WHY WAITING?

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 13, 1900

Christian Herald.

A BIT of church news comes to us often, to the effect that in such a place so many have been baptized, and so many more “are awaiting the ordinance.”

Such an item is interesting, but what does it mean? That the gospel has been preached, and that converts have been thus made, and that such converts have been baptized, reads like a paragraph in the book of Acts. But the further words, that certain ones are awaiting the ordinance, read like something else than a New Testament passage. There are a number of places in the book where baptisms are recorded in connection with the labors especially of Peter and Paul, but no record that there were others awaiting baptism. On the day of Pentecost even, when three thousand presented themselves for baptism, there were none left over. All that gladly received the Word were baptized. Why should there be any left over in the present day?

It is suggested that the use of this expression in the transmission of church news means that the pastor and church are hoping that others who have shown an interest in the truth will soon come out and be baptized. But in such a case the expression is misleading; those others are not awaiting baptism, but awaiting conversion.

Or it may mean that the waiting ones have come into the rest of faith, but have not yet offered themselves for baptism; or that they have been received by the church for baptism, but the time for the ordinance has not arrived.

In such cases there lurks in the phrase “awaiting the ordinance” a more than faint suspicion that there is somewhere a lack of prompt obedience to the initial command that Christ lays upon the believer. Is not the luster of the lordship of Christ dimmed by making baptism a matter of convenience? The only reasonable ground of delay is lack of evidence of conversion.