Roman Catholics (questions asked by them)
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3. Why do you Protestants, except some of you, refuse
to baptize infants? |
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The reason why we
don’t baptize infants, as you do in obedience to the teaching of the Roman Catholic
Church, is simply because the Bible authorizes us to baptize only those who
have believed in the Gospel, which excludes implicitly infants since they are
not able to believe. Jesus Christ, when He appeared to the eleven and told
them to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, said
to them: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16),
which means that water baptism must be preceded by faith in the Gospel, that
is, by the acceptance of the Gospel with one’s heart. How can an infant
accept the Gospel? |
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The apostles, according
to what is written in the book of Acts, never baptized infants but only adult
persons who accepted the Gospel. They always baptized people who had clearly
accepted the Gospel for they were able to accept it, therefore there could be
also some young people among those whom they baptized. On the day of Pentecost,
for instance, about three thousand people accepted the Gospel and were
baptized (Acts |
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According to the
Scripture, therefore, the so called pedobaptism you have received (as well as
the pedobaptism received by some Protestants) is not the baptism ordained by
Christ. However, as for the baptism you received, I must say also that it is
not the water baptism ordained by Christ not only because you minister it to
infants, but also because you minister it by sprinkling (both to children and
grown-up people) while the water baptism ordained by Christ is by immersion;
and because you think that water baptism has the power to regenerate a man and
make him become a son of God, that is to say, you think that it is able to blot
out sins, which is not true because water baptism is only a symbol of the new
birth, which has occurred through faith in those who are baptized: a symbol
of the purification of their conscience from all sins, which took place
through the blood of Jesus Christ, yes, because it is the blood of Jesus, and
not the water of baptism, which takes away sins. |
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Therefore, what you Roman Catholics must do is to stop baptizing your
children; but above all you must repent of your sins and believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ to obtain remission of sins, and then you must be baptized by
immersion by a minister of the Gospel. Of course, that means you must leave
the Roman Catholic Church and join an |