Is immersion baptism necessary to go to Heaven?

[chandrus]

I strongly believe it is required, by the grace of God I took it.


**edited by Admin. Note: Please capitalize proper nouns--especially God.

[johntwayne]

 Alexander Campbell wrote...

"But who is a Christian? I answer, every one that believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God; repents of his sins, and obeys him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of his will. . . . I cannot make any one duty the standard of Christian state or character, not even immersion into the name of Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and [cannot] in my heart regard all that have been sprinkled in infancy without their own knowledge and consent, as aliens from Christ and the well-grounded hope of heaven. Should I find a Pedobaptist [one baptized as an infant] more intelligent in the Christian Scriptures, more spiritually-minded and more devoted to the Lord than a Baptist, or one immersed on a profession of the ancient faith, I could not hesitate a moment in giving the preference of my heart to him that loveth most. Did I act otherwise, I would be a pure sectarian, a Pharisee among Christians." (Millennial Harbinger, 1837, p. 411-412.)

I would agree with this statement.

[soterion]

Alexander Campbell wrote...

"But who is a Christian? I answer, every one that believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God; repents of his sins, and obeys him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of his will. . . . I cannot make any one duty the standard of Christian state or character, not even immersion into the name of Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and [cannot] in my heart regard all that have been sprinkled in infancy without their own knowledge and consent, as aliens from Christ and the well-grounded hope of heaven. Should I find a Pedobaptist [one baptized as an infant] more intelligent in the Christian Scriptures, more spiritually-minded and more devoted to the Lord than a Baptist, or one immersed on a profession of the ancient faith, I could not hesitate a moment in giving the preference of my heart to him that loveth most. Did I act otherwise, I would be a pure sectarian, a Pharisee among Christians." (Millennial Harbinger, 1837, p. 411-412.)

I would disagree with this statement.

[Jimbob]

I don't like the question.  Immersion doesn't get you a ticket to heaven.  When Jesus was asked how one would inherit eternal life the answer was "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Luke 10). 

Jesus also said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14)

And we know that immersion in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and to receive the Holy Spirit is a command of God.  Why resist if we love Him?

[Bon Voyage]

I think people focus too much on exceptions.  They try to make the exception the rule, as with abortion and the life of the mother, and many other issues.

[Lee Freeman]

Alexander Campbell wrote...

"But who is a Christian? I answer, every one that believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God; repents of his sins, and obeys him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of his will. . . . I cannot make any one duty the standard of Christian state or character, not even immersion into the name of Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and [cannot] in my heart regard all that have been sprinkled in infancy without their own knowledge and consent, as aliens from Christ and the well-grounded hope of heaven. Should I find a Pedobaptist [one baptized as an infant] more intelligent in the Christian Scriptures, more spiritually-minded and more devoted to the Lord than a Baptist, or one immersed on a profession of the ancient faith, I could not hesitate a moment in giving the preference of my heart to him that loveth most. Did I act otherwise, I would be a pure sectarian, a Pharisee among Christians." (Millennial Harbinger, 1837, p. 411-412.)

I would agree with this statement.

I also agree with Campbell, who consistently taught that belief and baptism were all that was necessary for salvation, and that baptism is how we are born into Christ's kingdom; however that same Campbell refused to judge the "pious unimmersed" as he called them, stating his belief that many people might lack the outward baptism while posessing the inward baptism. So I would encourage converts to be baptized but won't judge anyone-that's God's job.

Pax.

[Jaime]

I don't like the question.  Immersion doesn't get you a ticket to heaven.  When Jesus was asked how one would inherit eternal life the answer was "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Luke 10). 

Jesus also said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14)

And we know that immersion in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and to receive the Holy Spirit is a command of God.  Why resist if we love Him?

jmg, I would modify your statement and say Baptism is not the ticket to heaven, but it is our symbolic hand that accepts the ticket to heaven. We have nothing to contribute to the value of the ticket but if we don't accept the ticket offered by God, paid in full by the blood of Christ, we don't get to ride the train, no matter how strong our belief that the ticket exists.

Robert Pate, this in no way indicates that we have any contribution to the cost of the ticket, because we don't. We are totally passive in the ticket purchase, but with the free will to "accept or reject the ticket" we don't deserve or earn in the first place.

[ann]

I too do not like the question.

I haven't had full immersion baptism.  I have been baptised the Anglican way. and confirmed.  I hope I will go to heaven.  We can all come up with suggestions what is necessary for us to get to heaven.  There are different theories.  I think the biggest important step to heaven is that you believe and you are sorry for your sins.

