What Was The 'Baptism of John?'

This is our Understanding the Scriptures segment, we’re in the gospel of Matthew. We are in Matthew Chapter 3, and we’re going to pick up with Verse 5. Then went out to him (him being John the Baptist), “Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.”

Dave:

Tom, this is quite a passage—Wow! I guess I could discuss this for a long time, but we have very little time. But, what is this, a Billy Graham crusade?I mean, I remember when Billy Graham was in Los Angeles and they had the coliseum, and even the coliseum which, what does it hold, ninety thousand? Or close to that, and they couldn’t get all the people in there.John the Baptist must have been a very popular preacher. Kind of undermines what we were just saying. I mean, he was telling them to come and confess their sins. Why was this so uh, such a popular message? Well, and that raises more questions, Tom. You could say that the Holy Spirit was at work, and was really speaking through, and that Israel was under conviction. And these people were moved by God to come and confess their sins.

Tom:

Dave, isn’t it also the fact that look what his message was, he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his path straight. This is, this was—John was the herald for the Messiah—

Dave:

Right.

Tom:

—the Messiah they were looking for.

Dave:

Right, but they hadn’t confessed their sins. Now Tom, we could think of a few other connections.

Tom:

Oh by the way, Dave, didn’t he sort of pump his promotion up by signs and wonders, healings and—

Dave:

No, you’ve got the wrong preacher, Tom. Now what about these people who came to confess their sins, and looking forward to this Messiah who was coming? Do you think they were all saved? Well, they weren’t saved because Acts 19 tells you that. You remember? There came to Paul some men who, they were passing themselves off as Christians, and Paul was talking about the Holy Spirit. And he says, Have you received the Holy Spirit? And they said, We haven’t even heard whether this—Holy Spirit? We never heard of that! Interesting passage,

Tom:

Mmhmm.

Dave:

…because immediately, what’s Paul’s reaction? To what then were you baptized? And I have in mind, of course, oneness, Pentecostals who say you’re baptized in the name of Jesus. They don’t believe in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Well, wait a minute, if they were just baptized in the name of Jesus, if the disciples who became true Christians were just baptized in the name of Jesus, well, they wouldn’t have heard of the Holy Spirit, would they? That immediately alerted Paul, something wrong with these guys.Haven’t even heard of the Holy Spirit? Well, you would hear that because you would have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, okay. So, that’s one of the evidences that baptism was in the name Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And they were not saved, and he preached—Oh, what was your baptism? Oh, the baptism of John. Oh, well you guys have got a little more enlightenment that you need, you haven’t heard the gospel yet. And Paul gives them the gospel, and they receive Christ, and then he baptizes them. But then, Tom, that raises a question, raise it like the Billy Graham Crusade. I saw thousands go forward, because I was in charge of the number of counselors at the, in the coliseum there back in those days. How many of them stuck? How many of them ended up in churches? I have a friend in Paris, and I’m not trying to run Billy Graham down, the pastor. He started quite a few churches in France and that is a tough place, atheist country. And he told me, during the Billy Graham Crusade, Wow, thousands went forward, there in Paris. But he said, I tried, after Billy Graham was gone, I couldn’t find any of them had found their way into Evangelical churches. Billy Graham, I think, says, maybe 10 % stick. I wonder how many of John the Baptist converts stuck? I wonder how many of them were in the crowd that day crying, Crucify Him, Away with Him, We’ll not have this man reign over us. I think a lot of those that Christ had healed, which I guess brings us back to the, one of the main points of our program: Search the Scriptures Daily. Search yourselves, whether you are really in the faith, Paul writes to the Corinthians. Examine yourselves, whether you are really in the faith. So, I’m not discounting, was this just a popular thing to do? Probably, Tom. Some of them saw the crowd, some of them heard, and that raises all kinds of serious questions. When we present the gospel there are techniques, salesmanship techniques. First of all, you get them to raise their hand. Well, that’s easy. And then you get them to stand.Whoa that’s, make another step. And then you get them to come forward. Little techniques you can use to get a lot of false converts, and we have to beware of that.

Tom:

Dave, I’ve also seen people come forward on the basis of renewing their faith, and of course numbers wise, it looks impressive. Wow. I was in a church one time where half the congregation went forward.

Dave:

Right.

Tom:

I’m thinking wait a minute, why has happened in this church at this time, what happened weeks and months prior, or years prior to this?

Dave:

Yeah. Well anyway I’m sure that John’s ministry was blessed of the Lord, but in the end there were only 120 gathered in that upper room, there were 500 who met Christ after his resurrection in Galilee. Well, maybe I should not mention such things, Tom, because—but it’s important. I would say to everyone out there now listening, examine yourselves, are you really in the faith? A lot of people who call themselves Christians, and they never personally received Christ as their Saviour and Lord, they never really—somehow it never really got to them that Jesus died for them, and that he bore their sins in his own body on the tree. Well, I just thought of that in relation to John the Baptist because Wow! All Judea, all the region round about Jordan, pretty hard for me to imagine that they all were now looking forward to the Messiah, and yet when the Messiah comes they cry, Away with Him! He’s despised and rejected. He came to his own and his own received him not. That’s something to think about seriously, Tom.

Tom:

Mmhmm. Well, Jesus himself said he wouldn’t turn himself over to the people because he knew what was in their hearts and minds. They were looking for a meal ticket; they were looking for somebody to take the Roman oppression from them.

Dave:

Right. That would remind us of John 8, where it says, As he spake these words, many believed on him. Then said Jesus to the Jews that believed on him, If you continue in my Word you are my disciple indeed, you know the scriptures. And then they began to argue with him. And finally, they take up stones to kill him. And yet, it said of them, at first they believed in him.That’s something to think about carefully.

Tom:

Verse 7: “But when he saw many of the Pharasees and Saducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.”

Dave:

You know, Tom, this is a guy who’s been reading, obviously he’s been reading positive thinking or how to win friends and influence people.

Tom:

Yeah, or the Joel Osteen approach.

Dave:

Yeah. No, he’s just telling it to them, I mean they’re a generation of vipers, and, You’re going to have to repent. You guys, you’re phonies, is basically what he’s saying. And we have an awful lot of them on TV, radio. But Tom, I’ve been doing all the talking here, you’d better say a few last words here to close us off.

Tom:

Well Dave, you know, repentance is the thing, we talked about that in the earlier segments. Without conviction of sin, with the appeal of productions, and uh, what this can do for me, we’ve lost the heart of what Christ did, what he came to do, what he did, what he accomplished on the cross, and we can have salvation. It’s not adding some baggage to my—what I already have.

Dave:

Amen.