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Should Your Baby Be Baptized?The Watchtower—1961 | January 15
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husband is sanctified in relation to his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in relation to the brother; otherwise, your children would really be unclean, but now they are holy.” (1 Cor. 7:14) So babies are made “holy” in God’s eyes, not by a sprinkling ceremony, but because of their having a believing father or mother.
Instead of being concerned about baptizing their baby, Christian parents will heed the advice of the inspired Scriptures and bring up their child “in the discipline and authoritative advice of Jehovah.” (Eph. 6:4) Teach the child the will and commandments of Jehovah God. Do as the inspired proverb says: “Train up a boy according to the way for him; even when he grows old he will not turn aside from it.” (Prov. 22:6) If parents have been diligent to teach their children God’s truth, then when they grow up they will be able to make a personal decision to dedicate their lives to God. After having made this decision, they will, like Jesus, symbolize that dedication by water immersion. By being faithful to that dedication, they will prove worthy of enjoying everlasting life on earth, under the kingdom of heaven.
What if the child dies before it is old enough to make a personal dedication to God? We can be sure that since God views the children of believing parents as “holy,” any child of such faithful parents who dies will be certain to be resurrected from the dead. Parents who obey and follow Jesus’ example never go wrong. Even the evildoer who was put to death on the torture stake next to Jesus was promised a resurrection and the opportunity of gaining everlasting life in the righteous new world. “You will be with me in Paradise,” said Jesus. (Luke 23:43) If this evildoer, up till then an unbaptized person, will be there when paradise is restored on earth, then certainly the children of believing parents who follow Jesus’ example, instead of having them baptized as babies, will enjoy a similar blessing.
To real Christians the words and example of Jesus Christ carry far more authority than the traditions of men. Real Christians follow the example of Christ closely. They see from a study of the Holy Scriptures overwhelming evidence that (1) no baby was ever baptized by the first-century Christians; (2) Christian baptism is not for washing away sins but is a symbol of a personal dedication to God, and (3) children of believing parents, without baptism, are viewed by God as “holy.”
Babies, then, need not and should not be baptized. Baptism is a ceremony that marks a personal commitment, a commitment that no one else can make for you and that certainly a babe-in-arms cannot make for itself. The Biblical doctrine of water baptism, and therefore the one water baptism that God really accepts, remains the same today as it was when Jesus began it.
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Christ Would Condemn Modern WorldThe Watchtower—1961 | January 15
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Christ Would Condemn Modern World
● “If the historic Jesus were to return today,” said Aldous Huxley, “he would unquestionably condemn our civilization for its inhumanity, its systematic and organized lovelessness—in a word, for all the vices on account of which, two thousand years ago, he condemned the civilizations of Rome and the Near East. He would also, in all probability, talk about the end of the world and the day of judgment, but in contemporary terms and in the light of world history since Hiroshima.”—Cosmopolitan, December, 1958.
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