So, you elevate “the church” above Jesus Christ? No way, man not in a million years. You have it back wards buddy. Honor the church, ya, but NEVER elevate ANYTHING or anyone above the Lord Himself. You do it by trusting in Jesus Christ as the bible clearly says. You have No scripture to back that faulty teaching, just a faulty church tradition which contradicts God’s word.
You cannot show me any place in Catholic teaching where what you have stated is our belief. Catholig has be ineloquent in his statement, but the principle is that Christ built
His church, and that Church believed and taught certain things that are recorded both in the New Testament and in Christian history.
If in fact your own beliefs do not align with those verifiable teachings, then who is wrong?
Blotted out when we reject Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
I’m sorry, but that is not at all what the passage says and not at all what it even remotely implies.
What you have offered is your own faith community’s all too fallible interpretation, and it glaringly contradicts what the Word of God says in this case.
The very word Baptizo, literally means:
- baptizw baptizo, bap-tid’-zo
Search for 907 in KJV
from a derivative of 911; to immerse, submerge; to make whelmed (i.e. fully wet); used only (in the New Testament) of ceremonial ablution, especially (technically) of the ordinance of Christian baptism:–Baptist, baptize, wash.
Mt 3:16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up
straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:
this is all well and good, but the fact is that the early church (both in the New Testament and after, had no such scruples on this matter, as the story of the Philippian jailer points out to us here.
Acts 16:[23] And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely.
[24] Having received this charge, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.
[25] But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them,
[26] and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and every one’s fetters were unfastened.
[27] When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped.
[28] But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”
[29] And he called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas,
[30] and brought them out and said, “Men, what must I do to be saved?”
[31] And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
[32] And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all that were in his house.
[33] And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once, with all his family.
[34] Then he brought them up into his house, and set food before them; and he rejoiced with all his household that he had believed in God.
Notice that he washed their wounds and then he and his whole household was baptized. It nowhere says that they carted him and his whole family off to the riverside to have a baptism. In fact it was the middle of the night…
Moreover, the earliest verifiably Christian writings show this was never an issue.
From
the Didache (The teaching of the Twelve Apostles):
Chapter 7. Concerning Baptism. And concerning baptism, baptize this way: Having first said all these things, baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water. **But if you have no living water, baptize into other water; and if you cannot do so in cold water, do so in warm. But if you have neither, pour out water three times upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit. **But before the baptism let the baptizer fast, and the baptized, and whoever else can; but you shall order the baptized to fast one or two days before.
