As I prepared to engage my first Mormon missionaries, my research uncovered that many Mormons have been trained to run at the first whiff of debate. I felt if I was to keep these girls around long enough to speak into them, I needed to create a safe space for our discussion. I approached our discussion with many questions (which was easy since the Mormon marketing and missionary machine is truly a marvel) and the following points as my foundation:
We are Sincere Witnesses
It is in the spirit of witnessing to our perspective truths in the effort to persuade the other of our theologies that we engage in this conversation.
We are not just sharing our theological perspectives. As missionaries, we admit to the desire and hope to help move one another’s internal ‘needle’ toward a more inspired and correct understanding of God by sharing what we believe and why we believe it.
Seeking Spiritual Truth
During the course of a loving and open dialogue, we may not be completely versed in all facets of our faith. When those moments occur, we feel safe enough to admit our uncertainty.
A Loving and Safe Space for Dialogue
If anyone gets upset or angry and the conversation is cut short as a result, everyone loses.
(Interreligious discussions can often carry the added pressure to save the soul of the other. We must remember it is not our job to convert anyone; that is the work of the Holy Spirit. Our job is simply to get the other side to think!)
Against Relativism and Pluralism
We hold what we believe are truths; however, we recognize our truths differ. If we believe in God’s absolute domain, we recognize the presence of moral absolute and universal law, as set forth by our Creator. In comparing our own understanding of God’s teaching, we agree
One of us can be right, or
We can both be wrong, but
We can’t both be right.
Points for the Christian to Avoid
Don’t argue peripheral points, such as polygamy; you’ll spend too much time in the weeds.
While it certainly merits mentioning, don’t spend too much time attacking Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Though failed prophecies, errant Egyptian translations, racism, poor character judgments and a myriad of other Mormon pitfalls salt this path, the argument is against the system, not the people. Our warfare is not against flesh and blood.
Points for the Christian to Address
According to a 2012 LDS survey taken to analyze why Mormons defect, here are the top five reasons Mormons leave the LDS church:
I ceased to believe the LDS doctrine/theology
I studied Mormon church history and lost my belief
I lost faith in Joseph Smith
I lost faith in the Book of Mormon
I lost confidence in the general authorities of the Mormon church
Obviously, then, these would be the places to start when beginning a discussion around the validity of Mormonism.
The survey, PowerPoint presentation and video by Mormon John Dehlin (indeed, the whole website, whymormonsquestion.org) was taken down somewhere in Spring of 2016. Last capture by Archive.org was April 24, 2016. Over 3,000 respondents were surveyed through liberal and former-LDS websites, forums, blogs and podcasts. During the survey, one respondent said:
“As I studied Church history and uncovered many controversial historical evidence, I would frequent LDS apologetic sites for answers (e.g. FARMS (now the Maxwell Institute), Shields, FAIR). I soon discovered those sites rarely dealt with the controversial evidences but rather often skirted or obfuscated the issue and frequently resorted to personal attacks on the individuals who were publishing historical information.”
I’ll do a deeper write-up on the survey findings in a future post as I believe the information is useful to both Mormons and Christians alike.
One hot evening in May 2016, I was putting away the lawnmower in our garage as I noticed two young ladies standing on our front porch. My wife and oldest son were pointing them over to me saying, “He’s the one you want to talk to.”
They came over and introduced themselves as sisters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. As we stood in the driveway, we engaged in very agreeable conversation about the Trinity, whereby they explained they believed in three separate persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—and I countered with a brief explanation that it’s one God in the Trinity; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
When it became apparent we weren’t quite speaking the same language (though it sounded very similar,) I went to my car to bring them a Greg Koukl CD on the Trinity. I figured Greg could do a better job of explaining things than I was doing. The sisters immediately rejected it, saying while they were on their mission, they were not allowed to listen to any media, watch any media.. nothing. But they were allowed to have conversations with people.
