Alan Gross
Well-Known Member
No. Technically and Biblically we have said that a person Baptized by a Baptist church is what makes a bona fide Baptist. John wasn't baptized, so he wasn't a member of a Baptist church, or a "Baptist".
Even if we want to accept a * Model Theory of the first church Jesus Founded in Jerusalem, as "Baptist"; it being "Baptist-like" in the distinctives:
(1) The church's Head and Founder is Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:18; Colossians 1:18).
(2) Its only rule of faith and practice is the Bible (II Timothy 3:15-17).
(3) Its members are to be only saved people (Acts 2:41).
(4) Its government is congregational (Acts 1:23-26 - equality).
(5) Its teaching on salvation is that it is by grace (Ephesians 2:8-9).
(6) It has but two ordinances; Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and these are symbolic (Matthew 28:19-20; I Corinthians 11:24).
(7) Its commission is inclusive (Matthew 28:16-20).
(8) It is independent (Matthew 16:19; Matthew 22:21).
* "Wherever, in history, in whatever age, you find churches teaching these doctrines, you have a Baptist church, no matter what name it may go by.
It matters not if we cannot, from church to church, trace it back to the First Baptist Church of Jerusalem.
The succession is there but records may hinder or stop our search. What it teaches is the important thing.
Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail against His church so He guaranteed perpetuity." see http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/hisel.bapt.hst.ntbk.chpt2.html
Independent Landmark Baptists of today (see https://harmony-mbc.com/wp-content/...rticles/The-Church-that-Jesus-Built-Mason.pdf) who hold to this Model Theory of the first church Jesus Founded in Jerusalem, as "Baptist", WOULD VERY MUCH WANT TO IDENTIFY WITH JOHN AND CALL HIM "THE FIRST BAPTIST", but can only do so, as a designation of sorts (he WAS "the Baptist"), or as an endearment, NOT BIBLICALLY.
I believe that is also a sentiment of those wanting to include John as a Baptist, in addition to being, "the Baptist". They wanted to be sure and include him in The Christain Era.
see: THE FIRST BAPTIST
"A pivotal passage is Luke 16:16, "The law and the prophets were until (mechri) John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached (euangelizetai) and every man presseth into it." John did NOT preach the Old Testament law and its ordinances. He DID preach the kingdom of God and Christ its King. Therefore, the new dispensation had to begin with the preaching of John, the first New Testament preacher of the gospel of Christ. This is important; it clarifies John’s position and Christ’s endorsement of him. It prevents the confusion of placing much of the New Testament back into the Old Testament.
A. T. Robertson: "Mark is justified by the word of Jesus (Matthew 11:12f; Luke 16:16) in making John the beginning of the New Dispensation. The actual outward beginning was when John lifted up his voice in the wilderness. ‘Until John,’ Jesus said . . . Luke is fully conscious that the new era opens with John" (John the Loyal), 36). "The Christian movement began with John" (Ibid., p. 52). "John’s (ministry) was first and introduced a new age . . . It was not from the close of John’s ministry that Peter dates the new dispensation, but the beginning . . . It is a great thing to mark a new time. That John did" (Ibid., p. 286). "But with Paul, as with Peter, John is the man who introduced the new age. He first preached the baptism of repentance and it was just before the coming of Jesus" (Ibid., p. 288).
Dr. W. A. Criswell, long pastor of the great First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, wrote in his Ph.D. thesis, "John the Baptist Movement in Its Relation to the Christian Movement" (Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, Ky., 1937), "The Christian movement began with John" (p. 24). "The Gospel of Jesus Christ began with the ministry of the Baptist" (p. 25, from Bruce, Expositor’s Greek Testament Vol. I, p. 341).
Dr. R. C. H. Lenski, a Lutheran: "John was in the kingdom, for faith admitted him to it as it did all other believers. The supposition that John belonged to the old covenant is contradicted by Jesus Himself Who described him as an object of Old Testament prophecy which ended with Malachi; Jesus thus combines John with Himself as opening the promised new covenant" (p. 414, The Interpretation of St. Luke’s Gospel. Used by permission of Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, Minnesota, copyright owners by assignment from the Wartburg Press.)
George E. Hicks: "The text, John 1:29, alone transforms John from the last of the prophets into the first and premier evangelist of Christendom" (John the Baptist, The Neglected Prophet, p. 56).
Since John is in the New Testament, then all of us who believe in Christ since John’s time may claim for ourselves the Gospel truths he proclaimed so well. And since John’s ministry overlapped that of Christ and His apostles, then we can be very sure they were similar. But if John is forced back into the older dispensation, or to the so-called "bridge period," then the door is open to all sorts of speculatings and compartmentalizing by ingenious dispensationalists. When Jesus equated the baptism of John with the "counsel of God" (Luke 7:30), He endorsed both for the entire New Testament dispensation. (Our chapter six has more on John’s New Testament gospel.)"
John was in the Christain Era but as the Baptist, not "a Baptist".
