Equipping Eve: I Was a Victim of Spontaneous Baptism

Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus?

Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy -coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed

Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women,

No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies -only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

Well, hello, ladies, and welcome to Equipping Eve. I am your host,

Erin Benzinger. Hey, have you checked us out online? We are at equippingeve .org

or .com, both of those addresses will help you find us. And there on the website, you can access some articles that I've written over the years at my other website at DoNotBeSurprised.

You can also find the radio podcast archives. They will link you back to No Compromise Radio where the podcast is housed.

We're very thankful to No Compromise Radio and all of the gang there for their support and their help in producing

Equipping Eve. Okay, so let's see what's on the docket for today. Let's look at something insane first because we like to do that here on the show.

One of our favorite little quirky things to go to is the

You're Already Amazing flip calendar that is based on a book by Holly Gerth.

That's Holly with an E, H -O -L -L -E -Y. I don't know that I ever noticed that before. Anyway, she wrote a book called

You're Already Amazing. And they turned it into a flip calendar, which is sad on multiple levels.

But this is embracing who you are, becoming all God created you to be because it is, after all, all about you, right?

Here in the world today, it is. So here on this day that I flipped to on this amazing calendar that tells me how amazing

I am, Holly Gerth writes, Let's dare to love, to share life with each other, to offer ourselves in the way

God has created us to do. I need you. You need me. The kingdom needs us.

Hmm. Now, it's not all entirely bad.

I suppose it's a little frou -frou for my tastes. You know, of course we should be selfless in giving of our time and talents with others and we should be putting others ahead of ourselves.

That's part of the Christian life. That's part of being a Christian. That's part of the definition. But what gets me is this last line here where she says the kingdom needs us.

Now, this is, again, feeding our narcissistic tendencies. You know,

God can't really do what he wants to do without me. And so I am amazing because Holly Gerth has told me

I'm amazing. Hashtag just be awesome, right? So the kingdom needs me and the kingdom needs you.

You know, here's the thing. Here's the thing, ladies. God uses us. We can't deny that.

That's a fact. God uses sinful human beings.

However, that is a privilege that is greatly undeserved.

Isn't it? I mean, ladies, get this straight in your head right now. God doesn't need you.

Okay? He doesn't need me. He will accomplish his purposes regardless of you, regardless of me.

So it is not about the kingdom needing you or needing me in order to grow or flourish or be successful or whatever.

Christ will build his church. He doesn't need you and me. It is a great honor to be used by God to further the purposes of his kingdom.

But it is not something that he's up there wringing his hands and doesn't know what to do if we don't decide to dare to love as Holly Gerth thinks that we need to do.

So let's just take the focus off of ourselves again, which if you're reading through Holly Gerth's book or calendar, it's really difficult to take the focus off of yourself because she keeps putting it back on you.

Put it back on Christ because it's all about Christ. Don't think about it as let me point to me because I'm so important and I'm necessary.

No, no, no, no, no. No, no. Your purpose is to point people to Christ and to glorify

God. So if you're busy doing that and you're busy doing the

Lord's business, that's what you're doing, and you're not thinking about how amazing you are and how the kingdom needs you because it doesn't.

God doesn't need you. It's a great honor that he has chosen to use you, that he has chosen to use me, and it's an honor for which we should thank him.

It's a reason for us to pursue righteousness and holiness and to be grateful for sanctification and for trials and a reason for us to desire to be under the sound teaching of the word week after week in a biblically, doctrinally sound church.

It's a reason for us to be in his word because he is using us and we want to be worthy vessels to be used.

But Holly Girth, hey, it's all about you. The kingdom needs you, so you should just be amazing so the kingdom can use you.

No, no, that's not what it's about. But these teachers, these teachers who propagate this narcissistic false teaching, it's always turned back on how awesome you are.

It always is turned into being about us, and it's so wrong. It's so wrong.

Okay. Well, that was your moment of insanity. Now let's move on to the primary topic for the day, which is one that I've been pondering for quite some time, years actually.

And you may have noticed the title of the show is

I Was a Victim of Spontaneous Baptism. That is not just a clickbait title.

That's a true one. I was a victim of spontaneous baptism. Now, most of you probably know what

I'm talking about when I say spontaneous baptism. If you don't know, we will get into it shortly here.

Actually, we won't get into it shortly. We'll get into it right now. So spontaneous baptism, this whole concept made headlines a couple of years ago now,

I don't know, maybe 2013, 2012, thereabouts, when Stephen Furtick of Elevation Church, it came out that they were performing these spontaneous baptisms, and that they had been for years.

