End of the Semester & Baptism Beliefs

It has been quite a while since I've written a blog.  I'm thinking back to when I began college in August 2004... now it is December 2007, and I rarely update any of my blogs it seems.  So much is always going on, I rarely see a point to really do so any more.  ::sigh::

My classes are now at nears end.  I will say, the course I have enjoyed far more than any other course this semester is my Religion 320 course... Jesus of Nazareth, commonly called "The Historical Jesus" (as if the Jesus of biblical Christianity is different from the "historical figure" of Jesus... ha on the liberal university for trying to indoctrinate me to believe it is so).  Again, I think I mentioned this in a previous blog, I felt I am too conservative for the class.  Some of my peers, including one I thought to be a strong believing Christian when the course began in August, seem Hell-bent on proving error in the text and that Jesus couldn't have done x, because it would have benefited the early Church to just claim he did x.  Dumb reason to doubt something, especially something about Christ.  Matthew even brought this up on the last day -- that too much of "biblical scholarship" automatically beings with the premise that Jesus was ONLY a mere man, and was not divine.  If one begins at this starting point, then of course things like miracles, signs and wonders, and a resurrection would seem foolish fantasy.  But they are beginning with that bias and working with the text from there.  So do I, a Bible-believing Conservative Christian, go at the Bible from a bias myself?  Absolutely.  But for me, the burden of proof is that Jesus DIDN'T do x; I don't feel the need to prove that he did do x, as it is recorded as such in the Cannon of Scripture.

Recently I have been beginning to study a bit about infant baptism.  I was baptized as a believer, and had a baby-dedication, not a baptism when I was a babe.  Well the evidence for adult baptism is all over the NT, but I had never really understood the rationale those who practiced paedobaptism used in doing so.  My brother introduced me to Dr. James White and his Alpha Omega Ministries earlier in the year, and just  recently got into it I guess you could say.  Recently I listened to a debate between Dr. White, a Reformed Baptist, and a Presbyterian on the issue of paedobaptism vs credobaptism.  And after hearing the evidence for each side, I will have to say that I do see more consistency on the side of the credobaptism argument.  Furthermore, recently I picked up a pamphlet entitled "A United Methodist Understanding of Baptism."  If the info in this pamphlet is correct and I am drawing the right conclusions... there are some major theological issues with the UMC's understanding of baptism.  Eventually I'll go through the pamphlet and point out the problems I have with their explanation of what baptism is and what it is meant to signify/do.

Eventually I will post more about this.  But I find the longer my posts are, the less people read them.  :-P  On another note though, I have been made an Administrator in the Facebook group "Joel Osteen Preaches A Different Gospel"!  Hooray!  So join that group if you get a chance.  It's been loads of fun so far.  Yay!

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