Part One   Part Two   Part Three   Part Four   Part Five

Kevin Bauder begins the next section, entitled, “Alien Immersion and Rebaptism,” with the sentence, “Landmark Baptists insist that a proper administrator is essential for valid baptism.”  He sets up a strawman by saying that proper administrator means “the succession of baptisms that leads back to John the Baptist.”  Graves himself denies that definition.  Maybe there are churches and pastors today who say that’s a requirement.  I’m still saying I’ve never met one.  If they do believe that, they didn’t get it from Graves, because he wasn’t saying that.

What I say, which is essentially what Graves said, and what I know other men say, who are local only in their ecclesiology, is that proper authority or a proper administrator is needed to be valid baptism. Bauder starts the next paragraph with the statement, “All Baptists agree that invalid baptism is not genuine baptism at all.”  Bauder himself writes that baptism must be valid.  However, when he discusses valid baptism, he does not include proper authority.

Bauder doesn’t write this, but his universal church theory has a lot to do with acceptance of a baptism regardless of authority.  If the true church is the universal church, then someone out there can operate as a free agent without submitting to any church.  Someone could just starting baptizing people without any authorization, because he could claim that he was getting it directly from Jesus in a spiritual way.  This is not modeled in the New Testament.

Let’s for a moment for the sake of this discussion argue from the standpoint that authority or proper administrator don’t mean the ability to trace church succession back to the Jerusalem church.  On many occasions here I’ve written about proper authority.  It’s obvious that authority matters in the New Testament.  Jesus gave keys to Peter in Matthew 16.  Each of the seven messengers, what are pastors, in Revelation 2 and 3, are in Jesus’ right hand of authority.  Churches can bind and loose on earth and, therefore, in heaven.  Jesus speaks about possessing all authority when He mandates the Great Commission.

There is authority.  What is disobedience?  It is not obeying authority.  When John baptized, he baptized with authority.  The gospels make a big deal about his getting his authority to baptize from heaven.  Jesus traveled 75 miles or so to go to John to be baptized by someone who had authority.

Some of what I’m writing about here relates to the authority of scripture.  Are we regulated by scripture?  Are we regulated by biblical example?  If the New Testament speaks about how things are done, then we should assume that is how things are to be done.  When worship was and has been violated, men laid out the regulative principle of worship.  We know that methods should be regulated by scripture too.  Paul said that preaching was God’s ordained method for the gospel or salvation. Other means are not to be used.

The ordinance of baptism was given to the church.  The church has the authority to baptize.  It must be a church.  What is often called a church can dip below the standard of being a church.  When a church becomes apostate, it loses its authority.  Jesus isn’t welcome there any more.  The candlestick has gone out, the glory is departed.

Baptist churches have believed and believe that only Baptist churches today have divine authority.  I often call this “horizontal authority.”  The Bible remains an authority always in this world, what I call “vertical authority.”  A pastor, for instance, we see in a church has authority.  He can rebuke, like Paul told Titus, “with all authority” (Titus 2:15).  Hebrews 13:17 says, “obey them that have the rule over you.”  Pastors have rule.  That is horizontal authority.

It is not a matter of checking out to see if the baptisms are chain link.  It’s looking to see if someone has been baptized by a church.  The church must have authority.  Roman Catholicism has no authority.  It is apostate.  Protestant churches came out of Roman Catholicism, so they don’t have authority either.  What does that leave you with?  Baptisms must come from Baptist churches.  I look to see if a church was started by another church.  I’m suspect if it isn’t a Baptist church.  This is just following the example of scripture, being regulated by scripture, understanding how authority operates.  Scripture says authority is necessary.

When you read Graves, his concern was that Baptist churches had accepted Presbyterian baptism and Campbellite baptism.  A man sprinkled as an infant baptized someone, so the man baptizing wasn’t baptized.  He doesn’t have authority to baptize if he isn’t baptized.  I’m not going to explain the Campbellite, because that should be obvious.

