October 01st, 2022

                                                                                   BAPTISM REFUSED


                                                                                    By Jeff Chowning



One Monday morning recently I received a call from my parents. They called to ask if I would go to Parkview Hospital and visit the family of their next-door neighbor’s sister. The woman’s husband entreated them to contact me so that I could baptize her.

When I arrived at the hospital, I found her husband at his wit’s end because of his grief and the intense fear he felt from knowing that his wife was not baptized. Upon entering the room and striving to communicate with the woman, I realized that although I ached for her distraught husband of 50+ years, there was no way I could baptize her. She was near comatose; she could not swallow or talk; she had not eaten for a week; her left shoulder was fractured from a fall a couple of weeks earlier. There was no way she could confess with her mouth unto salvation (Romans 10:10), nor was it very likely that the hospital staff would permit me to immerse her even if she could talk. Sadly, she had at least 60 years of adult life and had not prepared herself for this earth’s one inevitability: death. Her window of opportunity to obey the gospel had apparently been shut.

The temptation to compromise and seek to offer false hope was definitely felt. Intense anguish of the human soul is a horrific sight. According to church historians, the practice of sprinkling and pouring as “baptism” began in the third century under similar circumstances as this one. Somewhere earlier in the stream of time, someone failed to resist this enticing temptation. What a flood of false assurance and hope has come as a result.

The purpose of baptism, though, is not to please others or to reassure their conscience. It is immensely more intimate and personal than that; it is the answer of a good conscience toward God (1st Peter 3:21). Sadly, this woman was in such a state that she could not do this. To baptize her now would be as meaningless and as ineffective as “baptizing” an infant.

The time to face the reality of death and the Judgment is now, not later. “Today if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 4:7). If you have not earnestly sought a good conscience toward God by being baptized into Christ for the remission of your sins, do not let today’s window of opportunity close on you. “Behold now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation” (2nd Corinthians 6:2).


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