The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Step up and be counted

This has been my personal experience as well, which I have more than once related on this Board in several past discussions. I have found myself in a situation as stated by one in this thread, where the only reasonably decent church around was a Baptist church and I wanted to be able to not only be able to partake of the Lord's Table, which Christ Himself desires and commands me to do, but to exercise the gifts of ministry given to me by His Spirit. In every case, despite the fact that I was baptized as an infant AND as an adult (no real necessity to give the details here), I was told that membership would ONLY be open to me, regardless of my valid profession of faith and impeccable credentials, if I agreed to submit to baptism by immersion. This is very telling and shows that it isn't the notion of Believer's baptism which is the foundational element in many Credobaptist churches, but the Mode of baptism. This has always perplexed me since there is far more "evidence" to try and prove the baptism of professing adults than there is to try and show that baptism in the N.T. was done by immersion. In fact, Rev. William MacIntyre shows conclusively that this was not the case in the chapter of his excellent booklet: "The Token of the Covenant" (Mode of Baptism) - main page of the entire booklet can be found here: The Token of the Covenant.

Like most Paedobaptists I have had the pleasure of being acquainted with, we share the position that our differences over who should be baptized in regard to our Baptist brethren is not something which we should split over. In fact, there have been several occasions where churches I have been a member and served, have allowed membership to those who held to Credobaptism and even appointed some to teaching positions. Since they provided a valid profession of faith and held to the doctrines of grace, we felt it was only right that they be embraced as true brethren and therefore not denied the sacrament of the Lord's Table. To deny them membership and thus the sacramental means of grace of the Lord's Table would be to deny their professed relationship to the Lord Christ and pronounce upon them the verdict of "outside the camp", i.e., they would be considered non-believers. Credobaptists must consider the severity of what they are doing when they deliberately deny membership to someone who makes a valid profession of faith and who has been previously baptized by a mode other than immersion. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/scratchchin.gif" alt="" />

And lastly, Dave (aka: Puritan) spoke wisely when he stated that the person making the statement; that would be me <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/giggle.gif" alt="" />, re: Baptists being at least equal to Paedobaptists in number on this Board, was speaking of the total number of registrants and not restricted those who are "active". But what this comes down to is a matter of taking my word for it.

In His grace,