Immersion as a Sign of Judgment

Rev. Ronald Hanko

Rev. Hanko is a minister in the Protestant Reformed Churches in America and has authored a number of books, including (among others) the following: Doctrine According to Godliness: A Primer on Reformed Doctrine (2004), The Coming of Zion’s Redeemer: Commentary on Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi (2015). He was also the joint author of Saved by Grace: A Study of the Five Points of Calvinism (1995) and its accompanying study guide (all of which can be purchased at http://www.cprc.co.uk and http://www.rfpa.org).

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[Previous section: “The Biblical Ground for Sprinkling”]

Not only are the Baptist arguments for immersion invalid, but immersion, as we have suggested in the previous section, is not even a sign of salvation, but rather of judgment.  Immersion is not, therefore, an acceptable, though less preferable mode of baptism, as many paedobaptist writers suggest—it is not a legitimate mode of baptism at all!

      

There are two great baptisms in the Old Testament: the salvation of Noah and his family in the great Flood and the passage of Israel through the Red Sea.  The Flood is called a “baptism” in I Peter 3:20-21, and the Red Sea a “baptism” in I Corinthians 10:1-2:

Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.  The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. (I Pet. 3:20-21)

Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea. (I Cor. 10:1-2)

These passages have been cited before and will be coming up for discussion again, but here we should notice that in these two great Old Testament baptisms, none of the people of God were immersed.  So intent are some Baptist writers on proving immersion that they suggest that the Red Sea was a baptism by immersion—the sea on both sides, and the cloud above, so that Israel was surrounded by water and therefore immersed.  Gill says, for example:

As the Israelites were under the cloud, and so under water, and covered with it, as persons baptized by immersion are; and passed through the sea, that standing up as a wall on both sides of them, with the cloud over them; thus surrounded they were as persons immersed in water, and so said to be baptized.[1]

This is simply playing around with the testimony of Scripture, however, for Scripture clearly indicates that the Israelites passed through the sea dry shod:

And the LORD shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod.  And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt. (Isa. 11:15-16)

Nor were they completely surrounded with water, for the cloud was not above them, but behind them, as they passed through the sea:

And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them: And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night. (Exod. 14:19-20)

More important, however, is the fact that, both in the Flood and at the Red Sea, those who were “immersed” were not God’s people, but the ungodly—at the Flood, the whole of the ungodly world, and at the Red Sea the armies of Egypt and Pharaoh their leader.  On both occasions, immersion was a sign of destruction and judgment.

This is true in the New Testament as well.  We are aware that many, both Baptists and paedobaptists, are convinced that the baptisms of Jesus (Matt. 3:13-17) and of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-40) were by immersion.  With these two incidents we will deal in the sections that follow.  Leaving them aside, therefore, the only clear example of immersion in the New Testament is the immersion of the wicked in the lake of fire:

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.  And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.  And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:13-15)

There, too, immersion is a sign, not of salvation, but of judgment.

      

It is ironic, to say the least, that Baptists with all their emphasis on “believer’s baptism,” are actually baptizing in the way that God, in wrath, “baptizes” the ungodly world.  With all their emphasis on immersion as the proper and biblical mode of baptism, they are actually applying what is a sign of wrath and judgment and not of salvation.

[Next section: “Sprinkling as a Sign of Grace”]

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FOOTNOTES:

1. John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), vol. II, p. 643.