BAPTISM – Clarified from Scripture
BAPTISM
Rev. John Scott Johnson
Part1: Affusion ( Sprinkling)
Are we not impressed with the simplicity of the Bible accounts of water baptism? Physical preparation for baptism was recorded only once–that of Saul of Tarsus. He was told to “arise and be baptized” (Acts 22:16), and he “arose and was baptized” (Acts 9:18). That is the whole record of the ceremony.
There is no suggestion nor intimation anywhere in the Bible that clothing had to be changed, nor of any inconvenience of wet garments (even out on the desert road to Gaza). In a jail, about the Jordan, around the house in Jerusalem containing the upper chamber, in the home of Cornelius, by a river’s brink in Philippi, out on a desert road whenever and wherever water baptism was needed, it was administered without delay and with no hubbub, no commotion. Does not this fact argue strongly as to the simplicity of the ceremony? Does not the cumbersomeness and unwieldiness of immersion seem utterly repugnant to, out of keeping with, the simplicity of the record?
It is no accident that the verb “sprinkle” (in various forms) occurs 41 times in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, and 6 times in Hebrews. “Immerse” never occurs in the Bible in any of its forms.
SEC. 1. The BIBLE’S PRESCRIBED MODE
God has not left us in doubt as to His intended mode of baptism. Heb. 9:10 speaks of “divers washings” (Greek: baptismois, “baptisms”) which the whole 9th chapter of Hebrews identifies as- they can be no other than- the sprinklings of blood and water, which are commanded in Exodus‘ Leviticus, and Numbers. The following quotations prove this: Read Whole Article