By then my amused wife had come out to remind me it was bedtime for our kids. The missionaries and I set up another time to talk. I suggested exactly one week later, which I knew would give me more time to get clear on the Mormon position. The good sisters agreed and the date was set. As they left, they thanked me for “being so cool.” Apparently, they had been run off before by un-Christ-like Christians who hurled insults, calling them agents of the devil.
As I began to study Mormonism, one thing became clear. This was not Christianity. It sounded like Christianity and walked like Christianity, but it brought twists and contortions to God’s Word that plainly don’t exist when one spends time in textual analysis of the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic.
Through study, it also became apparent many missionaries run at first signs of conflict or Christian resolve. This was something I did not want. To quote a spiritual mentor of mine, “No contact, no impact.” Someone had cautioned me against letting them into my home, but as I discovered, this is caution for those Christians who are relatively new to their faith. While I was only about 7 months old from my born-again commitment, I was steeping myself in the works of Greg Bahnsen and Greg Koukl.
Over the next four weeks, the sisters and I met once a week. Their next visit, they brought another, older couple. The husband represented a member of the Mormon priesthood. As we sat in my home office, I sat on the hearth, deliberately and symbolically positioning myself between them and the inferno. By the end of that meeting, we had established introduced the concepts of Joseph’s failed prophecies and the notion that the apostasy meant Jesus and the Apostles failed to establish a meaningful church.
The third meeting messed me up. Just the three women this time, they took 20 minutes to show me a DVD on the origins of Mormonism, told “Little House on the Prairie” style. I wasn’t prepared for this and—though I agreed to watch the video to gain a deeper understanding into the marketing machine that is Mormonism—we parted ways that night with heaviness on both sides. One of the sisters was coming to the end of her mission and would be going back home to Arizona that next week. “Well, I suppose I’ll at least be able to see you in heaven after this life,” she said.
The stakes are different for we Christians, however. For me, I felt a sense of urgency to meet one last time; to speak into these girls and witness to them as best I could. In my own mind, I had not witnessed well this meeting. That night, I wept as I prayed for the four Mormons. Of the sisters, I knew their parents had to be wildly proud of them; I know I would be if they were my daughters.
For our last meeting, I had resolved to become more aggressive. This time, it was just the two sisters who appeared at the door. As the song goes, “by the blood of the Lamb and the words of our testimony,” I poured into them as best I could my own journey from Catholicism to agnostic to regenerate born-again. Through 15 pages of notes, I did my best to respectfully bring them back to the authority of the Bible, the nature of God and Jesus, and the differences between our notion of heaven and hell. Still, it wasn’t enough time.
As we parted, I let them know this would be the last meeting for a while. All the research and preparation was taking a toll on the rest of my work. They understood and we shook hands. We have kept in touch and I will continue to point them toward the truth of Jesus Christ and God’s Word. This blog post and the posts to follow are a part of that effort.
It is early evening and I am somewhere tropical.. beach resort.. blue skies dissolving into a setting sun, powdery sands, smell the salty sea air.. watching people splash around in a meat-market mentality, scoping each other out, picking each other up, laughing, eating, drinking, lounging in and around the pool. I was bored by it. Found myself walking past it all, alone, towards the pier. Suddenly, someone shouts and points to the sky. The firmament changes from blue to a beige and two halves of sky come together to become one. The two halves are rimmed, like the trim on a bed-sheet, and those edges are colored by three stripes; a bright crimson red on the outer edges, white in the center, and lastly midnight blue. As the sheets of sky collide, the stripes mixed with the fluidity of paint and become one set; red, white and blue. As they begin to mix slightly, a greater disturbance rippled across the stripe, like raindrops hitting a puddle, and for a brief second one can see the silhouettes of men on horseback galloping through the sky. (The stippling of the stripes had been caused by the hooves.)
