Walk About Zion

by J.MILLER | Category: General | Nov 1936

It is necessary from time to time for men to examine their houses, for repairs and renewals are ever needed in all earthly things. It is also the habit of the officials of certain townships to go round the boundaries that mark the material extent of their responsibilities.

In days long gone by the sons of Korah (Psalm 48. 12, 13), exhorted the men of Israel-

"Walk about Zion, and go round about her;

Tell the towers thereof.

Mark ye well her bulwarks,

Consider her palaces;

That ye may tell it to the generation following."

They viewed the holy city, the dwelling place of their God, that they might carry away a mental picture, taken from all view-points, and relate to their children the beauty of the place of the tabernacles of the Most High.

The coming generation was ever to be in the mind of the godly Hebrew, for there was to be continuity of the testimony which Jehovah established amongst the tribes of Israel. They must know the purpose for which they were together as a nation, and the purpose God had in the city which was called by His Name, where His house was, the centre of gathering for His people Israel.

We propose in this article to go about Zion in our day (and in other articles to follow, if the Lord will), and to note certain features which were characteristic of that together folk who were together in the beginning of the present dispensation (a people as truly together as one, and more so in the true meaning of being together, than Israel were in the land of Canaan) though they were dispersed in many lands and though they were of many nationalities-a people that once were no people, but became the people of God (1 Peter 2. 10).

In Acts 2. 41 it is shown that all those comprised in such a people received the word of God which was preached to them

and in consequence were baptized. The New Testament Scriptures will be searched in vain to find one unbaptized person in any of the Churches of God. Some have taken Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 1.14-17-" I thank God that I baptized none of you, save Crispus and Gaius ... also the household of Stephanas; ... For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel," as indicating that he thought but little of baptism and was but little concerned whether the disciples he made were baptized. There seems but little doubt that Paul handed over the disciples he made to other disciples to baptize them, as the Lord did-" Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus Himself baptized not, but His disciples)" (John 4. 1-2).

If Paul thought but little of baptism why should he remind the Corinthians that the people of Israel "were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea" (1 Corinthians 10. 2)? Note, too, that it says that they were all baptized. The Israelites who had been redeemed by blood were baptized in water, in sea and cloud, unto Moses their new leader and commander. To them Pharaoh and his law were things of the past. Even so in this day the Lord our Passover has been sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5. 7), and He is also our Redeemer, by whose precious blood we are redeemed, of which we frequently sing

And we have known redemption Lord

From bondage worse than theirs by far;

Sin held us by a stronger cord,

Yet by Thy mercy free we are.

The Lord ere He returned to heaven commanded His disciples that they were to baptize the disciples they made:

"Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28. 19). This commission has all the nations in view.

In Matthew 3. 1, John the Baptist is found in the wilderness of Judea calling Israel to repentance and baptizing those who repented with the baptism of repentance (Acts 19. 4). The twelve who were sent forth in Matthew 10. 5, 6, were not to go "into any way of the Gentiles," or, "into any city of the Samaritans," but they were to go " to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But in Matthew 28. 19 the eleven are to go to the Gentiles with the divine message. Here is a change of a most important kind. There can be no playing fast and loose with the commission of Matthew 28. as to what its primary meaning

is. It is not something that is proper to the gospel of the kingdom, which we may make use of, but which really belongs to others. This command of the Lord (who had been rejected by His own people Israel) to the eleven apostles, was carried out by Peter as described in Acts 10. 44-48, for he was the first to preach the gospel to Gentiles and to command Gentiles to be baptized. He had been chosen as the first to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, as is shown in Matthew 16. 19 : " I will give unto thee (singular, not you) the keys of the kingdom of heaven" and he (with others) was commanded to baptize discipled Gentiles into the Name of the Trinity.

If the words of the Lord in Matthew 28. 19 do not primarily apply to Peter and the others, where did Peter get his command to baptize in association with the new order of things consequent upon the Lord's rejection, His death and resurrection? Not only in Acts 10. 47, 48 did Peter command men to be baptized, and these men Gentiles, but in Acts 2. 38 he commands repentant Jews to be baptized. Here he is seen carrying out the terms of the commission of Matthew 28.

The New Testament knows nothing of baptism bringing men on to Christian ground, as some teach; far less does it teach baptismal regeneration. What then is baptism? It is not a washing away of any defilement of a moral or spiritual kind. Obedience to the command reveals that the attitude of the conscience of the believer is correct towards God : baptism is "not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation (appeal or demands answer, A.V.) of a good conscience toward God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3. 21). A good conscience requires baptism; it is the complement of a good conscience, and miserable at times must they be who have had their conscience cleansed by the death of Christ, who in the matter of baptism imprison their conscience and put it in chains, lest it should call them to its bar of justice.

Mr. Conscience was frequently, Bunyan tells us in his allegory of" The Holy War," put into prison by the inhabitants of Man's Soul because he took fits and disturbed the peace of the city, so must the unbaptized believer's conscience at times act, disturbing his peace of mind.

We do not wish to say anything of the teaching of baptism or the various aspects of baptism in the New Testament Scriptures. In this walk about Zion we wish to point out that it was characteristic of all who dwell together in the divine unity which existed in the beginning of the dispensation that they were all baptized in obedience to the Lord's command.

J.MILLER | Nov 1936
General