Wednesday, January 10th | Baptism by Immersion

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We're going to leave a couple of links in the description so you can do just that. The verse of the day today is coming to you from Isaiah 42, verses 8 and 9. I am the LORD, that is my name, and my glory I will not give to another, nor my praise to carved images. Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I declare. Before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

Lots and lots and lots of theology in that one little verse. Number one, he's the LORD. That's his name. That's his identity.

The king, the creator, the majestic ruler of everything that we've been talking about the past couple of days. That's who he is. That's his...

It's not just his identity, like, how do I identify him? That's his makeup. That's his being. And then, what was the rest of that verse? So it talks about, my glory I will not give to another, nor my praise to carved images. Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I declare. Before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

Right, right, right. He knows everything new that happens. He's a God of the new. That's why we love New Year's so much, is because God is just waiting to reveal all these great opportunities for us. Yeah, I mean, the Bible talks over and over again about things like God's mercies are new every morning. God is a God, you know, we talk about God being a God of second chances.

God is a God of the restart. But I love the first part in verse 8 where it says, my glory I will not give to another. You know, sometimes people hear the phrase, like, God is a jealous God, and they kind of bristle up at that, like, ooh, jealousy. We have negative connotations to that. But jealousy is coveting something that belongs to you. If my wife starts showing affection to another man, I'm going to be jealous because that affection is due to me.

Likewise, if I start showing affection to another woman, she ought to be jealous because my affection belongs to her. Our affection belongs to God. We are His. One, because He made us.

Two, because if we're believers, Christ has purchased our lives with His blood. So our affection belongs to God. So if we start showing our affection that is due to God, to other things, worshipping things like a relationship, worshipping things like a grade point average, worshipping things like a bank account, a status, a job, then God is going to be jealous for that affection because it is supposed to go to Him.

That's right. Even things, I like that you mention a lot of those things because a lot of those things are good. You know, we think of idol worship as something that's, well, these are bad things.

You're worshipping carved images or, you know, just bad, bad things. A lot of times we end up worshipping things that are good, even like the gym. Like, think about when you really, if you guys work out, like, think about when you get in the gym and you get that good pump and you're like, oh man, I'm coming back tonight. And then you go back again that night and then you come, you're like, I'm coming back first thing in the morning. And you're just in there all the time.

And it becomes this thing where you're not necessarily worshipping that space, but you're all your time and your affection and your attention is devoted towards that gym. David and I have started something new where we're only in there like 40 minutes, 40 minutes and get the heck out. You know what I'm saying?

Skedaddle. Yeah. Can I say get the heck out on Christian radio? I think so.

I don't know. I think I've heard Stu Epperson say it. If Stu says it, it's okay. Big Stu says it.

Big Stu, I apologize if that's not okay on the Truth Network, but we stay in there 40 minutes. And we've started this new thing where we're also diverging. We used to be like partners, buddies, right? Now he said, hey, forget you. I'm going to go listen to music and go on over there.

Now I'm going off on my own. I don't love it. It makes me feel, I'm not going to lie, bad. Sad, alone, afraid. And y'all might think this is a gripe vine disguised as a Wednesday episode.

It's not. This is a safe space for you to share those feelings. And then 40 minutes, he's like, I'm out. And so if I rode with him, I got to wrap up and go. I got to daggone go. You mentioned music. What are you listening to in the gym? Well, I listen to a lot of Coheed and Cambria. If I listen to music, I listen to a lot of Coheed and Cambria. What do you listen to, man? Music. Yeah. Okay.

I'm like, I've been lax on the gym, but I'm getting back in. One of my go-tos is this is going to really like reveal character traits about me that maybe I didn't want to reveal on public radio. But I listen to a lot of like Broadway, like show teams.

Yeah? But really like the high energy kind of rock. But it just gets me hype. Like what's a song that's like a... Five thousand, what, five hundred twenty four thousand six hundred minutes. That's too like just too vibe-y. I'm talking like real intense, like what's one, like Les Mis is one. Okay. Like, do you hear the people sing?

Like that real driving. Yeah. There's one that I've really been getting into. It's a new one that's on Spotify.

It's a musical that's structured around The Odyssey, the story of Odysseus. Okay. And it's really like I love that.

I've been streaming that nonstop. I don't typically listen to like just music out and about just because like as a worship pastor, you're just kind of listening to Christian music all day. So when I get in the gym, I do try to go heavier. I try to go Coheed and Cambria. I try to go Breaking Benjamin. Yeah. That's even if I listen to music at all. Also, also some punk rock.

