Look Up!

"O Brothers and Sisters, if you can say, “I will trust and not be afraid,” how bold you will be! You will go forward in duty. You will go forward in service. You will go forward in the confession of Christ before men, not asking whether men like it or dislike it, for while you trust in God you will not be afraid of men! I daresay you have heard the story of a certain boy who went to sea. On his first voyage, the captain said to him, “Can you climb?” He answered, “Oh, yes!” He thought he could climb, for he had been up an old tree at home after a raven’s nest. So, after a time, the captain told him to climb the mast to attend to something up aloft. As the ship plunged into the trough of the sea and then rose, again, to the crest of the waves, and the poor boy felt
the mast swaying to and fro as the tree in the garden had never done, he began to feel very strange and he feared that he would fall.

The good captain, who was watching him and who thought it very likely that he would fall, shouted out to him, “Boy, look up! Look up!” He did look up and that saved him! He had been growing dizzy and would have fallen if he had continued looking at the waves—and then he would have been killed. But when he looked up, everything above was all right. The sun does not reel to and fro! So looking up, the lad forgot his fears, performed his duty and descended in safety. You will find that the best thing for you to do, also, my dear Brothers and Sisters, is to look up! When you have been looking down and all around you, and you have begun to tremble and to fear that you will fall, look up, look up! Say, “I will trust and not be afraid”—and that looking up will make you bold in your Master’s service!"


C.H. Spurgeon Mr. Moody's Text sermon #2541

The Myth of Old Testament Jewish Proselyte Baptism

Matthew 3:11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance.

John was giving some religious leaders fits over his preaching and his baptism. John is still giving religious leaders fits over his preaching and his baptism. Matthew 3:1-8 gives the account of a portion of the ministry of John the Baptist, preaching and baptizing in the Jordan River. You have to do something with John, his preaching and his baptism, meaning you have to explain it some way or another. The baptism in Matthew 3 has been misunderstood, misapplied and attempted to be explained away since the very hours John was crying in the wilderness. John poses a problem for practically every false denomination; but especially those who practice paedobaptism, or infant baptism. They try to link baptism and circumcision and Abraham and the church to support infant baptism. One way to try and neutralize and explain away the reality of John’s baptism is to reinvent it as something it never was, namely proselyte baptism [Webster’s defines proselyte as “A new convert to some religion or religious sect, or to some particular opinion, system or party. Thus a Gentile converted to Judaism is a proselyte”]. John’s baptism was not the so called proselyte washing that many Presbyterians attempt to assert that it was; a carry over Levitical ordinance that Jesus partook of then changed. There is no scriptural ground, whatsoever, that there even was Levitical proselyte baptism practiced by the Jews in the New Testament during John’s ministry and there is nothing in the Old Testament that even hints to that assertion. I personally believe that Old Testament proselyte baptism is a myth used and oft repeated by baby baptizers to attempt to prove infant baptism and the universal church while at the same time, discredit John’s baptism and the truth of the Lord’s church. There is no question that the practice came into practice, but the key is to know when the Jews started proselyte baptism, which history will tell us but more importantly the silence of Scripture shows that Jewish proselyte baptism started well after the Bible was penned. Source after source repeats the same line about Old Testament baptism as a ceremonial immersion for Gentiles who believed in support of false notions about baptism, without giving historical or scriptural proof. Men will dismiss John’s baptism as Old Testament and give a line about Jewish proselyte baptism then move on without scriptural or historical evidence.