And it started to come out what these things actually were. I mean, there were actual news stories done on the spontaneous baptism phenomena and the

Elevation Church craziness. Now, if you start Googling around, you can find links on I think pastors .com

and things like that that talk about the Elevation Church spontaneous baptisms, and they want to link you to the spontaneous baptism kit that was offered by Elevation Church.

I say was because when you click on the link, it goes back to the Elevation Church website, but it goes to Stephen Furtick's book,

Sun Stands Still, and there is no link to a spontaneous baptism kit. Of course, that does not surprise us that Elevation Church wiped the web of their kit.

However, as it happens, myself and I believe some others managed to save off the spontaneous baptism kit years ago before it disappeared from the web.

So, I actually still have it. And in order to explain what spontaneous baptism is supposed to be,

I'm going to read some select passages from this spontaneous baptism kit for you.

Now, to start, what does spontaneous mean? So, you know what, let's go to the dictionary, shall we?

Almost all of us have a dictionary on our computer. I just typed spontaneous into mine, and it says spontaneous is an adjective performed or occurring as a result of a sudden inner impulse or inclination and without premeditation or external stimulus.

Okay, without premeditation or external stimulus. So, let's see if the spontaneous baptism kit that used to be offered by Elevation Church actually fits that definition.

The spontaneous baptism kit introduction reads, Due to the overwhelming success of our spontaneous baptisms, we decided to capture everything we did with the event to help other churches considering this amazing experience.

It was very taxing, but one of the most rewarding things we have done as a church. To help you understand what we did, here's a quick overview of who we were when we did the event.

Elevation Church began February 5, 2006. Pastor Stephen Furtick and a team of eight families sold their homes, believing that God will do some amazing things when we trust him and follow his leading.

That first Sunday, 121 people gathered for our first worship experience. Amazing growth followed over the next 14 months, growing to almost 2 ,000 people worshiping between our two campuses,

Elevation Providence and Elevation Union. The second campus, Elevation Union, is a video campus that we started with 33 days of lead time and launched

Easter Sunday of 2007. We have developed a pattern of undertaking audacious things.

Our first Elevation Egg Drop was planned in 19 days. It was an over -the -top Easter event in our second month of ministry where we dropped thousands of eggs from a helicopter as an outreach to the community.

It was an amazing success, with over 2 ,500 showing up for the event. You know, let me interject here.

Does anyone else just really feel the humility in this paragraph? Everything is so amazing and audacious, and there's numbers everywhere.

It's so weird. This is, okay, this must be what it is to be humble. Moving on, as you read the material, keep in mind we are an extremely aggressive church, continually asking what's next, and truly believing each thing will produce a harvest as we walk in faith.

So they did this spontaneous baptism experience, they say over two weeks, and was part of a five -week sermon series at the time, and they go on to describe their technique, if you will.

So it says that the week two sermon focused on how pride can keep people from walking in obedience, and Furtick preached from 2

Kings 5 on Naaman, the story of Naaman. And it says,

It says the sermon ended with Pastor Furtick telling the story of one of our key leaders at the church, and how pride had kept him from being baptized.

He's an extremely successful businessman that loved the first few visits to Elevation, until he found out we required baptism for membership.

He strongly disagreed, saying that God knew his heart, and he had been a Christian for a long time. The sermon ended with the man coming up and being baptized.

Pastor Furtick went directly into the invitation and called people to respond.

Okay. So they manipulated people into responding. Do we see how that worked?

Okay. That was all very perfectly orchestrated to elicit a reaction from the audience.

So here's one of the tips they give you in their kit. Remove excuses. A big part of helping people respond to the invitation is diffusing the excuses.

The most obvious excuse is, I don't have anything to wear. Well, we took care of that by providing all the clothes they need.

We also had everything they would need to put themselves back together. It was a long list of grooming and hygiene supplies.

See attached supplies list. That's right. This spontaneous baptism kit gives you a supply list.

We had hair dryers, hairspray, brushes, and anything they would need to get ready. The addition of Pastor Furtick's mother being baptized removed the religious tradition excuse, and the baptism of the successful businessman who didn't want to be baptized dealt head -on with the pride issue.

So, really, we pulled the mother card for the manipulation tactics.

So then you have to come up with flow and changing rooms because you don't want it to get congested.

