baptism

• religious ceremonial in Babylon

85:4.1Man­kind has wor­shiped earth, air, wa­ter, and fire. The prim­i­tive races ven­er­ated springs and wor­shiped rivers. Even now in Mon­go­lia there flour­ishes an in­flu­en­tial river cult. Bap­tism be­came a re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial in Baby­lon, and the Greeks prac­ticed the an­nual rit­ual bath. It was easy for the an­cients to imag­ine that the spir­its dwelt in the bub­bling springs, gush­ing foun­tains, flow­ing rivers, and rag­ing tor­rents. Mov­ing wa­ters vividly im­pressed these sim­ple minds with be­liefs of spirit an­i­ma­tion and super­nat­u­ral power. Some­times a drown­ing man would be re­fused suc­cor for fear of of­fend­ing some river god.

• evolution of ceremony

87:6.12Wa­ter was re­garded as the best pro­tec­tion against ghosts. Holy wa­ter was su­pe­rior to all other forms, wa­ter in which the priests had washed their feet. Both fire and wa­ter were be­lieved to con­sti­tute im­pass­able bar­ri­ers to ghosts. The Ro­mans car­ried wa­ter three times around the corpse; in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury the body is sprin­kled with holy wa­ter, and hand wash­ing at the ceme­tery is still a Jew­ish rit­ual. Bap­tism was a fea­ture of the later wa­ter rit­ual; prim­i­tive bathing was a re­li­gious cer­e­mony. Only in re­cent times has bathing be­come a san­i­tary prac­tice.

• Mithraic rite

98:5.4The ad­her­ents of this cult wor­shiped in caves and other se­cret places, chant­ing hymns, mum­bling magic, eat­ing the flesh of the sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals, and drink­ing the blood. Three times a day they wor­shiped, with spe­cial weekly cer­e­mo­ni­als on the day of the sun-god and with the most elab­o­rate ob­ser­vance of all on the an­nual fes­ti­val of Mithras, De­cem­ber twenty-fifth. It was be­lieved that the par­tak­ing of the sacra­ment en­sured eter­nal life, the im­me­di­ate pass­ing, af­ter death, to the bo­som of Mithras, there to tarry in bliss un­til the judg­ment day. On the judg­ment day the Mith­raic keys of heaven would un­lock the gates of Par­a­dise for the re­cep­tion of the faith­ful; where­upon all the un­bap­tized of the liv­ing and the dead would be an­ni­hi­lated upon the re­turn of Mithras to earth. It was taught that, when a man died, he went be­fore Mithras for judg­ment, and that at the end of the world Mithras would sum­mon all the dead from their graves to face the last judg­ment. The wicked would be de­stroyed by fire, and the righ­teous would reign with Mithras for­ever.

• Mithraic rite

98:6.4Al­ways had it been the prac­tice of Mith­raic wor­shipers, on en­ter­ing the tem­ple, to dip their fin­gers in holy wa­ter. And since in some dis­tricts there were those who at one time be­longed to both re­li­gions, they in­tro­duced this cus­tom into the ma­jor­ity of the Chris­tian churches in the vicin­ity of Rome. Both re­li­gions em­ployed bap­tism and par­took of the sacra­ment of bread and wine. The one great dif­fer­ence be­tween Mith­ra­ism and Chris­tian­ity, aside from the char­ac­ters of Mithras and Je­sus, was that the one en­cour­aged mil­i­tarism while the other was ul­tra­pa­cific. Mith­ra­ism’s tol­er­ance for other re­li­gions (ex­cept later Chris­tian­ity) led to its fi­nal un­do­ing. But the de­cid­ing fac­tor in the strug­gle be­tween the two was the ad­mis­sion of women into the full fel­low­ship of the Chris­tian faith.