Bauder spends an entire paragraph explaining how that baptizing someone a “second time,” rebaptism, confuses the gospel, like portraying a picture that someone lost his salvation.  He says it is heresy and sin to rebaptize, just because of alien immersion. The paragraph is an ignorant one.  It’s hard to see how that he could have been serious.  I believe he was, but it’s difficult.  It is rather simple if he spent a few moments, it would seem.  See, Bauder himself thinks that some baptisms are not valid.

To Bauder, baptisms are not valid if they are the wrong mode, recipient, or meaning.  So what would he do with those invalid baptisms?  Would he rebaptize?  Yes, he would.  Or else, he would say, like I would, a person wasn’t baptized in the first place.  It isn’t baptism if it is sprinkling.  It isn’t baptism if a person wasn’t saved.  Someone makes a profession as a small child, is baptized, later understands it was not a true profession, so this person is truly converted, and then is baptized.  He was never baptized in the first place.  It isn’t a “second baptism” to Bauder because the first one wasn’t valid.

Like Bauder believes baptisms are not valid, we believe that authority is another scriptural qualification for baptism.  The Bible teaches this.  Bauder leaves it out.  He doesn’t give good reason for leaving it out, because he doesn’t deal with the scriptural basis of authority, debunking that at all. He doesn’t get into the history either.  He relies pretty much on conventional wisdom and his own opinion, what I call, seat of the pants.  I could say that he is sinning by leaving it out.  He should stop sinning.  He is disobedient to the example of scripture.  Jesus went to authority.  Jesus gave authority to the church to baptize.

Bauder is selective or just loose about authority.  This is being disrespectful to God, to the Bible, and to the church.  It is careless with something really important.  I get why people don’t like authority. They like to free float and do their own thing without accountability. I get it.  Someone can behave in a more ecumenical fashion, to make people who teach and practice false doctrine to feel accepted, because he accepts their baptism.  It’s just sentimentalism.  It isn’t loving.  It’s also very confusing, because it devalues actual baptism.  Yes, I’m telling you what I really think (except it’s actually a little more harsh than this).

A person not baptized with proper authority is not baptized.  This was around before Graves and the 19th century.  Consider the 1689 London Baptist Confession:

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordinances of positive and sovereign institution, appointed by the Lord Jesus, the only lawgiver, to be continued in his church to the end of the world. These holy appointments are to be administered by those only who are qualified and thereunto called, according to the commission of Christ.

Then consider the first Baptist confession in the American colonies, the Philadelphia Baptist Confession in 1742:

1. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordinances of positive and sovereign institution, appointed by the Lord Jesus, the only lawgiver, to be continued in his church to the end of the world.  (Matt. 28:19, 20; 1 Cor. 11;26)  2. These holy appointments are to be administered by those only who are qualified and thereunto called, according to the commission of Christ.  (Matt. 28:19; 1 Cor. 4:1)

I can give a lot more historical evidence.  It’s all over the place.  When Bauder says that Baptists accept irregular baptism, that’s a newer concept, that comes after modernism began really taking its way in the world.  His position is not the historical position.  It’s the new one, the one that fits well with a universal church belief that is more concerned with getting along with more people, even with doctrinal and practical differences.

More to Come

Part One   Part Two   Part Three   Part Four

Certain Baptists, many of them, in the 19th century began accepting non-Baptist baptism and interdenominational sharing of pulpits.  These changes from the norm became rampant.  Others, however, repudiated these practices as unbiblical.  They understood that Baptists through the centuries had suffered over such doctrine as baptism.   From the others, leaders emerged, who encouraged Baptists to return to scriptural and historical moorings among which were local only ecclesiology, church perpetuity, and authoritative baptism.  They applied to a certain degree the doctrine of ecclesiastical separation, which taught that doctrinal and practical distinctions were worth preserving.  They believed that when professing believers and churches begin to stray from right teaching and behavior, something should be done about it.  The stances of these leaders and their proponents became known as landmarkism.

Kevin Bauder in his chapter, “landmarkism,” treats the conviction of the landmarkers as an intrusion on a path of orthodoxy instead of the opposite truth.  Roman Catholicism and Protestantism encroached on the biblical belief and practice of the legitimate line of true New Testament churches. Bauder classifies local only ecclesiology as a deviation from biblical teaching.  He writes (p. 208):

Paul’s teaching n 1 Corinthians 12:13 definitely indicates, first, that a universal Body of Christ exists; second, that this body includes all believers and not just members of a particular congregation; and third, that this body is constituted in or by the Holy Spirit.