So, basically, they had a large amount of volunteers strategically placed throughout the building so that when you respond to the invitation, air quotes, and come forward, you're ushered out of the worship center.

That's probably what they call it there. Heaven forbid we would call it a sanctuary. The worship center, and you're ushered down a hallway, and then you're ushered into a changing room, and then you get in line to be baptized.

So you have to have the right flow. Then you have to determine the pace of the baptisms.

So they give you some little tips on that. You have to have changing rooms. Then, of course, you have to train people.

So all of your volunteers have to come and be trained on how to make sure that the spontaneous baptism is pulled off smoothly.

So that's part of what they did. So then there's an interesting little blurb here called,

A Few on Deck. It says, Because of the rapid turnaround time, we had four people ready to be baptized for each worship experience.

When Pastor Furtick finished his prayer, those folks were already dressed and came directly side stage to be baptized. It was astonishing because it seems like a short time, but a line of people were changed and ready as the baptisms begin.

Okay, then it goes into the training, a little bit there, how to do that.

It goes in and gives you, I mean, they even break down the gender and age distribution of how many people were baptized to kind of help you get an idea of how many supplies you might need and how many

T -shirts they went through and all this stuff, and right down to the supply list.

I mean, you know, you need dark -colored shorts and T -shirts. You need towels and washcloths and makeup remover and lotion, apparently, and Ziploc baggies for jewelry and flip -flops and Sharpies.

This is a very detailed document.

It's 10 pages, 10 pages long, very detailed, telling you how to pull off a spontaneous baptism now.

As I said, now that you have a little bit of an idea of what this is. Now, this is spontaneously planned, is what this is.

Now, let's remind ourselves of the dictionary definition. That's a spontaneous is performed or occurring as a result of a sudden inner impulse or inclination and without premeditation or external stimulus.

Well, it may be a spontaneous baptism to the baptizee, but it is not spontaneous to the baptizer by definition.

And is it really spontaneous if there actually is an external stimulus, if you actually are manipulated into being baptized?

Because that is precisely what they describe here in this document. You know, preach the right sermon.

Don't take away all the excuses. Hey, pastor's mother is going to get baptized.

That should help get some people down front. Hmm, how spontaneous is it if you're manipulated into the action?

So, as I said, I was a victim of spontaneous baptism.

Now, there's a few important things to note here. This happened before I was actually saved.

And had the baptism been performed the way a baptism should be performed, the church presumably should have noticed

I was not actually saved. What happened at my spontaneous baptism was we were actually put in front of people.

They weren't elders of the church. There were far too many people being baptized that day. There were just random volunteers that the church had enlisted to sit and talk with everybody who was baptized.

Now, I do not see that same type of instruction in Stephen Furtick's document. He does not seem to care that anybody sit and talk to the person being baptized.

It is extremely important, ladies, if you have not been baptized and you're thinking about it and praying about it, first of all, it is an act of obedience, and we're going to get into that very soon here.

But this is something you need to talk about with the elders of your church. This is an elder issue.

This is not a random volunteer issue who comes for an hour of training on a

Saturday and then sits down and talks to dozens of people to determine whether or not they should actually be baptized.

So I don't see that instruction in the Elevation Church video. However, it did happen at my spontaneous baptism that I sat down with someone and basically they asked like three questions and said, okay, yeah, go ahead, get in line.

And then we waited for hours because the manipulation tactics had worked so well. But when

I first saw this spontaneous baptism kit, I could not believe it. I already knew I had been duped by the baptism way back when, but I just could not believe the similarities.

You know, the t -shirts were all there. Oh, hey, no, there's no excuses. You don't have any excuses. It's a very distinct formula that these seeker -sensitive churches follow.

Now, my spontaneous baptism did not occur at Elevation Church. It actually occurred at Harvest Bible Chapel and pastored by James McDonald there in Chicago.

The tactics are extremely similar to what Stephen Furtick describes in this document or whoever wrote this document on behalf of Elevation Church.

There were a few interesting things that James McDonald threw in, and I know that they were scripted and specifically designed to be manipulative because I heard the exact same message and tactics employed a year or two later.

And so it really makes you feel used when you realize that a church has manipulated you into something as serious as baptism in order to increase their numbers.

And something that was said during the sermon that was preached prior to my spontaneous baptism was, you know, you're sitting there trying to come up with excuses.

You're saying, oh, yeah, well, my mother's not here, and she wanted to be here when I was baptized. You know what? Your mother's not here, but Jesus is here, so you can tell her that it's fine.

