Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Amazing Disciples

Mark Howard

4. It’s Not My Gift

Kameron DeVasher

1. Orientation

2. What is a Disciple?

3. Your Gift or Mine?

5. As a Witness

Marshall McKenzie

7. Friendship Evangelism, Part 1

8. Friendship Evangelism, Part 2

Wes Peppers

9. How to Reach the Atheistic Mind, Part 1

10. How to Reach the Atheistic Mind, Part 2

Jean Ross

11. Divine Commission

12. Cycle of Evangelism

Jim Howard

13. Grow Your Church, Part 1

14. Grow Your Church, Part 2

15. Giving Bible Studies

16. Missing Members

Doug Batchelor

17. Christ-Centered Doctrine, Part 1

18. Preparing for Baptism

19. Discipleship

20. Gospel Presentation, Part 1

21. Gospel Presentation, Part 2

22. Christ-Centered Doctrine, Part 2

23. Outreach Lab

24. Keys to Success!

25. Nurturing New Believers

26. Fishnet Demonstration

27. Caveman Theology

6. Christ’s Method Alone

Father in heaven, we're grateful for this time we have to spend together.

We pray that you would bless our understanding, that you would help us in every way, Lord, to see clearly how we may bring people to decisions for you and then train them to be disciples who will not only stay in the church, but who will be active in your service and love you and lead others to you until you come.

So bless our time together with your Spirit, for we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.

Alright, so we're going to talk about baptismal preparation and discipleship.

And I have to mention, confess, right from the start here, that this can be a sensitive topic.

The reason that it can be a sensitive topic is because people have different views on what we should do to prepare people for baptism.

You go to certain areas of the world, certain areas of the North American Division, and they will say that if someone says they want to be baptized, then you should baptize them.

There are some places where they take them through 1 to 2 year programs and they won't baptize them until they get through those 1 or 2 year programs.

So I'll tell you my philosophy which I believe because of my own conviction from reading the Bible, the Spirit of Prophecy myself, and that is that We should not baptize anyone until they are ready, and we should baptize them as soon as they're ready.

So What that means is if somebody is in the middle of a one-year process and yet they've studied all the beliefs and they are committed to them, then don't need to wait till the end of the year.

Put them in the water because that decision, you might lose it.

On the flip side, if someone says they want to be baptized but they're not quite sure they want to adopt the beliefs and practices of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, then we should not at that point be baptizing them.

That's where I'm at, so that's what you're gonna hear in this particular seminar.

And of course, there are, you know, the details matter.

And so what exactly are we talking about?

What are the areas that we try to get decisions on?

And What are the areas that we try to get decisions on and what are the areas that we don't care about getting decisions on?

Those are things that different people may view differently, but I'll tell you that the convictions that I've come to are based on what I have explored in the inspired writings.

So I may be wrong about them, but that's where I'm getting them.

And that being the case, it's possible that you can come to...

Let me just say it this way, as a Seventh-day Adventist layperson giving Bible studies, even at that point, but then especially when I became a pastor, you have to wrestle when you're somebody who gives Bible studies.

If you don't give Bible studies, you never have to wrestle with this.

You just have to say what they should or shouldn't be doing, right?

But when you have to study with someone and tell someone, yes, they're ready to be baptized, or for your own sake, say, yes, I'm going to baptize them, then you've got to grapple with what's right.

And some people are very cavalier about it.

They're like, well, you know, what's the end of the world, whatever.

I want to know, like, am I going too far if I ask him to make this decision?

Or am I not going far enough if I don't require this decision?

I mean, those are the things that went through my mind as someone who gave Bible studies, and So that's why I wrestled through it, and I wrestled through the information that we have as a church on the matter.

Now 1 thing I'll say is that there are some who are strongly moving, And I'll just say that I know that there are some who have this strong conviction here in the North American Division, that the way that we have historically prepared people for baptism, in which we've been very careful and made sure that they understand and practice what Seventh-day Adventists believe and practice, that that is based on tradition and that it's not biblical.

And the rationale is that we don't see that specified in Scripture.

What we see in Scripture and what is used are certain instances in the book of Acts such as, you know, the Ethiopian, Philip and the Ethiopian, and the fact that after showing him, explaining to him the way of truth, then they went and he was baptized.

