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Baptism Quotes

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Baptism Quotes

“At present, the successful office-seeker is a good deal like the center of the earth; he weighs nothing himself, but draws everything else to him. There are so many societies, so many churches, so many isms, that it is almost impossible for an independent man to succeed in a political career. Candidates are forced to pretend that they are catholics with protestant proclivities, or christians with liberal tendencies, or temperance men who now and then take a glass of wine, or, that although not members of any church their wives are, and that they subscribe liberally to all. The result of all this is that we reward hypocrisy and elect men entirely destitute of real principle; and this will never change until the people become grand enough to allow each other to do their own thinking. Our government should be entirely and purely secular. The religious views of a candidate should be kept entirely out of sight. He should not be compelled to give his opinion as to the inspiration of the bible, the propriety of infant baptism, or the immaculate conception. All these things are private and personal. The people ought to be wise enough to select as their officers men who know something of political affairs, who comprehend the present greatness, and clearly perceive the future grandeur of our country. If we were in a storm at sea, with deck wave-washed and masts strained and bent with storm, and it was necessary to reef the top sail, we certainly would not ask the brave sailor who volunteered to go aloft, what his opinion was on the five points of Calvinism. Our government has nothing to do with religion. It is neither christian nor pagan; it is secular. But as long as the people persist in voting for or against men on account of their religious views, just so long will hypocrisy hold place and power. Just so long will the candidates crawl in the dust—hide their opinions, flatter those with whom they differ, pretend to agree with those whom they despise; and just so long will honest men be trampled under foot.”

“Wachawi hivi ndivyo wanavyoapishwa na kuikana imani ya Kikristo: Mwanafunzi hupelekwa kilingeni katika siku maalumu kuonana na Shetani, pamoja na jopo la wachawi. Shetani hutokea katika mwili wa hewa, mwili uliochanganyikana na hewa na mvuke mzito, wa mwanamume na kuwasihi waishikilie imani yao kwake kwa mioyo yao yote, huku akiwaahidi utajiri na maisha marefu kama hawatamkana. Kisha wachawi wanampendekeza mwanafunzi kwa Shetani. Shetani humuuliza mwanafunzi kama yuko tayari kuikana imani yake, kuachana na Ukristo na kutokumwabudu Mwanamke Aliyebarikiwa Kuliko Wanawake Wote Duniani Maria Magdalena, na kutoziheshimu sakaramenti za aina zote. Mwanafunzi atakapokubaliana na masharti hayo, Shetani atanyoosha mkono wake na kumsihi mwanafunzi anyooshe wa kwake. Kwa mkono wake mwenyewe, mwanafunzi ataapa na kuweka agano na Shetani mbele ya jopo la wachawi. Baada ya hapo bila kuchelewa Shetani ataendelea na kusema kuwa hicho kiapo hakitoshi. Lakini mwanafunzi atakapouliza afanye kitu gani cha ziada, Shetani atahitaji kiapo kifuatacho kwa heshima yake na kwa heshima ya mashetani wote: Mwanafunzi ajikabidhi kwa Shetani kwa mwili na kwa roho yake yote daima dawamu, na afanye kila awezalo kuleta wanafunzi wengine wa kike na wa kiume katika ufalme wake. Kama hiyo haitoshi Shetani ataongeza kuwa lazima mwanafunzi atengeneze mafuta fulani kutokana na mifupa na viungo vya miili ya watoto, hasa watoto waliobatizwa, kwani kwa kufanya hivyo atamtimizia kila kitu atakachokitaka hapa duniani. Hiyo ni njia mojawapo ya kiapo. Njia nyingine ya kiapo ni kwa wale ambao hawajiamini au wana hofu ya kuonana na Shetani uso kwa uso kilingeni, akiwa na mwili wa kimazingaombwe na sauti ya kutisha kwani Shetani hana mapafu wala hana ulimi. Badala ya kilingeni mwanafunzi hupelekwa kanisani na jopo la wachawi ambapo mbele ya jopo atalazimishwa kuikana imani yake, kumkana Yesu Kristo, kuukana ubatizo na kulikana kanisa zima kwa ujumla wake. Mwanafunzi baada ya hapo atalazimishwa kutoa heshima kuu kwa Mfalme Mdogo, kwani hivyo ndivyo wanavyomwita Shetani ili kumwondolea mwanafunzi hofu, kisha atalazimishwa kunywa supu ya mtoto mchanga waliyemuua akazikwa kisha wakamfukua na kupika viungo vya mwili wake; na dakika hiyo mwanafunzi atapata maarifa, maarifa ya kichawi, kama walimu wake na watarudi nyumbani.”

