Featured Are some Baptists "historic revisionists " ?

Since the New Testament era, the Catholic Church has always understood baptism differently, teaching that it is a sacrament which accomplishes several things, the first of which is the remission of sin, both original sin and actual sin—only original sin in the case of infants and young children, since they are incapable of actual sin; and both original and actual sin in the case of older persons.

Peter explained what happens at baptism when he said, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38). But he did not restrict this teaching to adults. He added, "For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to him" (2:39). We also read: "Rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name" (Acts 22:16). These commands are universal, not restricted to adults. Further, these commands make clear the necessary connection between baptism and salvation, a
connection explicitly stated in 1 Peter 3:21: "Baptism . . . now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ."

 

McCree/ BrotherJoseph, 1 Peter 3:21 - Peter expressly writes that “baptism, corresponding to Noah's ark, now saves you; not as a removal of dirt from the body, but for a clear conscience. “ Hence, the verse demonstrates that baptism is salvific (it saves us), and deals with the interior life of the person (purifying the conscience, like Heb. 10:22), and not the external life (removing dirt from the body). Many scholars believe the phrase "not as a removal of dirt from the body" is in reference to the Jewish ceremony of circumcision (but, at a minimum, shows that baptism is not about the exterior, but interior life). Baptism is now the “circumcision” of the new Covenant (Col. 2:11-12), but it, unlike the old circumcision, actually saves us, as Noah and his family were saved by water. Another point one of you guys brought up in a previous post, was the question of circumcision, the problem was that" the gates of heaven were not opened until the Sacrifice". Circumcision { Infants }of the Old and Infant Baptism of the New. Jewish and Christianity accepted a different cultural understanding of male and female infants.

Again, notice the parallel between Heb. 10:22 and 1 Peter 3:21: (1) Heb. 10:22 – draw near to the sanctuary (heaven) / 1 Peter 3:21 – now saves us. (2) Heb. 10:22 – sprinkled clean, washed with pure water / 1 Peter 3:20-21 – saved through water, baptism. (3) Heb. 10:22 – from an evil conscience (interior) / 1 Peter 3:21 – for a clear conscience (interior). Titus 3:6 and 1 Peter 3:21 also specifically say the grace and power of baptism comes “through Jesus Christ” (who transforms our inner nature).

 

BrotherJoseph, you are interpreting that passage wrong. I have the correct understanding but it is no sense in taking my time to write the rather lengthly explanation. I will give a snippit.... which also refers to Wis.7:26. These same terms are used of the Logos in Phito. The author now turns from the cosmological role of the preexistent Son to the redemptive work of Jesus: He brought about purification from sins and has been exalted to the right hand of God [ see Ps 110: 1 } The once humiliated and crucified Jesus has been declared God's Son, and this name shows His superiority to the angels. The reason for the author's insistence on that superiority is, among other things, that in some Jewish traditions angels were mediators of the old covenant { see Acts 7:53; Gal 3: 19 }. Finally, Jesus' superiority to the angels emphasizes the superiority of the new covenant to the old because of the heavenly priesthood of Jesus.

 

BrotherJoseph, about the Ark and Baptism.-

The great flood is a testament to God’s hatred of sin and determination to wipe it from the face of the earth. He of course offers a way to escape the waters of destruction. He instructs Noah to build an ark which carries to safety eight people and a pair of every animal. With these, he provides the earth and the human race with a new beginning. As a sign of God’s covenant of friendship with the newly recreated world, he places a rainbow in the sky.

From the beginning, Christians have seen in this story a hint of a greater work of God that would come later. The first flood swept away the evil from the surface of the earth, but not from the hearts of the ark’s passengers. The Red Sea closing in upon Pharaoh and his armies had much the same limitation–it did not cleanse the soul of Israel.

So an even greater act of salvation was needed, one that was more radical, that penetrated to the very “root” of evil. God himself enters into our world in the form of a man, and engages in hand to hand combat with the father of lies. First Jesus himself is immersed in the waters, a sign of the destruction of sin, though he himself has no sin. Next he goes into the wilderness to strike at sin’s agent.




The wrestling match is won by the Son. This, however, is not the decisive battle. Mark is a gospel of few words and does not relate what Luke (4;13) tells us: Satan left Jesus to await another opportunity. That opportunity came later, brokered by Judas, Caiphas, and Pilate. By means of the cross, the sign of this New Covenant, Jesus decisively vanquished sin and its patron, letting loose from his pierced side a stream that was more powerful than the ancient waters traversed by Noah and Moses. Through faith and immersion in these mighty waters of baptism, sin can finally be scoured not just from the skin but from the heart, putting to death not men, but the old humanity, separated from God and infected with the disease of disobedience. The first Letter of Peter (3:20) points out something that we can easily miss–there happened to be 8 persons in the ark. Jesus rose from the day after the Sabbath, the “Eighth Day.” God created the old world in six days, rested on the seventh, and performed the new creation on the eighth. For this reason, in the early Church, baptisms did not usually take place inside the main church sanctuary. Rather, smaller buildings called baptistries were erected next door to the church. It is notably that they were generally octagonal- eight-sided. Why? Because baptism means burying the old man with Christ and emerging from the womb of the Church as a new creation, sharing in Christ’s resurrection.

Lent is a time intimately linked with baptism. In the early Church, it was the season that catechumens prepared themselves through prayer and fasting for their paschal journey to the baptistry. The faithful prayed and fasted with them. It was also the time that those who had soiled the white garments of their baptism through sin prepared for reconciliation during the sacred Triduum.