Let’s first consider whether or not baptism was a Levitical ceremony for converts. There simply is no proselyte baptism in the Old Testament. The scriptures are very clear Exodus 12:48-49 And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land: for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof. One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you. There is the Gentile convert, but there is no baptism. The idea is you take that passage along with Exodus 19:10 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them to day and to morrow, and let them wash their clothes . This is the best Old Testament answer to prove proselyte baptism. There is simply no scriptural basis. The first accounts of proselyte washing are found in the Babylonian Talmud, written in the 5th century. The custom, for lack of scriptural evidence, was inserted into the tradition. C.H. Toy wrote a very interesting paper published in the Baptist Quarterly volume 6, 1872 on Proselyte Baptism which he said “The ideas of an initiatory baptism in the Old Testament, the conception of which originated, no doubt, in the natural desire on the part of the Rabbinic teachers to obtain Scriptural support for a custom which the exigencies of the times had established.” The scriptural grounds seem to come from the cleansings and circumcision. The proselyte had to be circumcised and then had to be purified according to the Jews, not scripture. Following tradition, the Jews had to offer sacrifices but after the temple was destroyed, purification became the last order of the convert since they could not offer sacrifice. However, this was not limited to the Gentile convert as the Jewish boy ALSO had to be purified by washing because the circumcision made one unclean. The purification or the washing was on account of the circumcision. Historically, there is no basis for Jewish proselyte baptism prior to the fourth or fifth century. There are, of course, rules and regulations that accompany the ritual for the Jews after this time, even down to how many gallons of water were to be used, but prior, history is silent. To quote Toy again on the historicity of the practice “There is positively no evidence of the existence of proselyte baptism before the destruction of Jerusalem, and that the negative evidence against it up to that time, is as decisive as negative evidence can be; that there are no clear proofs of its existence before the fifth century, while it is possible that it may have been gradually coming into use for a century or two that there are reasons why the Jews should have been led to adopt some such ceremony after the destruction of Jerusalem; that the form is such as their national observances would suggest; and the way in which this rite is mentioned, is just what we should expect on the supposition that it came into use first about the third century, gradually gaining ground till, in the fifth century, in was firmly established.” I believe this to be grasping at straws and it may have started, in part, to explain away John’s baptism to the Jewish converts and Jews who were confronted with the New Testament.

Toy once more says says “If the custom of proselyte baptism arose in the inter-biblical times, we should expect to find some reference to it at least in the apocryphal books, and in Josephus and Philo. …It is difficult to see how a new (or indeed and old) ceremony of initiation could be passed over entirely without mention.” This lack of evidence becomes even more powerful when we consider those histories detail converts to Judiasm, to which baptism is silent. Toy again “Josephus mentions four prominent cases [in his history] of proselyting that one of these is given at great length, with the debates on the ceremony required, by persons who would gladly have found some other ceremony than circumcision; that he writes minutely on the customs of the Jews; and yet throughout his voluminous writings, which are very full on our Lord's time, there is not a single reference or allusion to a proselyte immersion. We seem to be not passing the bounds of moderation, then, when we say that his silence amounts very nearly to demonstration of our position.” John Broadus in A Commentary on Matthew as well as the work of John Gill on the history of this Jewish practice, tried and failed to find any historical record of Jewish proselyte baptism prior to the fourth or fifth centuries. In regards to history, the earliest Christian writers are silent on the subject of Jewish proselyte baptism, which speaks volumes as they dealt much with the Jews in polemical writings. When considering the false Jewish teachers who tried to pull Gentiles and Jew away from Christ back into the ceremony in regards to circumcision, why was there never an attempt to turn baptism into a similar work, or why was there never misunderstanding of baptism in the early days of the church? “It is hardly conceivable that proselyte baptism , if it were know to them, should not appear sometimes in their writings. Yet no mention of the rite has been produced.” C.H. Toy.

