Alan Dale Gross
Active Member
I see what to me are some quite odd statements and questions coming out in posts and replies where someone has decided that certain verses which, for the most part, had never had any association with the actual experience of being born again for over a thousand years after the Bible was written, which have in recent centuries suddenly been hacked away at so many times trying to make them stand for physical 'water' presumably 'washing away' sin, which can only be dealt with by God in the Spiritual Realm, to worse...a scheme hatched to imagine the Holy Spirit 'baptizing', as Himself, with Himself, in the Act of the lost soul's New Birth.
That Has Never Happened.
True. The New Birth is the result of the Holy Spirit Regenerating the soul, from being dead, Spiritually, to being Born Again, from Above, to New Eternal Spiritual Life, but the rest is not.
Someone of you (Jon C.) may know just the precise time, or Era, when these errors began to take their place in the minds of some and in so doing, replacing what God had Assigned to those verses that He would have us to understand to be their True meaning, initially, before the serial switching which has taken place in 'Religion without God' over the centuries. We Must Worship Him "in Spirit and in Truth."
Here are a handful of verses, which I am here to declare unto you, THAT HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH A LOST SOUL'S REAL EXPERIENCE OF BEING BORN AGAIN, WHICH WE CALL BEING SAVED, ALSO.
The teachings contained in them is something else, but the Holy Spirit has never 'baptized' anything, so THEY ARE NOT WRITTEN AS WAYS TO EXPLAIN THAT THE HOLY SPIRIT 'BAPTIZED' ANY SOUL EVER, IN THE LANGUAGE God Uses in Scripture, or that 'baptism' ever has anything to do Directly with Salvation, by physical 'water', or imaginary 'spirit baptism', at all, according to the Record.
These verses say nothing in them and therefore teach nothing that has to do, specifically, with salvation. There's probably a dozen more add by the one who is "the author of confusion".
Can you even begin to see that these verses make no direct reference to How God Saves a Lost Soul and not assume something imaginary otherwise?
"For by One Spirit we are all baptized into one body..." I Corinthians 12:13a&b.
"There is one body, and One Spirit..."One Lord, one Faith, one baptism", Ephesians 4:4a&5.
"...ye are also are builder together for an Habitation of God through the Spirit" Ephesians 2:22.
"Buried with Him in baptism...Colossians 2:12.
"He Dwelleth with you and shall be in you." John 14:17b.
"Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?" Romans 6:3.
"...all our fathers were...all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea". I Corinthians 10:1&2.
"...baptize you with the Holy Spirit..." Matthew 3:11, Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, John 1:33, and Acts 1:5.
"...be baptized every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins" Acts 2:38.
"...baptism doth also now save us". I Peter 3:21.
You know one thing that is great about these verses is THEY EACH WILL TELL YOU HOW TO KNOW WHERE TO LOOK". What do I mean? That's when you are referencing a word study, Lexicon, Bible Dictionary, or Commentary, etc., and so, to be safe with regard to "the Faith once Delivered to the saints", you have to know where to look, to see how they have handled these particular verses, then you know whether to put any weight into whatever else they talk about, or to Opt Out, off jump street. That's good to know.
Does anybody know what these verses really teach?