Baptizing Children

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2 verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Opening Banter and Show Intro

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Steve just said prior to coming on air,.

In my heart there rings a melody.

Wow, I think that's just stuck in our brains now. The power of music. It's true. We were going to do part three today on Dazed and Confused,.

But Steve doesn't like Led Zeppelin. I'm so not a Led Zeppelin fan. And you know what? I'm sure if it sounds kind of murky to me, I'm sure by the time it gets through, ah boy, that is really insipid. But you know what?

I'm sure nobody will be able to figure out what that marble, narble, garble is. Nobody's fault but my own. It's biblical. Oh, okay. Don't you think?

Nobody's fault but my own. Well, that's taking responsibility. It's nobody's fault but my syndrome.

Yeah, we should do some show completely unbiblical about my most overrated bands of all time. Led Zeppelin is tops. Most overrated band of all time. Wow. Rush is up there too, in case you're wondering.

I don't know why Fly By Night just came to my mind. I don't even know what that is. I wasn't a big Led Zeppelin fan, nor was I a Rush fan, but I know the bands. Yeah. Yeah, I had them over to my house.

They did a little party, a pool party, and I had these floating candle deals and then some steel guitars and some steel drums. Like a candle in the wind. Yeah, okay. So today we need to catch up on something in which we were negligent to finish.

And so we have a lot of two parts, three parts, then we forget the fourth part, the fifth part. What do you call a Calvinist, Steve, by the way that, a Calvinist that only believes in the perseverance of the saints?

Pete. An Arminian? That's a Scotch Calvinist, 1 5th. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Ba da da da da.

The Tonight Show, starring Mark Abendroff.

Oh, that's funny. When I was, it was probably 1983, I did go to Burbank. Did you? And I saw Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon and all that stuff.

The closest I've ever been is I had a steak in the same building if they do the show, but that's it. Oh, wow.

Evangelizing Children and the Responsibility of Parents

Okay. So today we want to follow up on a series that we did some time ago about evangelizing children and what do we do with our children? We have a great responsibility as parents to preach the gospel to our children.

Steve, do we have the responsibility of saving our children? Absolutely, no. Absolutely not. And so, but we do have the scriptures that teach us that God saves through means, and those means are prayer and proclamation.

And so we are to preach Christ Jesus and Him crucified. We are to have an environment where we teach the children that are given to us by God. We are to teach them all about God from Genesis to Revelation.

We are to pray for our children. We're to be at a good church. We're to listen to no compromise radio. That's a key element. Regularly. But we can't save our children. And if we can't save our children, we don't have the responsibility to save our children.

And I'm glad for that because we would be nervous wrecks thinking if it was all up to us.

I mean, that just gets me back to, you know, the whole Calvinism versus Arminianism thing. If you believe in the sovereignty of God, there is great assurance in that. I think back to the missionary that we both know who, you know, spent years and years in Africa and used to just, he was an Arminian at the time.

He used to just lay awake at night hoping that he'd done all he could that people would remain in the faith. He comes back to the States after he retired and he was finally able to sleep at night once he grasped the idea that God alone saves.

It wasn't based on his methods or his thoroughness or anything else. It was, you know, preaching and teaching the word of God and then trusting the Lord for the results.

Absolutely. When it comes to evangelizing children, how'd you like that, absolutely? That's basically, okay, Steve, let me go with this. Absolutely, moving on. Now back to the real news. I pulled up something from the internet, Randolph Street Church, I think it is, Evangelizing and Baptizing Children, 2011, and I think we use their outline somewhat last time we talked about this in 1976, I think.

The early days of the show, before we got saved. Yeah.

One, the first thing we try to avoid, oversimplifying the gospel, you know, reducing it down to something. God loves you.

Two, go ahead. Did you ever wonder what kind of show we would've had.

If we were on the radio before we got saved? You know what, we probably would've fought about bands and I would've been some punk rock guy and you would've been mainstream or something. Do you think that?

I'm more eclectic than you think, though.