The silhouettes disappeared again, though the air still rippled with their presence as they came closer. By now, the crowd was screaming in panic, fleeing here and there. I knew there was no escaping power like this, so I found a place to hole up and wait. I remembered the Book of Revelations, and though it wasn’t as I imagined; I recognized the horsemen and their intent. I felt a sense of déjà vu as I walked on the pier and found a square cut out of the wooden planks (about 4′ x 4′), right before a step up which led further down the pier. There was a ladder that led into the water below.
Whatever possessed me to lay myself across that weird doorway into the sea, I have no idea, but I suspended myself across it, t-boning myself with my arms and feet holding me up and with the water supporting my back. As the mayhem continued and people ran around me, I completed the illusion of being crucified by placing one bare foot on top of the other and then I closed my eyes, relaxed my body and prepared to stay there for a long, long time.
At one point, a presence stood over me, I know.. I saw it in my mind’s eye (third-person now, standing behind me on the shore).. the air curving around a tall, transparent warrior, easily 10-12 feet tall.. the massive sword with a blade shaped like a diamond or a long, thin kite, also transparent but visible. I did not look up, I did not open my eyes, I did not say a word. The presence finally left to assist in the slaughter, leaving me as I was.
As the horsemen worked their way inland, the screams began to become more distant and silence ebbed in with the tide. In my mind’s eye, I saw the landscape, the tropical paradise it once was, with its tiki torches, thatch-roofed bars, crystal-clear pools and swank hotels, now polluted with corpses and the gore of the slaughtered. Still, I did not open my eyes nor climb up from my place.
Instead I slept, and awoke in a house after what seemed to be 30 years of slumber. As I emerged from one of the bedrooms in that dimly lit home, a man of early fifties (possibly early fifties) walked past. He smiled and said something. It might have been ‘so you finally decided to join us’ or something of the like, I don’t recall exactly. He was dressed in olive drab, almost as if he was a soldier, but there were no identifying marks on his uniform, no medals, no patches, no embroidery of any kind. He wore black wing-tips instead of combat boots. He was white-haired (one to two inches long and standing straight out), well-built, barrel-chested, and stronger and more vital with life than most men half his age. (This was definitely not my grandfather, however.) I had a feeling people referred to him as “The General”. There was a glow about him that was nothing you saw, but something you felt.
He was on a mission to grab some extra silverware or some other dining effect and led me back into the living room, where a large table had been set up with candles and a (Christmas?) feast. The TV was on and some of the 20 to 30 people in that room looked at me as I entered, some watched the TV, but all were standing with their hands clasped and singing the popular New Years song, Auld Lang Syne:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne
I met some of their glances and then hurried out of the room, finally realizing that I had been spared. I ran into one of the side bedrooms, fell to one knee and began praying. A woman came in to check on me and tell me that they all came to be there in the same way. She said that there was a list of names on the Internet where I would go and look for the name of my wife, to see if she had survived, same as I. (Note: I was not married at the time of this dream.)
I awoke, astonished, with a deep sense of, “What just happened there?” As I relived the dream and tried to crystallize the details, I remembered that I had, just this week, given a speech on abortion. I was overwhelmed by the dream, and to my surprise, I cried. I cried because I had been spared in the dream (relief) and I cried because we are killing ourselves and when destruction comes, we will have no one to blame but ourselves (guilt, remorse). As the tears quickly subsided, I said, “We are our own cancer.” I thought about calling my mother (she has a gift for dream interpretation,) but instead, tried to get the details of this dream into print ASAP.
Called Mum. A few things to notice:
– There were no children in the dream. ‘Paradise’ was without children. Hedonistic.
– The water-filled square may symbolize the womb. The ladder only had one aluminum rail as opposed to the usual two = umbilical cord.
