Protecting your position

So mman if someone falls out of eternal saving grace as you say they can, then do they have to be baptized again if they start to believe again?

 

No. none of them are. Baptism is not a prerequisite to salvation, that is my position as well as the majority on this board.
Neither is hearing the gospel, believing it, or obeying it. This is my position as a Primitive Baptist, and not many on this board will agree with this. Including you, I think.

God saved a people in Christ before the foundation of the world. In the eternal mind and purpose of God, these people are already saved. None of them will perish.
In due time, their salvation were completed at the cross by God in the flesh, in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ.
By making baptism a requirement or prerequisite for salvation, you are then limiting the power and ability of God, shortening His hand, if you will, to those only who believe and are baptized.
Therefore, making Him a God of the few, and giving the lie to His word, when He says, in Revelation 7:9:
After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;

Is God then, only the God of the Jews ? or is He God only in the Middle East until Israel was formed out of one man ? Is He not Savior of the whole earth ?

If He is Savior of the whole earth, then were those whom He saved in Christ, and were born in time, before the cross baptized in water ?

If yes, under whose name. If not, then they have all perished, according to your teaching.

 

I believe even I know the answer to that one --

Sure just like Matt 18 says, just like Romans 11 says just like 2Tim 2 shows us.

In Christ,

Bob

 

I do understand the Scriptures. You do not.
You do err not knowing the Scriptures, neither the power of God.

To say that I don't believe Mark 16:16 is a false allegation. I do. I don't believe your twisted interpretation of it as I have explained to you many times. Because I don't believe the same twist that you put on that verse, doesn't mean I don't believe it. This is another false allegation.
And yes the Bible plainly teaches the obvious truth:
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved"
--It teaches it in hundreds of Scriptures whereas you hang your entire theology on just one or two verse in the Bible.

You put your own spin on all of those verses. You attach a meaning to them that they don't have or dont' teach. You do what Peter says:

2 Peter 3:16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
--You wrest the Scriptures to your own destruction.

John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
--Jesus never said that baptism was the way to Him.
Jesus is the way. I go through Christ Himself. There is no other way. What does Jesus say about going through baptism and any other way?

John 10:1-2 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

"He that enters not by the door (Christ) into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way (baptism), the same is a thief and a robber.
--Jesus Himself puts you in the category of a thief and a robber. Christ alone is the only way to salvation, not baptism.

Everyone's experience is different. I was led to the Lord with a person connected with an interdenominational organization that did not put a lot of emphasis on the local church or on baptism. Was I still saved? Of course I was! It was Christ that saved me; not baptism. It wasn't til two years later when I joined a church, and learned about the importance of baptism that I was baptized. You can't deny me my of my salvation just because of your warped theology. There have been posters on this board (and may be still) who have been saved for ten to fifteen years and are still not baptized. What have you got to say for them?

There are many things that are not Biblical. But they are matters of disobedience not matters of salvation. In Luke 18:1, for example, Jesus says that we ought always to pray and not to faint. Paul says to pray without ceasing. Do you do that? Can you honestly say that you pray without ceasing? If not I would say that you are not saved because you fail to keep the commands of Christ. Baptism is a command of Christ--to be kept after one is saved, not before. It is like prayer. It is a command of obedience to Christ. It is a command for the Christian to keep after salvation. It never was a part of salvation and never will be.

They probably prayed to. Christians pray. Christians get baptized. Both are acts of obedience. Paul, in Acts 16, went to a place "where women were gathered to pray." That is the normal thing to do for Christians after they are saved; just like baptism.

The jailor started a life of prayer after he was saved as well. He was saved. Then he was baptized. But he also prayed. He also did many other things a Christian should do. He went and told his family. He witnessed.

Because you don't understand the Scriptures you build a warped theology on these few verses whereas the great totality of Scripture disagrees with you. Jesus said I am the way; not baptism is the way. He calls you a thief and a robber for trying to come to heaven some other way.

I accept the meaning of the verse for what it says. You do not. You have a problem with it. Your problem is with understanding.

Here you have Paul being saved after the fact. Paul had already called upon the name of the Lord. "Lord what wilt thou have me to do?" He was saved. Now you want (according to your theology) to have him saved a second time, because you don't understand what the verse is saying.

These verses speak of the symbolic nature of baptism. What does baptism symbolize? You attach a magical power to the water of baptism here and all of sudden connect yourself to magic and the occult. You might as well become a Hindu with your weird interpretation of these verses.

Again you fail to understand the verse, and take one phrase out of context, not realizing that the entire context is speaking of Jesus that saves.

I don't twist you do. You would have Jesus contradicting himself, who said: "I am the way."

Baptism is not a matter of faith. It is a work, a work of man. It is something that man does. You have just declared that your religion is a religion is a religion of works. It is not by grace through faith that you are saved, rather you say that you are saved by works, that is the work of baptism, and that is heresy.
DHK

 

Just a few Scriptures:
Rom 6:3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

Have you died, yet?

Rom 6:4 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.

Are you dead, yet?

Rom 6:5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:

Have you been buried? And, then raised?

Oh, Baptism is a Type of the Inward work that has already been accomplished... Doh!

Colosians 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.

Have you been buried, yet?

To say that Water Baptism is required to remit sins is to say that Jesus did not have to Die.

That He did not have to shed His Blood.

Hebrews 9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.

Ephesians 2:13 But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.

1 Peter 1:18 Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;
1 Peter 1:19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:

1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

Revelations 1:5 And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,

That is not to say that we shouldn't follow Christ's public example and get Baptised...

I believe we should...

As it is a public testimony that the inward work has been accomplished...

SMM

 

huh?

I could just as easily say that, to say Water Immersion Batism is required for Salvation, as I think I am hearing you say, is the same as saying the Blood of Jesus Christ was not efficacious enough by itself...

Yet, my reading od Scripture indicates it is the Blood the Cleanes us...

1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

Water Baptism is a confirming act a believer does as testimony to the world of an completed inward Spiritual Work...

Sorry, but we have what appears to be an irresovable difference over the essentiality of Watar Immersion Baptism in Salvation...

Of course I suppose that the thief could have been baptized in Paradise?

After all the Rich man asked for Lazarus to bring him some water.

But, as there's no record all we can do is guess...

SMM

 

It sure seems to me that you are irrevocably connecting Water Immersion Baptism to the Application of the Blood of Christ for Salvation?

This also seems to indicate that you do not believe that we are yet raised to newness of life.

No, I don't. If you try to continue to explain it to me I'll listen. Even patiently.

But, I honestly think you're reading into Scripture something that is not there...

At this juncture I am not even convinced that it is inferred...

SMM