The Effects of Fathers and Mothers on Their Children
Refutation of the Humanism of the Anabaptists and Their Kin
Continuation of another
thread; edifying in itself.
What choice did Ishmael have to be
circumcised; or Esau? or all the Israelites. But of course, circumcision
has nothing to teach us, right?
Why did God preserved my life in Noah,
when he entered the Ark? God didn't ask me if I wanted to be born.
I was preserved in the Ark as certainly as Noah was. God didn't ask me if
I wanted to be born in the 20th century in the USA and brought up in gospel
surroundings. It isn't all about me. But I was baptized in
the Ark just as surely as Noah was, and so were you, And Noah's baptism
not only saved him, it saved me, too. We were both saved by water, as Peter
said, just as Peter, James, and John were saved by the baptism of Israel in the
Red Sea. Even the things recorded in Exodus and the rest of the NT
are written for the benefit of the church.
If Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek in the
loins of his father Abraham, then the actions of father do most assuredly
affect the lives and spiritual condition of their children. To deny this
is to exalt self-will, humanism, and apostasy. Do you deny that the
faithfulness of Abraham had anything to do with the godliness of John the
Baptist? or Samuel? or Samson? or Timothy? or do they get all the
credit? I affirm they get no credit at all, and neither does
Abraham, for it is all the work of the Spirit. But in saving Abraham, God
provided for the salvation of an enormous number of saints, not only of Israel
but of the Gentiles. And God did not hinge the matter on the adult, proud
intelligence and wills of all those people. It was fixed from eternity
and would be brought to pass by the power of the Holy Spirit, for as many as are
led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. The Bible says plenty
about Abraham and his seed--not only those of the flesh, but of the
spirit. Self-will has nothing to do with it the existence and blessing of
the seed.
The sins of the fathers are visited upon
the children to the third and fourth generation; but the blessings are to a
thousand generations upon those who fear God and keep His commandments.
You baptists insist that children are born in sin; but you deny the blessings
of being born in a godly family. Go figure. I can be cursed because of my
father's sins; but I cannot be blessed because of his righteousness? when God
says I can be? as if children are born into Christian homes by
accident. Peter, in Acts 2:38,39, specifically included the children in
the Promise which Christ poured out on Pentecost.
When Jesus died on the cross, He saw His
seed. [Is. 53]. I know my ancestors back to the time of William Penn in
Pa. There are Methodists, Church of England, Baptist, and infidels in the
line. I do not know the purity of the their faith, but I do know that
when God didn't strike them dead for overflowing iniquity, that He preserved my
life when He preserved theirs. Was He gracious to them because I was
elect of God? or was I born to their line because there were elect among
them. Question: did God preserve them because of me? or did He save
me because of the godly among them? Did He save Lot because of Ruth,
Boaz, Jesse, and David; or did he save Ruth, Boaz, Jesse, and David because of
Lot? I was in that Ark in the loins of Japheth just as certainly as
Levi was in the loins of Abraham when he paid tithes to Melchizedek.
That the promise included the children is
also included in the work of Messiah in the last verses of the Old Testament:
Mal. 4: 5 "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the
coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:6 And he shall turn the
heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their
fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."
And you say the bible says nothing about
babies? Cease and desist from your ignorance. [Necessary caveat--I
am not angry, but I can weep if you want me to.] No man lives to himself
and no man dies to himself. Not even Anabaptists. The greatest
curse you can bring upon your children is to be so rotten than God kills you
before you can have children, thus affirming that there is no blessing in your
seed, that your line is finished. The very fact that Christians have
children is a sign that God is not finished with their line yet. My
grandfather had no evangelical Christians among his children, but there are a
great many Christians among his grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Accident? I don't think so. God is not God of the dead, but of the
living.
Eli's family had the priesthood taken from
them because of Eli's sins, not fulfilled until the days of Solomon The
whole tribe of Levi was blessed because of the obedience of the Levites at the
time of the worship of the golden calf. But the bible says nothing about
blessings upon children? Wow! But you would have it be all about
me, me, me. My Pictures, My Face book, My Documents, My faith, My repentance.
Me ME ME ME ME. God must receive permission from me to do anything for
me.
But the truth is this: I cannot even
take until He gives me life. The natural man is not subject to the law of
God, neither CAN be. I receive life because it has already been given to
me. Lazarus didn't receive life because he arose; he arose because he had
received life.
Any Jew would have so understood Acts
2:38,39. Children are in the covenant. Jesus didn't come and send
the Holy Spirit to kick the babies out of the covenant people, but to unite the
gentiles with the covenant people, renewed and restored [Eph. 2:11ff
--Ephesians doesn't end at 2:10]. Credo baptists need to repent their
divisiveness and arrogance, get their heads out of their own bowels, join the
church of the apostles, and cease from their maimed rites.
The Jews turned circumcision upside down,
and boasted in the rite that poured contempt upon their flesh and cried out for
the work of the Spirit of whom the promised seed would come.
Their modern counterparts turn baptism
upside down, glory in the flesh and make it all about themselves, separate
themself and their churches from those who do not assent to their gospel of
perfection, when the very rite is to emphasize the necessity of the work of the
Spirit to apply the work of Christ in all of my life, convicting me of sin,
calling me to Christ, regenerating me apart from my strength, adopting me into
the family of God, chastening me and teaching me, preserving me, calling me
from the dead, and taking me to glory. If any of this happens to me it is
because of the gift of the Holy Spirit, not of the flesh.
Just as the Jew made circumcision as sign
of their holiness and superiority over others forgetting that circumcision is
about God, not them; so the Anabaptist make baptism about them and their
superior religious experience over others [professed is enough because the
experience is not defined] and forget that the sign is about God, not
them.
----------------------
Comments added when posted February 18, 2011:
Of course there is personal responsibility; but you can't
even begin to understand the Second Great Commandment unless you receive and
begin to understand the First Great Commandment. You can understand nothing
about the branches unless you understand the root, for the root bears the
branches. Rom. 11:16-18 and context.
******
It is folly to insist that Romans 9:11-13 applies to nations
and not to individuals. It is to engage
in distorted mirrors and glittering charms. Does God's treatment of the nation
of Esau have nothing to do with individuals in Edom? Did the promises and covenants of Abraham belong to Israel,
without having effect on David, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and John the
Baptist? Did the sin of Ham have no effect on the Canaanites, on Adonizebek
Nahash, Jabin, Sisera?
The great promise of Acts 2:38ff is that the wall
of separation between Israel and the gentiles is broken down, but not so as to
leave out the children of the Israelites or the children of those who believe,
but to confirm the promises, so that that children of Abraham will be found in
all the nations of the world, not those of the circumcision only but also those
whose uncircumcised uncleanness has been washed away in baptism. It is
therefore of faith that it might be sure to all the seed, both circumcised and
uncircumcised. [Romans 4:16,17 and Context] The means that rightly understood
Christianity is the most cosmopolitan of all the religions of the world, any
racial component in Moses is washed away in the blood of Christ, and faith is
all that distinguishes the people of God from the children of the world.
*******
Link to comments on Colossians 2, showing that baptism
erases the uncleanness of uncircumcision:
http://basketoffigs.org/La