While surfing Facebook today, I ran across a revealing post on Hillary Clinton’s inconsistent position on the hot social topics of our time:
While I had no intention of voting for her, this video brought forward my dissatisfaction with the ALL the remaining presidential candidates into full Techni-color glory. Normally, I would vote Republican, but this year I was really considering abstaining. Neither business acumen nor political chameleon superpowers are enough to make up for the gross lack of character and integrity we’re presented with this year.
However, as I mentioned in my Facebook post on this topic, “the retort to that is, ‘Many have died to so we can have the freedom to vote as we want.’ Certainly abstaining is part of that freedom, but.. is it right? A quote against abstaining from the vote would be one commonly attributed to Einstein: ‘The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.'”
Well, one of the folks who responded to that thread had probably one of the best suggestions I’ve heard. Her words: “At this point I feel my best option is to vote a write-in (namely : Ted Cruz)…still exercising my right to vote – and yet standing by my convictions. Maybe it won’t matter at this election – but who knows the influence it could have at the next if enough of us take a stand?”
I had forgotten about the write-in option. I think that will be it for me. In the meantime, may God have mercy on our country. Like Israel before us, we are being judged and are being left to our iniquity. Hang onto your seats, recommit to sharing the Gospel, and pray for forgiveness.
Okay, so today I want to talk to you about something that blew up this week at children’s ministry. Every other week, I help my church out in the second grade classroom, so I’m dealing with seven and eight year olds. I’m just one of the adults there out of two or three volunteers. We end up with anywhere between twelve and twenty children. First we gather in large group, then there’s some relational time, and then there’s some teaching—that kind of stuff. Then, we come back to our own little classroom where we engage in an activity.
It’s been a good form of ministry. It’s nothing I sought out, really. I had made the prayer, “Lord, help me serve. Help me know how you would have me be of service.” Within sixteen hours, I had the church asking me to join the ministry. They sent out a note saying, “Hey. Your kids go to our Sunday school. How about the parents come and help out and join the children’s ministry?” So, that’s how I came to be a part of children’s ministry, and I do that every other week.
This last weekend, we had a little surprise. I was sitting down and playing chess with one of the children. One of the other boys runs up and says, “Hey, look what I made.” This is what they made.
When I saw that, I was kind of like, “What? Where did you see that?” He goes, “MLG.” I was like … I didn’t even catch it the first time. I looked up at the other closest adult, the gal (I had a couple serving with me as well…) I looked up at her, and she saw what I was seeing. She just kind of shook her head, as if to say she knows. I said, “Say that again?” He said, “MLG.” I didn’t know what MLG was. She didn’t know what MLG was. Her husband didn’t know what MLG was. Obviously, I had to go look it up later on. Well, what I did is I told the child, “You know what? That’s not a good symbol. You need to throw that away. That is not a good symbol.”
He did. He complied. He was like, “Oh. Okay. I didn’t know. It’s in the game.” Okay. I still don’t know what the game is. I may ask him about it. I wanted to talk with his parents, but the parents didn’t pick him up, his older sibling picked him up. In retrospect, I should have said, “You know, you’re not going to release him. We need the parents to come here.” There was so much commotion at the end of class, when the parents are checking their kids back out after service, I totally dropped it from my mind, totally blanked on it, forgot all about it. Boo to me. Still, I ended up, obviously, digging it out of the trash so that I could show you.
Yeah. Illuminati.
Can you say Illuminati?
Not good. I had a similar experience to that myself, growing up. I was about this age when we were watching some sort of TV show, it was on the weekend, so we weren’t at school. Hitler and the Nazis came on the screen. I don’t remember what the show was about, but I just remember seeing the impression of the Nazi regime, and they’re all doing their zig heils, and they’re in the backdrop, behind Hitler. There’s this massive Nazi flag with the bent cross. I remember thinking, “Wow. That’s so cool.” It made such an impact on me right then and there. (It’s funny, because I just shaved my head. No, it’s not connected at all.)