[zoonance]

That is why we must at least begin with what the bible says about baptism and determine if what I now know coincides with what I thought I knew.  If it is the same, then great!  If it is distinct, then a change in understanding is in order.  I knew of a man who literally claimed that he was so convinced that he did not need to be baptized to go to heaven that he promised to never be.  Jesus expects to have baptized believers as His body or he would not have commanded that they be so.  The answer to the question is biblically clear in the affirmative because it is in baptism that the bible claims that repentance occurs, being clothed with christ occurs, being put into his body, etc.  One might argue that these things had already occurred and immersion was just an outward sign of an inward change (not so stated in scripture but supported by interpreting other scriptures on faith, confession, etc. as being completely removed from baptism).  But, the norm is clear and should not be minimized - immersion in death, burial and resurrection of the new creature was expected of those heavenward bound.  To argue the theology is best left to theological wranglings.  We are expected to be immersed.  Why and what happened can come clearer with study.  The early converts had no clue about most of the theological tug of wars you find confusing today!!!

[chandrus]

1. Immersion baptism is the counsel of God.

Luke 7:29 And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God,
being baptized with the baptism of John.
7:30 But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against
themselves, being not baptized of him.

2. Jesus took immersion baptism.

Matthew 3:15 And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus
it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him.
3:16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the
water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the
Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:
3:17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in
whom I am well pleased.

Do you know who are all eligible to take immersion baptism?

[ann]

Do you know who are all eligible to take immersion baptism?

But why do you personally believe that immersion baptism is better than sprinking of holy water baptism, holy spirit baptism etc.

Okay so John the Baptist baptised people in the river Jordan. He used the river that happend to be near by.  Did he consecrate or bless the water first or did he simply just use local water? 

In York the Archbishop took Baptism out of the cathedral this last year and had a pool made up in the street and people were being fully immersed.  But does that make them any different to those who were sprinkled with water. The Holy Spirit is present whichever method.

I wonder what you believe is best and why?





(edited for code)

[CSloan]

I haven't had full immersion baptism.  I have been baptised the Anglican way.

What is a "Anglican baptism"?

[Lee Freeman]

I haven't had full immersion baptism.  I have been baptised the Anglican way.

What is a "Anglican baptism"?

Sprinklin og infants done in an Anglican/Episcopalian church.

Pax.

[CSloan]

I haven't had full immersion baptism.  I have been baptised the Anglican way.

What is a "Anglican baptism"?

Sprinklin og infants done in an Anglican/Episcopalian church.

Pax.

Well Lee, don't make me say it.

[zoonance]

OK I will, Og infants look just like Og adults, but are much smaller. 

[CSloan]

OK I will, Og infants look just like Og adults, but are much smaller. 

Ok I'll bite, what is "Og"?

[mike]

OK I will, Og infants look just like Og adults, but are much smaller. 

Ok I'll bite, what is "Og"?

It's a typo -- should be "of"

[CSloan]

OK I will, Og infants look just like Og adults, but are much smaller. 

Ok I'll bite, what is "Og"?

It's a typo -- should be "of"

Quit pulling my leg, whats it mean?

[kensington]

I don't think God cares if you are sprinkled, spashed, dunked or you take a bath... as long as it is an act of obedience to Him after salvation.

I've known many adults who get rebaptised once they come to the realization that salvation is a decision, personal to them and Christ.

I don't believe there is such a thing as a second generation Christian. 

[ann]

I been lead to believe that once you have been baptised there there is no reason to be baptized again for we are already entered into the Lord's family.  We are all members of the Christian church whether as it has been so gently put, 'dunked or sprinkled or splashed'. Once we have been done, its been done. Whether people have walked away and have come back to a different type of Christian Church there really is no need to be done again.  Jesus already knows you. He knows your name and is waiting for you to return, if you have strayed.  Adults who want to be done again are not fully comprehending the purpose of baptism and am worried about those adults because all they really need to do is to call out to Jesus and God and they be there waiting for them. Adults who want to be baptised again?  It is worrying because I am sure they do not undestand what they are doing. 

[janine]

ann, if it worries you that adults who want to be immersed as adults don't understand what they are doing --

Why does it not worry you when somebody christens an infant?  The baby doesn't understand a thing.

[mike]

OK I will, Og infants look just like Og adults, but are much smaller. 

Ok I'll bite, what is "Og"?

It's a typo -- should be "of"

Quit pulling my leg, whats it mean?

