Baptism Is A Meeting Place!

"By lazy theologians Christian Baptism is made out to be some work of man. So they dismiss it, delay it, deny it.

We are robbing Baptism for what it is. Baptism is God's invitation to the place and time of God's work. Baptism is an invitation by God to the place where you recieve His promised gifts. Not because of what you have done, rather, because of what He said He will do there if you come to Him.

Baptism is a meeting place.

Come meet Him!"

(Acts 2:38-39, Romans 6:1-8)

Water Does Not Purify From Evil

Dead Sea scrolls. Reading a translation document of the Qumran community.  The "Manual of Discipline" from the Essene community. speaking of  myriad of ceremonial washings common in the day (not to be equated with Christian Baptism)....

"No one is to go into water in order to attain the purity of holy men. For men cannot be purified except they repent their evil. "

- Manual of Discipline.

Essenes of Qumran.

Salty Baptism

"Salt was such an important symbol in the early church that when someone was baptized, a pinch of salt was placed on the new believer’s tongue. Purified in Christ, we are called to be a purifying agent in the world."

- Leonard Sweet. AQUACHURCH 2.0

"Search blessed salt"

The Angels Changed My Name

Negro Spiritual 

I have been tempted, O yes,
An’ I have been tried, O yes,
I have been to the river an’ been baptize,
An’ I want to go to heaven in the morning.

Won’t you ride on Jesus?
Ride on Jesus, ride on crowning King,
For I want to go to heaven in the morning.

If you see my mother, O yes,
Please tell her for me, O yes,
That the angels in heaven done change my name,
An’ I want to go

Baptizing Shamed Bodies

"When the temple priesthood started making God distant and elite, John just went down to the riverside and poured natural water over shamed bodies."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now 

Rejecting Infant Baptism.

"His (Andreas Karlstadt) understandings of liturgy, the church, baptism, and the Lord's Supper were based upon what he considered the teachings of the Bible alone. He rejected the Lutheran doctrine of predestination. He rejected infant baptism is a Sacrament, refused to baptize infants, and advocated adult baptism as a sign of Faith. His view of church rejected all hierarchy and emphasize the equality of members. The pastor calling was not to a higher status, but to an office performed only for the sake of order."

- J. Denny Weaver. Becoming Anabaptist. 2nd Edition. 

We Despise Them For It

"Here is a book that is against just about everything we believe in. I say that as a Methodist Bishop who ought to know what we believe in. Method is are those Christians who believe in trying to follow Jesus and attempting to be the church without letting any of that get in the way of our being successful. In other words, we methodists are just about everything that every anabaptist lives in fear of becoming.

I say thank God that the Anabaptists were run out of Europe so that they took up residence in Indiana and elsewhere. God has sent them into the Wilderness that is Contemporary American culture in order to keep the rest of us honest about Jesus, or at least to make us feel guilty. Here, as elsewhere, they have exercised and influence upon the extended Body of Christ far out of proportion to their numbers. They have been salt, light, yeast, and on unassimilatable lump in an otherwise comfortable and accommodated Christendom.  God bless them for their witness, though most of the rest of us despise them for it."

- William H. Willimin. Bishop, The North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Alabama

Forward written in : Becoming Anabaptist: The Orgin and Significance of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism

George Washington Was Baptized Twice, But Once!

Biblical words actually have precise meaning at times. 

It may come as a surprise to many to know that George Washington was twice baptized. According to his mother's Bible, he was baptized (Christened by Sprinkling) when he was not quite two years old… This baptism was in the orthodox Episcopal manner, and when he reached the age of thirty - three he took an oath to conform to the doctrine of the Church of England.   
  During Washington's life a strong wave of evangelicalism swept the Methodist and Baptist faiths, and it was during this period that he remarked to John Gano, Chaplain in the Continental Army, “I have been investigating the Scripture and I believe immersion to be the baptism taught in the Word of God, and I demand it at your hands. I do not wish any parade made or the Army called out, but simply a quiet demonstration of the ordinance.”
  Accordingly, George Washington was immersed in the Potomac in the presence of forty - two witnesses.
  John Gano was, at the time, a Baptist Minister and remains so all his life. His son, also named John, became a preacher in the Church of Christ in the early days of the Restoration Movement, and his son R.M. Gano, became a highly successful and popular preacher. He was an early leader in the church in Dallas and is said to have baptized 1000s of converts in his long ministry."