I think most of us are just enjoying this great discussion.
I do have one question, although it seems pretty immature compared to what is being discussed.
I see surmising that the authoritative Jews may have prevented some from being baptized, and it makes good sense, to me. I see baptism as a sacrament, not as a step in salvation. Are we all on the same page ?
After further consideration there definitely was a salvation to Johns Baptism... What you say?... That is not opinion I will let history speak!
Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History Book 3, Chapter 5, Page 70.
3. But the people of the
church in Jerusalem had been commanded by a revelation, vouchsafed to approved men there before the
war, to leave the city and to dwell in a certain town of Perea called
Pella. And when those that
believed in
Christ had come there from Jerusalem, then, as if the royal city of the
Jews and the whole land of
Judea were entirely destitute of
holy men, the
judgment of God at length overtook those who had committed such outrages against
Christ and his
apostles, and totally destroyed that
generation of impious men.
4. But the number of calamities which everywhere fell upon the nation at that time; the extreme misfortunes to which the inhabitants of
Judea were especially subjected, the thousands of men, as well as
women and children, that perished by the sword, by famine, and by other forms of death innumerable—all these things, as well as the many great sieges which were carried on against the cities of
Judea, and the excessive sufferings endured by those that fled to Jerusalem itself, as to a city of perfect safety, and finally the general course of the whole
war, as well as its particular occurrences in detail, and how at last the
abomination of desolation, proclaimed by the
prophets,
Daniel 9:27 stood in the very
temple of God, so celebrated of old, the
temple which was now awaiting its total and final destruction by fire — all these things any one that wishes may find accurately described in the history written by
Josephus.
5. But it is necessary to state that this writer records that the multitude of those who were assembled from all
Judea at the time of the
Passover, to the number of three million
souls, were shut up in Jerusalem as in a prison, to use his own words.
6. For it was right that in the very days in which they had inflicted suffering upon the Saviour and the Benefactor of all, the
Christ of
God, that in those days, shut up as in a prison, they should meet with destruction at the hands of
divine justice.
7. But passing by the particular calamities which they suffered from the attempts made upon them by the sword and by other means, I think it necessary to relate only the misfortunes which the famine caused, that those who read this work may have some means of
knowing that
God was not long in executing
vengeance upon them for their
wickedness against the
Christ of
God.
So History proves that those who were not Baptiised by John the Baptist perished and those that were, were saved.
