3302.- Baptism | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 6, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 48.

3302.— Baptism

Please explain Acts 16:33. It seems that the jailer was baptized without leaving the prison. How can that be if immersion was baptism? N. M.

In the first place there is nothing in the record which would hold us to the view that he did not leave the prison. There may have been pools or reservoirs of water very near the prison, so far as we know, where he could be baptized.

Secondly, there were probably reservoirs or pools of water within the prison enclosure where they could be baptized. This would not be an uncommon thing at all. The record declares and intimates that all that were in the jailer's household listened to the Word of God, and after they were through listening they washed the stripes of the prisoners. They then went and were baptized, he and his family who believed. This was done outside of his house. After the baptism they were brought into the house, partook of a meal, and rejoiced. That is perfectly consistent with the meaning of the word “baptize.” It is not an English word; it is a Greek word anglicized, simply transferred from the Greek to the English. It means, as every Greek translator will tell us, “immersion,” “whelming;” that is, complete covering by the thing in which we are baptized or immersed.