First of all, here you go, Clint -- and the last link is a dilly!
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/abemap.html
http://www.mdumc.org/upperoom/maproom.htm
http://www.bible.ca/maps/
http://www.biblestudysite.com/mapindex.htm
This post is going to be about the Matthew section of the Bible study, because there is something that caught my eye today that I have never really looked up before -- so I did today. It's something interesting to me, and I'd like to throw it out and hope some of our pastors and/or Bible scholars could comment...
Before that, though, note how John lashes out at the Pharisees and Sadducees who show up where John is baptizing -- he calls them a brood of poisonous snakes (vipers) and tells them to produce fruit in keeping with repentance.
We usually think of fruit in terms of the fruits of the Spirit, and we know that simple repentance does not save, as is noted in Acts 19:1-5. So what was John talking about? It's so simple, really: if you are sorry for what you have done, STOP DOING IT! This, and Jesus' anger at the Pharisees as shown in Matthew 23, both indicate that these folks were all show and no go.
OK, now what I have read so many times before and still stopped me this morning was John's explanation about his own baptism in verse 11:
I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire."
Out of curiosity, I looked up the words "baptize", "baptism" and "baptizing" in the Concordance to see what Jesus had to say about baptism.
He never spoke about baptism with water! The only two times it could even be inferred are at the end of Matthew, when He says to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and the verse in Mark 16:16, which is part of the ending of Mark which is so highly disputed and probably was not in the original document. Every other time he speaks of baptism it is specifically not concerning water.
In Mark 10:38-39, Jesus is referring to a series of trials or to His death when He asks James and John if they can be baptized with the baptism He is baptized with.
In John 3:22-26 we see the disciples baptizing in water, but Jesus was evidently not there, for in 4:1-3, we read,
The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
Did He go to stop them? The Bible never says. But it is on His way back that He meets the Samaritan woman at the well.
We know the disciples baptized with water. This is not an issue. But the fact that Jesus never baptized anyone Himself and did not ever refer to water baptism interested me.
We often think of water baptism as symbolic of the New life in Christ. But, according to Paul, that is not what it is at all! In Romans 6, Paul says (v.3)
Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in oreder that, just as Christ was raised frm the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
So while baptism with water, however it is done, is done in obedience to the Lord by the person who has received the New Life in Christ, the symbol is one of death. And I thought of another water of death: Noah's Flood. There, the Ark is a 'type' or symbol of Christ -- get on or get dead. The waters were the waters of death.
It's interesting. In part because an unsaved person -- the very person who NEEDS to die to himself cannot be baptized and have it please God. Romans 8:8 says nothing the person with a sin nature does can please God. So it can only be pleasing to God AFTER we are saved by Him.
We, as human beings, baptize with water as a symbol of death. But Jesus baptizes us with the Holy Spirit into life. But the reality of the death and life we experience in Christ comes before the symbolic baptism which is of water.
Working through this in Scripture seems to make it perfectly obvious that it is impossible for water baptism to have any part in salvation at all -- and so I can only wonder why the Catholics and others such as some of the Episcopalians and Lutherans arrive at the doctrine of the necessity of baptism for salvation? It is not only not in the Bible, but it seems exactly contrary to it.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
Fire... we know the Holy Spirit appeared sort of like tongues of fire over the heads of the disciples at Pentecost. We know Paul tells the Corinthians in 1 Cor. 3 that our works are tested as though by fire (although not we ourselves in this sense as is taught by the Roman Catholic church). And we can go back in the Old Testament to the furnace of fire into which Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were cast and know they were kept safe by a Fourth and that they came out unscathed. So what is baptism by fire?
I don't know. Is it the separation from the world? Is it the burning away of our old life, bit by bit, as we are matured in Christ? Is it the learning to trust that happens because we have to go through hard times?
I know that being a Christian can hurt. I know it can alienate one from family and old friends. I know that I get put into situations where I am totally incapable of coping without Christ, and so in my exhaustion and fear I learn to lean on Him more.
Or does it mean something else? The next verse has another reference to fire, but this is hellfire, where the damned will go. They are the chaff, as we can reference in Psalm 1:
No so the wicked!
They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
So I don't think the fire is referring to judgment as my NIV notes mention it might. Those baptized with the Holy Spirit will not experience that fire.
So another fire -- I would assume a purifying fire that is what cleans us of our old life, bit by bit.
I'll be thinking about this for awhile...
ONE DAY??? I MAY LEARN TO USE THIS COMPUTER AND NOT PRESS THE SEND KEY BEFORE I FINISH 