Yeah. I like punk rock in the gym. Binkle, a little bit of binkle. If I want to go on the little bit lighter side of things. Who else?

Mine's pretty heavy. What I listen to in the gym. Yeah. You want to try again? Because we asked you what you like and you said music. What do you listen to? The thing, you didn't let me finish. I was trying to like make a funny little joke, like music, like I don't want to divulge what I listen to. Sure, sure. Go for it.

Give us some recommendations. I listen to some T-Swizzle. Huh? You're saying I'm lifting weights.

I'm bench pressing to meme. If it's not Taylor Swift, it would be the Coheed, Breaking Benjamin type. Yeah. But sometimes you just got to throw that. That gets my blood pumping. But T-Sweezy for easy. T-Sweezy, I could see for a cardio day.

I think that's fine. Cardio is kind of light. It's kind of airy. It's kind of bouncy.

You know, you're doing your thing. You run for like three minutes. You look at the timer. You're like, oh, I got to go home. You leave. Three minutes? Yeah, just pick your favorite T-Swizzle song. You might as well just run in from the parking lot.

That's about three minutes. Yeah, sometimes I do. Write in and let us know if you're a T-Swift in the gym person. I'm interested to know how many other gym Swifties are out there.

Write in and let us know. Gym Swifties. Gym Swifties.

2-5-2-5-8-2-5-0-2-8 or you can visit us online at cleerviewtodayshow.com. Give us some recommendations for some good gym music. Yeah, let's get the good doctor in here and see what he listens to in the gym. Guarantee you he does not listen to music in the gym. My man is focused.

My man is focused on lifting. He ain't got time for that. He said the Dr. Gaines is in and the music is out.

We got to focus on what we're doing. We'll see you guys after the commercial break. We're going to leave a link in the description box so you can get your copy today.

Love that. Ellie, let's hop back in. Let's do it. Welcome back to Clear View Today with Dr. Abbadon Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at cleerviewtodayshow.com.

If you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 2-5-2-5-8-2-5-0-2-8. That's right. We're here once again in the Clear View Today studio with Dr. Abbadon Shah, who is a Ph.D. in New Testament textbook criticism about Ph.D. and getting some gains as well, my friend. Dr. Gaines.

Dr. Gaines. Well, I'm in the studio. I'm trying.

You're looking good for 2024, my friend. Thank you. Here's what I wanted to ask you, and I think what a lot of people are dying to know. What do you listen to in the gym? I tried listening to music, and I do.

When I'm on the elliptical, I try to listen to music, but usually I have friends and people who come by and talk to me. That's one of the things about being a pastor in a small town is, like, everybody's going to come talk. Hey, pastor, how you doing? Hey, how are you?

Pray for my mama, preacher. Or they talk about something or they joke, hey, did you hear that one? And so I've come to realize when I go into the weightlifting side of things, I'm not going to be able to say anything.

Ain't no music. Most times I just go and take it out and put it in my little box and put it away, because I know you'll spend more time going, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Has a 40-minute set ever turned into, like, an hour, hour and a half set because people are wanting to talk in the gym? Oh, yeah, easily. Two hours. And my motto that a friend of mine told me was, if you're there more than an hour, you're not making weight, you're making friends. There you go.

There you go. That's a pretty good motto to live by, especially in the gym. You've got to get 40 minutes in and out.

That's right, 40 minutes in and out. But that idea of, you know, staying focused on what matters is crucial. Staying focused on what the goal is, even if it takes a little bit longer sometimes because everybody wants to come in and talk to you. You still have a goal in mind. And, you know, when we think about our faith and we think about the goal of Christianity, one of the big things for us, especially in our context, is baptism. That's right.

That's the goal. You know, we want to get people to come to faith in Christ, and then we want them to, you know, follow that up with a decision to be baptized. Something I learned. I learned this in 2023, and I've been a Christian ever since I was 15.

I'm 31 now. I did not know for 15 years that people not only disagreed so vehemently about baptism and, like, the method of baptism and the, like, theology of baptism, but they were so passionate about it. I didn't realize how big of an issue it was for some people. That's right. And I would say it should be in some ways. Of course, we know that baptism doesn't save you. Let's put that away. But I think it should be an issue because Jesus commanded us to be baptized.

That's right. It is part of our family tradition that once you enter into the family, once you enter into the family, that entrance happens by grace through faith, not of works. And baptism cannot be works.

It has to be by grace through faith. It's when you pray to receive Jesus as your Savior, as your King, you're in the family. Now, the next step is take part of the family tradition, which is to be baptized.

