Baptism Paganized and Demonized by First Fruits Press

BaptismPaganizedandDemonized

Christ was made manifest to destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3: 8.) The work of the devil is not only sin but all the effects of sin, i. e., sickness and all the combinations of the enemy to bring hell on earth. When Jesus was preaching to the woman at Jacob's well, she responded to Him: "We know that Messiah who will restore all things." Jesus responds: "I who speak to the am He," thus acquiescing in the great open mankind, i. e., the final restitution of all things. Peter in his afternoon sermon at Pentecost said to the people, God will send forth Jesus who has been preached unto you as the Christ, whom it behooveth heaven to receive till the restoration of all things which Moses and the prophets have spoken. The word restoration in this passage is apokataskastaseoos, from estimi, to establish and apo, again, kata, thoroughly. Hence this long word is a tripple Greek compound, and means to put everything back where it was when Satan entered the Garden of Eden. There He found a perfect man and woman, just as God had created them, such was their perfection that they never would have died if Satan had let them alone. When they passed their probation, a thousand years or more, guided by instinctive providence, they would have had access to the Tree of Life, the normal effect of whose fruit would have been the elimination of mortality out of them and metamorphism into spiritual beings, would have flown away to other worlds as well as still retaining this earth as the paradescent home, God had given them. He created us with material bodies but destined metamorphism into a spiritual entities, to be occupied eternally by the spirit which he gave us. In 1 Corinthians 15: 15 there is a natural (psychal) body, i. e., this

4 Baptism Paganized and Demonized

body is now the tenement of the (psyche) soul. Then he says there is also a spiritual (pneumaticar) body, i. e., a body for the (pneuma) spirit to live in. Man is a trinity, consisting of spirit, soul or mind and body. The human spirit, the highest element, is the man himself and consists of the conscience, will and affections. The conscience is the medium of conviction as it is God's telephone, through which He speaks to the immortal spirit. The soul consists of the physical life, the intellect, the judgment, and the sensibilities. The body is simply the tenement in which we live. In this present life it is the house of the animal soul. In the transfiguration, which all would have received if Satan had let us alone, the body is divested of all ponderous matter, so that it will not weigh anything and consequently be free to fly away to other worlds as in case of Enoch, Elijah and the Seer of Patmos and will be the happy lot of all the saints who will be living on the earth when He comes for His Bride. As you see this scripture, (v. 51), "We shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye; this mortal shall put on immortality; this corruption, incorruption ; and mortality shall be swallowed up of life." You see from the Scriptures, that while we were created with material bodies, they were destined to spiritualization; originally the tenement of the immortal soul; but in the spiritualization, which they shall receive either the transfiguration or the resurrection ; they will become the tenements for our immortal spirit to occupy forever; divested of all ponderous matter, so that they will not weigh anything and consequently be free to fly from world to world ; this restored earth, which God created for us and gave us in the beginning; being our home forever; not a prison, as we will be free to fly from world to world and stay as long as we please, anywhere and

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everywhere, persuant to God's original economy, that we should be His love slaves, doing His will on earth as well as in heaven. His sweet and precious will being our eternal paradise.

In the baptism of the Holy Ghost, negatively we get rid of depravity, i. e., devil nature, receive a clean heart, so we can walk with Him in white; meanwhile the positive side of the experience is the incoming and abiding of the Holy Ghost, giving us wonderful refreshings and experimental enlargements; beautifully and lucidly revealed (Ezek. 47: 1-12) in His holy waters which flow out from the right hand side of the altar, because the priests poured all the blood of the sacrifices under which we get a clean heart, the negative hemisphere of the sanctified experience. These waters which so beautifully reveal the progressive phase of the posi tive hemisphere are first ankle deep when the prophet reaches the Holy River. As the ankle is the walking joint it shows thg,t we then get into a glorious hand-to-hand walk with Jesus, only going where He goes and singing:

"My Savior comes and walks with me, And sweet communion here have we; He gently leads me by His hand, For this is heaven's border land."

Then we have an intermission of vital Bible study, communion with God and evangelistic work.

When we reach the Holy River again, it is knee deep. This is the worshipping point, where we now prevail with God in prayer and receive victories and more decisive progress in the divine life. Then we have another vacation in which we roll on the conquest for souls, seeking the front of the battle and the thickest of the fight, make decisive progress in

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the divine life. Behold, we strike the river again; still deeper as it is up to our lions, the location of strength, where we no longer stoop, simply giving the Lord His tithes: but we also dump our nine-tenths, shouting over the privilege and throwing in ourselves for good count. Again we have an interval, in which we make conquest for our King, carrying out the stakes and elongating the ropes and enlargment of the tabernacle, to accommodate the swelling multitudes who have been esteeming it a privilege to enjoy standing room; and accommodated with seats, and still vacant room to which they are coming from the regions beyond. Now we come to the Holy River again. It is over our heads; waters to swim in; glorious for diving and we have nothing to do but to turn over on our backs, look up to heaven and shout the victory, as the specific gravity of the human body is less than that of water and you will never sink if you keep your face up talking to God. The billows will not inundate you and you will have nothing to do but shout the victory, symphonically with the angels looking down on you serving as your faithful guardians. Henceforth we float on the swelling bosom of God's providence and grace, our faces turned up toward heaven shouting, "Glory to God in the highest !"

