One of the foundational doctrines of Christ is Baptism and according to the scriptures, There are two major types of baptism while some doctrines say there are in fact three types of baptism. However, Brother Eli in his teaching emphasized on the baptism by immersion and shared some lights on the misconceptions about baptism. I have been baptized twice and both are in different churches having different doctrines on baptism. I only accepted my last baptism in order to fulfill all righteousness under the denomination I am in currently having full knowledge of baptism and choosing to just let the church be satisfied with my service even though I know baptism should be only done once.
After listening to brother Eli's teaching, I've come understand that there are certain things that must be put in place before baptism should take place, and I also got to understand that not everyone is qualified to baptize a person. Truth be told I never really understood baptism in this light before and I'm very happy to have full knowledge of this now. Even though I knew that it wasn't right to be baptized twice I never really had a valid explanation for it. And I guess if I should continue like that, I might end up being baptized even thrice. So if I am to go by what I have understood after listening to brother Eli's message, it's safe to say I am baptized once and need not to be baptized again.
Mark 7:7
They worship Me in vain [their worship is meaningless and worthless, a pretense],
Teaching the precepts of men as doctrines [giving their traditions equal weight with the Scriptures]. (AMP)
One of the valuable lessons I can draw is that first of all, any doctrine born out of the will of man is fake and vain. And according to brother Eli, if what you have done (baptism in this case) is of the commandment of man, then it is vain. If you worship God out of the commandments of man, your worship is vain. Worship must be by faith in God and his word, not from the commandment of man. Now what is the commandment of man? A lot of churches or pastors tell their members how to do the things of God probably with the intention of leading them right, but then the members only do those things because their pastor or church said so, putting their faith in the pastor or church and not God is making whatever they do vain.
MATTHEW 28:19-29
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations [help the people to learn of Me, believe in Me, and obey My words], baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always [remaining with you perpetually—regardless of circumstance, and on every occasion], even to the end of the age.”
Another very important aspect of this topic is understanding the position of the baptizer. From here we can clearly see that not every Christian has the authority to baptize a person. This therefore means that it is whoever that teaches a person to fully understand everything but the commandments of Jesus that has the authority to baptize them. Again according to what brother Eli said, you need to be able to teach everything about the commandments of Christ in its completeness before you can be qualified to baptize a person. I think this is necessary so that the baptizer can be certain that he can continue to teach the person who has been baptized the commandments of God and not doing it because they became Christians first
I would like to drop the note here hoping I have been able to fully share my thoughts on what I have come to understand about baptism from Brother Eli's message. Below is the link to the message just in case anyone would like to listen to it personally.