• John baptized for remission of sins
• of gentile proselytes into fellowship of outer court

135:6.4There was still an­other and a new fea­ture about the work of this Nazarite preacher: He bap­tized ev­ery one of his be­liev­ers in the Jor­dan “for the re­mis­sion of sins.” Al­though bap­tism was not a new cer­e­mony among the Jews, they had never seen it em­ployed as John now made use of it. It had long been the prac­tice thus to bap­tize the gen­tile pros­e­lytes into the fel­low­ship of the outer court of the tem­ple, but never had the Jews them­selves been asked to sub­mit to the bap­tism of re­pen­tance. Only fif­teen months in­ter­vened be­tween the time John be­gan to preach and bap­tize and his ar­rest and im­pris­on­ment at the in­sti­ga­tion of Herod An­tipas, but in this short time he bap­tized con­sid­er­ably over one hun­dred thou­sand pen­i­tents.

• public profession of entrance into kingdom

144:6.7But the most se­ri­ous of all their prob­lems was the ques­tion of bap­tism. Their dif­fi­cul­ties were all the more ag­gra­vated be­cause Je­sus had re­fused to make any pro­nounce­ment upon the sub­ject. They fi­nally agreed: As long as John lived, or un­til they might jointly mod­ify this de­ci­sion, only the apos­tles of John would bap­tize be­liev­ers, and only the apos­tles of Je­sus would fi­nally in­struct the new dis­ci­ples. Ac­cord­ingly, from that time un­til af­ter the death of John, two of the apos­tles of John ac­com­pa­nied Je­sus and his apos­tles to bap­tize be­liev­ers, for the joint coun­cil had unan­i­mously voted that bap­tism was to be­come the ini­tial step in the out­ward al­liance with the af­fairs of the king­dom.

• price apostles paid to gain followers of John

144:7.1Through­out the months of Novem­ber and De­cem­ber, Je­sus and the twenty-four worked qui­etly in the Greek cities of the De­capo­lis, chiefly in Scythopo­lis, Gerasa, Abila, and Gadara. This was re­ally the end of that pre­lim­i­nary pe­riod of tak­ing over John’s work and or­ga­ni­za­tion. Al­ways does the so­cial­ized re­li­gion of a new rev­e­la­tion pay the price of com­pro­mise with the es­tab­lished forms and us­ages of the pre­ced­ing re­li­gion which it seeks to sal­vage. Bap­tism was the price which the fol­low­ers of Je­sus paid in or­der to carry with them, as a so­cial­ized re­li­gious group, the fol­low­ers of John the Bap­tist. John’s fol­low­ers, in join­ing Je­sus’ fol­low­ers, gave up just about ev­ery­thing ex­cept wa­ter bap­tism.

• public profession of entrance into kingdom

144:8.5Many who heard Je­sus that day sub­mit­ted them­selves to John’s bap­tism, thereby pub­licly pro­fess­ing en­trance into the king­dom. And the apos­tles of John were firmly knit to Je­sus from that day for­ward. This oc­cur­rence marked the real union of John’s and Je­sus’ fol­low­ers.

• Jesus never opposed rite of

170:5.13Je­sus fore­saw that a so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion, or church, would fol­low the prog­ress of the true spir­i­tual king­dom, and that is why he never op­posed the apos­tles’ prac­tic­ing the rite of John’s bap­tism. He taught that the truth-lov­ing soul, the one who hungers and thirsts for righ­teous­ness, for God, is ad­mit­ted by faith to the spir­i­tual king­dom; at the same time the apos­tles taught that such a be­liever is ad­mit­ted to the so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion of dis­ci­ples by the out­ward rite of bap­tism.

• in early Christian church

194:4.9At first they bap­tized in the name of Je­sus; it was al­most twenty years be­fore they be­gan to bap­tize in “the name of the Fa­ther, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Bap­tism was all that was re­quired for ad­mis­sion into the fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers. They had no or­ga­ni­za­tion as yet; it was sim­ply the Je­sus broth­er­hood.