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
Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch”]
The two great Old Testament
baptisms, the Flood and the passage
of Israel through the Red Sea, have some bearing on the whole question of the
mode of baptism, if only because these passages are consistently misinterpreted
by the Baptists. They insist that
baptism means immersion—only, ever, always immersion. This is not true in the case of these typical
baptisms, and so the Baptist argument is proved false.
It must be emphasized, first of all, that these
Old Testament events were baptisms. The New Testament itself defines them as
such, using the New Testament word, the same word that is always used in the
New Testament to describe both the water-sign of baptism and the spiritual
reality to which that sign points. The
New Testament defines the Flood as a baptism in I Peter 3:21; “The like figure
whereunto even baptism doth also now
save us.” The passage of Israel through
the Red Sea is also called a baptism in I Corinthians 10:1-2; “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.”
Recognizing the fact that the New Testament so
clearly identifies these events as baptisms, some Baptists have tried to find
immersion in the record of these Old Testament events. It has been suggested, for example, that the
Israelites were immersed in the Red Sea in that the cloud was above them and
the water on both sides. We have already
quoted John Gill along these lines. Another
Baptist writer, arguing that baptism means burial and therefore immersion
writes: “The children of Israel were completely buried in the sea and in the
cloud, when they were ‘baptized into Moses.’”[1] Some Baptists have even suggested that the
Israelites came through the sea completely soaked.
All this is, however, contrary to the testimony
of Scripture. For one thing, Scripture
clearly states that the Israelites came through the sea on dry ground (Exod.
14:16, 22, 29; 15:19) and that they themselves were “dry shod” and not soaking
wet (Isa. 11:15-16):
But lift thou up thy rod, and
stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel
shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea ... And the children
of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the
waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left ... But the
children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the
waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. (Exod.
14:16, 22, 29)
For the horse of Pharaoh went
in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the LORD brought
again the waters of the sea upon them; but the children of Israel went on dry
land in the midst of the sea. (Exod. 15:19)
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)
Scripture also makes it clear that the
Israelites were not “surrounded by water,” as some Baptists suggest. The cloud was not over them, at least not
when they passed through the sea, but behind them, separating them from
the Egyptians (Exod. 14:19-20):
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.
Even more importantly, however, the fact is
that the Israelites were in no sense of the word immersed; nor did they
even get wet in this baptism. This was
the driest baptism on record, contradicting the Baptist assumption that a
person is not baptized unless he is completely wet. All of which is to say that neither the
amount of water, nor the manner of its application, are the important things in
this Old Testament baptism.
What was true of Israel at the Red Sea was also
true of Noah and his family. In that
baptism, too, no one who was baptized was immersed, even though the water saved
them. Noah and his family were born up
by the water and carried into a new world, but the only ones who were “immersed”
were the ungodly.
There is no way, therefore, that baptism always
means immersion, all arguments of the Baptists to the contrary. Nor can these events be dismissed by an
appeal to the fact that they were in the Old Testament and were but types, for
the New Testament clearly and unmistakably identifies them as baptisms.
[Next section: “Old Testament Prophecies of Baptism”]
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FOOTNOTES:
1. J. J. Sims, Christian Baptism: the Plain Teaching of the Word of God (Pickering
& Inglis: Glasgow, n.d.), p. 27.
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