And then there are places in the Book of Acts where they appear to be baptized somewhere in the near future after hearing and accepting certain aspects of the truth.

Number 1, we cannot make arguments from silence.

So what I mean by that is, because we don't have in these scriptural accounts an actual full record of everything that went on in the conversations and what have you.

I mean, if you read a lot of accounts in Scripture, you see a conversation that takes about 45 seconds to read, right?

There was probably more to it, and we don't see that.

So it's not that there is an explicit prohibition to prepare people for the baptism in the way that we historically have, but they simply don't see it specifically commanded, and therefore, because it's not commanded, they call it tradition.

I believe that's sort of an argument from silence, number 1.

Number 2, and the primary reason I feel that it is an argument from silence, is because as Seventh-day Adventists, once we accepted the prophetic gift of Ellen White as genuine and as a fulfillment of the remnant church characteristic of the testimony of Jesus Christ at the end of time, Once we did that, we now consider in our hermeneutical or interpretive method, we consider the inspired evidence of the Spirit of Prophecy and compare it as well with what we're finding in Scripture.

And since we don't have a lot of explicit information in Scripture on it, we let the Spirit of Prophecy inform us even more.

Because here's the thing, there could have been a lot more that was said and done.

And then what are we going to reject what is written in the Spirit of Prophecy so that we can make a speculative decision based on what we don't see in Scripture?

I don't think that's a safe position as Seventh-day Adventists.

Another aspect is that we're in a totally different environment than they were at the time of the Book of Acts.

Let me be clear, most of the people that were baptized in those examples would be people who had some prior knowledge to biblical truth.

I mean, the main, and in some cases, exclusive difference was accepting Jesus Christ as the Messiah.

And once they accepted that, then they were ready to be baptized.

The history of where we stand today is so different than the history in biblical times.

Because we have now Daniel 7 and 8, and Daniel 8 tells us that there would be this period of time in which the truth would be cast to the ground, and he would cause, in Daniel 8.25, deceit to prosper.

So we have this period that we commonly refer to as the Dark Ages, where many traditions were brought in to replace the truth, and all manner of error, such as the things that we commonly correct in our evangelistic campaigns on death and hell and the secret rapture and you know going straight to Christ instead of through a priest and all these things were and now today evolution and everything else these were all Things that happened over the last couple of thousand years that have greatly polluted what people in this world think about their worldview and about God and about the Bible.

So when you are studying with somebody today and they say, yeah, I want to be baptized because I read that he who believes and is baptized will be saved.

They don't know what they're talking about.

Now some of them might and if they do and they understand everything that the Bible teaches, it won't take any time at all for them to be prepared for baptism.

You're gonna walk them through it and they're gonna go, oh I know that, oh yeah I see that, oh yeah I've studied that, and boom boom boom boom and you're going, wow you're ready to be baptized.

No, instead we're correcting things that are previously held views because the world is so splintered and divided in terms of what they believe today.

So we have those different factors weighing in.

1, we have some, what I would call ambiguity about what actually happened in the period of time, in the conversation prior to the baptism, in the experience.

Number 2, even if it happened exactly and without any other conversation, it could be that there was an understanding that made them ready in that situation that we would not be ready for today.

And number 3, we have the Spirit of Prophecy to help give us some insight into the best way in our setting to prepare someone for church membership.

All right, so let's talk about baptismal preparation and I'm going to take some time to look at the inspired counsel that we have from the Spirit of Prophecy because this is what I did to kind of dig in and see where I want to go on this.

Before baptism, there should be a thorough inquiry as to the experience of the candidates.

I'm underlining words that are important.

They're all important, but these are things that I want to draw out.

It's making sure that you ask sufficient amount, right?

Let this inquiry be made, not in a cold and distant way, but kindly, tenderly, pointing the new converts to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.

Okay, so we just read thorough inquiry, right?

But then we read, let it not be in a cold and distant way, but kindly, tenderly.

So if you're gentle with someone and we're talking about spiritual matters and we're talking about conversation, we're not talking about touching, right?

Part 1 of 27

18. Preparing for Baptism