Carl W.
3/5
I recently visited New Life Baptist Church (NLBC).
I appreciate their Statement of Faith regarding
“Sola Scriptura – “Scripture Alone”
The Bible is the only inspired and authoritative Word of God, is the only source for Christian doctrine, and is accessible to all — that is, it is clear and self-interpreting (2 Tim. 3:16-17).”
Visitors to NLBC should know that it is a big deal to NLBC that “the church *knows* that you have believed on Jesus and have identified with Jesus Christ as your savior.” (1/5/25, AM service, YouTube starting at 23:50). To “know*, NLBC requires a passport, an *exclusive* sign not unlike what tongues signifies in Pentecostal circles. NLBC’s “show me your papers!” sign is, If you confess with your mouth that you have been believer’s water baptized, thou shalt be known as being a part of the body of Christ.
A litmus test of believers water baptism is not found in the “…for all shall know Me…” New Covenant mediated by Jesus Christ. This litmus test only *recently* infiltrated the minds of some “Sola Scriptura”-confessing Huntsville-area church leaders who, not coincidently, have been *known* (example, Feed My Sheep conference, 11/4/2024) to keep bad company with newer para-church organization, 9Marks, a Reformed/Puritan promoter of a new, 6th sola (Sola credentes aquam baptismi).
These local 9Marks-affiliated churches, in a *coordinated* manner and after many decades of not teaching nor practicing such a thing themselves for some reason, are now zealous to *spiritually abuse* all those in a gathering who “have the first fruits of the Spirit” but are not water baptized …. to actually *dispirit* such from partaking of the Lord’s Supper.
This “church purity” technique, to starve the unbaptized from communion even if such confess to having already “proclaimed the Lord’s death til He comes” one hundred times in Christian assembly gatherings, is sometimes called, “close communion.” NLBC teaches and practices close communion despite the warning from the Apostle Paul to those who partake of the Lord’s Supper while others in the gathering go hungry: “For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. Therefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.”
Imposing water baptism on the believer during “the time of reformation” (Heb. 9:10) is unfitting, given:
“… the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For *by one Spirit* we were all *baptized* into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many.”
“… not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the *washing* of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, *one baptism*.”
The Apostle to the Gentiles, contrary to “the Great Commission” to the eleven disciples, wrote, “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect,” a gospel that emphasizes, “by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.”
It is Christ’s obedience of “baptism” (Luke 12:50) that a gathering of those “in Christ” proclaim when partaking of the elements, their consciences cleansed by His blood of the New Testament to thus remember His death “once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit.”
The “clear and self-interpreting” Word of God, “the only source for Christian doctrine,” does not compel the saints to accept close communion; the faith once delivered to the saints does not include close communion.
