Originally Posted by semiannualchick:
Originally Posted by Contendah:
What Skippy wanted was to continue playing his silly game of pretending that the documented facts posted about his Mormon cult were not true. Well, they are true, and Skippy could not convincingly rebut them, so he wisely got out of Dodge. Each day he remained on the forum, his naivete' and evasiveness became more obvious. When folks can not defend the wacky tenets of a bizarre home-made belief system, it is in their interest to retreat, which is what Skippy did.
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And who made you & Bill God? What about Pastor's & Christians from all over that proclaim the COC to be a cult?
What do the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics, & the Church of Christ denomination all have in common? They each claim to have THE Way; THE Truth; & THE Life, and that no one gets to heaven without being a part of their organization! Notice I said organization, not church. The COC is thought by many to be a most deceptive & dangerous cult. Their teaching of baptismal regeneration is an age-old heresy that dam*s people to hell. The idea that your church is the one, true & restored church of Jesus Christ puts them in the same league with the Mormon & Roman Catholic churches.
You & Bill badgered Skippy to answer your questions & you claim he wouldn’t. Why don’t you answer mine?
1: How did the thief on the cross get to heaven without being baptized?
2: How did Cornelius get saved before he was water baptized?
3: Why did Paul say that the Lord did not send him to baptize but to preach the Gospel?
4: Why do they forbid speaking in tongues?
5: Why do they reject musical instruments if God never said to?
6: Why do they teach that they are the only true Christians?
7: Why do they never talk about the Holy Spirit when he is mentioned on virtually every page of the New Testament?
I could go on & on, but I don’t really expect you to answer those questions because you can’t w/o showing the ignorance of the COC & their teachings.
How would you feel if someone stayed after you all the time like you did Skippy? I have a feeling you wouldn't like it either.
You're just as stupid in your beliefs as Bill is about his belief of OSAS.
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Do not expect me to find the time to answer ALL your questions at once, but I will start with a couple and as time goes by, I will address the others.
Let us start with that old "thief on the cross" issue (your question No. 1). NO, he was not baptized, but the promise Jesus made to him was made BEFORE JESUS DIED. The significance of that is that it with in the death of Christ and the shedding of His blood for remission of sins that the new covenant in Christ began. Read Hebrews 9" 12-15, which makes it clear that the new covenant followed the death of Christ.
Thus the thief lived under the old covenant, the Law of Moses , which obviously did not include Christian baptism. Whether or not the thief kept laws and observances peculiar to that old covenant we are not told. But whatever his standing in the law of Moses, Jesus Christ saw fit to pardon him and assure him a place in paradise. If you have a problem with that, ask Jesus to help you with it.
Your question No. 3 : "Why did Paul say that the Lord did not send him to baptize but to preach the Gospel?"
This one is very easy to answer, semi, and the answer, in part, is that Paul's statement actually proves the opposite of what so many careless students of scripture claim for it.
Paul was not saying anything here about the purpose of baptism. He was dealing with Christians who were forming party loyalties based on their attachment to people like Apollos and Cephas (Peter), who had baptized them. Paul, in looking back at his work in Corinth, was glad to be able to say that he had personally baptized only a couple of the Corinthian Christians because that prevented him from becoming the object of such divisiveness.
The passage (I Corinthians 1:12-17) actually makes a very strong statement about the importance of baptism. Paul asks a series of rhetorical questions "Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" The unwritten, but obvious answers to these questions are as follows:
Q. "Is Christ divided? "
A. NO! Your loyalty, then, is to CHRIST.
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Q. "Was Paul crucified for you?"
A. Of course not. It is Christ who died for you; you owe Him, not Paul, your undivided love and loyalty.
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Q. "Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?"
A. If they were baptized in the name of Christ, and we have every reason to believe that they were, then they are Christ's, not Paul's, not Cephas's, and not Apollos's.
Paul is in effect asking these divisive Corinthian believers, "Whose are you? To whom do you belong?" And he is saying that they belong to Christ because, among other things, they were baptized in the name of Christ. That in no way diminishes the importance of baptism. To the contrary, it demonstrates its importance to the apostle as a central and essential tenet of the Christian faith..
Those who misrepresent the meaning and purpose of baptism fail to see how this passage powerfully portrays the importance of baptism .
To isolate the verse from its context, as careless interpreters often do, and then to attempt to use it to imply that it "proves" something that it does not prove is not being honest with the Word of God.