[mike]

ann, if it worries you that adults who want to be immersed as adults don't understand what they are doing --

Why does it not worry you when somebody christens an infant?  The baby doesn't understand a thing.

Now that is a good point (manna worthy). I'm waiting for ann's answer to this question.

[ann]

When the baby grows up and is old enough to think. They can choose to be confirmed which is reaffirming the vows made on their behalf as an infant. 

I don't know if it is still this practice but in the past if babies were not baptised then they would have to be burried in non consecrated ground and possibly be left in Purgatory for a very long time.  People didn't want this of their children so baptism allowed the child to be burried in consecrated ground.   I myself had (emergancy as was born ill) infant baptism and at 17 through my own choice was confirmed.   

By Baptising a baby, the individual has entered into the Lord's family and parents and God parents see the child is brought up knowing God is good and Satan is bad.   I don't see anything wrong in infant baptism but there again I would be biased because I go to the Anglican church which teaches infant baptism.  If adults haven't been baptised then they are quite happy to baptise adults.  My mum didn't need to be baptised again because in her childhood she was a Baptist.  No doubt if she really wanted to then the priest may have given way but saw no point in being 'done again'.

You want your children to know good and bad? You want your children to learn about God and the Bible?  You want your children to turn away from satan?  By having your children baptised at such a very tender age of below 1 year old can only but help. 

As I say, when they are old enough it is upto them whether to follow it through with confirmation and say the promises for themselves. 

Is this helping any?

[mike]

ann,

It does help, and what you say does make sense. I do understand the traditions behind infant baptism.

However, in my religious tradition, children are still taught about God, and raised to know Jesus even though they aren't baptized. Then, when they decide for themselves that they want to follow Christ, they are baptized. Confirmation becomes unnecessary. This accomplishes all the same things that you mentioned.

Therefore, infant baptism is either just an innovation (a tradition) without much of a purpose (except that it is a pleasant tradition), or children desperately need to be baptized or they will be lost. Which do you believe?

[janine]

If you do believe that the innocents of the world are lost when they die, upon what do you base that belief?

What evidence from the Old and New Testaments do you base the idea of Purgatory on?  You do know there was no mention of anything like Purgatory until a long long time after Jesus bought and paid for His church, right?

Shoot.  I only wish there was a Purgatory.  It would be useful.

Sprinkling a baby is the same thing as smacking a bottle of champagne on the bow of a new boat.

It says a lot, symbolizes a lot, and can be a very moving and special and meaningful ceremony to the people who bind themselves into it and make promises because of it.  It has a fine tradition behind it, that of setting aside an object or a person for God's use, and calling it sanctified or holy -- like, sprinkling with the ashes of a heifer.

But it doesn't mean doodly-squat to the baby, who is a soul and a person in his/her own right.

Now, you are depending upon the baby to grow up and look back to a ceremony s/he does not remember, and to think, as an older child or adult, "Wow, I am so glad they consecrated me like that.  I will continue the process of my own commitment to God by getting the church to confirm me."

This will only do any good if:

1) the sprinkling of the baby did any good in the first place, and

2) if the church figuratively standing around the now-grown baby and saying "Yup, s/he'd approved by God now", while the candidate says, "Yup, I want to agree with what was done to me as a baby",   means anything to God.

I'm not having a problem with the passage of time between the christening and the confirmation, because God isn't bound by time, so that doesn't worry me.

I'm seeing you depend upon the reliability of perhaps as much as 1500 years of church history (for some aspects of the matter), and the reliability of 1500 years of oh-so-fallible human beings who claimed to speak for God, for your understanding, belief and practice on this and related points.

That troubles me, somewhat.  Not because God is not merciful -- and not because anything or anyone but the Word will be your judge in the end.  I ain't your judge -- I will be too busy judging the angels.

But it does trouble me enough to talk to you about it --

Because, if the original -- immersion into Christ, immersion to put on Christ, immersion resulting in being added to His church -- is a symbolic death/burial/resurrection, from the old man to the new, to a new walk with God --

Then y'all who sprinkle infants have taken one of the original early-church symbols, immersion, and have decided to use a symbol of that symbol, sprinkling.

Is that fine with you, then?  drawing back a pace, drawing an extra line where God didn't originally draw one -- ratifying a symbol-of-a-symbol as common practice?

Trust me, if I came upon a car crash victim, in his final moments of life, and he whispered to me in his agony that he had waited too long to commit to Christ and he wished he had just one more day to make that choice and take that walk to the water, to be baptized --

I would grab that bottle of springwater out of the car and I would sprinkle him in a moment, saying every comforting and appropriate word I know to say.  I would do it with a bottle of Coke if that was all I had.  I would do it with ditchwater, I would do it with the sour whey out of a curdled bottle of forgotten baby milk.  Whatever it took to comfort the guy and to make an appeal to God with whatever I had available with which to help him before he died.