That's right. And this was part of God's people, or the people of Israel, the Jewish people, their tradition, to be baptized. Baptism for purification, baptism to enter into a community. A lot of different baptisms were there at the time when Jesus came into this world. But with the coming of Jesus, even prior to Jesus coming on the scene, John the Baptizer was also baptizing people, but that was not the same baptism that we have today. His baptism was of repentance.

Repent and prepare yourself for the coming of Jesus. That's not the same baptism that you and I have. In fact, when Paul went to Ephesus, there were people there who were being baptized by John's baptism, and he said, look, wait, let me bring you up to speed.

We don't do this one anymore. Right, but because you were doing it to prepare yourself, haven't you heard he came? He's numb. Yeah, and I believe they knew he came, but they felt like we just need to keep doing that baptism. Baptism with the Apostle Paul, Romans chapter 6, has a deeper meaning, which is our death, burial, and resurrection with Christ. It's about telling the world that now we have this life in Christ. He died, we died.

He was buried, we were buried. He rose again, and we also spiritually rose again, and when we were born and came into this world, God applied to us what had already happened. So I am one with Christ, my union with Christ, my participation in the divine nature. 2 Peter 1.4, we are partakers of the divine nature.

What does that mean? Well, guess what? Baptism is the image of my participation in the divine nature, and that is much more than just, well, I have the attributes of God. I am to be loving because God is loving. I am to be holy because God is holy. I am to be wise because God is wise. No, participation is also in his essence, and not for a single moment do I become God. I'm not God.

I'll never be God. But to say that I don't participate in his essence, well, what does that mean to be united with Christ? Right, and we're talking about it today on January 10th because there was something really extraordinary that happened that doesn't get talked about a lot.

It doesn't. It's sort of buried in the annals of history, but I think it's very important. And the event that we're referring to, January 10th, 1887, there was a reply given from the American Baptists, and it was to tell the Bible societies, I'm talking about the British and Foreign Bible Society, they sent a request to the American Baptists for permission to reprint Judson. For those of you who may not know, Adoniram Judson was a Baptist missionary to Burma.

He was there for 40 years. And among the many other things that he did, he and his wife did, he also translated the Bible into Burmese. Wow. Yeah, Burma, today's Myanmar, that's what we're talking about. Okay. So he translated it into Burmese.

Burmese language. Okay. And there was an issue there in the translation that we need to talk about. Okay. Was it a doctrinal issue? Grammatical?

I would say so. And see, I love that it relates back to this because this is your field, textual criticism. It's looking at the original text and how does that translate, because rarely do you get a perfect translation. I mean, you've said before, perfect translations don't exist.

Don't exist. There's not a single one and there's not a single word-for-word translation. Not even the King James? No. 1611, though. Oh, I'm getting a lot of emails.

They don't play that. No, I like the New King James. I like the Byzantine text.

Right. But no, neither the New King James or the King James are word-for-word. Word-for-word translations would be so frustrating you would give up after the first chapter. Trying to get, because Hebrew is backwards, right? Or Greek is backwards is one of them? Well, it's not as much about backward, it's just the word order.

I got you. It's going to be very confusing. Verbs and nouns and adjectives, they get all over the place.

All over the place. Now, if you ever heard me talk sometimes when I get passionate about something, my word order gets all over the place and people are like, what exactly is he saying? It's because I'm sometimes going to that word order, which I'm putting emphasis on, like I just did. And you need to pay attention to how it's being done, but if you don't grow up speaking like that, it's like, I don't understand. Well, for you, at any given moment, you have several languages to filter through. Well, not only the biblical languages, but also the four or five languages that you learned growing up.

They all come through. You've got English, Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, and then you've got to put on biblical Greek, biblical Hebrew, and all of them are starting to get mixed up. And I guess this is what's happening to this guy that translated the Burmese?

Well, so what happened here is, now he is long gone sort of by this point. He lived from 1788 to 1850, but his translation is there. Now, there are two Bible societies that were involved in this issue. First is the British and Foreign Bible Society, which was founded in 1804. And then the American Baptist Bible Society, American Bible Society, founded in 1816. And the Baptists supported these Bible societies. They encouraged translation of the Bible into numerous languages. But the conflict arose, which caused the Baptists to withdraw their fellowship with these interdenominational Bible societies. The British and Foreign and the American, they're interdenominational means Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, congregational. All of them were taking part of their translations from these Bible societies. And this mistranslation or this issue is causing the Baptists to sort of pull back. Pull back.

