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Benjamin writes, and this is a good one,
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"Who is qualified to baptize believers?
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I moved to a new town. Led someone to Christ.
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And I baptized them in the local river.
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My pastor said that because I was not ordained,
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it was invalid.
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I'm pretty sure that the Great Commission says
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to make disciples of all nations and baptize them,
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so if I was wrong to baptize the new believer,
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I guess I was wrong to lead him to Christ and make disciples.
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Please help me and others with the clarification of baptism."
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His question is three-fold:
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Who is able to be baptize, one, the mode, two?
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And who is able to perform the baptism?
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What do you guys think?
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Well, let's start with his first one.
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Who is able to be baptized? Christians.
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Believers. Can anybody prove that?
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Acts 2? Repent and be baptized.
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That's the order right. Repent and be baptized.
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In Mark 16, the order is believe and be baptized.
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Repent and be baptized.
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And every single example in the Scriptures
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is an example of someone believing and being baptized.
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Acts 18:8 Many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed,
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and were baptized.
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Acts 8:12, "But when they believed Phillip as he
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preached good news about the Kingdom of God
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and the name of Jesus Christ,
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they were baptized, both men and women."
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Acts 2:41, "Those who received his Word..."
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First, they received the Word...
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"were baptized. And there were added that day
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about 3,000 souls."
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Matthew 28, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations..."
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and then you baptize, "baptizing them in the name
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of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."
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That's always the order in Scripture. Believe - be baptized.
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Repent, be baptized.
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Anybody that you find in Scripture being baptized,
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you have one of two scenarios:
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it either says that they believed and they were baptized,
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or it just tells you they were baptized,
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and the assumption is that they believed.
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Never are we told that an unbeliever was baptized.
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Never.
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Except possibly Simon, and yet it says
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he believed and was baptized.
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Now later, it turned out his profession wasn't true,
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but we see that there was at least
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a nominal profession or a nominal belief first.
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But that's always the order.
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Ok. So by example in the Scriptures,
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we have that command: the Great Commission in Matthew 28,
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we make disciples and baptize - that's the order.
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By all the examples we're given in Scripture,
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they believe and then they're baptized.
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What about mode? You know what I mean by mode?
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In other words, should we immerse them?
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Should we just pour some water on them?
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Should we just throw a little holy water on their forehead?
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What's the mode?
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(from the room: What does the word mean?)
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Folks, if you don't know this already,
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let me just give you a little bit of history.
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About 200 years ago, William Carey and his cohorts,
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they went to India.
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They translated somewhere around 42 versions of the Scriptures;
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42 different languages they translated.
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In many of those, they translated the word "baptize."
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In other words, they took the Greek: "baptizo"
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or its various forms and they translated it.
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You say so what?
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Well, listen, a faithful translation of that word is "immerse."
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Guess what? Those folks that translated the King James Bible?
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They weren't baptists, and so you know what they did?
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They didn't translate the word. They knew what it meant.
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They transliterated it. You know what that means?
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They basically took the Greek word and Anglicized it
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without translating it.
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Carey and Marshman and Ward, they came along 200 years ago
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and they did all these 42 translations, and in many of them,
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they did translate the word.
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What is the word? Immerse.
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And it fits with the imagery.
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What is the symbolism of baptism?
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Colossians 2:12, "Having been buried with him in baptism."
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The symbolism is burial.
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The symbolism is not carried out if I just splash a couple drops
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of water on your forehead, is it?
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You have the same truth in Romans 6:4.
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"We were buried therefore with Him by baptism."
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Baptism symbolizes burial.
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And the only way that is accomplished
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is when somebody is immersed.
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And that's what the word means.
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So we don't have to go much further than that.
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No, it does not have to be immersion in water.
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The word is "immerse."
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What we're immersed in has to be declared.
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When Christ said He had a baptism to be baptized with,
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He was going to be baptized by the wrath of God.
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Immersed in the sufferings of the vengeance of the Almighty.
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So yes, we can be immersed in various substances,
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so we have to look at the context to see what it is we're immersed into.
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Now here's the last part of this question,
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who is able to perform the baptism?
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I think the guy has a great point, don't you?
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Matthew 28? I mean if his pastor comes to him and says,
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you didn't have authority to do that.
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He can say, well then, so I have authority to make disciples?
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Right?
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Because they both go together in the Great Commission.
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Oh, I'm likely to get in trouble for saying that.
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But let me tell you, who do we find baptizing?
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You see, a lot of times we can look at direct commands,
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sometimes we want to look at Scripture to draw principles out.
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And sometimes we want to look at the example of the early church.
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I can tell you this, Matthew 28, yes,
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it doesn't seem to be specific.
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In fact, there is no commandment that specifically says
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a man has to be ordained to baptize.
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It's not there.
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Anybody who wants to make a case for that,
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they're making a case somehow from silence,
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or they're trying to extract principles from Scripture,
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but they don't have a direct commandment
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that says only ordained men, or only pastors,
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or only elders, or only apostles.
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There's nothing like that.
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Now, the example of the early church.
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Who do we find baptizing?
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John the Baptist;
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Christ baptized, but He didn't really baptize - His disciples did.
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But His disciples, the word disciples can be broad,
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but typically when it's used it probably means the twelve,
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who were the apostles as well.
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Did Paul baptize? Yes, we find in 1 Corinthians he did.
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Now he was glorying in the fact that he didn't baptize a whole lot,
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but he did baptize some.
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Who else baptized? Who baptized the Ethiopian eunuch?
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Phillip. Now what was Phillip?
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At best, he was probably a deacon.
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But he was ordained.
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We see that in Acts 6 that that took place.
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So, what you find is that typically the example was
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that it wasn't just indiscriminately everybody.
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You do find it typically was the ordained men.
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It tended to be the men that had been called out
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by God for the ministry.
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That seems to be the example.
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But I'm not certain we can make a steadfast...
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I know there's men that are adamant at this point,
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but I'm not certain that the Bible really gives us
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some definitive word on this.
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Men may speculate, but I think at best,
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that's what we do - it's speculation.
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So that's as far as I can go with that.
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And I would say this, I would say look,
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if you're a young man, and your pastor
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has strong convictions about this, you should submit to him in it,
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because he does have Biblical examples
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of it being ordained men.
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If he wants to go to the practice of the early church,
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you really are not going to find anybody other than
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God's ordained men doing the baptisms.
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So by practice, they may have a point.
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And I would say it's in your best interest
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to submit to your pastors on that point.
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If he's got a strong conviction there,
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definitely submit to him in it.