Explore the Bible

WITH the general decrease in religious belief and as society becomes increasingly secular, there is strong commercial pressure to treat every day of the week equally; shops, bars, places of entertainment are open, and sporting and other events are held now on any day from Sunday to Saturday. These moves are welcomed by some people, who see them as the final sweeping away of hide-bound traditions. But others see the trend as a great threat and an indication of serious moral and religious decline. When there are such strongly held and conflicting views on the subject, how can we determine what response to make? Where can we turn for answers to the problems that are raised?

Who or what is the Holy Spirit? What part does the Holy Spirit occupy in the work of God? These are serious and deep questions. We must conduct our inquiry with reverence because we are searching into the things of God. All of our searching would be useless if God had not encouraged us to find out as much as we can by means of the Bible, which is His authoritative Word. Let us discover what He has told us about His Spirit.

More than 100 years ago these lines were written (by an unknown author) to accompany a drawing of "His Satanic Majesty":

"This is he, with horns and hoof,
The parsons call the devil;
They tell us he lives in a sultry place
Where ghosts and imps all revel.

They say that he wears a great long tail,
And carries a three- pronged fork,
That he sometimes leaves his sultry home,
And through the earth doth walk.

They say he can assume with ease
The garb of an angel bright,
And then, for a change, he takes the form
Of a roaring lion at night:

That he's power to act and do as he likes,
Be in fifty places at once;
And that to fulfil his evil designs,
Can be wise as a sage, or a dunce."

Death is Real
There is no escaping the reality of death. When it comes suddenly, unexpectedly, as the result of an accident or heart attack, we are shaken. Similarly when someone still “in the prime of life” dies of cancer or kidney failure. Such events are so common that we all experience them. We are overcome by the sense of our own helplessness: we cannot reverse what has happened. All human resources are powerless to restore a dead person to life. The grieving relative is not easily comforted.

How do people react to the fact of death? The young frankly do not treat the matter seriously. When they have the occasional shock - a friend is killed in a road accident, for example - it is just “bad luck”. The tragedy is soon forgotten. The middle-aged do not care to contemplate death. It is too far off yet to seem a real danger: “Better face it when it comes.” Older people become more aware that here is a reality they will not escape. Their friends and relations pass off the scene. Failing eyesight and hearing, growing physical ailments remind them that the human frame eventually perishes.

Where did it happen?
It happened outside the walls of Jerusalem, in a very public place. The Bible says, "This thing was not done in a corner". Jesus Christ of Nazareth was crucified between two thieves. The place is called Golgotha, otherwise the Place of a Skull, or the hill of Calvary. These are places described in the gospel records – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – which are identifiable today. It was a very real place.

We talk about hope in everyday conversation. We say "I hope you feel better soon", or "We hope to go abroad this year" or "I hope the strike will be over by next week". We mean there is something in the future we should very much like to happen, and we feel cautiously optimistic that it will. Life without hope would be very grim. Even in the worst of circumstances, people like to look on the bright side. A poet wrote: "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." Hope can give men extraordinary tenacity of spirit-miners trapped by a roof fall, or sailors drifting on a raft, will often fight death for days, convinced that their friends will come to the rescue before it is too late. Sadly, of course, they are sometimes disappointed. It can happen that the rock fall is too deep to tunnel through, or no one knows the ship has foundered. In this case the chance to which they cling does not exist, and their hope is an illusion.

No doubt many people today would say: "Why are you bothering with baptism? It's only a ceremony, isn't it? Having a few drops of holy water sprinkled on the head of an infant by a clergyman in church, or just having a bath? What real difference can it make? You're wasting your time."

The short answer is that the New Testament has a great deal to say about baptism, from the lips of Jesus himself as well as through his apostles. Now the plain fact is that the Bible is all we have. If we want to know who Jesus was, what he taught and what he commanded his followers to do, we must go to the Bible for the answers. To look elsewhere is to rely on the opinions of men, whether of individuals or of bodies of men in Synods or Councils. What the Bible has to say about baptism must be vital for us. If Christ and his chosen apostles have declared certain things about baptism, then we ought to want to know what they are.