Follow these holy waters and you find that they flow toward the rising sun. Only a dozen miles east of Jerusalem we strike the wilderness of Judea, a dreary, rugged, mountainous region, consisting largely of burning sands and barren rocks. And as these waters flow through them they are all transformed into fruitful fields and smiling gardens ; till they flow down into the Dead Sea, occupying the site of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were destroyed for their wickedness; the awful blight still abiding on the environments, that beautiful sea seventy miles long and ten

Baptism Paganized and Demonized 7 miles wide, significantly denominated dead, because it has not a living creature, fish, turtle, snake or lizard, as its waters are so highly mineralized that nothing can live in them. The river Jordan which abounds in fishes, flowing into it, by its wonderful impetuosity, carrying myriads but they all perish in the Dead Sea. Even the birds in the air all die of the intensely mineralized atmosphere. When these holy waters pour into the sea, those of the latter are gloriously healed, so they abound in .great fishes of every kind and receive the boats running through it, drawing them out, carrying them away to the cities, towns and villages, bestudding it on every shore, whereas at present it is without inhabitant. This beautifully illustrates the power of the sanctified experience, the only thing that will save a lost world from Satan's degradations and the doom of the damned. The Dead Sea is the lowest spot on the globe; thus symbolizing the depth of sin. You see these holy waters restored all the wilderness of Judea into climatric prosperity, beautifully illustrating the competency of this glorious experience, to signally defeat the devil and drive him from all his hiding places and restore the desert wastes and dead seas which girdle this lost world and will continue so to do while Satan sits upon the throne.

Chapter I. HOLY GHOST BAPTISM

The baptism which Jesus gives with the Holy Ghost and fire, gloriously fulfilling the Johanic prophecies is a sine qua non to the salvation of every soul, its antithesis being damnation, as you see in my book "Holiness or Hell," as holiness is only received when Jesus baptizes you with the Holy Ghost and fire. Therefore the failure to receive this baptism seals your doom forever.

Christendom literally abounds in counterfeits of this baptism. So many good Protestant Christians think it means an impulsive blessing. A sad mistake, as our Savior and His apostles define it simply to be a purification received after a good case of experimental salvation. The apostles were converted under the preaching of John the Baptist and remained with him till Jesus came and he was honored to introduce Him to the people and inaugurated into His official Messiahship by baptizing Him. Then He said to His disciples, "I must decrease but He will increase" ; "behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." This was their notification to leave John and run after Jesus, and as John says that His work is to take away the sin of the world. This depravity is in every human heart regardless of sect, race or color. Jesus alone can take it away.

It is the depravity hereditary in every heart and the blood of Jesus is its only elixir of purgation. If you do not get rid of it, Satan gets you. The only way to get rid of it is to forsake the devil, giving him back everything you ever got from him, leave him world without end; come to Jesus and get saved.

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Then as you abide with Him, He will baptize you, because He baptizes all of His children and none of the devil's children; only marking His own sheep. Hence the people who baptize sinners, awfully grieve the Holy Spirit, putting the Lord's marks on Satan's goats.

Sanctification is perfectly synonymous with the baptism of the Holy Ghost; is abundantly confirmed in the fact that it is defined by the very same word, catharidzo, which has no meaning in the Bible, where it is thousands of times, but sanctification. In Luke 11: 38, you find Jesus uses it to define baptidzo, which is now an English word, baptize; having been adopted into the English vocabulary. In the 26th verse of the 5th chapter of Ephesians we have hagiadzo, sanctify, defined by this same word,catharidzo, which defines baptidzo. John 3d chapter, we find a controversy among the Jews, relative to the baptism administered by John and Jesus; not that Jesus ever baptized anybody with water, but His disciples did. (John 4: 1.) It is said that this controversy was about purification, (catharismon). This word is simply another form of catharidzo. Throughout the New Testament baptidzo is only used in the sense of catharidzo and consequently has no meaning but purification.

Sa tan embargoes all his myrmidons and his false prophets to deceive the people and lead them astray, lest they get saved and he lose them forever. Therefore he rallies all his forces and brings into availability all his churches to keep you from getting born from above, as in that case he is sure of you, because you never can get sanctified, "without which no man shall see the Lord." (Heb. 12: 14.) Therefore if you follow Catholics, Campbellites or fallen orthodox churches, you will never get born from above, and therefore never be sanctified and the

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devil has you, world without end. Therefore defeat on the regeneration plain means certain damnation. Yet you may get truly born from above, so you will know it by the clear witness of the Spirit, and then fail to go on to perfection, (Heb. 6 ch.), i. e., not get sanctified, and you will assuredly grieve the Holy Spirit, your sanctifier, till He leaves you and you make your bed in hell.

''I did not know that justified people could be lost." They cannot in the justified state, but no one can keep justified unless he obeys God and in that case he will seek and find sanctification. If he disobeys God, grieves the Holy Spirit away, because he will not let Him sanctify him, he drops into a backslider's hell.

(1 Thess. 4: 7, 8): "He has not called you unto uncleanness, but sanctification." He that rejecteth sanctification, rejects not man but God who gives to you His Holy Spirit, i. e., God gives you His Holy Spirit to sanctify you and if you will not let Him do it, you commit that awful unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost.

