Baptism For The Dead (Part 1)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendroff. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures verse by verse with No Compromise.

Well at theological seminary they said you always need an introduction to get people's interest and secure them, so today is no different. My introduction is we're going to talk about the passage that discusses baptism on behalf of the dead.

The Meaning of Baptism on Behalf of the Dead

Let's open our Bibles. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, if you're a visitor here today, we love it that you're here. We're preaching verse by verse by verse through the Bible. And so we come to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 29 as we just sequentially, consecutively see what the God of the universe has revealed to us in his scriptures.

Paul has been telling these struggling Corinthians, he's been telling them that theology matters. What you believe about God is important because what you believe is hooked with, hooked together with what you do, your behavior.

What you believe, credenda in Latin is hooked to your agenda, what you do. Doctrine, duty, creed, conduct. And so it's no different for Paul here except that he's dealing with the issue of thinking. He's not correcting behavior in chapter 15, he's correcting what they believe.

And so some of the Corinthians for some reason don't believe there's any such thing as a resurrection. They don't think that everybody's body will be raised from the dead to stand before God for an accounting.

And Paul says early in chapter 15 verses 3 and 4, listen, you have to believe in a resurrection because Jesus was raised from the dead. Christ, the Messiah died for our sins, was buried according to the scriptures, was raised, appeared to many according to those very same scriptures.

And so Paul now moves into verses 29 and following and he continues to not harp on the idea of what if you deny the resurrection, but he gives more truths and realities that if you deny the resurrection, there is big problems.

And we'll see later in the sermon how this applies to our very lives. So what we'll do for an outline, I think probably found in verses 29 through 34, for resurrection realities, since resurrection is true, these things need to be considered.

And so I think we'll probably get through about three of them today. It's a very fascinating thing to preach two sermons because then I have to end this morning with you where I ended with the first service.

So that's kind of a fun thing to do, try to figure it out. I won't call them guinea pigs or anything, but we want to stay on track. I've also noticed that my font keeps changing because I have to increase it from 11 to now 12 and to now 13 font.

And I have my reading glasses here too and this bright light and these. And so I believe that I want a resurrected body. That's what I believe. But actually, that's next sermon. So let's get to the first truth, the first reality of the resurrection.

I'll put them in positive forms, although Paul is still going to spin them negatively. If you deny the resurrection, what about this? But let me put them positively. Number one, first resurrection reality.

Verse 29, since the resurrection is true, don't be surprised that people baptize others on behalf of the dead. Since the resurrection is true, don't be surprised when Mormons baptize people on behalf of the dead.

That shouldn't be a great shock. Let's read the verse. Verse 29, otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?

Now we come to this passage and it's a debatable passage. There are 42, at least that I know of 42 different ways to interpret this passage. I'm not going to give you all 42. My wife said to me, honey, are you going to give them all 42?

No. I don't even know all 42, but I want to give you a few of them. And we have to think through this issue, not to just say, oh, it's debatable. We don't know what was going on because it really does matter.

Every verse matters, but particularly this one in our context today, just let me give you a few options of what this could mean. First thing it could mean is that you actually baptize dead people, that the dead are baptized.

Physically deceased people are baptized. Chrysostom said that some bizarre procedures were happening with the Marcionite dissenters. They baptized people who have died. Now think about this big picture.

If you believe that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, founded on scriptures alone, baptism, of course, it's still important command by the Lord Jesus Christ, believe and be baptized.

But if you believe that you've got to be baptized, like some believe, to go to heaven, it even becomes more important to you because you say, I've got a friend who died. They haven't been baptized. I want them to go to heaven.

And so this first view says, these people weren't baptized. We believe, not Paul, but we, these dissenters, believe they've got to be baptized to go to heaven. We better baptize their dead bodies. So they go.

That's the first option. Marcionites also did something very close to this. And what they would do is a person that would have died and they wouldn't have been baptized. And so they would be laying on a table or something elevated and a live person would lay underneath them, underneath the person that had died.

And then the leader of the church would say to the dead body, do you wish to be baptized? Well the dead person can't say anything. So the live person underneath would say, yes, I wish to be baptized. And then the body was baptized.