That's right, that's right. In the 1830s, the British and Foreign Bible Society refused to support Carey's, William Carey, the missionary to India, his Bengali translation, and the American Bible Society refused to support Judson's Burmese translation. Alright, get it? William Carey's Bengali translation was not going to be supported by the British and Foreign Bible Societies. And Judson's Burmese Bible was not going to be supported by the American Bible Society. Two different Bible Societies rejecting translation by two different missionaries. But both of those missionaries were Baptists. So that's why the Baptists were pulling back? Because when they came to the word Baptizo, both of them translated it as immerse. See, it's all making sense now, man. It comes back to people really care about Baptism.

Which is, I mean, I guess it's good. Yeah. William Carey put in there, immerse. Going to all the world, make disciples, immersing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

So also Judson, in the Burmese translation, going to all the world, make disciples, immersing them. I see. So the British, these two societies are saying, no, we're not for that. We're not going to support it because it says immerse. And the Baptists are saying, no, it does say immersed. And if you don't support it, we're going to pull it. We're pulling away.

Got you. On both the continents, this was beginning to happen. The Baptists were saying, we're going to give our support to somebody else because you are not properly translating these words. Or this word, Baptizo, which is immerse. And so during the half century after these two divisions, the Baptists had occasionally sought to restore the fellowship.

Well, let's come back together. Some headway was made, but the refusal to recognize the actual meaning of Baptizo continued. And so in 1886, the American Baptists, I'm a bishop of Rangoon, Burma, and the British and Foreign Bible Society sent a request to the American Baptists for permission to reprint Judson's Burmese translation, but with one change. Oh, they want to change it?

It's not going to be immerse. It's going to be baptized. And Judson's reply to an earlier similar request had been this. This is what he said when people said, hey, can we just make it Baptist? It's just for peace and harmony.

He said, I would rather lose my right hand than tamper with the word of God. There you go. My guy. There it is. Wow. I like that. Yeah, you're not messing with it.

It's always a way to minimize it. Look, look, look, look. Just so we know we're wrong. We just want to make waves. And your translation is awesome. We want to use your translation.

Why would we use anybody else's? Except for this tiny little itsy bitsy thing. And he said, I'm not having that. The one bugaboo is we just got to change that one word. But it's just one word.

Nobody will ever miss it. Doctrine is important, man. Good on him. So the reply came from the American Baptist on January the 10th, 1887. And this is what they said. Do you want to hear that? Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. They said, we understand that you ask our consent to change Dr. Judson's translation by the word baptize and its cognates, either by transliterating the Greek word after the manner of the English versions, or by adopting a neutral term which all denominations might use. You make this request not on the ground that the present rendering is an incorrect or inadequate translation of the Greek word, but because it is not acceptable to other denominations of Christians.

You seem to regard it as more important to please these other denominations than make the Burmese version mean the same thing to the Burman, and the Greek Testament means to the Greek. We are compelled to decline. I'm not a translator, but let me just try my hand at that. What he's saying is, take a hike. Get lost. Get lost, kid. Go pull on your heads.

Take a long walk off a short pier. It ain't going to happen. That's what he's telling them, man. There are four reasons they give. Can I give you those four reasons?

Yeah, let's hear it. First one, because we cannot consent to obscure or neutralize the plain meaning of our Lord's command. There you go.

The leading authorities, both in classical and New Testament Greek, define the word baptized by words signifying to immerse or to dip. In such a question, we must be guided simply by a sense of loyalty to Him who gave the word, and not by a desire under other conditions to meet their wishes. We cannot, we dare not. There you go. Deliberately obscure or neutralize any word of Christ.

Jesus said it, man. I can't go against it. Can't go against it. You may want to go against God's word. I don't. I can't do that.

I can't do that today. Second, because Judson's translation describes the act of baptism as it was accepted and practiced by the apostles and their immediate successors, the New Testament and all credible church historians being witnesses. So that's something that you and I worked on, because I had to write a paper on infant baptism this past semester, and you and I worked on that very closely. You gave me a lot of great resources.

And I was like, you know, I just don't, I don't see where they're coming from. And that was, your whole thing was exactly. There is zero New Testament evidence. It did not happen in Jesus's death.

That's a powerful point. Number three, because Judson's translation follows the precedence established by versions of the best repute, both ancient and modern, made by men who acted without bias before any questions had arisen about baptism and with a single purpose to express the real meaning of the Greek text. So let's just see if we can apply that to some other aspect of church. For example, think about it as the communion. Every time there's a communion, most times we turn to 1 Corinthians 11, verse 23. It says, For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed, he took bread. Now, what if the word for took is elaben, from Lambano?