If we’re honest, all of us fall to some degree into that second category. So let us determine– through prayer, fasting, and giving–to intercede for the catechumens and candidates, and at the same time to scour lukewarmness and compromise from our own hearts. Procrastination and excuses must be put to death. Now is the acceptable time, now the day of salvation!

 

DHK, my bad mistake, sorry.

 

BANNER Article from The Goldstein Letters- 1956

ARTICLE 69:
ORIGIN OF THE BAPTIST CHURCH

"It is not correct to say that the Baptist church is of 17th century origin. We Baptists know that our church dates back to John the Baptist. That is one of the reasons for its name."

The above declaration was made by a gentleman who had been given a copy of The Pilot by his Catholic friend. It was one of the issues in which the attention of Rev. Moses H. Gitlin, the" Jewish (Baptist) Christian" minister, was called to the fact that the first one of the 22 now existing Baptist denominations came into existence about 16 centuries after the Holy Spirit came down upon the Apostles, and the public work of Christ's Church, the Catholic Church, began.

If what the gentleman said were so, then does his church date back to a man, and not to our Lord, Who is true God as well as true man. His church may go back to John for its method of baptizing by immersion, but not for its origin. John the Baptist was a faithful Jew and not a Christian, though he, by God's grace, recognized Jesus to be the Jewish looked-for Messiah. John's Jewish baptism was infinitely different from the Baptism Christ administered; which Christ instituted as the first of His seven Sacraments (St. Matt. 28:19-20). This was recognized by John, who said, "I have baptized you with water, but He will Baptize you with the Holy Spirit" (St. Mark 1:8).

John did not attempt to establish a Church, for he was a member of the one and only Church of God then existing, the Church of the Children of Israel. That Church functioned with Divine authority until the Veil in the Temple was rent. This was prior to the First Pentecost Day, when the Christ-instituted Catholic Church began to function.

The gentleman's claim, which is entirely unhistoric, ... The declaration that the Baptist church is of John the Baptist origin is refuted by Baptists themselves in the U.S. Report of Religious Bodies. While the unwarranted claim is made therein that the founder, authority and creed of the Baptist churches can be traced "back to the New Testament," it is asserted that the first definitely known group of "persons holding Baptist doctrines" were the Anabaptists (re-baptizers). Their organizer and leader was Thomas Munzer (1521), who revolted against Luther. He opposed infant Baptism, holding that persons Baptized in infancy, should be reBaptized upon becoming adults. Driven by Luther from Germany to the Low countries, some Anabaptists were gathered together by Menno Simons (an unfrocked Catholic priest) into groups known as Mennonites. "To their influence," the Report says, "in all probability, the English Baptists owe their churches, established in Amsterdam in 1608 and London in 1611." The English minister of the first Baptist church was John Smyth, a former Anglican minister. So while the Baptists, if they desire, may trace their Baptism by immersion to the Jewish baptism of John the Baptist, they cannot legitimately trace their origin as a distinct religious denomination further back than 1608 and 1611, even though they claim to have been "influenced, in all probability," by the Anabaptists, as they say in the Report of Religious Bodies.

The Baptists are convicted of error "out of their own mouth" in the Report of Religious Bodies. Therein they prove themselves to have been of the 17th century origin as a distinctive Protestant congregation; whereas the Church that Christ established dates from the Year 33 A. D., which is 1575 years before John Smyth organized the first Baptist church congregation.
Our insistence upon the historic fact of the Apostolic origin of the Catholic Church, and her unbroken record of organic existence throughout the Christian ages, is, and will continue to be resented by the Baptists. They repudiate submission to a living authority in religion; while they declare that their "cardinal principle is implicit obedience to the plain Word of God"; which Word of God evidences the institution by Christ of the authority they repudiate.

What, but an erroneous concept of the Word of God, prompted Dr. Edward Hughes Pruden, pastor of the First Baptist church of Washington, which President Truman attends, to repudiate the suggestion of Pope Pius XII, that all Christians be united in one Church, on the ground that "it seems to me utterly foreign to the spirit of the New Testament?" Surely there are numerous texts in the New Testament that call for a unified belief, and unification of spiritual authority, such as exist in the Catholic Church. In fact, the oneness, doctrinally and authoritatively, in the Catholic Church, is a New Testament credential that proves her to be of Christ.

Here are a few of many such texts. St. John 10:16-17 tells of the readiness of Christ to lay down His life to have all His sheep in "one fold": St. Paul identifies the members of Christ's Church, the "body of Christ," with members of the human body in 1 Cor. 12, and not a hundred kind of bodies, such as make up Protestantism: St. Matthew 16:18 plainly declares that Christ would build a Church, not churches, as He did, against which the "gates of Hell" would endeavor to prevail, as they have against the Catholic Church throughout the Christian ages, but without success. St. Matthew 18:17 contains the command to "hear the Church" and Romans 15:6 calls upon Christians to "glorify God with one mind and one mouth." This last named text alone proves that "it is utterly foreign to the spirit of the New Testament" to assume that the will of Christ can be expressed through the minds and mouths of 22 different kinds of Baptist churches, and a couple of hundred kinds of other Protestant churches.

If Dr. Pruden and his fellow-Baptists were to follow "the spirit of the New Testament" texts named in the above paragraph, they would graduate from their 17th century Baptist churches, into the Church Catholic, that is of first century origin. We hope a copy of the issue of The Pilot, in which this answer to the Baptist gentleman appears, will be passed on to him for consideration.

Wholesale Baptisms at ponds, rivers and seashores are like picnics, in that they disarrange and clutter up the places where they are held. They caused the following advertisement to be inserted in The Cape Cod Guide: "Positively no more baptizing in my pasture. Twice in the last two months my gate has been left open by religious people, and before I chase my heifers all over the country again, all sinners can go to Purgatory."