I think we can be pretty certain that some (many?) of those who bayed for our Lord's death had been baptized either by John or the apostles. We are told that 'Jerusalem, all Judea and all the region around the Jordan went out to [JTB] and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins' (Matt. 3:5-6). We allow for some hyperbole here, but we must be talking several thousand here surely? The only criterion for baptism that we see is that they confessed their sins.
Below you claim to take in the "evidence as a whole" but willing ignore that John the Baptist clearly taught that repentance was accompanied with faith in Christ as John 3:36 and Acts 19:4 explicitly demand this. Your evidence here is nothing but silence and assumptions without a shred of hard facts. You have NOTHING but your own vivid imagination you are reading into the text (eisgesis).
We note that John talked about 'He who is coming after me' (v.11), but even he wondered at one stage whether that was really Jesus (Matthew 11:2-3).
Read on and see what Jesus said about John at this very moment! Jesus thought much more highly of John at this very moment of weakness than you do.
We then read that 'many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did' (John 2:23). Surely you will not suppose that none of these were people whom John had baptized?
You have NOTHING but presumption based on absolute silence again as you READ INTO the text what you want rather than what it says, but not honest enough to admit it as you are being driven to defend your false doctrine.
Yet 'Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men' (v.24). A little later, 'Jesus said to those Jews who had believed in Him, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed"' (John 8:31). But they didn't abide, did they? By the end of the chapter they're trying to stone him!
Not a word in this text or context that these had been baptized by John or by the disciples of Jesus. You are again READING INTO the text what it neither says or even suggests, but not honest enough to admit it as you are being driven to defend your false doctrine.
I
n Matthew 11-13, we see our Lord at the height of His popularity, yet He warns the very places where He had spent most of His time that they faced the fate of Tyre, Sidon and Sodom (Matthew 11:20-24), and He spoke to the crowds in parables 'because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear' (Matthew 13:13).
Those John baptized repented and confessed faith in Christ but there is not even a hint in these passages that these are John's or Jesus disciples. Again you are READING INTO the text what it neither says or suggest but not honest enough to admit it as you are being driven to defend your false doctrine.
Even after His resurrection and ascension, there are only 120 disciples out of all those thousands baptized by John (Acts 1:15). Where had the rest gone?
John 20 tells you they were hiding for fear of the Jews. Acts 1:15-26 tells you where they are. You are grasping at not even straws but thin air and desperately trying to READ INTO any scripture what is not there but simply exists in your vain imagination.
Your whole defense is nothing but absolute foolishness based upon pure silence and forced interpretation but you are too proud to admit it because you are driven to defend what has no defense.
Not at all. I am assessing the Biblical evidence as a whole rather than relying on proof-texts.
Any objective reader of your so-called "evidence" will find NOTHING but what you choose to READ INTO every text you have offered as not a single text you have offered even remotely suggests what you are forcing upon it.
Your naivety is charming, but you have to face the facts I have brought before you.
It would either take an absolutely stupid person or one full of bias to even consider your "facts" as anything but pure eisegesis built wholly upon pure silence.
You are also misunderstanding Acts 10:37-38]
Hardly, as the only comment I made about the text was the call to repentance and those whom John and Jesus (through his disciples) had baptized already repented and already believed in Christ.
The fact is that whatever John's baptism was, it lacked the power of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:11; John 7:39).
This is such an absurd statement it is almost beneath the dignity of even responding to such nonsense. John was "filled" with the Spirit and operated under the same power as Elijah as he came in the POWER of Elijah.
Lu 1:17 And he shall go before him
in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
Tell me Martin what kind of power does it take to "turn the hearts" of people???? He preached in that kind of power. So don't give this absolute nonsense that John's ministry was without the power of the holy Spirit in changing lives.
The fact is that for quite some time even the Apostles did not know who He was (Matthew 8:27; 16:16), even after the resurrection, some of His disciples were confused as to why He had come (Luke 24:21; Acts 1:6). No, the start of the Church is Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down in a new way, and baptism as we know it started from there.
Provide one text that says the church began on Pentecost - just one? My bible says the 3000 were "added unto them" and the "them" are those who were united and assembled in one place (Acts 2:1) who already had a church business meeting in Acts 1:15-26 and installed another man into the "church" office of apostle as the apostles were set first in the church (1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 2:20) and that was BEFORE Pentecost.