Perfection and sanctification are synonymous, as they both come from the same word facio, to make, and in the one case per, complete and the other sanctus, holy and hence it means simply to make you holy. As the Lord came into the world to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3: 8) and that work is sin. Therefore when he destroys the sin personality in the human heart by the baptism which he gives with the Holy Ghost and fire (Rom. 6: 6) crucifying the old man, destroying his body, i. e., the body of sin and not the mortal body and buries that old crucified body; nQt into water, but into the "fountain filled with Blood, drawn from immanuel's veins and sinners plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains; the dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain

Baptism Paganized and Demonized 11 in his day, so there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away."

The Bible nowhere says the human is to be buried in water. How risky it is for people to go and do things they cannot find in the Bible to save their lives and at the same time neglect the beautiful commandments of God, living in disharmony with God and disconformity to the divine law.

In Romans 6th ch. and Colossians 2nd ch., you notice water is not mentioned a single time in either of these epistles. Therefore it is dangerous fanaticism to see it where there is none to see. On the contrary, work is imputed to baptism which water cannot do. The baptism in these scriptures crucifies the old man, i. e., the devil nature in human hearts; destroys the body of sin, whfoh is that same old man and buries that dead body, not into water, but into the death of Christ. (V. 3): "Know ye not so many of us as have been baptized into Jesus Christ have been baptized into His death. Hence you see that the baptism here puts the old corpse, not into water, but into the death of Christ. When we immerse a man in water we resurrect the same body that we buried. In case of these beautiful scriptures, the old man, the body of sin, devil nanature, the son of the devil, is buried and left deep down in the death of Christ forever; meanwhile the new man, the son of God, the divine nature is raised up to walk in newness of life. Thus you see the thing you bury is the son of the devil, as different from the thing you raise up as the devil is from God. Besides he is killed before he is buried whereas in case of an immersion you bury a living person and raise up the same, in face of the Bible that says in that case the last state is worse than the first. The humbuggery of intelligent people is paradoxically in the extreme. How strange that Campbellite preach-

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ers, Mormon prophets and others succeed so extensively in the delusion of Bible reading people. A thousand years ago, not one man in a thousand nor one woman in twenty thousand, could read or write. Then priest-craft was all the go and these innovations got into the Church, brought in by the heathen, but now when everybody can read it is astounding to see the people so gullible and hoaxable. With the light now shining over the world, how strange that the people don't settle the matter, "I will follow the Bible and leave the preacher to paddle his own canoe. The simple fact that by His precious Word we are saved, sanctified, fed, panoplied, have the victory and will be judged in the great day, should raise everybody on tip toe with burning enthusiasm to follow the Bible at any cost and be true to God, fearless of men and devils.

Chapter II. THE ALARM CLOCK

This is but another name for the Bible. Which, like the Bereans, we should all study day and night, that ye may know and be prepared every word at the judgment bar.

Travelling in the old world we come to a city and ask somebody whether it is Pagan, Mohammedan or Christian. They respond the latter. Then we only ask one more question, "ls it Greek or Latin?" These two wings of great Catholicism gives us the enormous roll of 450,000,000 immortal souls. Add to them 100,000,000 of orthodox Protestants, who have lost their hold on God and Satan has pulled down into dead formality and hollow hypocrisy. Then add to them Campbellites and Mormons who are stickleristic on immersion. You have more that 550,000,000 who have robbed Jesus of His baptism, which He has for every son and daughter of Adam's ruined race, and as He sits upon the Father's throne at His right hand and sends down the Holy Ghost to administer that baptism to every human soul who will let Him. This mighty host of nominal Christians have usurped the office of Jesus and turned it over to the priests, who administer the baptism of water which is utterly incompetent when it comes to the great work of crucifying old Adam, and destroying the body of sin and taking the devil nature out of you.

I had a sad experience along that line. Though my preaching father and shouting Methodist mother who were felicitously instrumental in my happy conversion in childhood and told me they had given me to the Lord for a preacher, telling me the name

14 Baptism Paganized and Demonized of the man that baptized me (James King). At that early day, thus happily converted and called to preach and never doubted either, thus jubilantly escaping Satan's black lasso which caught my neighbors and dragged them head long into wicked habits, blighting their hopes for time and eternity. I never ran away after Satan, sowing wild oats, polluting my childhood, alluring the buoyancy of my boyhood, chilling the ardor of my youth and defeating the enterprises of my young manhood ; yet despite the unsullied banner of my outward life, I still had the old man of sin in my heart, big as a rhinocerous, often signally defeating in the inward conflict and bringing me into bondage, making my life a constant battle, by the hardest to hold on my irreproachable character and keep steady in the home industries and the restricted pursuits of wisdom, by no means ample because of our poverty. After sundry lapses and reclamations, in a Baptist revival, I was gloriously blessed; the people all pronouncing it a brilliant conversion, as they thus cognomen all blesssings received in religious meetings, not a ray of light on sanctification. This was my last reclamation. I became exceedingly active in the Lord's work. Soon I realized the terrible battle with inbred sin. Availing myself of the counselors, joyfully given me by the sages of Israel, deeply sympathizing with me in my inward conflict, but the same time assuring me that I would have it all my life as they did at that time. Though my infant baptism proved a great blessing to me, a constant palladium against dangerous temptations as well as an inspiration to be true to the vows assumed by my parents to bring me up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

As I was reared in a waterlogged country: people going for immersion all around me, and assuring me that it was the very thing I needed to give me the

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victory for which I was crying and sighing. Therefore I constrained a Methodist preacher to put me in Pittman's Creek over my head. He at first tried to argue me out of it. If he had known what I do now he could have settled me in ten minutes. But he did not and I was strong headed and would not take his ipse dixit.