Did Francis Turton write a systematic theology? Yeah, eclectic. Eclectic. When I first saw the word, I thought, was that misspelled? Number two, reducing the gospel to praying a prayer. That's the background I grew up in, at least in my early evangelicalism at an Armenian church.

Three, third thing to avoid, giving false assurance.

Kind of tied into the last one, don't you think? It's almost as bad as false insurance, but yeah.

Yeah, I learned when I was in college at Current Economic Issues at the University of Nebraska. I don't remember much, and it wasn't the teacher's fault, but it was, you know, I was too lame to understand.

Yeah, and so I remember they said, don't ever buy insurance from a celebrity on TV. Oh, that's probably good advice. Yeah, that's very good advice. Giving false assurance. How is that related to praying a prayer, by the way?

If you pray a prayer with your children and try to seal the deal,.

How could that give false assurance? Yeah, it's not just children. You see this time and time again. Somebody prays a prayer, and right away, you welcome them into the family of God, you assure them of the riches that await them in heaven, and the real problem with that is, you don't know their hearts.

I mean, could they be saved? Absolutely, but what do you like to say? It's time and trials. That's how true faith is revealed. Okay, good.

Childhood Profession, Baptism, and False Assurance

Today on No Compromise, we're talking about children, baptism, evangelism. Holding, number four, holding a person to a childhood decision. Steve, they quote Grace Church here, and I like the quote from Grace, but without reading it, here's what Grace Church says, that children, by definition, are immature.

Would you agree with that? I would agree 100%. And that when you're more immature, or the more immature you are, the more susceptible you are to self-deception and deception by other means. And so, when you're immature, you're easily deceived, and you could even deceive yourself that you're saved.

I agree. I mean, we wouldn't trust children to do financial planning for their future, or all kinds of things, but somehow, we think if they just say, I love Jesus, I have Jesus in my heart, that they're saved.

And that may or may not be true. Steve, as a pastor, some kid comes up to you, and if they would say to you, this week, I believed in Jesus. And let's say they're six years old. What would be your response?

No, you didn't? Yeah, I would talk them out of it.

In evangelism, discipleship evangelism. De-evangelism. We used to call that buying it back. Oh, God. No, what you do is, what I would do is, I would encourage them that that's great that they believe, and I'd say, keep on believing.

And I would probably try to get them to sort of recount what it is exactly that they were believing, and maybe correct, and help, and everything like that. But I'm not just going to, as it were, roll out the red carpet and say, welcome to the family of God, and that kind of, and I think that's the error.

Too many people are just so excited that their kids will say anything positive that they just seize on it, and they won't let go, no matter what happens after that.

When I talk to my children about the Lord, and do they believe, and how are they going to get rid of their sin problem? That's the way I like to approach it. How are you going to get rid of your sin problem?

Because they know they have sins of bitterness, and anger, and resentment, and envy, and covetousness, selfishness. I like to talk to them, how are you going to get rid of your sins? You know, how do you deal with your sin problem?

Who's going to forgive you? But when they express faith in Christ, I'm glad, and I know you agree with me, Steve. I'm glad they don't say, I believe in Buddha too. When they say, I believe in Jesus only for salvation, and that's basically what they're trying to tell me with their young vocabulary.

I affirm that, and I'm excited that they're saying it. In other words, I'm not saying, I think for sure now they're saved, but I'm glad that they're saying, or at least parroting, or mimicking the household of faith at the church, yes, I do believe, and I want to say, good, keep believing.

That's right. Sometimes I do, that's really good, Johnny. I'm glad you believe, keep believing, and then smile, and then kick them,.

And walk out the door. And then, you know, on the other end, there are people who are just so ecstatic over anything. I mean, I have a video of my granddaughter flipping through page after page of the Bible.

Of course, she can't read it.

You know, but she'll also Maybe the Holy Spirit is whispering to her.

She can tell you who's in the Bible. She can tell you Jesus is in the Bible. She likes praying. She makes us pray for every meal before we pray. Or before we eat, she'll pray, pray. And then she says amen at the end, and she's smiling.