The Pharisees were full of self righteous hypocrisy in their strict keeping of the ceremonial law. Their counterparts, the Sadducees were religious liberals who did not believe in supernatural and interestingly enough, many were priests. Both groups hated Christ and both groups relied on outward works for their justification. When John was baptizing, both groups then came to the baptism. If something new was going on, they wanted to know what it was. I supposed the final nail in the coffin of the Old Testament proselyte baptism is if it was proselyte washing, why did they want it? Luke 3:7 Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Which we know from Matthew were the Pharisees. Here the pious religious leaders come to take part of the religious right. I can almost imagine them coming to see, to question, and to grace John with their presence. I can almost see them coming to give their expert opinion, since they were the religious leaders or perhaps they thought that John would be impressed with their attendance and sanctioning by their observance. John 1:19 And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? John 1:25 And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet? First, we see that the Jews sent priest and Levites to find out who he was, and the Pharisees asked him “why do you baptize if you are not Christ, Elijah or that prophet?” Had the John been performing a common Jewish ritual, why so many questions? It was recognizable to the Scribes and Pharisees that this was of Divine origin and their questioning tells us much. Had this been a Jewish practice, the question would not have been “why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ” but the question would have been “why bapzitest thou then these Jews as if they were Gentiles?” Why would the Pharisees ask who he was and what was the purpose of his baptizing? If John’s baptism was an Old Testament practice, when Jesus asked in Luke 20:4 “The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men?”, most assuredly the chief priests and scribes would have asserted Moses and the Old Testament, but by remaining silent, they loudly declare where and when baptism came into practice; with John. They would have said “our fathers have baptized since the wilderness.” We are to believe that even though circumcision was a major point of contention in the churches between Jews and Gentiles and false teachers, the baptism that followed was never questioned or pointed out to be separate from circumcision? The Pharisees never questioned Jesus for having a proselyte baptism or His disciples for baptizing Jews, both men and women?

“Why baptizest thou then?” Why did John baptize? If this was proselyte baptism, why did the Jews want it? If this was a common Jewish custom, why did the Pharisees ask why he was baptizing? If this was common Jewish custom, why did the Pharisees marvel that he was baptism, yet not Elijah or the Messiah? The fact is this was something new John was doing. The Jews knew this, realized it and wanted to be part of it since they perceived that John was a prophet. They saw another outward ceremony that they could be a part of, but the ax was struck to the root of their outward legalism. The biblical narrative shows without a shadow of doubt that what John was doing was a new and unique practice, something that God sent him to do. The whole idea of Old Testament proselyte baptism is a myth that is propagated and repeated as if it is common biblical history. Only one problem; Old Testament proselyte baptism is not found in the OLD TESTAMENT, or in the first centuries among any practicing Jews.

Apples of Gold

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I found this quote to be quite amusing. From B.A. Ramsbottom's biography on Christmas Evans.

The Welsh, though loving their preachers, for the most part, did not take care of their physical needs. Christmas Evans, a powerful Welsh Baptist was content with his poverty. On one occasion, he did speak his mind. After he had given a sermon, his hearers informed him that he would be recompensed at the resurrection. To which Evans offered the following reply.

“Yes, yes, no doubt of that; but I have to live till I get there. And what of my poor old white horse that needs to be fed now? For my horse there will be no resurrection!”


In Austin Phelps Theory of Preaching he gives a caricature of the sometimes "offensively elaborate" preface given to texts, merely to take up time.

"You will find the particular passage of the Sacred Scriptures to which it is my present purpose to invite your earnest attention on this solemn occasion, in that most interesting and impressive description of the most blessed of the virtues, recorded in the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, in the thirteenth chapter, the first verse, the last clause of the verse, and expressed in the following language; to wit, 'I am become as sounding brass'."



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Douglas Newell IV

The Bible - Various Quotes

"If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost" William Tyndale to a Roman Priest.

"Clearness in the pulpit is good sense in the pew. Mysticism in the pulpit is nonsense in the pew. The absence of exposition from the pulpit is ignorance of the Bible in the power." Austin Phelps from The Theory of Preaching

"If the Bible be an inspired volume, it is inspired for a purpose. If inspired for a purpose, it is divinely fitted to that purpose. If fitted to that purpose, it is a compendium of the truths most necessary to the world in all time. The world will always need it, and will need the whole of it. As a unit, it will be as fresh to the last man as to you and to me." Austin Phelps The Theory of Preaching




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Douglas Newell IV

Apples of Gold (Proverbs 25:11)

This week brings us the D.M. Lloyd-Jones addition of Apples of Gold this week. These quotes came from his book Studies on the Sermon on the Mount.


We now have Marriage Guidance classes. Up to this century mean and women were married without this expert advice which now seems to be so essential.


It is a great characteristic of scriptural truth that it can compress, as it were, the whole content of our entire position into a pregnant verse such as this. ‘Ye’, said our Lord, looking out upon those simple people, those entirely unimportant people from the standpoint of the world, ‘Ye are the light of the world.’ It is one of those statements which should always have the effect upon us of making us lift up our heads, causing us to realize once more what a remarkable and glorious thing it is to be a Christian.