I have been in hospitals before with dear Christian people as they have lost their little tiny babies. And I've had a nurse at St. Vincent's kindly with a good heart and she was tearing her eye, come over to me with her hand like this, and I just received it and put it in my hand and walked away.

And I looked at it and my hand contained a scallop shell, beautiful scallop shell. And then it dawned on me, these babies in this person's mind haven't been baptized and so they need to have their sin gone.

Here's the scallop shell to contain the water so I could go baptize the bodies of the babies. There's another option here, not baptizing the dead bodies themselves. But the second option, I think it's MacArthur's option, is that people who are alive now would watch a saint and they would watch a saint excel in the Lord.

Just think of somebody in your life who you've seen just run the race well. A Hebrews chapter 11 race by the grace of God, running well. And you've watched that person. Those people's lives can influence you.

And if you weren't a believer and you watched a saint, maybe your grandma or your grandpa or somebody in the church and you just really respected them, even though you're not a believer, you watched them finish the race well, you watched them as Tertullian would say or Wesley would go on to say, Christians die well.

And they died. And then you thought, you know what, Christianity has to be true. These people have run this race in spite of all kinds of odds and suffering and trials and afflictions. They've ran the race well by the grace of Christ Jesus the Lord.

And even though I'm an unbeliever now, Lord, grant me faith because in light of what they've done, in light of their confession, in light of what that dead person has done, I want to believe and I want to be baptized.

Following in the footsteps of those faithful Christians who have died. And so, the response to that exemplary life or faithful influence as one person says, they want to get baptized. Well, another option is a dead describes the spiritual state of the person.

Dead describes the spiritual state of the person. All of us are dead in trespasses and sins when we were believers. And so, this describes a person's pre-baptismal condition. As I said this morning, first service, it didn't go over very well, but I said, that view just doesn't hold much water.

Option four, this is a very popular view, maybe the most popular. This is the Mormon view, by the way. Vicarious baptism. Notice the text in verse 29, on behalf of the dead. So, a person has died. Still, these groups believing that you have to be baptized to go to heaven, it's not Christ's finished work on Calvary, his perfect life, his perfect death confirmed by the resurrection, and faith as a non-meritorious instrument.

It's, you know, you've got to be baptized to be going to heaven. We know people that haven't been baptized, so I will get baptized in their place. Vicariously, by proxy, I'll be baptized for them. This is a very popular view.

Now, in the middle of all this, I want to remind you, congregation. Paul isn't saying this is a good thing to do. He's actually using language, do you see it in verse 29? What do people mean? Look at the end of verse 29.

Why are people being baptized? And then he switches in verse 30, why are we in danger? These people have baptisms on behalf of dead. We don't. He's not saying this is a good idea. He's describing what's going on.

And there were some people around Corinth who did, in fact, baptize people by proxy. We want people to go to heaven, they need to be washed. We think the washing comes from water instead of the washing of the word on the inside.

Let's baptize on behalf of the dead by proxy. Paul doesn't express approval. He believes in salvation by grace alone, through faith alone. Romans 4, Paul writes elsewhere, for what does the scripture say?

Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now, to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Paul believes in salvation by faith. The thief on the cross wasn't baptized and he was in heaven. Baptism is important, but after belief. My particular view, which is an orthodox view, or I guess if it wasn't orthodox, I wouldn't hold it.

That's, by the way, one of the things you want to do when you study the Bible is at the very end, after you get your view, you check it. Because if you're the only person in the universe that has this view, then you possibly might be right, but most likely you're not.

My view is simply this. Paul realizes that some pagans baptize on behalf of the dead. And Paul is saying in his argument, listen, the resurrection's true. Not only has Jesus been raised from the dead, there's something even in the warp and woof of a pagan who realizes, I'm standing before God one day.

God has set eternity in our hearts and we realize that when we die, we're going to stand before God on that great day. Pagans even know that. That's what Paul is saying. He wants the deniers to answer the question.

If the resurrection isn't true, why do pagans even do it? Now, of course, pagans do some things that only pagans do for no good reason, but here it's just a spillover. Since the resurrection is true, you shouldn't be surprised that anyone, let alone Mormons, baptize on behalf of the dead.