Bauder sees 1 Corinthians 12:13 as the proof text for the catholicity of the church.  I’ve shown so far in this series of posts that in no way does 1 Corinthians 12:13 teach any of those three points above that he asserts.  He doesn’t prove them with exegesis.  He reads into the text and really just assumes his position without justification.

Bauder says that the catholic church “is the church in the truest sense of that term.”  This is how most advocates of a universal church express it, that “the true church is all believers and a local church is the visible manifestation of the true one.”  The mystical or invisible being the “true,” one should recognize as platonism.  Plato saw the reality in the ideal with actual items only a visible manifestation.  The ideal is the object in its truest sense, hence a universal church, the church of the ideal, with an actual church merely a visible manifestation.

Bauder goes to Ephesians to bolster his universal church belief.  He asks, “Can the word church rightly be applied to this body?”  To evince that point, he uses Ephesians 1:22-23, which read:

22 And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, 23 Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.

Bauder doesn’t prove anything, just alleges that the church is all believers.  Why is it all believers? Bauders reasoning goes, 1 Corinthians 12:13 says the body is all believers (which it doesn’t, it says the opposite, see 12:27) and since the body is the church in Ephesians 1:22-23, then the church is also all believers.

When New Testament authors use the word “church” in the singular, such as “the church,” they either write of a specific assembly or are employing the generic use of the singular noun.  Those are the only two grammatical choices for a singular noun.  The application and invention of some type of platonic usage of the singular noun is not found applied to any other noun in the New Testament.

I’ve noticed Bauder’s assumptions concerning the universal church are typical for those who accept that teaching.  It relies on circular reasoning:  Ephesians 1 teaches it because 1 Corinthians 12:13 teaches it, and why does 1 Corinthians 12:13 teach it?  Because Ephesians 1 teaches it.

Bauder does this too with Ephesians 5.  He writes:

If we already believe that the universal Body of Christ can be called the church, we will almost inescapably see the universal, invisible church in Ephesians 5:22-33.

He provides no exegetical basis from Ephesians 5 to make that point.  He assumes a universal church in Ephesians 5 for there to be one.  His only explanation is that since individual churches have unbelievers in them, Paul could not present them as the bride of Christ.  That doesn’t prove his point and it really does the opposite.  A husband loves his wife by sanctifying her, like Christ sanctifies the church.  Even if the church were all believers, is Bauder saying that the church will have reached 100% sanctification when it is presented to Christ?  That line of reasoning doesn’t prove anything, and if it did, it also undermines Bauder’s own position.  He needed to think his argument all the way through, including his own position in his evaluation.

A lot in the text of Ephesians 5 contradicts a universal church understanding.  Bauder, like almost all universal church advocates, takes the metaphor of the bride further than he should.  Ephesians 5:23 reads, “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.”  “The church” is another generic singular noun.  It has to be, or else “the husband” and “the wife” also must necessarily be a universal, invisible husband and wife.  The verse actually has both of the two usages of the singular noun.  “The husband” is a generic singular and “the saviour” is a specific or particular singular.

“The husband” is not speaking of any specific or particular husband and “the church” is not speaking of any specific or particular church.  No one attempts to redefine “husband” to mean something different than it is, just because it is used in a generic way.  No one would say that there is only one husband, just because it is used in the singular.

A slightly different translation of Ephesians 5:23 can make a difference to one’s understanding, such as what William Tyndale did with his translation there, “even as Christ is the head of the congregation.”  The Greek word means “congregation” or “assembly.”  If one understands the word as “the congregation” it is more difficult, even impossible, to fathom something universal in Ephesians 5.  Tyndale does the same in Ephesians 5:32, “I speak between Christ and the congregation,” even as he does through the New Testament.  Was Tyndale a Landmarker?