When I get to heaven, now very soon as I am eighty-one, I shall hunt up and thank him for his kind service, which kept me in the Methodist Church. If he had not immersed me, I would have gone to the Baptists and preached to them,-a dangerous thing, as I might have drifted, no telling where.

Alexander Campbell was a Baptist preacher, drifted far a way from Bible orthodoxy and founded the most dangerous heresy that now curses this country, as it is so seductive and popular and at the same time utterly destitute of salvation, having neither the supernatural birth nor entire sanctification, the absolute sine qua non salvation, without which the devil gets everybody.

I went for the immersion with a glad heart, expecting to get the victory as they had told me, but awfully sadly disappointed as I found the change from dry to wet as old Adam, like his cousins, the snake and the frog can live in the water just as well as on land and all my efforts to drown him proved a failure. I howled in the wilderness nineteen years, sighing and crying to be wholly the Lord's and feeling that I would give a million of worlds for this pearl of great price, but as there were no Holiness people to help me, I had never heard anybody testify to it nor a sermon preached on it. (The Lord finally gave it to me fifteen years before the Movement crossed the Ohio River at Cincinnati, and reached great Dixie Land, using my humble instrumentality all that time as a pioneer in the sunny South.

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I shall believe that if I had not gone off after the water, though I had no Holiness people to help me, single handed and alone I would have prayed through and gotten through in less than half of those nineteen years. Amid the gorgeous splendor of the present day, Holiness Churches and camps all around, it is impossible to conceive the diffuclties which environed me forty-six years ago.

As Satan is on the throne of the world and has been these six thousand years, in process of time, he captures everything, from the simple fact that the saints die and go to heaven, others take their place who have not been sanctified and many of them not converted, soon any church will fall into his hands.

The doctrines of the churches may be straight and all right on entire sanctification, as we see abundantly illustrated in great Methodism, and at the same time when carnal people get the church into their hands, they will sidetrack it, derail, ditch, and strand it, till the devil will get it and will become a passport to hell instead of heaven, as we see sadly illustrated in great Catholicism and deplorably in Lutheranism, and all the great Protestant churches. As we contemplate Christendom this day, how melancholy they seem of 550,000,000 so sidetracked by the devil as to actually lose sight of the baptism which Jesus alone can give, and perfectly free for all, because He not only wants to give it to us all, but has actually willed it to us.

(1 Thess. 4: 3.) Here we see the great rank and file of Christendom, (as the..Holiness people are but a little sprinkle) contenting themselves with the preacher instead of the Savior; water instead of the Holy Ghost, despite alarming certainty that in that attitude it simply means hell instead of heaven. How lamentable and appalling to contemplate the lugubrious fate of the Church, having made these

Baptism Paganized and Demonized 17 awful substitutions, taking the preacher instead of Jesus and water instead of the Holy Ghost, with the normal alternative, hell instead of heaven.

These 550,000,000 led astray by their preachers, are actually plunged head-long into idolatry, worshipping the priests and the water god, havmg paganized baptism, i. e., run it into idolatry especially the specific form of hydrolatry-looking to millions of priests and the water god, eucharist, the edifice and other ecclesiastical idols instead of taking Jesus for everything. If you do not lose sight of everything except Him and take Him for everything, i. e., looking to Him alone, you will never have the victory. And if you get it and then look away to popery, prelacy, priest-craft, and churchisms, beautiful houses, loud sounding bells, high steeples, pipe organs, cushion pews, gothic domes, corrinthia columns, etc ; you will lose your experience.

N. B. It is not because Israel did not worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that they were carried into Babylonian captivity but because they would worship other gods, unable to resist the temptation of popular religion. When Hezekiah and Josiah were kings of the Jews, they travelled all over the country, destroying idols, sparing none, not even the brazen serpent, which was a beautiful souvenir of a glorious deliverance and Hezekiah would have so gladly preserved it, and looked on it as an impressive memento of the millions who had been saved by looking on it, the significant emblem of our wonderful Christ, who took our place, paid our debt and redeemed us by His blood. As we have been captured by the devil through the medium of the serpent, received his nature in our hearts, thus becoming a race of snakes. You have heard the maxim, "It takes a rogue to catch a rogue." Hence it takes a snake to catch us snakes and save us from hell.

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The snake is the very thing to run into all the holes and catch all the snakes. So Jesus in His wonderful mercy turns snake that He might ferret the devil's kingdom, from centre to circumference, going down into all the hell dens, brothels, saloons, penitentiaries and save the poor victims of sin, misery and damnation.

The reason why Hezekiah destroyed this brazen serpent, grinding it into powder and throwing it into water, so they could never get hold of it again, was because they had idolized it, and would burn incense to it.

