WATER BAPTISM ISN'T FOR US

[MedicBravo]

Regardless of the disagreement here:
Christians continue baptism because:

• Jesus commanded it,
• the apostles practiced it,
• and it symbolizes repentance, cleansing, and union with Christ’s death and resurrection.

Different Christian traditions disagree on whether baptism itself is necessary for salvation or mainly a public act of obedience and faith.

I don't know of any church that shows their baptisms LIVE or records.
It IS a public profession of faitha and telling the world you are a Christian.

It should not be an easy decision. You will be "hated for His name and persecuted. A TARGET.

We're not saved by it but we are changed b/c of it. It should be a turning point in one's life.

 

[KingJ]

Regardless of the disagreement here:
Christians continue baptism because:

• Jesus commanded it,
• the apostles practiced it,
• and it symbolizes repentance, cleansing, and union with Christ’s death and resurrection.

Different Christian traditions disagree on whether baptism itself is necessary for salvation or mainly a public act of obedience and faith.

I don't know of any church that shows their baptisms LIVE or records.
It IS a public profession of faitha and telling the world you are a Christian.

It should not be an easy decision. You will be "hated for His name and persecuted. A TARGET.

We're not saved by it but we are changed b/c of it. It should be a turning point in one's life.

Doug is a hyper-dispensationalist with many interpretations that overlap with Calvinism. He probably is one.

He repeatedly divides scripture so sharply that clear teachings become redefined or pushed away from Christians today.

You begin to see things like:

• baptism being called “Jewish only,”
• the Great Commission being postponed to the millennium,
• Peter being treated as irrelevant to Christians,
• and universal terms like “world” or “all nations” being narrowed into limited groups.

Instead of allowing straightforward passages to speak plainly, the system often filters everything through rigid dispensational categories:

• “that was only for Israel,”
• “that was only for the kingdom,”
• “that is future millennium doctrine.”

The result is that many direct teachings of Jesus and the apostles get explained away rather than followed naturally.

Christians should be careful of any theology that repeatedly needs to redefine obvious universal language or push active New Testament commands into another age in order to preserve a theological system.

 

[MedicBravo]

Christians should also stop trying to understand God on His level.
The Bible was created so that almost anyone anywhere can read and understand much of it.

I was baptized during Basic Training at Ft. Benning. NOTHING in that set of a warning or anything negative.

IDK who this person is.
People disagree b/c they have a problem with what our Creator has said and done.
Good Christians state/think "Yes, Lord....." even though we disagree or don't understand.
God will wipe out all the misguided sects of Christianity anyway.

 

[DougE]

You still are not directly addressing the core issue.

Nobody denies that Gentiles will be blessed in the millennial kingdom. Isaiah 60 and Zechariah 8 absolutely speak about that.

But those verses do not prove Matthew 28 was postponed to the millennium.

You are taking future kingdom prophecies and then reading them back into Matthew 28 without Jesus ever saying that.

The problem is that the apostles immediately began carrying out Matthew 28 in Acts:

• preaching,
• making disciples,
• baptizing converts.

That means the commission was already active.

If Matthew 28 was only for the future kingdom, then the apostles were prematurely obeying a command supposedly meant for another age.

And again, Acts 10 destroys the limitation theory because Peter literally baptized Gentile believers in the present age, not in the millennium.

So yes, Gentiles will be blessed in the kingdom. But that does not remotely prove the Great Commission was postponed until then.

[Luke 24:47 KJV] "And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem."
[Luke 24:49 KJV] "And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high."

No there is nothing that explicitly states Matthew 28:19 is delayed til the kingdom. Before they went to the nations they had to begin at Jerusalem. Jerusalem rejected Christ and the offer of the kingdom.
[Matthew 28:20 KJV] "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, [even] unto the end of the world. Amen." ****** who else could teach what Jesus commanded them but the apostles themselves? The nations will be in the kingdom so therefore the resurrected apostles will teach them in the kingdom. I am not dogmatic, it just makes sense.