You know, does that mean she's a Christian? No. It means that she's learned what we want, and she does that, you know, so.

So we teach our children the Bible. We do some of those external things, and we just pray that God gives them the heart to respond. And when I see a kid, and they say, I believe, I say, way to go, but I never say to the parents, you know what, that sign's sealed and delivered.

Yeah, the deal is done. Now we move to the fifth error. Okay, fifth error. Baptizing prematurely. Now, we are credo Baptist.

What's a credo Baptist? It means we take them out of the credo and baptize them. Oh, let's see.

See, that's why people either love or hate Tuesdays.

Credo. Baptism means credo from, like, I guess the same word we get creed from. It means to believe. And so we believe in baptizing believers, people who make a credible profession of faith. And by credible, we mean that there's no automatic disqualifier to it.

And then with the word pedo Baptism, pedo is from the Greek word child, and so you baptize infants or you baptize believers?

Yeah, it's one or the other. So, I mean, do you, you know, for the pedo Baptists in our listening audience, I would advise you to hit mute. No, what they believe, that they are ushering the kids not into salvation, but into the covenant.

And so they baptize them as a seal of the covenant. And we just think that's faulty thinking and that there is no biblical directive to baptize anyone who is not a believer.

Even though almost all our favorite authors are Presbyterian.

Yeah, well, you know, and well, because here's the thing. I mean, if they get soteriology right and they get baptism wrong, I'm okay with that.

That's better than getting baptism right and soteriology wrong. Can you get a, can I get a witness? Hey, you can get a double amen. All right. So, then Randolph Street Baptist quotes Grace Church. MacArthur is the pastor there.

As previously stated, it is extremely difficult to recognize genuine salvation in children. Rather than rushing them into baptism after an initial profession, then it is wiser to take the ongoing opportunity to interact with them and wait for more specific evidence of a lasting commitment.

Even if a child can say enough in a testimony to make it reasonably clear that he understands and embraces the gospel, baptism should wait until he manifests evidence of regeneration that is independent of parental control, end quote.

I agree. Steve, if baptism saved, I would be much more, I would be much, I would be quicker to baptize children if it was salvific because I would want to,.

I would rather err on that. Well, yeah, I'd be like the nuns or nuns or Catholic nurses or whatever, run around the hospitals baptizing every little baby. If that's your belief, how dare you not baptize people, young children?

And it's like when I was in the Mormon church, what do they do? They baptize you on the first Saturday and Sunday of the first month after your birthday. That's a long story. But anyway, I mean, they want to get you after your eighth birthday into the water immediately because they believe it washes away your sins.

So why wouldn't you want to do that, right?

What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the water of baptism. When I was in the hospital with a couple and they lost a child, they actually lost two children within a week after the first baby died. And I was there with the family when we had to take the child off life support and was there and they let us have a small little room, kind of a comfortable counseling room.

And the staff at St. Vincent's was really wonderful and I appreciated them there at that hospital for how they watched over this family who was a member of Bethlehem Bible Church. Very, very kind. But then I stepped out of the room, the baby was taken off life support, already brain dead, but now the heart had ceased functioning and we just held that little baby and did all kinds of things, Steve.

And we took some pictures. We were gonna have no pictures of the baby without these pictures of a dead little girl. And I walked out of the room and a nurse had her hand reaching out to me, but it was covering.

It was like hiding something. Like when a kid would say, daddy, what's in my hand? There was something in her hand she was trying to give me discreetly and secretly she was trying to give me. And I opened up my hand, Steve, and it was a scallop shell.

And I'm in the trauma of, you know, in the room with the baby dying and all this, I'm not thinking really clearly. I'm not putting it one and one together and St. Vincent's Catholic Hospital, all these other things.

And she hands me the scallop shell. And I mean, that's weird to me, right? What's a scallop shell have to do with all this? I have no idea. And I said, I'm sorry, you know, thank you, but I have no idea what, and she said, oh, that's to baptize the baby if you'd like.

