W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

Solomon; if they had they would not have been permitted to immerse in them.
Now take the facts that three thousand were baptized in connection with the forenoon service, and five thousand
in the afternoon, and no special time appointed for it Then consider the fact that they were all Jews who had
been baptized by sprinkling from the days of Moses, and the only possible conclusion consistent with the
environments is in favor of the simple Jewish effusion, to which they were all accustomed, as baptism is not a
Christian institution, but a Jewish, perpetuated into the Christian dispensation.
When Mark, seventh chapter, says that the Pharisees washed every time they returned from the forum, the
original says they baptized. Of course it was their simple ceremonial purification, lest they had become polluted
by contact with Gentiles, unclean animals, lepers, dead people, sepulchers and many other things by which they
might contract ceremonial defilement, and in that case be prohibited from the tabernacle service till the water of
purification was sprinkled on them by some ceremonially clean person. They made it a point for some old
person or infirm member of the family who needed rest to stay about the house, while all the able-bodied went
off and labored through the day, and were nearly certain to come into contact with ceremonial defilement in
some way, I. e., the camel and donkey, the most common and useful animals in that country are both unclean
and they work with them all the time. Here it is said in the English Version that they washed every time they
came in from the market-place where they worked, and my version, which gives it just the way the Lord does,
says baptized. The Greek is the very word used for the ordinance of baptism. Now in Leviticus you will find the
law of clean and unclean specified; they had to be sprinkled with the blood of the red heifer. This animal had to
be blood red without a spot or blemish, thus symbolizing the blood of Christ. The feminine gender represents
the wonderful fruitfulness of the atonement, really the mother of all God's children. As it was expensive to
slaughter one of these animals for every occasion of ceremonial defilement, the law permitted them to burn the
animal utterly into ashes, leaving nothing at all; and then drop just a dust or two of these ashes into water, thus
constituting it the water of purification. One animal thus consumed into ashes would suffice a whole community
for a long time.
Then any ceremonially clean person who had not gone out and incurred the defilement was competent to serve
all the balance, dipping the hyssop into the water and sprinkling it upon the subject of ceremonial defilement.
This is currently called baptism in the New Testament. In many cases, where in the English Version you have
the word wash, in the Greek it is baptize, as you can see in my translation.
There is no doubt but that many a pious Jew was baptized forty thousand times in his life, and perhaps many
more, because the Jews had a hundred times as much ceremony in their religion as the Christians do. Those
ceremonies symbolize the work of Christ who has already come and His work been fulfilled. As those Jews
were baptized frequently every day of their lives, you see the very same people whom John baptized, many of
them, when Jesus began to preach, were baptized by His disciples. You remember that when Paul came to
Ephesus and found those twelve men who had been converted by the preaching of Apollos who had come from
Africa, being a disciple of John the Baptist and a powerful preacher in the Johanic dispensation, but who had not
heard of the mighty work of Christ and His crucifixion for the world, (as they had no newspapers then), though
they had received the Johanic baptism unto repentance administered by Apollos, yet Paul had them baptized in
the name of the Lord Jesus. Hence you see how loosely the Jews held baptism, using it freely to seal their
consecrations, in case they made any new departure of the Divine life; I. e., when they received a great and
glorious spiritual uplift they symbolized it by water baptism.
In I Cor. 15:29, Paul alludes to the baptizing for the dead, I. e., while those flaming Pentecostians were running
all over the country preaching from house to house, and telling the people that the Christ for whom they all had
been looking all their lives had already come and redeemed the world and gone back to Heaven, and that the
thing for them to do was to believe Him and confess Him before the world by baptism, thus passing out of the
dispensation of the law and the prophets into that of Christ and the apostles, therefore they proceeded at once to
baptize them. Meanwhile they found some of them in deep distress because the father or mother, brother or
sister, or other members of the family, had died before the good news of the Messiah reached them, and in their
flowing tears they observed, “Oh, that mother had lived to this day! How she would be delighted to receive
baptism in the name of our blessed Christ for whom she watched and prayed all her life, but died without the
sight. Will you not permit me to receive baptism as her substitute?” Then the evangelist unhesitatingly granted