Featured The term "Reformed"

I am sure you do think it is correct. However it is not correct and a reasonable exegetical based interpretation of 1 Corinthians 5 and 11 will demonstrate it is not. And, yes, I realize we debated that point before, and I think objective readers can see your position was wrong.

 

I have no problem with those who were baptized as infants and who are not yet persuaded that they should be Scripturally baptized, becoming members upon their declaration of faith in Christ and their acceptance of the church constitution. It is very likely that they will be persuaded of Believers' baptism once their eyes are opened to it. The practical problem would come if such people wanted their children baptized; in such instances it would be clear that they would be better off in another church.

 

So am I.

 

No, I am not! John Tombs and then after him John Bunyan were mixed membership churches and they called it "open communion" in the Associational records. Both were condemned by the Seven churches of London and the associational churches. Toombs complained because the Baptists associations stood opposed to him. So opposed, that any church that practiced mixed membership was not recognzed as a true church and when converted were reconstituted.

 

Martin and I are both Baptists, same as you, so how can we be slandering the name of Baptist?
True Gospel churches are those that preach the true Gospel, have the true Jesus!

 

while I was a missionary in Montana I had one member drive 200 miles one way and was hardly ever absent from Sunday services. I know of others who simply moved to the locality where a good church existed. I know of others who sought out a church and ask for a missionary to be called in. It is just a matter of how bad a person wants to be in a true church. Excuses are merely skins of a reason stuffed with a lie. You will do what is necessary if your convictions are strong enough. On the other hand, NT churches are not going to send a missionary to a place if that person is unsound in the faith and will only be a source of trouble.

 

Water Baptism /communion are done after salvation, contribute NOTHING to salvation!

 

So again, you woul d major on things such as modes of Baptism.meaning of communion, which are minor issues, and neglect the all important one, that a real church teaches real Hospel and real Christ?

 

You require that whicjh is not proscribed in the scriptures though!

 

Their chirches are reprobate by believing other than what you believe than?

 

Communion in the scriptures is allowed to any Christian who is not living in a state of known disobedience to the Lord, correct?

 

The welsh Calivnistic Baptists moved whole churches from England to the USA in the early 18th century.

 

Persuaded by the Holy Spirit no doubt, but through the ministry of the people, church, Pastor etc. Look EWF, I am not proposing that anyone brings unconverted people into membership and nor was Bunyan. You've gone off on a tangent of your own.

Let me give a little testimony. I and my wife were saved in our late 30s in a church that had been Plymouth Brethren but is now described as a Free Evangelical Church. A little while after we were approached about being baptized. We both said at first, "No way! We've already been baptized as babies in the Church of England and we're no going to do it again". But after reading through the relevant chapters in the Bible, we came to realise that what we had undergone as infants was not true baptism, and therefore gladly submitted ourselves to Believers' Baptism.

My experience is that most people who leave a paedobaptist church don't leave it because of the question of baptism, they leave because they come to realise that they are not being fed with the Scriptures. Like my wife and me, they don't give the baptism question a thought. If they are born again and gently instructed on the matter, they will come quite quickly to the realisation that infant baptism is not Scriptural. If they are not born again, they shouldn't be being baptized at all or brought into membership, should they?

 

John Tombs, although he wrote more on the subject of baptism than any 17th Century Baptist, remained in the Church of England all his life and never founded any churches. [Mike Renihan has written an interesting biography of him]
If the earliest Baptist churches were so opposed to mixed membership, how come Spillsbury remained within a paedobaptist church for some years up until 1633?

I have a suggestion to make as to a possible answer to my last question.
During the 1630s and until the start of the English Civil War in 1642, Archbishop Laud was persecuting all Dissenting churches, and indeed any Anglicans who did not conform to his ultra-Arminian regime. At this time the dissenting churches tended to have good relations with each other as they were all in the same boat. As the Parliamentarians gained the upper hand in the war, the Presbyterians became the dominant party and they became as intolerant and persecuting as the Anglicans. The Congregationalist poet John Milton wrote, "New presbyter is but old priest writ large." It was at this time that the Baptists, not without justice, became very hostile to paedobaptists in general and Presbyterians in particular.

However, after a brief period of religious freedom under Cromwell, the Monarchy was restored in 1660, and shortly after, the persecution began again, of all dissenters, the Presbyterians as well as the others. Once again, in their distress, the dissenters began to grow more together, and when the Baptists came to compile a new confession in 1677, they were not too proud to base it on the Presbyterian WCF. They also dropped their insistence on Closed Communion and left the individual churches to decide for themselves on that matter. Even Kiffin and Knollys, who were such staunch closed-communionists signed up to the new confession when it was finally published in 1689.