The term “bride” doesn’t occur in Ephesians 5.  The Apostle Paul is teaching concerning the husband and wife relationship in Ephesians 5:22-33, and he uses Christ’s relationship to the church to illustrate the relationship of the husband to his wife.  Does Paul’s comparison in Ephesians 5 mean that the church is “the bride of Christ”?  It might surprise you to know that the “bride of Christ” isn’t terminology found in the New Testament anywhere.  The words “bride” and “Christ” do not appear together in any verse in the New Testament.

Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church (5:25), but that doesn’t mean that the church is Jesus’ bride.  Revelation 21:2 says that the New Jerusalem is “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”  I would assume that is also “the bride” of Revelation 21:9 and 22:17.  Is “the bride” there “the church”?  Ephesians 5 is a wife metaphor, just like John 14:2-3 are one, and just like Revelation 21 and 22 are a bride metaphor.  The Greek word translated “bride” in Revelation 21 and 22 is translated “daughter-in-law” in Matthew 10:35 and Luke 12:53, so the word itself isn’t even always a “bride.”

Ephesians 5:26-33 proceed to describe how Jesus’ loves the church, as an example of how the husband is to love the wife.  This doesn’t mean the church is His wife.  The language is metaphorical, very much like the body metaphor with Jesus as the Head and individuals in the church as body parts or members.  Like body parts of a real body submit to their head, the members of a church submit to Jesus.  These are metaphors.

The next post will talk about landmarkism and “alien immersion.”

Some reading here might ask, “Why now? Why not before the election?”  I’ve already explained that in previous posts, so I’m not going to belabor here, but I’m also saying “partly of Trump.”  I wouldn’t put Trump’s picture next to “fake playboy manhood” in the dictionary.  However, we live in a culture, whether left or right, that does not push actual manhood.  Left or right.  Trump got attention for it in the campaign, but it wasn’t defined for what it was.  It’s called sexism, but I’m calling it “fake playboy manhood.”

There are various iterations of fake playboy manhood.  Not all the “playing” is sexual, like Trump revealed.  Some of it is the glory given to man-aged males, promoting their playing above their taking responsibility.  I say it is “partly of Trump,” because Trump obviously takes responsibility and works. He is a hard worker — that is obvious.  For him to build what he’s built and get where he is, he has had to fulfill a lot of conditions of manhood, like Solomon built up Israel with all of its splendor. Because he took responsibility, a lot of people had employment and jobs.  He earned it.  However, Trump also promoted the fake playboy manhood that he and all others should repudiate.

Fake playboy manhood is everywhere.  It is manhood today.  It isn’t manhood, but it is as good as manhood in this culture.  Like I said, they call it sexism, because they can’t refer to manhood and womanhood.  They can’t say there are distinct roles of men and women.  They can’t say that, so they use the murky, flimsy castigation, “sexism,” a shell of a word intended for maximum injury with minimal understanding.  You could be sexist for holding the door open for a woman.

Many males today, who are playboys, would take what Trump has procured if they had Trump’s resources and abilities.  They settle for playing around a lot.  I looked up “playboy” in dictionary.com and it said, “a man who pursues a life of pleasure without responsibility or attachments.”  That’s exactly what I’m talking about.  It’s why I don’t think of Trump as a playboy.  He has given somewhat the impression of one, one that actual playboys might aspire to.  Even if he isn’t an actual playboy, he has encouraged it, especially with the NBC leaked footage from during the campaign, what he called locker room talk.  I haven’t been in an actual locker room, such as he referred, in many, many years, but in my assessment, it’s locker room talk.  I’m sure men talk that way among themselves.

I don’t see anywhere in scripture for a man to be a playboy.  If you are a real man, you’ve got plenty to do.  You have God, church, and family.  Each of those can take up all of your time.  If you do each of them right, you don’t have much time for playing around.  I see men, especially young men, with a huge commitment to their “spare time.”  I didn’t even include taking time for intellectual and aesthetic enrichment that will make someone a better man.  I didn’t including working out, keeping yourself fit. The latter very often the playboys still keep as a priority.  They’re into their bodies, even though Paul wrote that bodily exercise profits little.  I’ve always worked out consistently and regularly, but it’s a means to an end.  I recommend shrinking that amount of time and putting more into spiritual disciplines, like evangelism, study, and prayer.

