I read an Internet article last week where the author was commenting on how baptisms have become extremely non-traditional. I don’t know the author or the author’s religious background, but it is clear that there is a great deal of misinformation about baptism in the religious world. I cannot possibly cover all of the problems and misunderstandings in a single, short article, but here are some of the bigger takeaways that we need to share with our friends and family. Baptism is a burial in water by the authority of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins (Romans 6:4; 1 Peter 3:21; Acts 2:38). Candidates for baptism are teens and adults who recognize the need. Where someone is baptized and who does the baptizing are things that do not matter. A person wearing casual clothes baptized in a pool by a friend is no less saved than a person wearing a baptismal robe who is baptized in a church baptistry by a minister or an elder. Our concern should not be how traditional a baptism is but how biblical it is.
[Editor’s Note: Traveling around the world to distant and often remote interior destinations with the Gospel message presents a variety of variables that differ from American traditional trappings. Over a hundred years ago in the USA, too – predating contemporary American church amenities and traditions – baptismal robes and baptistries in modern buildings did not trump the immersion in water of penitent believers for the remission of sins. The conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch on the Jerusalem-Gaza Road is a biblical example in which the absence of a baptismal robe and a baptistry was no impediment to scriptural, New Testament baptism (Acts 8:26-40). What kind of clothing the Ethiopian was wearing and that he was immersed in a roadside pool of water were not the focus of the conversion. ~ Louis Rushmore, Editor]
