“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. …he that sent me to baptize with water.” John 1:6,33
Baptist in the New Testament is the identity God gave to the agent by which He sent the New Testament (covenant) seal = baptism. “In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea” Matthew 3:1. John was identified as a Baptist when he came preaching, not after he had baptized for a while.
John came as Christ’s forerunner, “…to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” Luke 1:17. From this prepared people, Jesus called and ordained His apostles, and set them first in the church that He built during His earthly ministry. Peter and the apostles, and the 120 first church members, had only the baptism of John, and they only administered the same baptism they had received. Jesus Christ, who went to John to be baptized of this heaven sent, New Testament Baptist baptism, declared it necessary to do so in order to fulfill all righteousness, Matthew 3:15. Before His ascension, Christ made the New Testament Church He had built the agent of this Baptist baptism, Matthew 28:19-20. All who rejected the baptism of John were declared to have rejected the counsel of God against themselves, Luke 7:30. Thus, there is but one Lord, one faith, one baptism – Ephesians 4:5.
There is no saving grace in the Baptist identity. But it is embraced due to following the operation of God in identifying the baptism of the New Testament, sent from heaven, which Christ set in His church. To accept the one baptism which God sent from heaven, gives us every reason to accept the God given identity of the agent of that baptism, which is no longer John, but now the New Testament Baptist Church.
The rejection of Baptist as being the identity of God’s agent of New Testament baptism, is first due to the rejection of the baptism itself. Those who reject the Baptist identity for the agent of New Testament baptism, first reject the truth that the baptism God sent from heaven by John, is really New Testament baptism. They throw things out like, “Well, John’s baptism belonged to the Old Testament, etc.” NOT SO, because all that belonged to the Old Testament was given to Moses on the mount! “For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.” Matthew 11:13
SHARING
