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.

troops that Israel had, they would vaunt themselves against their God, saying, “Mine own hand hath saved me” (Judges 7:2). So God instructed Gideon to eliminate 31,700 of the 32,000 troops: Israel only had 300 soldiers left to fight the battle against the Midianites and Amalekites (Judges 7:6). That is lowering the number of Israel’s army by over 99%!
The soldiers of Gideon, which included men (no women) from the tribes of Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun, Naphtali and later Ephraim pursued after the Midianites and destroyed the enemy leaders named Zebah and Zalmunna and over 135,000 soldiers of the Midianites. He was so successful that the “men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son also; for thou hast delivered us, from the hand of Midian” (Judges 8:22). Gideon answered: “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you; the LORD shall rule over you” (Judges 8:23).

