I didn’t attend my most memorable baptism, I was however witness to its after effects.
I visited a friends place but he wasn’t home, he had gone out to the shops. His wife invited me in to wait till he came home.
I sat down on the couch as she went to get her baby son. When she returned holding him, I couldn’t even look at them because the light emanating off the baby was brighter than welder light. The light had a quality of Joy and Holiness in it, I couldn’t explain. Dumbfounded, I was about ask her if the baby had been baptised, but remembered how viciously anti religious she was, so I bit my tongue.
For about 10 minutes I was making small talk with her as this baby was wriggling and shining with this Divine Light in her lap.
My friend came home from the shop, but had forgotten the milk, and I said I would go with him.
Away from the house at the car I asked if the baby had been baptised or something. And my friend couldn’t believe it, and asked how I knew, I said, he is shining with light of a thousand suns it’s pretty hard to miss. He told me he secretly baptised his son at the bath sink without his wife or anyone knowing just shortly before he went out.
My seeing this effect cast off for him any lingering doubt he had.
Baptism is real regeneration, it is not merely symbolic.
If baptismal regeneration is true, then all men are dependent on another man to make their regeneration possible through a ceremony.
That is heresy! Salvation is all of God and none of man.
Baptismal regeneration is a faith + works salvation that will be rejected by Christ.