It's big news now. How could anybody ever vote for somebody that believed in that wacky thing? Right, when you hear baptism on behalf of the dead, what do you think? Honestly, I'll tell you what I think, baptizing dead people.

This is about as weird as you can get. By the way, you should see all your faces right now. So far, no one's sleeping. Mormontopics .org, official LDS site, I quote, God has provided a way for everyone to receive and accept baptism, even if they do not have an opportunity.

Jesus taught that baptism is an essential gateway to heaven, see John 3, 5. This often prompts the age-old question of what happens to the billions of people who have never had that opportunity. Mormons believe the answer lies in the doctrine of the baptism for the dead, a practice of early Christians, see 1 Corinthians 15, 29.

But lost to the modern Christian world, for those who have died without the opportunity to hear, understand, and accept the full gospel of Jesus Christ, proxy baptism offers the opportunity of eternal life with God.

Baptisms for the dead are not an indication of God's love for all his children. No, they are, it is rather, excuse me. A proxy baptism is an offering only. Such a gesture cannot make a person a member of any particular church or a Christian in the next life.

A person who has died retains the right in the next life to make choices and is free to accept or reject the baptism. So we have good motives, allegedly. We want people to go to heaven. These people haven't been baptized, will get baptized for them.

And by the way, with good semi-Pelagianism still intact, they get to decide afterwards. I was so interested this week to talk to Pastor Steve Cooley. He is an ex-Mormon elder. I asked him a question I've never asked him before.

I thought I should have asked him the question, but I never thought about this passage very much. I just thought it was some debatable passage and skip over it. I asked Pastor Steve, how many times were you baptized, proxy baptism, on behalf of the dead?

I don't know if this is gonna increase Steve's stature in your eyes or decrease it, but he was a pagan when he did it. So it's under the blood, as we like to say in Christianity. Not once, not twice, not three times, but 25 times.

25 times, Pastor Steve was dunked, and then he got saved and he got baptized the first time, the only time as a believer.

So 26 times, see?

Steve's gonna be the greeter at the door on the way out. We want people to go to heaven. We're not trying to be mean if you've got to be baptized to go to heaven, which again is false. That's a work. That's not grace.

Then let's baptize on behalf of other people. Dr. Ironside said in his book, Random Reminiscences, a discussion he had with a young Mormon elder. And that young Mormon elder said that the members of the Mormon church were saving more souls through being baptized for the dead than Jesus Christ ever saved through dying on Calvary's cross.

It related one particular lady who got baptized for Alexander the Great, Nebuchadnezzar, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Cleopatra, and 30 ,000 other people. The elder said to Ironside, I believe in the day of judgment it will be proven that this lady, those being baptized through being baptized for the dead, has saved more souls through being baptized for the dead than Jesus Christ.

Well, since 1840, the Latter-day Saints have been baptizing on behalf of the dead. Is it any wonder that your belief determines your behavior and then you say we ought to do a lot of work genealogically?

Of course they're into genealogies because they have baptized the founding fathers of the US, all US presidents, Pope John Paul II, John Wesley, Christopher Columbus, and Adolf Hitler. It should be no surprise that in 2008, the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican Congregation for Clergy, said stop sending our microfilm and our digitized information through diocese to the Latter-day Saints.

So now let's think about this for a second, super practical. If you want me to use this pulpit as a bully pulpit for voting, I'm not going to do that. If I catch you, I'm gonna make sure I smile when I say this, if I catch you handing out voter registrations guide in this building, if I know you really well, I'll probably give you a knuckle sandwich.

If I don't know you very well, I'll say, I'm sorry, this isn't about that, because the king of the universe is going to be on the throne November 8th, 9th, 10th, and we will submit to the sovereign God and only three votes count anyway, the Father, Son, and the Spirit, and they all vote for the same person.

And the Messiah is not going to be elected in November. Neither will the Antichrist be. I mean, the list goes on. This is not about voting issues. But I'm not afraid of social issues and moral issues.

And for you to say this, what do I do about voting for someone, this is in the news, who believes in baptism for the dead? How could I believe in such a loon who believes that? So I want you to think through it, and then you cast your vote the way you'd like to, but here's the way I want you to think through it.

