saved". We have no right to read this as "he that believeth shall be saved and ought to be baptised". This may raise

problems in our minds, but we must first of all adjust our conceptions and our thoughts to what God has said,

otherwise, we can never get truth.

We come now to another aspect of baptism quite different from the foregoing. In Luke 12:49 we read "I am

come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptised with;

and how am I straightened (narrowed, held in, literally) till it be accomplished". What was this baptism? Obviously

it was nothing to do with water. This was the death baptism of Calvary. The mother of Zebedee's children has

asked that her sons should sit on the Lord's right hand in the Kingdom (Matt.20:21) but Jesus answered and said

"Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptised with the

baptism that I am baptised with? They say unto Him, we are able. And He saith unto them Ye shall indeed drink

of my cup, and be baptised with the baptism that I am baptised with". This was a baptism of suffering and

death. Little did they know what they were asking, and with one exception (namely John), all had to follow the

Lord in martyrdom. Peter and Paul followed Him in this respect and so did the twelve apostles.

Let us sum up again; we have the washings, the baptisms of the Old Testament, contained in the ceremonial law

of Moses. We have the water baptism of Israel, unto repentance linked with John the Baptiser. We have the Spirit

baptism of power and miraculous gifts, Pentecost and onwards, and the death baptism of Calvary of the Saviour with

its suffering and shame. Now let us take another aspect of this subject. Let us turn to 1 Corinthians 10:1

"Moreover, brethren, I would not that you should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud and all

passed through the sea; and were all baptised unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea", and most of us who face this

carefully, notice this is a most unique baptism because, although they went through the water, they were not

touched by it. They went through on dry land and there are at least four Scriptures which emphasise this. You

will find them in Exodus 14:22; 15:19 and Psalm 66:6 and Hebrews 11:29, where each context tells us that Israel

went through dry shod. Here is a dry baptism; the only ones that were immersed in water then were Pharaoh and

his hosts. That was Divine judgment; they were drowned. For Israel it was a dry baptism. All were baptised unto

Moses so one can have, as we have seen, quite a number of aspects of baptism that have nothing to do with water at

all. What did this baptism do? It united them with all that Moses stood for in Divine law and ceremonial and

that is the first great underlying teaching of baptism. It is so easy to go through some external rite and never

understand what that rite is really meaning. Here the whole nation of Israel, redeemed and brought out of Egypt, is

linked with all that Moses stood for in law and ceremony. Mark you, this is the first baptism in point of time in

Scripture. The first occurrence of the word is in the book of Job. But the first baptism was Israel coming through

the Red Sea miraculously, and they had a similar experience of passing through Jordan on dry ground as they

entered the promised land at the end of the wilderness wanderings (see Josh. 3:13-17; 4:22). This is also rich in

typical teaching.

What are we going to do with the Ministry of the apostle Paul on the subject of water baptism? He made a very

definite statement when he wrote to the church of Corinth and said "Christ sent me not to baptise but to preach the

gospel" (1 Cor. 1:17). We wonder what our Baptist friends would do with him today if he were alive. He would

possibly be called a disobedient child of God, yet he insisted that Christ sent him not to baptise, so water baptism is

not an essential part of the apostle Paul's ministry. Some would tell us that what they call "the great commission" of

Matthew 28, discipling all nations, baptising them in the name of the Trinity, is what we ought to be doing now. But

the apostle Paul could not have come under this ministry, otherwise he could never have said "Christ sent me not to

baptise but to preach the gospel". There are three great portions in his Epistles which deal with this subject. One is

in Galatians, chapter five, which teaches the Galatian churches that baptism has united them all together in Christ, so

there is no more Jew or Gentile, they are all one in Christ Jesus. This is the unity which we have seen before that

baptism symbolises. Then there is a very important one in the Epistle to the Romans in chapter six. Here we come

to a very controversial passage of Scripture as to whether water baptism or Spirit baptism is meant. It needs

weighing over very carefully. The more we do this the more we are convinced that the teaching of this passage

could never be true of merely going through some external rite. Extraordinary things are said in this sixth chapter

verse three, "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death?"