For the same reason we must turn inconoclast and indiscriminately destroy idols everywhere we go ; showing them neither destinction nor mercy. The closing sentence in St. John's first epistle is, "Little children keep yourselves from idols." History says it was axomatic with him and when a hundred years old, he would sit in the church at Ephesus and say repeatedly, and whenever he met an aundience, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." With old Adam, styles, fashions, jewelry, lodgery, sectarianism, politics and every form of Satanic fantasmagoria bled and on the cross evanesced forever.

In the American church, immersion is the great rival of Jesus, the water god the biggest idol between the oceans. Waterlogged timber, sinks to the bottom of the river and waterlogged souls into hell which has no bottom, consequently they sink forever.

The great trouble with immersion is that it is not in the Bible, Old or New. Consequently we have to go to idolatry to find it; which solves the problem at once, as to its paganistic origin. When I travelled all the way around the world, preaching to the heathen everywhere, seeing their gods of wood and stone,

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I found them worshipping the holy Ganges, a great and beautiful river and the Jumna, also a majestic river. The priests every where preach not only their gods of wood, stone, silver, gold, brass, etc., but they pre~:u·hthat these rivers are. holy and have the power to wash sins away.

As India is a great country with 300 millions of people and most of them exceedingly poor and unable to travel beyond a pedestrian pilgrimage, the priests ~ncourage them to construct tanks everywhere, which they do with great labor and cost. In Madras, the largest city in South India, a million people, while preaching there I gave especial attention to the holy tank, or.cupying a whole square in the city, the size of our square in Cincinnati; having carried earth and formed ample room for a beautiful lakr, with stone floor 6.nd elegant hewn stone walls with steps descending from each one of the four streets, so multitudes could go down simultaneously and wash their sins away. The priests everywhere assure them that when they make a tank and supply it with water from the nearest river and they consecrate it, it is just as holy as the Ganges and Jumna.

The Brahman priests preach immersion for the remission of sins just like the Campbellites in this country; heroically conserving their own consistency by telling them to take it everytime they sin, which certainly is in harmony with their doctrine and throws a condemnatory shadow over Campbellites and Mormons in America who refused to immerse them but once. These idolatrous priests tell them to go to it every time they sin. Therefore many a godly Hindu goes under the water a hundred thousand times in his life to wash his sins away. As they have no Bible to tell them how to get rid of sin, and their conscience is very tender; believing that they accidentally step on a bug or worm they are

20 Baptism Paganized and Demonized guilty of murder; actually refraining from the destruction of vermin, lest they commit sin.

As I utterly failed to find immersion in the Bible or anything of that meaning and find it among the heathen in all lands, who in their ignorance believe that the mortal is the sinner as many people in America who claim to be Christians do; as you know is utterly untrue, because 1 Corinthians 6: 18, settles it forever: "Every sin is without the body," i. e., not in it, but belongs to something else besides this mortal body.) "He that committeth fornication, sins against his own body," thus the libertine and the drunkard and many who sin in other ways, actually destroy their own bodies and as the Bible says, "Do not live out half of their days." Therefore you see that instead of your body being the sinner its the sufferer in sin ; suffering a thousand deaths and finally dying before its time.

These scriptures for ever knock out the burial of your mortal body in water for baptism, as it no where says that baptism is a burial, but the burier; in the bold imagery of Paul, not only the burier of the corpse, but the sheriff who arrests the criminal, i. e., the old man, nails him to the cross till he bleeds and dies, and then serving as undertaker, buries him into the death of Christ, i. e., the a1:onement so deep that Satan's resurrection trumpet will never raise him.

I said immersion is not in the Bible or anything else that has that meaning; let me add that there is nothing else in it meaning to immerse which is ever used for baptism. Katapomtidzo, (Matt. 18: 6) means to immerse; buthidzo also means to immerse; but neither of these words, ever a single time used for baptism, showing demonstratively that they did nothing of the kind.

Their great argument is, buried by baptism, which

Baptism Paganized and Demonized 21 they utterly misconstrue and misapply ; as it tells you that the thing buried is the old man, the sin personality, the depravity in the heart, the body of sin and buried, not into water, but into the death of Christ, the great vicarious atonement, into which all sin must be buried or into hell. Hence you see the great Campbellite heresy actually means damnation, because it blinds the people to the truth, so instead of coming to Jesus and getting Him to baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire, and thus crucify the old man and destroy the body of sin and bury into the Atonement so deep the devil can never raise him, they have you come to the preacher, who puts your mortal body in a mill pond which is not the sinner at all, thus deceiving you till you lose sight of the old man, i. e., inbred sin and just leave it there and go on and die, and with Dives, the great influential church member, lift up your eyes in hell, being in torment.

Chapter III NOT IMMERSION

"Be sure you're right and go ahead!' This is the motto of David Crockett, the excentric statesman and warrior of Tennessee, who lost his life on the bloody field in the Mexican war. In order to be sure you are right, you must take God's Word alone; be true to Hirn as revealed in His book, at every cost and regardless of consequences.

