“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” II Corinthians 4:17
I do not think we as Baptist can appreciate our heritage until we have some understanding of the history of the suffering and severe persecution that our forbearers endured. It was delivered to us bathed in blood. We can trace these sufferings back to the middle of the eighth century AD. The persecution of the Anabaptist was at the hand of the Roman Catholic Church until the Reformation. At which time the protestant reformed joined forces with the Catholic to annihilate and banish them from the face of the earth. These persecutions endured until 1848. The point of contention was baptism. The Anabaptist contending for “believer’s baptism” only, while firmly denying infant baptism, censoring it as unbiblical. The following is from one of the earliest Baptist Confessions written from a prison cell in 1541 by Peter Rideman of the Hutterians (Anabaptist). “Since infants are not born of God after the Christian manner, that is through the preaching of the Word, faith and the Holy Spirit (James 1:17-18; I Pet.1:3-5), they cannot be baptized in the right way. For baptism is acceptance into the Church of Christ. Now, since all who are born of Adam partake of his fellowship, should they desire to be embodied in the Church of Christ, they must be born of Christ in the Christian way (Rom.5:12-15); that they may be accepted in the right way, which was committed to His Church by Him (Mark 16:15-16); Matt.28:18-20). We find in no place that the apostles baptized infants; on the contrary we find that they kept what had been committed to them and their Master’s teaching. “The following are the reasons why we hold the baptism of infants to be useless and wrong: firstly, that in the whole of the Holy Scriptures not a word can be found in which the baptism of infants is even considered, much less commanded; secondly, we find that the popes in their decrees have ordained that children who can say the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles’ Creed should be baptized, which they would not have needed to ordain if it had been so before (firstly); therefore it is obviously a plant that hath been planted by men, and so must be rooted up (Matt.15:13); thirdly, that baptism is the bond of a good conscience with God (I Pet.3:18-21); fourthly, that the covenant of grace is a covenant of the knowledge and recognition of God (Jer.31:34). Infants, however, know neither good nor evil (Deut.1:39). That is alone reason enough for us had we no other reasons, to reject and put away infant baptism.” My dear readers, if it was worth dying for back then, it is worth standing for today. ~~Terry Worthan, 1938-2022
Older
Top
