighted with darkness and death. Though this constantly affirmed in the Old and New Testaments most people in the churches can no longer accept this fact of God’s Word.

Pelagius, the Church of Rome, Erasmus and Arminius (Jacob Hermandson) mistakenly thought and taught that Adam’s innocence was righteousness. It was not! When Eve first sinned, then Adam, it was not a fall from righteousness. The popular doctrine of ‘The Fall’ is not found in Genesis because he possessed no righteousness from which to fall. The term ‘Fall of Adam’ is by the Church of Rome and mistakenly perpetuated afterwards by Christendom, especially after the Age of Enlightenment.

If holy water of a Roman priest could have restored the innocence of Adam to the believer (and it cannot), it would still not restore original righteousness to the believer, because it is a myth, rejected by the whole of biblical counsel of Scripture. Augustine was not the only scholar that stood by the opinion of the Bible: Luther, Calvin and many other godly scholars through time did so, including C H Spurgeon of London in the 19^th century.

Following the lead of Pelagius and Erasmus, the first Baptists took a left hand turn against the Reformation’s ‘faith by grace’ by eclipsing it with their militant compulsion of adults to take a second baptism. Yet this was a negation of the Reformation and its biblical message of the ‘bondage of the will’. The message of water became a distraction from the Reformation message of ’faith alone, by grace alone, by the Scriptures alone.’

Human volition, or the will, with conscience suddenly survived the curse of sin and was even able to access faith through mental understanding and verbal affirmation. Synteresis, or the universal spark of a godward conscience came from medieval Rome and had its roots in Greek philosophy.

The Quakers also agreed with the Baptists and Jacob Arminius that this was so, but they erred from the truth in a major way. Yet this fallacy abounds today across the globe throughout Christendom. Augustine, Luther, and Calvin have been rejected for the easy religion of freewill faith which is now supposed to access grace. It never has and it never will be a means of accessing the divine.

Freewill faith is natural faith and supposedly activated by man’s will. The words of the apostles refute this idea. It is in direct opposition to the Bible’s doctrine. It is merely a humanistic deviation, so well espoused in the 18^th century Age of Enlightenment and by the lapsed Jonathan Edwards, who also turned to philosophy to reject original sin and universal inherent decay of man’s body, soul and spirit. This includes mind, motives and morals of a blighted conscience according to the words of Jesus, St. Paul, St. John and James.

It took only seven years after Martin Luther before deviant new churches began to reject the Reformation’s of sola fide, via sola gratia, via sola scriptura, . By faith alone through grace alone through Scripture alone is the path of access to participating in the divine nature of Christ. Paul and John affirmed that these do not come through water-wine-wafer or the will of freewill faith by man. The pathway cannot be trod naturally, regardless of the disciple’s best of motives, moral rectitude, religious zeal of verbal affirmations.

Today’s revivalists and fellow travellers go even further since the advent of the 19^th century Father of American Psychology, not only can freewill access faith, but any freewill act of the unbeliever in a godward direction is faith, no matter how small and insignificant it seems.

This is the folly of believing in the myth of original righteousness, and, secondly the folly of denying original sin’s catastrophic outcome. In short this is the easy-religion that now pervades Christendom’s churches.

There is no original righteousness, despite the Church of Rome’s claim to holy water becoming the water of rebirth to the christened baby who is made originally righteous.

There is no godward propensity and man is not interested in even seeking God, let alone understanding his message to humanity. His devious heart, however, will become religious when its suits his ulterior self-interested motives. Otherwise, the universal propensity to worship some unseen being kicks in one way or another. Thus the birth of a panoply of Christian and non-Christian religions within both the civilized and uncivilized world. From Eve in the Garden onwards, the hunger for the paranormal and the divine has been an innate self-justifying gravitational pull.

When in the 19^th century this was acceptably immersed into the new religions and sects of Christendom it gave rise to all sorts of cults which continued being born in the early years of the 20^th century. They can be easily discerned by the true saint: stage performed; sensationalist; and excessively loud. They are often guided by personality cult shepherds swaggering with unique knowledge no one else possesses. They alone are privy to special revelation of which others are unaware, confident gurus with the ‘gift of the gab’; unctuous; self-promoting with bibliolatrous over veneration of their select verses of Scripture to justify their new extra-biblical doctrines of error.

They focus on emotion, titillating the curious and the gullible with grandiose exaggeration and graphic entertaining asides to keep the congregation’s attention. The degree of ecstatic physical responses becomes important as each tries to outdo a contemporary in another assembly. Conversions are made easily and quickly by use of various verbal and musical cadences to soothe the unsuspecting adherent in the pews. Emotional expression soon comes to be synonymous with faith itself. Coaching counselors school and tutor would be converts into easy-religion to be followed by induction in water to seal the deal. Easy trips to heaven are up for grabs at the drop of a hat. One may change one’s destination from hell to heaven on a whim and never look back, always reassured that the matter is irrevocably final and cannot be changed by man or devil.

In the final analysis, freewill righteousness by natural understanding and mere verbal affirmation after being tutored is as false as the original righteousness of Adam. In the former and the latter neither are possessors. That is why the Second Adam had to come and give the gift of enlightening grace to the first eleven disciples before they could understand or believe in the Christ that had died and had risen from the dead to meet them on that first day.

BIBLE READING.

10 As it is written, There is no one righteous; no, not one. 11 There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God. (Romans 3.10-11)

Now the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, and he can’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14).

1 “Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters! Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat!
Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 6 Seek God while he may be found. Call on him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to God, and he will have mercy on him; and to our God, for he will freely pardon. (Isaiah 55:1; 6-7).

https://www.biblegateway.com/

SPECIAL NOTE:

Read again Isaiah 55:1 and see the paradox in the futility of self-effort and self-will to gain the unattainable. It cannot be bought or purchased. It is priceless and invaluable a treasure yet there is no price attached, so it cannot be purchased. This is not an open invitation to all and sundry to come and get easy-religion or a quick ticket to heaven. Only those who thirst should even bother coming. Only those who are seekers can possibly find this unspeakable treasure, though the price was paid in full at Calvary.

Nevertheless, the great paradox is:- “There is no one who seeks after God.” (Romans 3.10-11). Is this antinomy? Is this a contradiction? No, certainly not! Both Testaments of Scripture tell the story of grace and without the touch of grace men will not be arrested in their tracks enough to hunger or thirst after God.

Without grace a man will not want to subject himself to hearing and learning of God the Father. Without grace the no man will forsake his way, and his unrighteous thoughts. Without grace sorrow and regret cannot be turned into the godly sorrow of repentance. Without grace there will be no final enlightening by the risen Christ to understand and to be born a second time as the eleven disciples experienced after the resurrection with one hundred and nine others in the forty days of his visitations and appearances.

THE DOWNGRADE OF GOSPEL