Though you try to educate and control man it will avail nothing as long as his nature is sinful and fallen and he is a creature of passion and dishonor. We have tried knowledge, we have tried education, we have tried political enactments, we have tried international conferences, we have tried them all but nothing avails. Is there no hope? Yes, there is abundant and everlasting hope: “Ye must be born again”.

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Douglas Newell IV

What is a Church?

I suppose that you could ask 100 people that question and get 75 different answers. It is amazing that such a common word as church could have so many different meanings. What is even more astounding is when people have personal definitions to words. You could ask a person for a definition of the word church and you would hear something like “the church, to me, means…” as if words do not have any meaning or can change from person to person. Or the they may struggle to even answer the question because it is too deep to define. Could you imagine treating any other word like that? For example, if you asked someone to define the word car and then they say “the word car, means to me…” or “the word care is so deep that it has many meanings.” Wouldn’t you find that to be odd? Then, on the other extreme of defining words, some words are so familiar that we have never even considered what the word means. Sometimes we assume we know what the word means, but if we were asked to write a definition of the word, we would be at a loss. You may have gone to church your whole life, but never stopped to ask yourself, what is a church?
The English word church is found 80 times in the Bible and the word churches 37 times. Christians should understand a word that is found so many times in the Bible. The better question would be “what does God mean by church?” rather than the common question, “What does the word church mean to me.” When God inspired the writers of the New Testament to pen the very Words of God, what did God mean? When speaking of church, some refer to denominations, others to buildings and some say the church means every saved person on earth. What did God mean when He said church?


God could have used any word that He wanted to use. God was not short on vocabulary, so whatever word we find is the exact word God wanted to use. I really do not enjoy hearing preachers say “what Paul really meant to say was…” or “what would have been better to say…” rather “this is what God said.” The first time the word church is used is in Matthew 16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The word church is the word ἐκκλησία, (ekklēsia) in Greek, which was the language the New Testament was originally penned. The word ἐκκλησία means a called assembly. However, in many popular lexicon’s and dictionaries, the modern usage of the word has been inserted into their definition. I am afraid that many people put more authority on the work of one man who authored a lexicon, than in God’s word. As I hope to point out, merely because a man is an authority on the language, does not make him beyond reproof.

What I would also like to call attention to, for your deliberation, is that when you go to a dictionary or a concordance with Greek definitions, we are reading the authors definition of the word, not necessarily the meaning of the word at the time of its usage. Take, for example, Thayer’s Greek Definitions; he defines the word translated church as “a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place, an assembly”. However, the definition doesn’t stop there, but he then goes on to define the word as “in a Christian sense… the whole body of Christians scattered throughout the earth”. That is a broad definition and illustrates the problem that we are going to have to face squarely as we go on. What does the word mean? Is Thayer correct in stating the Greek word ἐκκλησία was understood by those who spoke and wrote Greek in that time to mean “the whole body of Christians” or is that the definition he applies to what the word has become to mean? Strong’s defines the word as “a calling out, that is, (concretely) a popular meeting, especially a religious congregation (Jewish synagogue, or Christian community of members on earth or saints in heaven or both): - assembly, church.” So Strong defines the word church with the word church. He has interjected his opinion into the definition. A.T. Robertson, in his work Word Pictures in the New Testament says “The word originally meant “assembly”, but it came to be applied to an “unassembled assembly”. W.E. Vine falls into the same trap when he defines ἐκκλησία. Vine says the word comes “from ek, out of and klesis, a calling was used among the Greeks of a body of citizens gathered to discuss the affairs of the State, Acts 19:39. In the Septuagint it is used to designate the gathering of Israel, summoned for any definite purpose, or a gathering regarded as representative of the whole nation. In Acts 7:38 it is used of Israel; in 19:32, 41 of a riotous mob.” Here Vine faithfully gives the meaning of the Greek word and the way the Greek word was understood by those living during the times. However, instead of bowing to the authority of God’s Word, he goes on to say “It has two applications to companies of Christians...” then applies the universal invisible body theory. This is interjecting our thoughts into God’s Word. It then becomes easy to declare that you believe every Word of God when you get to choose your own definition of the words. This same duplicity is applied to baptism as well.