Wow. And so at least their theology is consistent. And so I just said, thank you. I was not there to have some debate on baptismal regeneration, but I just said, thank you. And I said, we can trust that little baby into the hands of God who made her.

And we don't, you know, I probably said something like, I don't believe that baptism takes away sins and et cetera. So if you do believe in baptismal regeneration, then I get how you want to baptize babies.

If you do believe in covenant, sign and seal, and those things, I understand why you want to baptize a baby. And it's not baptismal regeneration, but if you've got a child who makes a profession of faith, first of all, Steve, do we have children in the Bible believing?

There must've been children who believe, but is there a case of people in the Bible who are six years old believing in who God is?

No, all we have, you know, are the somewhat at best ambivalent, you know, this guy and all of his household statements in the book of Acts. And, you know, they want to import a lot of meaning to that.

I mean, almost up to including the livestock, you know, everything in the house believed. And you just go, okay, well, maybe not. You know, I mean, if you have to kind of go and parse and farce and marse words to find people, find children who were, you know, saved, I think you've just, you know, you've crossed the line there.

So at Bethlehem Bible Church, like Grace Church and like Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Dever in Washington, DC, when children who are young, five, six, eight, 10, say they believe, we encourage that. We want to spur on their faith.

If they really are saved, if we withhold baptismal waters from them, they're not going to hell, yet we wait. And so most Baptist churches dunk pretty fast. They baptize children when they're young. Listen to what Capitol Hill Baptist says regarding their baptismal statement and children.

We believe that the normal age of baptism should be when the credibility of one's conversion becomes naturally evident to the church community. Now, Steve, just stop there for a second. If I was arguing the other side, we don't do that with adult professions of faith.

Why do we do it with children? It seems like this is an extra step somehow, because if someone can give me a credible profession of faith before we baptize them, and then I say, I'll baptize you based on your profession of faith, I don't say, let me see your life for a while.

I don't see that in the book of Acts, either.

They just believed and dunked. Well, I mean, the difference is we, you know, let's just be honest, we discriminate against children. Why? Because they are apt to say things just because they know it'll make us, as parents, happy.

And they're able to parrot back the things that they've heard and all this kind of thing. But, you know, the question is, would we expect them to then, well, let's put it this way. Is there a person who's baptized who ought not be a member of the church?

And the answer is no. In other words, that would be the next logical step. You're baptized. Well, why wouldn't you join the church and be accountable to it? Well, would we expect a six or a seven-year-old to function as a member of the church, to confront people when they need to be confronted, to encourage people when they need to be encouraged, to exercise their spiritual gifts?

No, we wouldn't. You know, so why are we going to go ahead and push baptism as if it is salvific when it's not?

We generally try to wait for baptism until the child hits around 13, 14, puberty. We try to delay it. We will meet with the children and the parents and talk about it and affirm their affirmation. That is to say, good job, way to go.

You know, tell me what you think about this, that, and the other. You know, Steve, Capitol Hill has an interesting comment that really small children, like six years old, they haven't felt the pull and the tug of the world, Satan, the flesh, the external and the attractions of sin because they're in their home.

And so sometimes when you think about the seed falling on certain kinds of soil, that hasn't even happened yet in a home because how can Satan come take away the word when the person doesn't even, you know, they're in a home without even a TV?

I'm not saying Satan only works through a TV. I don't mean that. But he definitely does. Let me just read what it says, which marks one who has felt the tug of the world, flesh, and the devil. How can you have a child be mature enough to go against that as part of their demonstration of faith?

Steve, how about this? How about if I say from the baptismal waters before I baptize someone else, this is where I get in trouble.

If you're not baptized, you shouldn't call yourself a Christian. Well, yeah, and you also say that they shouldn't take communion either because baptism is the first step and communion would follow sometime later.

Yeah, so you probably do get yourself in trouble.

I do, but I think it's probably good trouble because if you're not going to be baptized, the first step of obedience of a Christian is baptism. And if you're not going to be willing to do it, then how can you call yourself one?