“That is not the only trajectory along which the baptism narrative grew and evolved. The Markan version itself began to afford new embarrassments as Christian history progressed. After all, John's was a baptism for repenting sinners! What on earth was Jesus doing there? [...] Apparently, Mark saw nothing amiss. After all, it is a good thing to repent, isn't it? The same humility that led Jesus to wade into the Jordan that day also bade him deflect the polite flattery of a wellwisher in Mark 10:17-18. "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone!" Needless to say, the thought never entered Mark's head that Jesus might be an incarnation of God. That is a later stage of Christology, and when theologians arrived there, Mark 10:17-18 became a headache for which no cure has yet been found.”

“Living in the present moment is the recurring baptism of the soul, forever purifying every new day with a new you.”

“It is not a gathering of 'escapees' from the world, bitterly enjoying their escape, feeding their hate for the world. Listen to their psalms and hymns; contemplate the transparent beauty of their icons, their movements, of the entire *celebration. It is truly cosmical joy that permeates all this; it is the entire creation - its matter and its time, its sounds and colors, its words and silence - that praises and worships God and in this praise becomes again itself: the Eucharist, the sacrament of unity, the sacrament of the new creation.”

“Accept the past as the past and realize that each new day you are a new person who doesn’t need to carry old baggage into the new day with you. It’s amazing how many people ruin the beauty of today with the sorrows of yesterday. Yesterday doesn’t exist anymore! For example, if ever I feel foolish or guilty about something I’ve done, I learn from it and attempt to do better the next time. Shame or guilt serves no one. Such feelings actually keep us down, often lowering the vibrations of those around us, as well. Living in the present moment is the recurring baptism of the soul, forever purifying every new day with a new you.”

“We have seen some gatekeeping or fencing-the-table language already beginning to rear its head in this context. One needed to be baptized to take the meal; one needed to repent to take the meal; one needed a bishop or his subordinate to serve the meal. This was to become especially problematic when the church began to suggest that grace was primarily, if not exclusively, available through the hands of the priest and by means of the sacrament. One wonders what Jesus, dining with sinners and tax collectors and then eating his modified Passover meal with disciples whom he knew were going to deny, desert, and betray him, would say about all this. There needs to be a balance between proper teaching so the sacrament is partaken of in a worthy manner and overly zealous policing of the table or clerical control of it.”

“How do we reach Gilead? Remember, Gilead lies beyond the River Jordan. That's where God meets us. The waters of the Jordan are made up of the tears of God, blended with the tears of all our grieving. The journey to Gilead crosses that river of tears. It's the journey we call baptism. That's what baptism is: being bathed, healed, cleansed, and renewed in the waters that flow from the broken heart of God. That's the balm in Gilead. The tears of the living God. The tears that make up the water of our baptism. To be baptized in the tears of God: this is the truest balm of all.”

“To try to understand the words, first and foremost, is a fool’s errand. That’s why everyone thinks Christian fundamentalists, or really any kind of religious fundamentalists, are wackjobs or idiots or both. What most Catholics understand, it seems intuitively, or perhaps because they were baptized as babies and already put on their path without much of a say, is that they are supposed to behave like actors; it’s about learning the lines, the cues, then feeling them, there in the church and also out in the world. That’s it. That’s how Christianity is supposed to work; it is based on feeling, not knowledge. That’s what it means to be a follower.”

“Sometimes silences are pregnant and sometimes not. It is hard to know what to make of the silence of much of the New Testament about the Lord’s Supper. Perhaps it is simply an accident of time and circumstance. There was not a felt need to address the matter. What we should not likely conclude is that it was not seen as an important matter in the latter part of the first century A.D. What we can observe is that the Lord’s Supper continued to be an in-home ceremony taken in the context of a fellowship meal. We also now know it was important in both Gentile and Jewish contexts in the church in the second half of the first century, and beyond. We see no evidence anywhere in this material that clerics of any kind are in charge of the meal and its distribution. Even in the Didache, prophets, who were mouthpieces for God, are only allowed to say the thanksgiving prayer as often as they like. The low ecclesiology, coupled with the ever-present eschatology, suggest that the Didache does indeed go back to the end of the first century A.D. But one precedent in the Didache does stand out: the Lord’s Supper is for baptized Christians, and in particular for those who repent of their sins. We are on the way to the church of the Middle Ages in some respects, but we have not begun to localize or confine grace to the elements of the Lord’s Supper itself and then have it controlled by clerics.”