I’ve noticed that playboys have a lot of buddies.  Their buddy relationship revolves around temporal things.  Their common ground is temporal.  They hang out together.  They joke.  Now its also the social media, the snap chat and texting.  God is left out of the equation.  They might enjoy the superficial admiration of women, but they won’t commit themselves to marriage and a family.  You’ve got to lead spiritually there, and they are too self-centered to take that step.  They don’t want to be judged.  They are looking for acceptance, admiration, and fun.  That’s all.

Alexander Hamilton is not a favorite founding father of mine, but he has one of the most amazing stories of any.  His story so intrigues that, as fact, it could work as a novel.  If you want to understand the founding of the United States, you’ve got to know Hamilton.

The hit Broadway musical, Hamilton, uses Alexander Hamilton as a vessel for a progressive message, delivering an audacious rendition of revisionist history.  The actual Alexander Hamilton is spun into a metaphor for left wing political propaganda.  If I were Mike Pence, our Vice-President elect, the ten foot pole would be a few miles short of how close I would have come to attending.  He should never have touched it.  Who does he think he is?  Was he there for entertainment, relaxation, or outreach, actually to show how diverse he was?

As many of you reading already know, Pence did attend Hamilton, was booed by many in the crowd when he entered the venue, and at the curtain call, a major cast member, Brandon Dixon, read a note from the cast intended to lecture Pence:

Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us at Hamilton: An American Musical, we really do. We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf all of us. All of us.

I draw your attention to the five words, “we are the diverse America.”  What is “the diverse America”?  What did Dixon mean by that?  Some might think it obvious.  How is the cast of Hamilton diverse?  On March 22, 2016, Hamilton announced on Playbill, “Seeking NON-WHITE men and women, ages 20s to 30s, for Broadway and upcoming Tours!”  Hamilton isn’t diverse either politically or racially.  Hamilton isn’t diverse.  Hamilton is the antithesis of diverse.  It is as alike, similar, or the same as could be.  They call such sameness diversity.   Would they have given a similar message to a President-elect Obama?  Of course not.

Some people call what Dixon did, “free speech.”  It’s not free speech.  Free speech is asking to deliver the message.  The audience, Pence, agrees.  Dixon speaks.  Pence answers.  Pence couldn’t answer.  He could never have hoped to answer.  He would have been booed down, violence would have followed, and the media the next day would say that Trump incited violence again.  What Dixon did was lecture Pence, like a Soviet KGB would a victim.  Pence had to “listen.”  Later, he had to say he enjoyed it, which he did.  What Pence did was politics.  Trump exercised his “free speech,” actual free speech by calling out the Hamilton cast for bad behavior, which it was.  It will contribute only to lose more elections.  People are sick of it.

Hamilton does not allow diversity.  For someone like Mike Pence to join the cast, he would need to keep his own political views to himself.  To start, Hamilton seeks non-white men and women.  I don’t care about that, but the lack of diversity at almost every major media outlet is why you can count on almost all of them to take the very same point of view.  They aren’t diverse at all.  If there were a very good word to describe their lack of diversity, I would give it, but for now, sameness.  They are all the same. If you are not the same, you are not allowed there.

The places most declaring diversity are the the least diverse.  The media.  Not diverse.  Schools and universities.  Not diverse.  Hollywood.  Not diverse.  When they say diverse, what do they then mean?  You can’t express a different point of view without being punished.  That’s for sure.  So what is diversity?  They aren’t diverse.  They are left winged progressives, who disallow diversity.

In the media, schools and universities, and in Hollywood, you cannot be pro-life, you cannot support traditional marriage, you cannot espouse traditional roles for men and women, and you cannot promote Christianity without punishment.  Conservative economic philosophy is also unwelcome. An “inalienable right” of Dixon of Hamilton would be the right to free healthcare, the right to transgender bathrooms.  Those are what he means by rights, neither of which are inalienable.   Someone who declared a differing point of view could not co-exist at Hamilton.

