Professing Christendom does not understand that true Christianity involves two baptisms.  One baptism marks the beginning of the journey unto conversion and an introduction to Jesus Christ as one’s potential Savior.  The other baptism marks the beginning of the journey from introduction to salvation to take place upon Christ’s Second Advent.  This Truth was brought out in a statement found in Acts 19:1-7, a statement that is ignored by the Institutional Church to her peril.  As a result, billions of supposedly saved, sanctified, born again, rapture-ready Christians have lived and died believing that, having performed a prescribed ritual and agreeing to repent following each inevitable sin, they were “ready to go home” upon their eventual death.  Not one word of the aforementioned is Biblically true as this website was designed by the Lord to make clear to the Catholic/Protestant world.  That world is deaf and blind to the Word of God, which that world basically rejects.

In Acts 19:1-7 we find the Apostle Paul in Ephesus where he has been introduced to a dozen or so believers who had come to believe in Jesus Christ through the teachings of the apostles and had been baptized.  Hearing this, Paul asked them: “Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?”  They replied: “We have not heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”  Paul knew that they had been baptized, so he asked them: “In what then were you baptized?” They replied: “In John’s baptism.”  Then Paul explained that John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance which neither converted nor saved them.  Having believed in Jesus and having been baptized in water, the men needed to be baptized in the name of the Man who would come after Him.  When they heard this they were baptized in the name of Jesus … and, following the laying on of the apostle’s hands, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in (unknown) tongues (languages) and prophesied.”  As Paul stated in Romans 3:25, John’s baptism (immersion in water) served one purpose–to symbolically remove all of the penitent’s PAST SINS.  Water baptism has no effect in the future IF (NOT WHEN) one sins.  Read 1 Jn. 2:1,2/ 3:6,8,9,10) which prove that future sins are in a class all their own and God deals with them in a different way.  The “IF” situation relative to future sin is a completely different subject that will be addressed when we study Jesus’ part in the baptism/path/destination issue.

Upon hearing that the men from Ephesus had received only John’s baptism, Paul explained that they needed what we today call “Christian baptism” in which one receives God’s Holy Spirit which empowers the believer to overcome Satan’s temptations to defy God.  Jesus said in Revelation 3:21 that only those who do so will join Him in the Kingdom of God–not heaven where no one has gone or will go.  Read Life After Death.  Key word–Life.  Knowing this, Paul immediately administered Christian baptism and the men received the Holy Spirit.  In this instance, as well as other instances, those who received the Spirit spoke in tongues.  Thought this was the case in some Biblical cases, not everyone speaks in tongues upon receiving the Holy Spirit.  For example, in Acts 8 we find Philip going down to Samaria where he preached Christ to the heathen, who heard what he said and saw the signs and miracles that took place when he ministered.  At the word of Philip, people were healed and evil spirits were cast out.

A heathen priest named Simon, upon seeing what was happening as a result of Philip’s preaching and ministering, “believed and was baptized,” along with other men and women.  They had not received the Holy Spirit because this Philip was not the ordained apostle, but rather a different Philip who was a deacon.  Upon hearing that people in Samaria had heard the Word of God, Peter and John went there to pray for them and lay hands on them so that they could receive the Holy Spirit. “For as yet the Spirit had fallen on no one because they had only been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.  Then they (Peter and John) laid their hands on the people and they received the Holy Spirit.”  Notice that there is no mention of them speaking in tongues.  Read chapter 14 of Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth.

I realize that I have ventured off script (again), but as is always the case, it is for a good reason–sadly, BILLIONS OF PEOPLE HAVE REFUSED TO RECEIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT BECAUSE OF THE TONGUES ISSUE.  The problem is self-inflicted on their part in that they refuse to hear the Words of God on this (and many other) issue and refuse to study the Word itself with an open mind.  Therefore, they remain ignorant and unconverted and have cut themselves off from any chance to rise to meet Christ in the air during the first resurrection and spending eternity with Him in universe headquarters–A 1500 mile, cubed, walled square whose center will be Jerusalem where God, Christ and their Very Elect saints will live and from whence they will rule and reign over, first the earth and the people on it for 1000 years, then the universe forever.  Read The Three Resurrections, Life After Death and the Kingdom of God.  Key words–Three, Death and Kingdom respectively.  L.J.