Now, we translated that, elaben, take, or took. Arton, bread. Is this Greek?

This is Greek. When Arton took bread, what if I were to do what people do with baptism? And instead of saying the Lord's supper or communion or the Lord's table, we're going to have Lebanese this week. People are like, oh, man, I could really go for some Lebanese cuisine. Like, oh, delicious.

No, no, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about communion. Yeah, you're talking about that Lebanon bologna? We have it in the plate? That sweet Lebanon.

You can eat that at Aldi for like $3. No, no, we're going to be Lebanon this week. So we eat it with the cracker, the Lebanon bologna? No. No, that's what the communion is. Well, why don't you say took bread? No, leavening.

We're going to be leavening. Yeah, so that's what we did with baptism. Baptizo is the Greek word. We're just going to say baptize, and now we all need to disagree on what this means. Because baptizo means immerse.

It's like, we're going to use the word baptize, but we also mean sprinkling. Why? Yeah. So you see how crazy that gets?

And I can make a hundred more examples just going to the Greek word, and instead of translating it, transliterate it. Right. And here's the fourth reason that they gave. These are American Baptists. In this letter on January the 10th, they said, because the rule which you have adopted is invidious to the extent of positive injustice in that it discriminates not against a novel and unauthorized rendering of the word baptize and its cognates, but against a numerous and influential body of Christians who conform to the New Testament law of baptism and the practice of the primitive ages of the church. I was actually thinking that, like what would happen if we, as Cleve, you just started calling these services our immersions, but it's so ingrained into Christian culture now. Baptism services. Baptism services.

We are Baptists. It's like, it's almost our core identity that we're now going to try to rename after centuries of this transliteration being founded into our cultural identity. It's a transliteration. It's crazy. But it just, I mean, it's taken on a life. It's become integral to this conversation.

It's almost the thing, it's like too late to change it. Yeah. And then it ends with, of course you do not mean to say that the British and foreign Bible society will not join in circulating a version which translates baptize by a word meaning immerse. What you really mean is that you will not circulate such a version if it be made by Baptists for a people whose practice it would be likely to shape or determine.

You will circulate it if made or used by people who say I immerse thee when they simply apply their wet fingers to the forehead of the candidate. Bruh. Bruh is going hard. He's not playing around.

No, he's not. Well, he understands what's at stake. I mean, you know, doctrine matters and baptism directly ties to what you believe about salvation. It directly ties to what you believe about Christ. I really genuinely, I know I say this a lot, but that learning experience for me, seeing that, and we'll talk about it one day, the entire drama that unfolded with the video we made on baptism, but seeing that thing unfold really taught me a lot about how fiercely people hold to doctrine and how wrong we can get it.

Yeah. The question in that big hoopla about baptism that I had said was not really about the mode of baptism. It was about the efficacy of baptism. They were saying, they believed in, a lot of these people who attacked me were saying that baptismal regeneration was true, and I was saying, no, baptism doesn't save you.

It is simply an act of obedience to what Christ has already done for us. So helpful for us. I hope today was helpful for you guys at home, those of you who are listening, and you're clarifying your understanding of baptism, maybe some misunderstandings you might have had. We also want to say, here at the Clear Read Today show, if you have questions about baptism, or if you would like to know more about how you can grow in your faith, how you can make that decision, we would love to help you take those next steps. Write in and let us know, 252-582-5028. Or you can visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com. Don't forget, you can partner with us financially on that same website. Become part of our Clear View Today show family, as we seek to impact the nations with the gospel. I also want to remind you to visit MightyMuscadine.com.

Use that promo code TODAY on checkout, that's T-O-D-A-Y, when you check out with their products, and a portion of those proceeds will come right back here to the Clear View Today show. Jon, what do we have on tomorrow's episode? Talking about a great mystery, maybe not even a mystery, but just something really, really cool that happened in the Old Testament that does not get talked about a lot. Talking about the company you keep, man, it's so important to have God as our constant companion through life.

And there was this one person, a man named Enoch, walked with God. Kept close, nice dude. It's like if you get knocked through the internet. It's a digital knock. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But listen, God took him, and that is something that I think a lot of people fixate on because it's so unique and unusual. So we're going to dive in that on tomorrow's episode. Yes, we're going to unpack that tomorrow, so make sure you guys tune in. Same time, same place you're listening right now, make sure you join us tomorrow. Love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clearview Today.