Jesus was there when you got baptized, and it's fine. Something to that effect. And everybody laughs, and that's fine, but it's little things like that that are used to make it seem like they're taking away all the excuses and you need to be obedient, and they're playing on something that actually is true and is important that you should be obedient to the call to baptism, but yet they're doing it for their own selfish purposes, and that's wrong.

And that is wrong. And in doing so, I guarantee you that I would even dare to say the majority, the vast majority of people who are baptized in these spontaneous baptisms are not saved, and I know because I was one of them.

And then it is used to dupe you into believing that you are a

Christian because you even followed in obedience with baptism, but you weren't actually saved.

You were just manipulated into it. Now, praise the Lord for, to close out my own story,

He did save me actually very, very shortly after that incident, and it wasn't long after that that I stopped attending that church, and the

Lord continued to grow me, and then eventually I was able to be baptized for real as a believer, but it's part of my testimony that as a false convert,

I was baptized. And that is so pervasive and so prevalent, and so many people who think they are

Christians rely on the fact that they were baptized.

And so they point back and say, well, yeah, I was baptized. I was baptized as a believer as an adult, and so, yes, of course

I'm saved. But so many of these false converts, well, all of these false converts, they don't understand what baptism truly is.

They don't understand the gravity of it, the seriousness of it.

This isn't just, hey, I'm being obedient, woo -hoo. No, no, no. This is serious.

There are so many misunderstandings about baptism, and we could go into all the false teachings about baptism.

There's paedo -baptism. We're not going to discuss that today. We're going to presume believer's baptism, and we'll touch briefly on why we think that's so.

There's the belief that baptism saves you. As you go down an unbeliever and you come up a believer, that baptism is necessary for you to be saved.

You know, there's some people who maybe don't specifically believe that but have a warped, distorted view of the purpose of baptism and think, you know, well,

I knew I was saved when I got baptized. I just felt cleansed when I came out of the water. Well, no, no, no. You should know you're saved before you get baptized because that's why you're getting saved, or why you're getting baptized is because you're saved.

And so we need to have a proper biblical understanding of baptism, ladies. Spontaneous baptism is extremely unbiblical.

It's a manipulation tactic. It's for the purposes of that particular seeker -sensitive church to increase their baptism numbers so everyone can be impressed with how awesome they are.

But we need to know what biblical baptism looks like. So let's take a look at that over the next few minutes here.

I'm going to be taking much of this content that follows from a sermon that was preached by Pastor Don Green not too long ago as I tape this, depending on when you're listening to this.

And I will link to that at the Equipping You blog. And so I would encourage you to go and listen to that sermon and hear him expound on these points much more eloquently and much more deeply than we will have time to touch on here today.

So the first point, ladies, that we have to consider is why do we even practice baptism? And these are all things that you should be taught and that you should understand before you even get baptized.

You don't have to understand everything perfectly, but you should have a basic concept of these things before you are baptized.

And so ladies, if you've not been baptized, but you have been saved, you're going to see as we continue to talk here that you need to be baptized.

If you've been saved by Christ, you need to be baptized. And so I encourage you to study it, to listen to some godly teaching on it, and I hope that the sermon that we'll connect you with will help.

You need to talk to your pastor and to your elders about it as well so that you can walk forth in obedience to your

Lord. So why do we practice baptism? Well, we practice baptism because Jesus commanded it, and Jesus is the sole and singular authority in the church.

What is perhaps one of the most well -known verses there where Jesus commands this?

The Great Commission in Matthew 28. Matthew 28, 18, Jesus came up and spoke to them, to his 11 disciples, and said,

All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And, lo,

I am with you always, even to the end of the age. And so we see that through the teaching of the word, disciples are made.

And once disciples are made, they are to be baptized. So go preach the word, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, but those disciples then must be baptized.

So who should be baptized? Well, this flows right into that. Everyone who has believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, those who have been born again.

So we see this as a biblical pattern over and over again in the New Testament. We see that believers were baptized upon confessing their faith in Jesus Christ.

They hear the word of God, they hear the gospel proclaimed, they confess their faith in Christ, repent of their sins, and then they are baptized.

If you turn in your Bibles, ladies, to Acts 2, this is where we start to see the life of the early church, the birth of the early church, and so we start to see these

New Testament baptisms. And so Peter has preached, and Acts 2, verse 37 says, when the people heard this, when they heard his sermon, and he declared

Christ crucified, the people were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brethren, what shall we do?