But I would not, will not, depend upon stretching the mercy of God like a rubber band, when normally I have the luxury of sticking more closely to the ancient rites.

[ann]

as I said I am biased and will admitt that. I do attend High Anglican which is nearly Roman Catholic so I am naturally going to support the view of infant baptism.  But I do like your reasoning Janine because for once on this board someone has begun to think things out from their own point of view rather than just using the Bible to quote sentences. 

What I fail to see is that why are you all so against infant baptism?

I know I am going to be shot for this because you are all going to point out that immersion baptism is in the Bible because of John the Baptist.  But what happens if for say, Janine's example of the dying man who hadn't been baptised. If Janine isn't there to give him a baptism would God refuse him entry into heaven on the grounds he'd been not evil but not a follower of God and Jesus and had never been baptised but in his last breathing moments he thought to say, I am sorry God....Is God going to turn him away?

I won't go on until that has been answered.

[CSloan]

I been lead to believe that once you have been baptised there there is no reason to be baptized again for we are already entered into the Lord's family. 

Ann,

I don't know if you recognize the Bible as in inerrant Word of God or not, but according to the Scripture; we can be baptized incorrectly.

Act 19:1-5
And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus: and finding certain disciples,
He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.
And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John's baptism.
Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.
When they heard [this], they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

[yogi bear]

You see that is the problem with carnal thought.We have trouble thinking spiritual so we rely mostly on carnal thoughts. The question what if we waited to long to do Gods will and at the last dieing moment decided to give our all to Jesus is not one question we have the authority to answer. We can only give our opinion of how God will deal with such a time but that is only gods call.

God I feel has answered it but we refuse to hear. God has many places in his word warned us not to wait to long. God has said that what we convince ourself as truth as to how he will deal with things is not always the real truth but carnal thinking on our part. Think about the ten virgins. Think about the passage in Matthew of the foolish man compaired to the wise man. Remember god said that some that thought and convinced them self they were right would here depart from me I never knew you.

The moral to this thought is that God has spoken and we must hear him not what we think he will do. It could come a time where it could simply be sorry to late It seem that it is hinted at in his word.

[CSloan]

What I fail to see is that why are you all so against infant baptism?

I am not going to point out John, but to the contray Jesus:

Mar 16:16
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

Jesus says believing is a prerequisite to baptism.

[janine]

Ann, I have not begun "for once" to say stuff on my own without resorting to the bible.

I have no trouble doing that.  I can blabble and witter on all day long telling you stuff JANINE thinks.

And you would be enriched because I am of course a most brilliant person.

Hah.

But -- most of us her have some sort of connection to the American Restoration Movement, and we are one of those groups who figure that the Scriptures have more to say to inform our spiritual and religious decisions than any denomination's teachings.

Thus the pointing back to the Bible, as much as seems useful.

[ann]

And you would be enriched because I am of course a most brilliant person.

Hah.

Cheers Janine. Its the best laugh I had all day.

[soterion]

But what happens if for say, Janine's example of the dying man who hadn't been baptised. If Janine isn't there to give him a baptism would God refuse him entry into heaven on the grounds he'd been not evil but not a follower of God and Jesus and had never been baptised but in his last breathing moments he thought to say, I am sorry God....Is God going to turn him away?

I won't go on until that has been answered.

The problem here is that we can make hypothetical situations say anything we want.  All of us can invent situations to try to prove the other person incorrect about anything.

Hypotheticals can be used to tell others what we believe, but they should not be used to try to undermine the teaching of Scripture. 

The "deathbed conversion" argument is inevitably brought up to try to prove that baptism is not really necessary to be saved.  In my opinion, that is using human logic to disprove the teaching of Scripture.  Of course, the "out in the desert without any water" argument is a good one, too, not to mention the "in a plane that is about to crash" argument.

I can only respond in all honesty with what I believe the Scriptures teach us.  What does the Bible say about the purpose of baptism?  What does the Bible say about those who repent at the verge of death? 

Let's answer those questions biblically and those questions we can't find answers to we can leave to God to take care of.

[ann]

I truelly give up

life beyond the Bible I screammmmmmmmmmm




I bet you all watch TV and there is no mention of TV in the bible.    

[CSloan]

I can only respond in all honesty with what I believe the Scriptures teach us.