Lesson 3614

 (Lesson 3614)(11-26-21) Acts 2:39-41

    “For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.” 

    Part of today’s quote relates to yesterday’s in that therein, the author says that on that day of the Pentecost celebration, there were three thousand souls added to the church. 

    The New Testament affirms in several passages of scripture that the baptism that provides spiritual rebirth and eternal salvation is the baptism into the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. We can further confirm that fact by using a little simple math. 

    Part of the quote says, “and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls". The Jewish day began at sunrise and ended and sundown. To believe that the baptism mentioned in this passage was intended to be a water baptism, one must accept that those twelve apostles baptized three thousand people in nine hours. Consider too, that to allow for a full nine hours, they would have been required to start baptizing from the beginning of the sermon that Peter and the others preached.

 The text has already told us that the sermon that Peter and the others preached at that Pentecost celebration, began about the third hour of that day. The third hour, given that pentecost falls in our month of May, when the days are almost equal with the nights and each consists of approximately twelve hours. 

    With that in mind, we can say that having three hours of the day already past, the sermon began at about nine o’clock in the morning. That would leave nine hours before the end of the day. 

    We know that all twelve apostles were present because, according to the author, all twelve participated.  

    Breaking down nine hours into minutes allows five hundred and forty minutes within which those twelve apostles would have had to perform three thousand water baptisms. By dividing those five hundred and forty minutes by three thousand we get 0.18. Multiplying 0.18 by twelve, we get 2.16. That means that each of the twelve apostles would have had to administer one water baptism every 2.16 minutes for nine straight hours beginning when Peter started preaching at nine o’clock AM. 

    As we can easily see, that would be an impossible task. Therefore today’s quote, again, affirms that the baptism that is required to attain spiritual rebirth and eternal salvation IS NOT immersion into water, but rather, the baptism that saves our soul is that baptism administered by Jesus Christ, as referred to by John the Baptist when he said, “I indeed baptize you with water unto (toward) repentance, but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.” (Matthew 3:11 in part)~