The whole problem comes when we try to put our opinions into the word of God. We have men who believe that the church is universal and invisible; but the bible word for “church” means a called out assembly. Rather than conform to the authority of scripture we have generations of men who redefine the word rather than yield to it. When the book of Matthew was penned, there was a definition to the word ἐκκλησία. It had a common usage and a common definition. If Christ had meant to say a universal invisible group, why not say it? If I were to give a speech on television and I wanted to speak to all the Republicans in the United States how would I introduce the speech? I would address the Republican Party, I would not address the Republican assembly. Had Christ intended to speak of one who is a member of a community, then He too would have used a word that meant universal group of believers. But the fact is, Christ did not use a word that referred to a universal body over the whole world united by faith, but Christ spoke of an assembly. J.R. Graves in his book Old Landmarkism said “The Holy Spirit selected the Greek word ἐκκλησία, (ekklēsia) which had but one possible literal meaning to the Greek – that of a local congregation.” The universal church men would have you believe that God said local assembly, but meant universal invisible body, and that the meaning of the word was changed to something completely different without warning or redefining it.


William Tyndale in his translation of Matthew 16:18 rendered it this way, “And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter: and upon this rock I will build my congregation. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” David Daniell, who wrote the introduction to the 1989 Yale University Press edition of the Tyndale Bible said “The Bishop of London hunted down and burned many thousands of Tyndale’s successive New Testaments and Pentateuch’s with fanatical thoroughness, a ruthlessness that seems close to hysteria – only a dozen in all survive. King Henry VIII’s chancellor, Sir Thomas More, showed himself less than gentile, reasoned, saintly and urbane in his long, and indeed violent polemics against Tyndale. He calls him in his Confutation, ‘a beast’, as one of the ‘hell-hounds that the devil hath in his kennel’, discharging a ‘filthy foam of blasphemies out of his brutish beastly mouth’. Elsewhere, More calls him a deceiver, a hypocrite; puffed up with the poison of pride, malice and envy’. Yet the best that More, in all the great length of his tirades, can summon against Tyndale, when all is boiled down, is the he translated the Greed word for ‘elder’ as elder, not priest and the Greek word for ‘repentance’ as repentance, not do penance, the Greek word for ‘congregation’ as congregation not church…Even Erasmus, More’s friend, had translated the Greek ἐκκλησία, as congregation, not church. Every change that Tyndale makes is more than defensible: it is correct.” Since we are not dealing with the denomination definition or what the English word has become; we are dealing with the meaning of the Greek words, the original meaning and intent of the word, then we must all admit the word ἐκκλησία, means assembly. That is the literal meaning of the word and that is what the writers of the New Testament meant, that is what the Holy Spirit inspired them to write. Had God wanted to use a word that categorized people by faith instead of using a word that means assembly, let us grant that God the Holy Spirit could and would have done so.


The word ἐκκλησία, means a called assembly. The Greeks used the word to mean called assembly. If the Holy Spirit used a word that was known and used for a local assembly, we must know that the Holy Spirit meant assembly. This must be our starting point. Everyone has an idea in their mind of what a church is, but we need to know what meant by the word. If you start here, and with what the word church means and go on through the biblical teaching, using the word as it was intended that you can clearly see the teaching of the Lord’s church without redefining words and using revisionist history. The Lord’s church is not an invisible, universal body, but a local assembly called for official business. Certainly there are other distinguishing marks of a church, but this is the most basic, is your church a church (ἐκκλησία)?


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Douglas Newell IV

Honest Movie Review

This is the review of the movie LEGION by Paul Asay from pluggedin.com.


This is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It is so bad that it could kill monkeys. It is so bad that I'd recommend any cinema playing the thing to put baffles up so its badness doesn't somehow leak onto adjacent screens. It is so bad it should come with a surgeon general's warning—and a government tax for causing cancer.


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Douglas Newell IV