"Brother Godbey, why did they go down into the water and come out of it?" The Word of God clearly reveals that they never did any such thing. Read Mark 1: 8, Luke 3: 16, Acts 1 : 5, Acts 11: 16 and Hebrews 10: 22, in which we have the testimony of John the Baptist, Jesus, Peter, Paul, Apollos, Mark and Luke, all certifying that they handled the water and not the people; as in these five passages we have no preposition at all, but hudati (water) constantly in the instrumental dative, positively certifying that they handled the water and not the people. Besides all statuary shows the candidate standing or kneeling and the administrator pouring the water on his head. I have often seen Jesus as represented in statuary standing and John pouring the water on His head. Only three years ago, 1911, when we were in the house of Judas on straight Street in Damascus, we all saw the marble statue of Paul standing and Ananias pouring the water on his head. They are very appreciative of all the historic places. This house is still used as a Christian church by the Greeks. Rest assured that those people would not tolerate lying statuary. We, here in America, where we know nothing, as the Indians had no books

Baptism Paganized and Demonized 23 and transmitted nothing to us, but all our knowledge comes from the old world. People are everywhere boldly certifying that immersion was the Apostolic practice. Go over there where it all took place and you will never find trace or track of immersion, but the very opposite, in harmony with the Bible, which gives nothing but sprinkling and pouring, which are all the same thing. You find affusion baptism throughout the Bible, Old and New, but immersion, not a single time.

As immerse is a Latin word, if it had been the apostolic practice it would abound in the Latin, which was made and used in the Apostolic age. I am familiar with it, having read it much and as we do not find immersion anywhere in the English Bible, neither do we in the Latin. Baptize is a Greek word and of course immerse, which is native Latin, would be constantly used in the Latin Bible, if that were the meaning of baptidzo, baptize.

I have in my possession and have seen all the lexical authorities in the world. I have on the table now the great work of Dr. John Schleusner, of Germany, the most exhaustive Greek New Testament Dictionary in the world, which gives all the definitions in Latin; because the scholars of all nations read the Latin, and if he had given them in German, none but German scholars could have used it. He starts off with the definition baptidzo (baptize) to immerse. Then he proceeds in hac significatione nunquam in Novo Testamento. In this signification it is never used in the New Testament. Then he goes on to give every passage in the New Testament that it was not in immersion, but in affusion. I have on the table now the New Testamental Lexicon, by Dr. J. W. Robbinson, standard in this country, who gives it in English; certifying that whereas in heathen Greek, baptidzo was sometimes applied to the sink-

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ing of ships and drowning of people, it is never used in that signification in the New Testament.

He then goes on to mention the fact that all the ancient Baptisteries are entirely too small for immersion. I am a witness to this as I have often seen those which were made far back in the Apostolic age. There is not one of them large enough for an immersion for the entire body. If you ever travelled in the Bible lands, you will see one in an old coptic church in Old Cairo, Egypt, where Joseph and Mary, with the infant Jesus, spent a month, during their sojourn in that country to protect Him from Herod's cruelty. It absent hulnult in the top of a stone pillar, about the size of a common wash bowl. Robbinson also, in his definitions of baptidzo, alludes to the well known fact that the Latin Bible nowhere has immersion, as a demonstrative proof that it was not the Apostolic practice, as in that case it would certainly occur all the time in the Latin Bible. These facts are unconvertable proofs that there was no immersion in the Apostolic age.

Constantine, the Emperor was converted A. D. 321 and became exceedingly zealous for Christianity; doing his best to get all the people in the world to join the Christian Church. His zeal over ran his knowledge, so millions poured in, unconverted, great heathen temples, with their thousands of members, becoming Christian churches; their priests turning preachers ; the members coming in by wholesale; of course a few getting saved, but the rank in file getting nothing. In that way the Church apostatized, getting farther and farther from God, till she degenerated into dead Catholicism. In process of time, becoming so worldly and wicked as to imbibe the spirit of bloody persecution and actually kill the true people of God, as Paganism before her.

As the heathen from time in immemorial had been

Baptism Paganized and Demonized 25 practicing immersion, as they do to this day, to wash their sins away, when they poured into the Christian Church they brought their immersion, as well as other heathen rites and ceremonies with them. In the Dark Ages which occupy a thousand years, from the third to the fourteenth century; we find plenty of immersion, but it was the three dips. First dip, you right side downward in the name of the Father; then lift you up; left side downward in th~ name of the Son ; finally lifting you up diping face foremost in the name of the Holy Ghost.

The reason why the English Testament abounds in statements "into the water" and "out of the water," is because the translators had all been immersed three times-the universal practice in their day. Consequently they had water on the brain and so little learning in the world and they did their work three hundred years ago. Therefore they put those in the Bible which would have been used by the Apostles if they had immersed them. Therefore the very fact that none of those immersional adjuncts are in the Original, is of itself demonstrative proof that they did not immerse.

When history takes hold of the matter in the third, fourth and fifth centuries they were not only practicing trine-immersion, but they received it in a state of nudity, alleging that there was no authority of baptizing the clothing. They also accompanied it with diversified heathen ceremonies; thus showing up its paganistic origin. The heathen do not now practice trine-immersion, but the single dip, as we see here in America, confirmatory of the conclusion that the repetition the third time was a real accession to the Pagan ordinance, made by the Christians, whose explanation is easy to every one acquainted with Church History.

Arius lived and preached in the third century;

26 Baptism Paganized and Demonized giving himself historic notoriety by repudiating the divinity of Christ and preaching that he was only as man; thus dividing the Church into two factions, which fought through rolling centuries; the greatest controversy that has ever racked the Church. The Trinitarians got the victory, so the war abated in their interest; the Earians, falling into lone minority till the great rank and file became distinctly understood Trinitarian. In order to inforce that great and important doctrine of the Trinity, they preached the three dips; the single dip, being unknown in Church History till the seventeenth century, when Roger Williams, a Baptist preacher in Providence, Rhode Island, had Ezekel Hollman immersing and then reciprocated the favor; thus landing the single immersion, which has been growing in prominence and popular favor ever since.