I watched at RCP the clip of Saturday Night Live’s (SNL) satire of the Trump presidential transition. In this bit of political propaganda under the guise of comedy, Trump supporters were lampooned as ignoramuses, the stupidest people on earth, being duped by Trump.  Trump himself is a totally stupid, con artist in the business of fooling the American people.  He has the svengali like ability to con people, yet at the same time being an incompetent fool.  Kellyann Conway (and Trump) is a joke, who is in way over her head.  SNL mocks her in a way that they themselves would call sexist if Trump were doing it, ridiculing for the way she looked.  This is really who these people are. Total hypocrites.  Democrats would likely say that SNL serves as therapy after a devastating loss.  It doesn’t quite work though because these stupid people are the ones who defeated them and will now be in charge of every branch of government.

Diversity exists in this country, because it is enshrined in the United States Constitution.  The people who claim the mantle of diversity themselves are not diverse.  They don’t want diversity.  They want complete homogenization, where everyone is required not only to take but also support their point of view, almost every right taken away from those who oppose them.  This is a major reason they lost the election.

Many state colleges and universities have courses on pluralism.  I’m not kidding when I say that Harvard includes me in their study.  I’ve received a few emails and phone calls from Harvard students through the years.  I think it is interesting when you read what Harvard says “pluralism” is on its definition page, which includes the following four aspects:

First, pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity. . . . Second, pluralism is not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference. . . . Third, pluralism is not relativism, but the encounter of commitments. . . . Fourth, pluralism is based on dialogue.

I’m fine with a definition acceptable to Harvard.  I have used the example of Coke and Pepsi.  They both get to exist, but that doesn’t mean they have to promote each other.  They can even say one is better than the other.  I would expect it.

I can tell you that I have an open mind when I talk to people from other religions.  When I recently visited a Sikh home, I asked him to give me his explanation of Sikhism and what motivated it.  I spent and hour and a half sitting, listening to him and asking questions.  I don’t believe Sikhism, but I really know what it is and why I’m not a Sikh.

Every Christian with whom I have spoken in California at state education institutions says that the message of Christianity is not welcome.  It’s not fine for any of our church members in the public high schools or state colleges or universities.  They cannot give their opinion without the threat of violence.  When I say violence, I mean that they are given intimidating treatment.  That is allowed to go on.  Only one point of view is allowed.

I was talking to a young lady who attends El Cerrito high school here, who is a Christian.  Everyone is protected in their speech except for Christians.  She is African American, she grew up in California, and she says that here California is supposed to be some kind of model of diversity and multiculturalism, but she can’t freely talk about Christianity on campus.  You can with every other religion, she says.  This is not someone who grew up in our church.

Trump wins the election, and there are violent riots in the street, destruction of property, physical harm to people.  I hear one side call that first amendment rights.  On the other hand, Trump supporters celebrate, and that is covered as hate speech.  Just supporting the victory is viewed as hate speech by a large portion of our population.  Those same people use foul language and expletives to deal with Trump support.  For sure, some Trump supporters retaliate, but nothing like what they get from the proponents.

Jamelle Bouie, who is on mainstream media, a regular panelist on CBS on their Sunday shows, as well as appearing on many others, writes a column for Slate magazine, entitled (and he is serious), “There Is No Such Thing as a Good Trump Voter.”  Many, many have said they don’t want Trump to succeed and that he isn’t their president.  I’ve never seen so many death threats.

Everyone reading here knows that in most of the United States and especially in public institutions, you cannot show support for Trump.  I’m sure there are athletes in the NFL, NBA, and MLB who like Trump, but they can’t say it.  You saw 100% support of Hillary.  I get why the coaches in professional sports feel like they will be better off if they bash Trump.  They don’t think they can keep their locker room together if they said they wanted him to win over Hillary.  Maybe he liked her, but Greg Popovich is a recent example.  Here’s someone you know is a complete filthy mouth, who is regularly disrespectful and condescending to people all around him. You know he is.  He gets away with it, because he has won five championships, and perhaps a few other reasons that people won’t say.

If we want to keep free speech, if we want to continue saying what we believe or even think, then we better get doing it, and doing it in a major way.  They can’t shut everyone down.  If people are too afraid, the numbers will help.  I’m not saying for people to be disrespectful.  I’m saying speak out in a respectful way against abortion, against evolution, for a Christian worldview, for a true view of history, for conservative principles, and for the Bible.  We better stand right now.