QUESTION | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 17, 1880

QUESTION.

Where in all the gospel of Christ do you find the idea conveyed or revealed that men and women are immersed into the burial of Christ? Did Christ bow backward in his death on the cross, or in his baptism of sufferings in the garden? Please let us have unbiased gospel light on these points in the SIGNS. P. H. BEAVER.

No one ever refers to Christ's sufferings in the garden as a baptism (immersion) except as a figure. So every candid person must regard it. We cannot see how any one can, with any show of justice to the sacred record, take exceptions to our view of Rom. 6 and Col. 2. When Paul says we are "buried with him by baptism," he cannot refer to any thing which took place on the cross. Christ was buried, but not on the cross. He died before he was buried; therefore it is proper to speak of being baptized into his death. We could not be baptized without confessing his death. See 1 Cor. 15:29. The immediate reference to his resurrection in both Romans and Colossians shows unmistakably to what our burial and rising refers. And Paul offers our baptism or burial, in Rom. 6, as proof that we are dead, because death precedes burial. There is no representation of dying in baptism; but it is proof that we have died with Christ. Then we are buried with him and rise with him. Of one thing all may be certain: Christ neither died nor was buried three times; therefore they who are immersed three times are not baptized into his death in any sense. Seeing this, many who practice three baptisms have condemned the idea of our being baptized into the death of Christ! This we will show before the close of our articles on baptism.