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It is difficult to discern what the author objects to. He seems to take offense with people having an easy time of getting baptized. Then without reason he calls them false converts.
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Revive Mississippi is probably a well-intentioned evangelical group that’s full of wonderful people. ("Probably" great people, who apparently are making false converts. Hmm.)
However, their mobile baptistry unit is ill-conceived.
The trailer, which has a cattle watering troughs designed for baptisms-on-the-go, is equipped to be hauled on location for various church activities in which the gospel will (theoretically) (For unknown reasons the author feels the need to impeach this church.)
be preached and then people encouraged to get dunked.
Baptism, in the Christian faith, is the immersion of a believer in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19) to represent dying with Christ and being raised again with him (vicariously) into a new life, and serves to symbolize the doctrine of Regeneration. The down-and-up model of immersion demonstrated in the Scripture is meant to correspond with Christ’s burial and resurrection (Colossians 2:12). (All true. Now perhaps the author will tell us where this church is at odds with this.)
However, baptism is an ordinance of the church and is meant to be conducted among the congregation of believers as a public profession of faith in Jesus. (Suddenly the author is at a loss to provide a Scripture. Probably because there isn't one. In fact, every NT baptism was done in a public place.)
The idea that people aren’t baptized because it’s too inconvenient to go down to the local church house (a reason for the trailer’s creation given in local news reports) probably indicates someone hasn’t been converted to begin with. (An unsupported assertion. We are at loss to explain how the convenience of baptism would come to bear on someone's salvation.
In fact, there many Scriptural examples of convenient baptisms:
Ac. 8:35-36 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. 36 As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?”
Ac. 2:41 Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.
Ac. 9:18 Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized,
Ac. 8:12 But when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.
Ac. 10:47 “Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” 48 So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
Ac. 16:33 At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized.Long journeys were not a thing of difficulty, it's just the way people traveled. There is no record of anyone embarking on a trip noted for its difficulty in order to be baptized, nor is there any record of commendation for anyone who did so. It is a completely irrelevant issue, yet the author makes a big deal of it.)
Would a real believer not travel a few miles to be baptized? (How does it make a difference? Today we could jump in a car and travel 25 miles without a problem. Should a person be required to travel, say, 100 hundred miles to prove the genuineness of their salvation?
Later the author will note the thousands of churches in Mississippi and suggest these people could have been conveniently baptized without the need of a mobile baptistry. So is convenience relevant or not? The author doesn't seem to have the ability to present a consistent argument.)
In John 3:23, we discover that John the Baptist was baptizing near Aenon near Salim because “there was much water there” (immersion takes a good deal more water than sprinkling). This was a spring (which is what Aenon means) likely on the west side of the Jordan river (the other side from Jerusalem), because John 6:23 says that’s where Jesus first encountered John the Baptist.
John the Baptist is also said to have baptized at Bethany Beyond the Jordan (John 1:28), which was a term distinguishing it from Bethany right outside of Jerusalem (where Jesus’s friends, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived). Sometimes the town was called Bethabara in antiquity.
When John baptized at that aenon, or spring, running into the Jordan River at Bethany west of there (probably because the spring was much cleaner than the river itself), the Scripture says that “all Jerusalem and Judea” went out to see him to be baptized (Matthew 3:5).
From Jerusalem, Bethabara or Bethany Beyond the Jordan was about 25 miles, or a full day’s walk across arid and treacherous desert. Yet, anyone remotely interested in baptism walked into the barren wilderness to be baptized. (Indeed, John 3:23 does say they were coming to be baptized. We shall quote the Scripture, since the author seems reluctant to:
Jn. 3:23 Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were constantly coming to be baptized.Were they coming to be baptized because they felt the need to be baptized? No, they were coming to hear him preach:
Mt. 3:1-2, 5-6 In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea 2 and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” 5 People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. 6 Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.Even the Pharisees made the journey, and they had no intention of being baptized.
Mt. 3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing...The people came to hear him preach, they were convicted, they repented, and they were baptized.)
Should we expect less of believers today? (Irrelevant.)
A mobile baptism unit in a state like Mississippi (the most religious state in the union) which has just under 110,000 churches listed in its directories (that’s 2.29 churches per square mile and 1 church for every 29 people) is hardly necessary. (Too bad they didn't ask the author what was necessary. Fortunately, they decided what was necessary, not the author.)
Baptism, a sacred ordinance of the church, should not be a cartoon novelty. (And, one final leap to an unjustified conclusion.)
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