Consider this, you've got one party that MacArthur calls the party that now runs on Romans 1. Evil is good and good is evil. Abortion is good and homosexuality is righteous. They run on a Romans 1 platform.

They don't even know what's right and wrong. Romans chapter 13 basically says, if you're in government, you need to know the difference between right and wrong, and if you don't, you can't govern, for the rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad.

Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is a servant of God, the government, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.

So what you've got to do is you've got to think to yourself if you're the voting kind. I've got one party that denies right and wrong, good is evil and evil is good, but I can't vote for this other person because they're believing in some kind of loony bin deal baptizing for the dead.

Listen, you vote for who you want. But this other party who has Mormon background, they believe there's going to be a resurrection of the dead and a payday one day because if they didn't believe it, they wouldn't be baptizing dead people.

People ask me the question, can I vote for someone who believes in baptism for the dead? If you'd like to, vote as you'd like. But at least that person believes in the resurrection. You say, well, I don't want you to talk about politics.

Okay, I'm done. I won't talk about it again. People that baptize other people who are on behalf of the dead realize there is a right, there is a wrong, and these people are going to stand before God, and I want them to stand before God properly.

Now, Mormonism is a cult. They deny grace. They deny Christ-exclusive salvation. But they are pagans who realize there is a resurrection. Positively, all this discussion of baptism, let me ask you the question, do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?

And if so, have you been baptized? You could say, well, all this talk about politics and this kind of loony stuff, I don't think that should be your discussion until you've said, in light of the grace of God in my life, I've had great guilt.

God's grace has been greater in the person of Christ Jesus, and out of gratitude and obedience, I'm going to be baptized while I'm alive. All right. Point number two, since the resurrection is true, live your life with fearless faith, not faithless fear.

Courage in Gospel Ministry Because the Resurrection Is True

The resurrection is true. So, don't be surprised when people baptize dead people on behalf of the dead. Secondly, this is what describes Paul. This is what is in Paul's mind. You ever want to know why a person ticks?

This is why Paul ticks, because he realizes who Jesus is, his resurrection, Christ, and now Paul's own. By the grace of God, Paul is going for it. To put negatively, if the resurrection isn't true, then hole yourself up in a cave.

But since the resurrection is true, go evangelize, go preach, risk your life for the sake of the gospel. Verse 30, now he talks about himself here, distancing himself from verse 29. Why are we in danger every hour?

By the way, if there's no resurrection, why do this? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord. I die every day. If resurrection isn't true, Christianity isn't true, why get eaten by cannibals in the New Hebrides Island?

Why go there? Can you imagine John Payton and his wife, and I don't know if the baby was born yet, or they had the small son, and they show up on the shores of Cannibal Island, not speaking the language?

For what reason? They had the notion, the biblical notion, that every one of these people made in the likeness and image of God cannot be saved except they hear Romans chapter 10, and we've got to give them that, and if it costs us our life, it costs us our life.

Why didn't Jim Elliott and the other men on that airplane who landed on the sandbar in Ecuador area not use their guns to kill the people who are going to slay them, and did slay them, with that spear that's over in Gloucester right now at Elizabeth Elliott's house?

Because Jim Elliott knew that if I die, I'm going to heaven and I get a resurrected body one day, and if these people die, they will get a resurrected body made perfect for the torments of hell forever.

See, because what you believe determines how you live. Answer to the question in verse 30, why are we in danger every hour? Because the resurrection's true. The resurrection is true, or it would be a fool's paradise risking my life for this.

Regardless of what the people say, oh, there's no resurrection, Paul says there is a resurrection and it starts with Jesus, and then you can see it flesh itself out in my life. I'm in danger or jeopardy every hour.

In the original, that is every hour. That's exactly what it means. Every single hour. I'm awake, I sleep, I travel, I stay, people are trying to kill me. And then he says in the next verse, I've got pride in you.

That's almost the nicest thing he says to the Corinthians. I spent 18 months of my life pouring my life for the gospel's sake into you, and they were going to try to kill me there too. They were going to try to hurt me there too, but for you it was worth it because I believe in the resurrected Jesus, therefore I believe in the resurrection of my body and your bodies, and so it was great pleasure for me to pour my life into you, mortal danger aside.

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 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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