Msg#1620 Baptized for the Dead?
What The Bible Says
Good Samaritan’s Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice
A friend refuting the LDS cult told an elder “Get real! There is nothing in the Bible about being baptized for the dead!” His mouth was stopped when the cultic elder showed him 1Cor 15:29. Indeed the verse captures the focus of many false teachers, and stumps far to many honest believers. There are three exceptional rules for dealing with difficult verses: #1 watch the context in the chapter, #2 watch the context in the book, and #3 watch the context in the Bible. False teachers excel at taking things out of context. The verse says, “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?” The false teaching supposes that there is some merit in the living somehow being baptized for the dead. The whole Bible captured in a single sentence is its most memorized verse, John 3:16. It shows man’s stubborn, rebellious, lost need of a Saviour, the Only Begotten Son as that Saviour, the destiny of those without the Saviour, belief to be the only means of appropriating eternal salvation, and the whosoever that is eligible for that eternal salvation. There is no baptism of any sort in this principle, least of all a baptism for someone else, and certainly no baptism for the dead. Corinth was the most carnal of all New Testament churches; in these fifteen chapters are refuted fifteen apostate conditions, and in chapter fifteen the undeniable truth of the resurrection of the dead is the topic. In context this verse, 15:29, is the nonsensical question, “If Christ be not risen, then he is dead, and Why are they then baptized for the dead?” A believer is baptized (wholly immersed) into our Lord Jesus Christ; water baptism is not the act, it is only the picture; and if Christ is dead, What shall they do which are baptized for the dead? Christ is indeed resurrected; he is alive forevermore; and when one is baptized into the living Christ, he is alive for evermore. One is not baptized for the dead, but for the living; that is the core of 1Cor 15:29. Don’t let false teachers rob from this simplicity, and make the Holy Bible say something that it does not, For God so loved the world…
An Essay for week #20 May 15, 16
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