While the victory achieved by the trinitarians, during the Dark Ages and enforced by the trineimmersion, so culminated that about forty-nine out of every fifty in all Christendom, were enrolled with them, as solid believers in the divinity of Christ, we are grieved t.o see in our day a great revival of Unitarianism, i. e., the repudiation of our Lord's divinity. Our late president, Taft, revived it in this country when elected to the presidency. When it was reported against him by the papers during the canvass, believing it to be political trickery, I wrote him a letter on the subject, making inquiry. He answered it promptly, confessing that he held membership in that church.

Now Christian Science's wonderful growth, spreading all over the world, is giving great prominence to this awful heresy, as they deny the divinity of Christ. The same is true of Socialism, which is also spreading alarmingly, as it not only repudiates His divinity, but hurls a dagger at the heart of civil

Baptism Paganized and Demonized 27 government. We may also relegate under the broad banner of Unitarianism, New Thought, Theosophism, which is simply the old Asiatic Buddhism, which is Unitarian on the Christhood, denying His divinity and putting Buddha in His place. Besides we find our great preachers who have been caught by Satan's wily lasso and dragged away, now denying the divinity of Christ.

Recently while preaching in a state capital, the pastor of the Free Methodist Church, a godly man of ample veracity, told that he heard the pastor of the First M. E. Church in the city, a noted doctor of divinity, openly repudiate the divinity of Christ. Thus the Unitarian infidelity is clandistinely creeping into all great Protestant denominations, thus expediting their rapid and alarming apostasy, in the track of Babylonian Catholicism, rushing precipitatly down the awful precipice of Unitarian infidelity, getting the people ready for the bloody reign of the Anti-christ, who will be the pope, during the tribulation environed by the 450 millions of Catholics, 300 millions of Mohammedans, 900 millions of Pagans and the great fallen wing of the Protestant world whom Satan is now preparing through the Higher Critics, Christian Science, Socialism, New Thought and platoons of hell-hatched heresies; thus all developing and reaping the greatest harvest hell has ever reaped or ever will, i. e., the Armageddon, for which all nations, indiscriminately are now preparing; manufacturing the greatest and most costly artillery ever known; the most formidable gattling guns, great fleets of war ships, costing multiplied millions of dollars ; vast harbors around the ocean shores and sea coasts for the protection of the immense commerce of the whole world; vast and formidable fleets of war ships; in connection of which they have to build great walls a hundred feet high,

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having strength and security of an immense native cliff, in order to protect the multitudes of ships which whiten the seas of the commerce of the nation; and formidable citadels all the great nationalities are building their lofty mountains at the cost of princely fortunes; everywhere oppressing the laboring millions by exorbitant taxation, because vast quantities of the revenue are turned over to prosecute these formidable beligerent preparations, till the bread question is becoming the conundrum of the age and the public peace jeopardized by revolutionary strikes, fearfully ominous of the great explosion of this universal volcano, destined soon to wrap the whole world in the Armageddon conflagration, whose grand utility will be the illumination of all the unsavable and incorrigible out of the world and the ushering in of the glorious millennial reign.

Chepter IV. TO THE LAW AND THE TESTIMONY

Whereas immersion is not mentioned a single time in all the Bible, and ample reason why we should not go after the water god; another reason is because it is so big, that you can't take it without looking at it, exposed to the liability of getting your eyes off Jesus and on the water god, in which case you at once begin to sink as Peter did when walking on the Sea of Galilee. So long as he kept his eyes on Jesus he had no frouble to walk on the stormy sea. A great rolling billow, ship-high, is coming. He He cannot forbear looking at it. Consequently he gets his eyes off Jesus and begins to sink. If he had instantaneously shouted vociferously, so as to be heard despite the thunder of the mighty sea, "Lord save me, I perish," when Jesus instantly took him by the hand and rescued him from a watery, winding sheet; certainly he would have gone to the bottom of the dark, deep sea. The multitude of souls now in a backslider's hell because they got their eyes on the water god, and consequently losing sight of Jesus, have gone down to rise no more. Rest assured He alone can save you. If you think anything else esser 1.tial to your salvation, you have already gone off in to idolatry and in great danger of losing your soul. Whatsoever you look to, anything but Jesus for, you will never get, from the simple fact He is the only Savior and every thing else is idolatry, which throughout the Bible is denominated an abomination because it is abominable in the sight of God. When you take the little sprinkle of the

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Bible (which is the only water baptism you can find in it, Old or New), you do not have to go into idolatry and to make a god of it; because it is so little, but beware of the big ones, when you go in all over! It is so big you can't keep your eyes off of it, so that you will not, to some extent, lean on it, i. e., make an idol of it and so eminently imperil your soul, exposing it to Satan's greatest hell trap which is idolatry. Infinitely better would you be a dry land Quaker without a drop of water, than a water log Campbellite with so much water, that you actually believe that it is essential to your salvation; thus plunging head long into idolatry. N. B. The water god is as weak as water and cannot save you. If you depend on him hell is your doom.