Now, you can be one, but you maybe shouldn't call yourself one if you're not willing to follow God's commands. Yet when I say that, I'm mainly talking to the adults to say, if you haven't been baptized and you're 60 years old and you've been a Christian for 30 years, get a move on.

I do believe you're a Christian, but motivate. You're afraid of getting up in front of people, et cetera, et cetera. But when I say that and there are children in the audience, in the congregation rather, then they take that the wrong way and they're like, how can I be a Christian, daddy?

I need to get baptized. So it's very, very difficult because I have no template in the New Testament for baptizing babies, for baptizing young people, for baptizing children. That's why we try to put it off until that child can be a functional member of a New Testament church.

And a lot of Baptist churches in particular, they've invented this age of accountability. Maybe it's seven, maybe it's eight. When I was in the Mormon church, it was eight years old. All of a sudden, if you're seven years old in 364 days, you're not accountable for your sins.

But when you hit the magic eight, woohoo, now you're accountable. I don't know where that is because it's not either in the Bible or the spurious Book of Mormon. But those kind of things, and Baptists do the same thing.

They create that mythical age because it gives us some kind of surety. It gives us a marker, as it were, and the Bible just doesn't do that. Steve, I guess I'll say it this way,.

And tell me if you agree or not. While we run the risk of discouraging children and their parents from withholding baptismal waters from them, I think at the risk of discouraging children, I go against something worse that could happen.

By not baptizing children, at least I prevent small children from being baptized and then holding onto that profession of faith when they're not a Christian, but they're living in sin. I've got to pick one or the other.

What do I pick? Well, I think you should give them false assurance of salvation by baptizing them. I mean, I know I discourage some kids from baptism and make them discouraged as a person, they can't get baptized, but I am protecting them from the other risk, and that is, hey, I was baptized, I'm saved, I'm living with my girlfriend, and I have assurance because I believed and I was baptized.

I remember the day that I was there.

The Age of Accountability, Church Membership, and Delayed Baptism

Well, and true or false, if we were to mystically, magically transport ourselves back into the Bible time, a child of six, their profession, they would be seen as valid and treated as an adult and baptized.

I think the answer is false because you were not considered an adult in that, what's the word, a culture, until you were 13. I mean, today, what do the Jews do? At 13, you have a bar mitzvah, or now they've, of course, come up with the bat mitzvah, but they do that at 13.

Why? Because it signifies the age at which you become an adult, and the age at which, in ancient times, you could even get married as young as 13 or 14, but now we want to baptize kids when they're six because we don't want to disappoint the child.

What a mistake.

I know. Well, Dever does a good job in chronicling when preteen children were baptized, and it didn't start before the 20th century, and it's pretty much a U .S. phenomenon. Other countries don't do it, and we just started to do it, and so, for a long time, and of course, church tradition does not settle the point, but isn't it fascinating, Steve?

You have 20 centuries of not baptizing preteen Baptistic churches, and all of a sudden, now we're gonna do it,.

And especially in the United States? Yep, I think it's, I mean, it is insane, and by the way, just to our Paedo-Baptist friends, I watched a special on the History Channel one night, and they were going through the caves in Asia Minor where the churches, they were actually hiding out because they were getting persecution.

This was like the second and third century, and guess what they had in all their churches? Baptistries.

Ooh, dunkers. Yeah, they were dunkers. I like that. Here, this article says, "'Christians in Europe, Africa, and Asia "'often wait to baptize until children are grown "'and are in their 20s.'".

How about that for the East? Because now you can see their life. You can see whether or not their profession is genuine, and I mean, that might be a little excessive, but I understand it. You know, now we can see what they've been doing with their lives and determine for ourselves whether we think it's a credible profession.

So on No Compromise Radio today, Pastor Mike and Pastor Steve, we've talked about baptizing children. Make sure you talk to your pastor and submit to the elders, even if you disagree with them.

That's what submission is. You don't agree, but you go along anyway because you know that they're the ones who are gonna be held accountable for your soul. God bless you. No Compromise Radio.

Closing Disclaimer and Station Identification

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.