“Sonnet of Holy Water A new day starts with a new you, And I ain't talkin' about born again nonsense. A bigot baptized a thousand times is still a bigot, A human helping another is Christ himself. There is no second coming, there’s no reincarnation, Except when we go from selfishness to kindness. We are the messiahs and saviors of our people, Nobody's gonna fall from the sky to lift the helpless. The liquor store sells you the same divinity, That the holy store sells you for even higher price. We'll be born again when we abolish such divinity, By baptizing the soil of society with our sacrifice. The tears of joy someone sheds because of you, Are the only holy water to build the world anew.”

“I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism make me one; and as to being a Deist, I know not, strictly speaking, whether I am one or not, for I have never read their writings; mine will therefore determine the matter; for I have not in the least disguised my sentiments, but have written freely without any conscious knowledge of prejudice for, or against any man, sectary or party whatever; but wish that good sense, truth and virtue may be promoted and flourish in the world, to the detection of delusion, superstition, and false religion; and therefore my errors in the succeeding treatise, which may be rationally pointed out, will be readily rescinded.”

“Baptism makes us kings. It calls us to fight with spiritual weapons of prayer, righteousness, faith, the sword-word of the Spirit. It commissions us to rule with wise justice and to build with skill. When we sin, baptism assures us that 'the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise' (Ps 51:17). Baptism promises that the Spirit dwells among the fragments of a shattered heart.”

“The Spirit of God draws or leads the sinner from one phase to another, gradually, in proportion as one is found having a disposition to responsive hearing. Grace flows ordinarily from prevenient grace through the grace of baptism through the grace of justification toward sanctifying grace leading toward consummation in glory. The power by which one cooperates with grace is grace itself. In this way God draws all to himself, eliciting a hunger for righteousness and a desire for truth.”

“I was raised as a Baptist in the Bible Belt of the South. Until the age of 37, I had never heard anyone teach or preach about the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Oh yes, I had heard those scriptures read, more aptly read over, and had read over them myself, but I had never heard anyone try to explain this amazing experience or even give it any credence.”

“The early Mormons were even less concerned about ministerial training. On several occasions, a man heard a discourse, submitted to baptism and confirmation, received a call to priesthood, and was sent on a mission - all on the same day. Canadian Samuel Hall, for instance, found a Latter-Day Saint tract on a Montreal street and traveled to Nauvoo to hear the teachings of Joseph Smith himself. On the day of his arrival, he heard a sermon by Smith, requested baptism, received ordination, and started on a mission - without even pausing to change his wet clothes.”

“Learning to listen with one's whole body. Learning to hear with the eye and see with the ear and speak with the hearing. Knowing the Spirit in movement and not in stasis. Such a process makes us aware of the way some of our bodily and work-role functions were usurped for the rituals of the church over which women were forbidden to officiate as celebrants. New birth, symbolized by the uterine waters of baptism, was separated from physical birth. The Eucharist took the serving role in which women were cast all the time and adapted it as a seminal experience that only men could perform.”

“Simple, powerful, poignant, the Sign of the Cross is a mnemonic device like the Mass, in which we sit down to table with one another and remember the Last Supper, or a baptism, where we remember John the Baptist's brawny arm pouring some of the Jordan River over Christ. So we remember the central miracle and paradox of the faith that binds us each to each: that we believe, against all evidence and sense, in life and love and light, in the victory of those things over death and evil and darkness.”

“... for our sake loosing within Himself the bonds of bodily birth, He granted us through spiritual birth, according to our own volition, power to become children of God instead of children of flesh and blood if we have faith in His Name (cf. Jn. 1:12-13). For the Savior the sequence was, first of all, incarnation and bodily birth for my sake; and so thereupon the birth in the Spirit through baptism, originally spurned by Adam, for the sake of my salvation and restoration by grace, or, to describe it even more vividly, my very remaking.”

“The fact is that a "minor exorcism" takes place in every Baptism and Confirmation ceremony when we renounce Satan and all his works and empty promises. This prayer service will be along those lines. I'm not saying that anyone involved in the redefinition of marriage is possessed by the devil, which, if that were the case, would require the remedy of a "Major Exorcism," but all of us are certainly subject to the devil's evil influences and in need of protection and deliverance from evil.”

“Anyone who is outside this Church ... is walking a path not to Heaven but to Hell. He is not getting closer to the home of eternal. life; on the contrary, he is hurrying to the torment of eternal death. And this is the case not only if he remains a pagan without Baptism, but even if he continue as a heretic after having been baptized.”

“Time would fail me were I to try to lay before you in order all the passages in the Holy Scriptures which relate to the efficacy of baptism or to explain the mysterious doctrine of that second birth which though it is our second is yet our first in Christ.”