Verse 38, Peter said to them, repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit. There we see repentance linked to baptism.

You repent, faith in Christ. This is all two sides of the same coin, repentance and faith, both gifts granted by God, and then out of obedience we're baptized in Christ.

We see then, moving on in verse 40 of Acts chapter 2, with many other words, he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, be saved from this perverse generation.

So then those who had received his word were baptized, and that day there were added about 3 ,000 souls.

They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.

So repentance and faith in Christ, you're given the gift of the Holy Spirit, we see all that in Acts 2 .38, and then you are baptized in obedience.

If you'll turn a few pages in your Bible to Acts 8, we see more mention here of baptism following the proclamation of the word.

Acts 8, verse 12, when they believed Philip preaching the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were being baptized, men and women alike.

If you'll turn to Acts chapter 16, this is one of my favorite stories in the book of Acts.

We read about the first convert in Europe, is what the subtitle says in my Bible. Subtitles are not inspired, but they're helpful sometimes.

Verse 14, a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening, and the

Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the

Lord, come into my house and stay. And she prevailed upon us. God opens

Lydia's heart to turn to the Lord in repentance and faith, and she was baptized in obedience.

A little further down in that chapter, we see Paul and Silas in prison. Verse 25, about midnight,

Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.

And suddenly there came a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened.

When the jailer awoke and saw the prison doors opened, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing the prisoners had escaped.

But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying, don't harm yourself, for we are all here. And he called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas.

And after he brought them out, he said, What must I do to be saved? Verse 31, they said,

And you will be saved, you and your household. And they spoke the word of the

Lord to him, together with all who were in his house. And he took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds, and immediately he was baptized, he and all his household.

And he brought them into his house and set food before them and rejoiced greatly, having believed in God with his whole household.

We see the preaching of the word, followed by obedience in baptism.

Acts 18, verse 8, Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his household.

And many of the Corinthians, when they heard, were believing and being baptized. Jesus commands us to be baptized.

Acts 22, 16, Why do you delay? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name.

And so we see that Jesus commands us to be baptized. And who should be baptized? Those who have been brought to repentance and faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ should be baptized. We see so much of this in Acts.

We see that Christ is building his church. Christ is building his church, Holy Girth, not you.

And so baptism is this means of public declaration that you have been saved by the

Savior. And so how do we baptize? We've seen why we practice baptism.

Jesus commanded it. Who should be baptized? Those who have been brought to repentance and faith in Christ. How do we baptize? We're not going to get into the paedo -baptism debate here.

We believe here at Equipping Eve, it is the position of this podcast, of this ministry, that biblical baptism is by immersion.

So we see that. If we go back to Acts chapter 8, we see the story of the

Ethiopian eunuch in verse 34. The eunuch answered Philip and said, Please tell me, of whom does the prophet say this?

So the eunuch had been reading Isaiah 53 and did not know about who this was written in.

So he's asking Philip, and the eunuch says, Tell me, who is the prophet talking about?

Of himself or of someone else? Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from the scripture, he preached

Jesus to him. Isn't that, let me pause there. Isn't that, quite possibly, one of the most beautiful verses in all of scripture?

He preached Jesus to him. Friends, on a slight tangent, if your pastor is not preaching

Jesus, you need to find a new church. It is not about your pastor, or your pastor's wife, or how awesome he is, or how awesome his wife is, or how awesome his kids are.

It's not about his funny little anecdotes. No, no, no. It's about Jesus. So he needs to be preaching Jesus, and if he's preaching anything except Jesus, because he is not actually a pastor, and you are not actually attending a church.

Back to Acts. Back to Acts 8, verse 36. As they went along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said,

Look, water, what prevents me from being baptized? And verse 37 was not in some of the earliest manuscripts, but we'll read it anyway.

And Philip said, If you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the

Son of God. And he ordered the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water. They both went down into the water,

Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the

Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away, and the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing.

So we see a description of going down into the water and coming up out of the water. This is not a sprinkle. This would be immersion.

Of course, we see this back in Mark with the baptism of Jesus himself.

Mark 1, verse 9, In those days Jesus came from Nazareth and Galilee and was baptized by John in the

Jordan. Immediately coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opening and the

Spirit like a dove descending upon him, and a voice came out of the heavens, You are my beloved Son, and you

I am well pleased. And so we see that the biblical pattern for baptism is by immersion.

Okay, so let's recap. We have seen why do we practice baptism.