I went and I had this cork board—this bulletin board—in my room where I could put up little things. I don’t remember what any of that stuff was that was on it. Photos of family and that kind of stuff maybe? I drew on the cork of the cork board the bent cross. When she eventually found it, my mother obviously started having heart palpitations. She said, “Matthew, what is this?” I said, “Oh, it’s a cross. It’s a symbol that I saw on that show.” She goes, “Oh no, honey. No, no, no, no. That symbol reeks of evil.” She told me about the Nazis, and millions were killed as a result of people lining up behind that symbol.
That made a big impression on me. I was like, “Oh no. I don’t want that.” I carved the cork out of the cork board and threw it away, obviously. It was imprinted at that point. Nope. That symbol’s not so good, doesn’t have a good meaning. Might have had a different meaning back before the Nazis used it, but the Nazis turned that symbol. Yeah.
Finding the Illuminati Eye in a child’s hand this weekend was…
Parents, you need to have discernment. If you’re letting your children—even at the age of eight and ten and twelve—play first-person shooter games (because that’s primarily what I found at MLG; MajorLeagueGaming.com) this is not okay. Not okay. We’ve got mass murderers who can point to the violent first-person video games (say, Call of Duty,) to say this is what they use for practice. They practiced it over and over and over. This is how they trained for going out and having their shooting spree.
Not good. This is not good, gang. If you think, “Oh, it’s just a video game…”—it’s programming. It’s programming, just like your TV and your radio. It’s programming. Garbage in, garbage out. We try to keep first-person shooters out of our home, and still, they occasionally creep in and we have to get rid of them.
Not just first-person shooters. Violent shows—like Walking Dead for crying out loud (don’t get me started.)
Keep vigilant. You are called to discern what is proper media for your children.
That does not mean first-person shooters.
That does not mean violent TV shows.
Does not mean violent music.
Does not mean racy music. (Even though it has a good beat, it may not be what you want your kids growing up to, because it will have an effect on their behavior with you and with others. You may have some unsavory results come teen years.)
That’s it guys. Just use your discernment. Watch out for stuff that’s creeping into your media and your children’s media. Get it out. Get it out of your house. Get it gone. All right?
Comments deleted from YouTube???
Soon after this video was posted at YouTube, there was a thread that bubbled up there. It was quickly deleted. I’m not sure why, but I’ve opted to record what I have left of it as best I can. Conspiracy theories, anyone? Hmm….
Ovo borus (Wed 5/4, 10:52 AM)
I’m sorry no one trains on video games to go murder people in life. When actually it’s a proven fact the government has killed more people in the name of religion than any other thing period.
Levaire (Sat 5/7, time unknown)
+Ovo borus, wellll… it’s certainly leaning that way, right? Really, it’s pretty simple. Think “garbage in, garbage out.”
“Norway’s alleged mass killer testified on Thursday that he played video games as a way to train for a shooting spree that killed 77 people last summer. In particular, Anders Behring Breivik said at his trial that he played ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’ as a means of shooting practice, according to CNN’s report.”
Do violent video games play a role in shootings?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/18/opinion/bushman-video-games/
Ovo borus (Sat 5/7, 01:22 PM)
+Levaire did Cain have video games to blame for his crimes?
[Lost rest of this response? This is the only thing that shows up in the email notification.]
Ovo borus (Sat 5/7 01:24 PM)
+Levaire so you found what, 6 things that back up a statement… that is enough to base a theory upon?
Could I not then apply the 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon method to anything and find the same correlations? In fact, give me any made up hypothesis and I’ll prove it with 7 sources in less than a week.
Just because you read it on the internet doesn’t make it real.
[To this, I had no real intention of responding. It became obvious this person was clinging to their gaming without being open to the fact that maybe the programming they’re plugging into isn’t in their best interest.]
Praise God! We have a date scheduled for my baptism!