"Does not the Word say that John was preaching in Enon because there was much water there?" Oh, yes, but it is a wrong translation as the Greek polla hudta does not mean much water, but many waters. Enon is a Chaldaic word in the plural number and means springs. I have often looked over that valley and interrogated my guide, Suchery Hishmeh, who was born in Jerusalem, lived there all his life, educated for a dragoman and seen the whole country, repeatedly over and over, while escorting travelers everywhere; I trow the most intimately acquainted with it now living on the earth. He told me there was no immersion water in it. I saw no sign of any. The word simply means that it was a land abounding in springs so important for a great camp-meeting, such as charactelized John's ministry, needing a hundred times as much water for the people and their animals to drink and use in their culinary booths as to immerse people. Hence it has not an intimation of immersion.

Phillip and the eunuch climaxed all their grand speeches in favor of immersion; regarding it as a

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smashing, unanswerable argument. Like all others, when you investigate it, you find not an insinuation in favor of immersion. I have been there eight times. It is just a water spout, shooting out of a rock as we ride along the macadamized road, on the backbone of the great mountain range, running through the peninsula between the two seas, Mediterranean on the west and the Dead Sea on the east; the former forty miles and the later thirty miles-no room for a river and none nearer than the Jordan, seventy miles and water very scarce on that lofty summit, so they catch it all for use as it shoots out of the rock a jett about the size of my thumb, into the vessel held up for its reception and no stream running away and they catch all the water and use it, as it is not only a first class article, but very scarce.

I made my first tour in 1895, alone. In 1899 I was accompanied by two young men, who, on arrival, leaping out of the carriage, halted on the road, ran to the spring, caught water in their cup, drank and brought me a drink as I kept my seat. While changing vessels, the water falling on the hard earth had accumulated a puddle, in which the women were standing barefoot, each waiting her turn to get the water. I saw them both go down into the water and come up out of it. When they got into the carriage I asked them if they had got their feet wet. They both answered in the negative. They had on summer shoes but there was not water enough there to wet their feet.

All such far fetched and unnatural constructions of scripture simply prove the falsity of the creed they are laboring to prove. The "down" in this scripture simply means from the chariot to the ground as the word is antithetical to the "up'' in the proceeding verse, when the eunuch invited Phillip up into his chariot, that he might explain the scripture to him,

32 Baptism Paganized and Demonized which he had already heard him read. That scripture you will find in Isaiah 52 ch. In the last verseread it for yourselves-"So shall He sprinkle many nations," referring to our Savior who sprinkles them with His Blood, w bile His preachers, under His commission (Ezek 36: 25) sprinkle them with water as they go forth preaching the Gospel to every nation. Everything in the New Testament is prophesied in the Old Testament; Ezekiel here giving the commission 600 years before Matthew repeats the same, (Matt. 28: 19): "I will sprinkle clean water upon you ; from all your filthiness and idols I will cleanse you; a new heart will I give unto you and a new spirit will I put within you; I take away your stony heart and give you a heart of flesh."

Do you think that Peter waded into the sea waist deep to catch the fish that had the money in its mouth with which they paid their temple assessments? You know they did not as only a idiot would have done that when he had nothing to do but throw in the hook and catch the fish.

N. B. The very same verb, poreno, go, and the preposition, eis, which means to, into, unto, toward, and at, leaving you to take your choice, is used in case of Peter going to catch the fish and Phillip and the eunuch going for the baptism. So if you do not believe that Peter waded into the sea to catch the fish, you have no reason to believe that Phillip and the eunuch waded in for the baptism, they had nothing to do but catch the beautiful rill and apply it to his body. As this is the strongest argument they have, I have given special attention. Every other one is just as plain as this is, in favor of the Bible baptism by affusion and no intimation of immersion.

You can't build an argument for anything on prepositions; as they are no essential part of any language; but only connectives like the conjunctions.

WILLIAM BAXTER GODBEY (June 3, 1833September 12, 1920) was raised a Methodist in Pulaski County, Kentucky, who experienced his moment of conversion at a Baptist revival in November of 1849. Godbey became a licensed preacher for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in the Kentucky Conference in 1853. After graduating from Georgetown College with a bachelor’s degree in 1859, he served as President of Harmonia College in Perryville, Kentucky while also preaching on the Perryville Circuit from 1859-1869. He married America Emma Durham (1839-1915) in 1860. (1873-1906) survived to adulthood. In December of began to preach holiness revivals.

From the 1860s through the 1880s, Godbey preached the doctrine of holiness throughout the South. He wrote over 200 books and pamphlets on topics of holiness theology and even taught for a while at God’s Bible School in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1878 he converted Alma Birdwell White, future founder and bishop of the Pillar of Fire Church. He eventually returned to the Kentucky Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and was buried in Perryville, Kentucky.

Baptism Paganized and Demonized

Baptism Paganized and Demonized

Baptism Paganized and Demonized

W. B. GODBEY

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Baptism Paganized and Demonized

Chapter I. HOLY GHOST BAPTISM

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12 Baptism Paganized and Demonized

Chapter II. THE ALARM CLOCK

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16 Baptism Paganized and Demonized

18 Baptism Paganized and Demonized

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Chapter III NOT IMMERSION

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Chepter IV. TO THE LAW AND THE TESTIMONY

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Articles inside

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