Jesus commanded it. Who should be baptized? Those who have been brought to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

How do we baptize? We baptize by immersion. Finally, what does baptism represent?

And we already said briefly that baptism is a means of a public declaration of your salvation that you have died with Christ.

And that you now identify with him. No longer a slave to sin, you are a slave to Christ.

It is an outward profession of faith and an outward symbol that testifies to an inner reality.

You are saved before you get baptized. You do not get saved when you come up out of the water.

Let me be really clear on that. Baptism does not save you. You don't need to be baptized to be saved, but if you have been saved, you should desire to be baptized because it is in obedience to the command of your

Lord. If you'll turn with me to Romans 6, ladies, we can see what baptism represents in terms of a spiritual reality.

Romans 6, verse 1, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be.

How shall we who die to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?

Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the

Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin, for he who has died is freed from sin.

Baptism represents this death to sin and rising to new life in Christ.

Christ was raised from the dead and our baptism represents that we have been raised from that spiritual death.

In Colossians 2, verse 12, we see having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

You see, baptism represents this inner reality of this new man, this new master, this new man that you are made into in salvation and this new master that you now have when you are saved.

And so, baptism will not create the life change that should come with salvation, no, no, no, because again, baptism is not required.

But this change that is brought about in your life through the work of the Holy Spirit when you are saved, this shows the reality of true conversion.

And along with that change of life, that's the outward fruit that people can see, but it reflects an inner reality.

You know, the outward behavior we can do even when we're unregenerate, but there must be an attitude and an affection change as well.

And we talked a little bit about that in our show on sanctification not too long ago, that salvation, the nature of a true

Christian is in the change of the affections of the heart, change of the desires of the heart, our desires for the things of the

Lord, not the desires of the things of the world and your sinful self. And so, as you change, as Christ changes you when you are saved, you desire to be obedient to him.

That's part of what that looks like. And ladies, one of those things that we should be, that we must be obedient to him in, is in baptism.

Let's not be ashamed. Let's not be ashamed to publicly profess our faith in Christ, to publicly proclaim that we who were dead to sin have been made alive in Christ.

Ladies, if you've not been baptized, I encourage you to do further study open your

Bible and study baptism, study the call for the

Christian to be obedient to the Lord and I encourage you to talk to your pastor, to talk to your elders, so that you may follow your

Lord in this call to which he commands you. Okay, ladies, we've run a little over.

We've been doing shorter shows lately, but, you know, spontaneously we ran over today.

That's okay. We're not actually on the time clock, so that's fine. I hope this was helpful to you today, ladies.

I know I did a lot of talking, although I guess that's the nature of a radio show, but I hope it's been an encouragement to you.

I hope if you were one who was baptized, perhaps as a false convert, let me, let me,

I didn't have this in my notes, but it's so important for me to say this, ladies. If you were baptized as a false convert, but have since been saved, but have not yet followed in that step of being, for lack of a better term, re -baptized, ladies, please, please talk to your pastor about that.

Please get into the Word and pray that God would show you what you need to do there, but I am here to give you my opinion.

As someone who was baptized as a false convert and was saved very shortly after that, it is so important for you to be baptized as a believer and do not, do not, do not, do not, do not let your pride stop you from being obedient to the

Lord. I don't mean to be pulling the same heart strings that Stephen Furtick used in his sermon. That's not my intent here at all, but it was something that I had to work through myself because my salvation happened so soon after my baptism.

I thought, well, maybe I actually was saved when I was baptized initially, and then God made it very clear to me that I had not been, and then

I knew I had to follow him in baptism again because the first one wasn't actually real, and some people won't understand it.

Some people, even some Christians, might not understand it. I had one person even say to me, hey, third time's the charm, right?

Because I had been baptized as an infant. Don't let that discourage you. Just know that you need to be obedient to the

Lord. That's all it's about. It's between you and God. Don't worry that other people might think you're weird.

Don't worry that other people might look down on you. No, no. What will your

Lord think when you're obedient to him? That's all that matters. So if you were baptized as a false convert, got saved later, ladies, you need to consider being baptized again as a true believer this time.

That's my two cents. It's about all it's worth, but I urge you to search the scriptures on that point.

Okay, ladies, that's enough of me talking for today. Until the next episode, get in your

Bibles, get on your knees, and get equipped. Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Equipping Eve, a no -compromise radio production.

If you'd like to get a hold of Erin, you can reach her at equippingeve at gmail .com, or you can check out one of her two websites, do notbesurprised .com