As an infant, I was baptized into the Catholic Church. Since coming back around to a deeper walk in my Christian faith, it has been on my heart to consciously accept baptism as a new man in Christ. Numerous attempts to be baptized through my non-denominational church have stalled, not through any lack of readiness on my part, but through a lack of administration on theirs. Since losing their baptismal pastor last year, they have been pushing the baptismal responsibility back and forth between departments. They even cancelled their Easter baptism this year with a commitment to conduct baptisms “sometime late spring, early summer.”
What?
When I asked my Baptist pastor about this and he said it was because they don’t view baptism as membership into their church. My brother in contemplative prayer understands this and confirms that baptism is not to be church-specific. He says the old man dies upon immersion and is born new in Jesus Christ into the Body of Christ upon emerging; not into a specific church family. Then he made a joke about taking me down to the river and taking care of it.
So, after more consideration, I’m taking him up on that offer. It seems fairly appropriate, actually, when I think about our biblical example. If Christ is our example to follow, I will follow Him in this too.
Pastor Doug of Fellowship of the Martyrs Church of Liberty, Missouri, points out the connection between water baptism and Passover. This inspired me to look into the dates for Passover to possibly align with that. Well, in the year 2016, Passover takes begins Friday evening, April 22, and runs until the evening of Saturday, April 30.
So, April 30th it will be!
More soon!
P.S. Enjoy the following article which more clearly states the connection between baptism and Passover.
Baptism & Passover: Two Pictures of Our Need for Christ
by Jerry Laws, December 2001
From time to time my thoughts keep coming back to the process of salvation. The more I think about it, the broader and deeper it gets. In this ever-expanding process I’m being made more keenly aware that there is “nothing but Christ!” What I mean by this is that in the Father’s purity, He only views His beloved Son.
And by the Father’s grace (ability) we believers have been placed or positioned “in Christ” (1Cor 1:30) whether we are actively aware of it or not.
Salvation is a process of delivering us from the world, Satan, and self. It’s a process of the old man’s death, and the new creature in Christ growing into a mature thinking and acting individual, just as our Messiah was and is (Eph 4:13). The apostle Paul’s determined goal for all those whom he ministered to, was given for our reference in Galatians 4:19, “My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you.” This central theme of the reformation process is summarized in 2Cor 3:18, and is specifically emphasized in 2Cor 4:11; “For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”
Now the principle of life out of death is pictured both in our public baptism and the Christian Passover service.
Let us first briefly review the need for a Savior to deliver us from ourselves and the evil that exists in this world. Adam and Eve’s wrong choice resulted in mankind’s separation from God, pictured by removing them from the Garden and thereby barring them from the Tree of Life. In order for reconciliation to come about, God the Father had to first propose deliverance—salvation. Secondly, the beloved Son had to purchase it. And finally, God’s Holy Spirit has to apply it. The first two steps have been accomplished, and the third is in active process.
There is no amount of good works we can do to earn salvation. Our part is not production, but reception of our life “in Christ Jesus”, who is our salvation. However, our efforts are involved here as this entails Bible based fact-finding, and explicit faith in Him and His purpose for us “in Christ”. It also involves our patient trust as He takes us through the necessary purification process involved (Tit 2:11–14).
As God’s calling continues to go out, the people have a choice to make, not unlike Adam and Eve’s choice. Many factors can affect the response: love of the world and the things that are in it; strong self-will; rebellious natures; procrastination, etc. (I remember a friend telling me that it took him 18 years from his calling to make a firm commitment before being baptized. Praise God, he did make it.)
Even after we have made the correct choice of Life, I don’t think most have a very deep understanding of the life-out-of-death process that we have entered into with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This usually comes later on with our child-training.
Submitting to water baptism is to be a testimony, or giving evidence that we have accepted the facts of Scripture, and acknowledge our need for a Savior in order to be reconciled back to God. We therefore reckon, or count ourselves to have been placed in union with Jesus Christ, by the Spirit (Rom 6:1–11). Baptism need be done only one time in one’s life—at an age when one is old enough for a life-long adult commitment. It also testifies to our position; we have died to—out of the power of—the old life and are alive in the newness of life.
