Church of the Slam Dunk Part 2
by Pastor Mark Downey
September 14, 2014
Scripture Reading: John 1:6-9
We've been looking at the sacred cow of full body immersion baptism. Baptism is not really the best word, biblically speaking, for the practice of submerging oneself in a body of water. I think what has happened is cognitive dissonance; when two things are so similar that the original intent is ignored for something else. Our race has suffered from being shortchanged on important principles of biblical events such as the Flood account of Noah being borrowed by non-Adamic cultures. After awhile, every stranger has their 'flood' legend, and the presumption becomes that it was worldwide, rather than local. If baptism is something other than water immersion, then their New Testament exegesis of Old Testament types and shadows cannot be supported. They try to incorporate the parting of the Red Sea as some sort of baptizo on the Israelites, however, if you recall, it was Pharaoh's army that experienced the full body immersion. And it was not Noah and his family that received the full body immersion during the flood. The principle of the original has been lost or is not recognized. Just as God's chosen people don't know who they are, we have a situation today where the wrong people are calling themselves Israel. It behooves us, therefore, to identify the principles of baptism from Genesis to Revelation.