As recorded in the Bible – People baptized: “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (or Holy Spirit)

While I could leave this section blank, let me rather affirm positively that there is no evidence in the whole of the Bible of anyone ever being baptised directly in this way. We have seen the evidence from all ninety-one witnesses in the Bible, and found that there is exactly zero evidence of any believer being baptised by merely repeating these words. The command given by Jesus, as seen in Matthew 28v19 {17 }, was received by the Apostles in the context of everything else that they knew. On the day of Pentecost, Peter, mindful of this command from Jesus, along with everything else that he knew about Jesus, used the authority given to him by Jesus to reveal the master key to the kingdom of heaven. This did not include repeating the command of Jesus, but through the revelation that he had the result was that he obeyed the command of Jesus in all of it’s totality.

I am reminded here of a story I heard a pastor tell once – his name is not important for this purpose (and also in case my retelling is slightly inaccurate). One day one of the ministers in his ministry was called to go out preaching on his behalf, and the Holy Spirit impressed on the pastor to give his favourite suit (they were the same size) to the minister before he went. So the minister was called to the pastor’s house for a meeting. As he was leaving, the pastor said ‘wait a minute’ and went to his wardrobe and took out three suits that were quite nice and gave them to the minister. But the Holy Spirit was still on his case to give the favourite suit, so he then went and got some more suits – some of them he hadn’t even worn before. So now the minister had seven or eight suits, but not the pastor’s favourite. Again the Holy Spirit impressed on him to give the favourite suit. Finally, he went and got out the favourite suit and gave it to the minister.

If he had obeyed the Holy Spirit from the start, the cost would have been only one suit – even though it was the favourite one (And in any case, today’s favourite can quickly turn into tomorrow’s has-been). But because of his disobedience – doing something similar but not exactly as revealed by the Holy Spirit – the cost turned out to be many times greater. In fact, if he had stopped giving suits before the specific favourite one had been given, he might have given seven suits or so but not been obedient to God. As the prophet Samuel said, “to obey is better than sacrifice” (1^st Samuel 15v22).

The cost to this pastor of not obeying the command of the Holy Spirit turned out to be much greater than the cost if he had obeyed, showing once again that it pays to be obedient to everything that the Holy Spirit requests us to do to serve Him. The area of Baptism is no different – to just obey, without involvement in looking for loopholes and the effort of arguing another case – will lead quicker to obeying God’s will in all areas.