Our “position” is not a place, but is a person with a personality. Sometimes we have difficulty grasping this concept. Making a comparison with our human birth might help here. When we were born into this world, we automatically inherited the characteristics of our forefathers clear back to the beginning of time. We inherited a deep self-centered nature that is prone to sin. We didn’t have any choice in the matter. We were therefore “positioned” with Adam’s nature—our flesh—which is simply not compatible with God’s nature (Rom 3:23; 7:18; 8:7).
When we are immersed into the water, our old man is as a dead man, crucified and its power over us is broken. As we come out of the water, we have entered into the newness of life. This is our new position, “in Christ” and the old man has no power over the new man in Christ. Remember when Jesus was nailed up to the stake, and He was up there crucified for a period of time before He finally died. This is where our old man has been placed—up on the stake with Jesus, crucified, power broken, but not yet annihilated.
There is an allegory which has been given to me by another, and it might help clarify this situation: there is a ship on a voyage and the captain has been tried and found guilty of a capital offense, and as such has been put below deck in the ship’s jail. The new captain of our ship gives good guidance and steers a true course along safe harbors. Meanwhile the old captain continues to loudly claim he is the rightful leader of the ship, and the crew are so used to listening to him that they still sometimes do—which causes a lot of problems for the ship. Explanation: We are the ship on our voyage of life. Our old man is the old captain who has been put in chains, and his power over us is broken at our baptism. He will be permanently removed from our ship when the ship reaches the final port, but he still causes a lot of problems in the meantime. The new captain of our ship is, of course, Jesus Christ.
This brings us to the Christian Passover/Lord’s Supper connection and the reason why we need to partake of it as an annual memorial, rather than a one-time experience such as with our baptism.
When we come up out of the water we have entered into a brand new life, separate from the old. It is the life of Christ—He is our life (Col 3:4). We have been positioned in Him by the Father. However, we come into Jesus’ life as newborn spiritual babes, with God’s goal set before us to grow in grace and knowledge until we reach the full maturity, just as the beloved Son of God is mature (2 Pet 3:18; Eph 4:13). This ultimately leads to intimacy and oneness with our God.
The Passover service sets forth our experience in our voyage of life. It is our continual condition, of growing to full maturity. It is not the old man improving, or getting better—for he has been crucified—but our human condition is in the process of purification. We, individually, are being transformed (conformed) to His death in order that His life may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
Even though the ultimate goal of Jesus’ death was to bring us into Life (Rom 5:10), we can never bypass the importance of His beaten body and shed blood. We need to remember—proclaim—His death annually, on a continual basis to help us focus on our need for Him. We acknowledge that our condition in this journey of life is a needy one, because it is all too easy to take our eyes off the new Captain of our vessel and let the old man take control of the helm once again. Remember what the beloved Son of God experienced on our behalf. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1Cor 11:26).
Maybe this will help illuminate what Paul said in Galatians 2:20; “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.”
Permission is granted to reproduce any article in its entirety.
(Laws, J. Servants’ News. December 2001. Retrieved from http://www.servantsnews.com/sn0111/baptism.htm.)
Biblical Quotes Regarding Baptism (KJV)
Acts 2:38 – Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
John 3:5 – Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and [of] the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Acts 22:16 – And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.
Mark 16:16 – He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
1 Peter 3:21 – The like figure whereunto [even] baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
Matthew 28:19 – Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Colossians 2:12-13 – Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with [him] through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.
Ephesians 4:5 – One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
Acts 2:41 – Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added [unto them] about three thousand souls.
Romans 6:3-4 – Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Galatians 3:27 – For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Matthew 3:16 – And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:
Matthew 3:11 – I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and [with] fire:
Acts 8:36-38 – And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.
Colossians 2:12 – Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with [him] through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.
