Babylon Bee—Regular attenders of Elevation Church reported being surprised Sunday morning when they were directed to the “new balcony entrance” for seating.
“We normally get there early so we can sit as close to pastor Steven as possible,” Marie Dotwiler told reporters. “We were all like, ‘What’s going on?’” They did not have to wonder for long.
Pastor Steven Furtick took the stage under a single spotlight, and after some coy banter, he reportedly announced that it was “Baptism Sunday,” but that this was “not your Mama’s Baptism Sunday.” At this cue, a giant water slide, stretching from the balcony down to a small pool of water, was unveiled from behind a large curtain as the worship band began performing TLC’s 1994 hit “Waterfalls.”
Those, like Marie Dotwiler, who had been ushered to the new entrance were directed one-by-one into the orange contraption and, with a push, sent hurtling toward the waters of baptism in screaming identification with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The church had hired auctioneers to stand along the sides of the slide and speedily utter the phrase, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” as the unsuspecting congregants whooshed by into the pool below.
“Otherwise we can’t count it,” Larry Hubatka told reporters.
Hubatka is the Creative Pastor and chief architect of what has been dubbed by leadership “Splashtism Sunday.” “The water slide is fun,” said Hubatka, “but the whole reason we did this is to get the most number of people baptized in the least amount of time possible. If we can’t count some of these baptisms because someone didn’t utter the right words, or because someone’s head wasn’t completely submerged, then what’s the point?”
HT/ Meerkat
Praise the Lord and pass the PFD’s!
My church had maybe at its peak 60 families. This just doesn’t
seem like a church to me, more like an amusement park.
” Come to the church in the wildwood “
gimmicks for Christ…..if the person gets saved a water slide is just theatrical attempting to put more butts in the pew and dollars in the collection plate.
Jesus, John the Baptist and the disciples didn’t need a water slide, they had confidence in their Faith and the Word of God.
Hopefully Jesus will visit us in our FOX holes right before we are killed by the UN. I’m 70 percent ready. If Trump loses I’m good.
Are you friggin kidding me? Church is not an amusement park people.
I’m starting to realize this is a Christian hating Spaatz website that is like the onion. But not at all funny.
The Babylon Bee is an ironic name for a newspaper to be reporting on this idiocy. I wonder how long these folks stay baptized as new Christians after the thrill is gone of their so called baptism by water slide. Another hokey gimmick to draw in a crowd just for show. And you have to wonder also if the church’s praise/rock band plays loud music to accompany it. This is all part of Vanity Fair just like in The Pilgrims Progress.
But there comes a line between funny and spending too much work on it. At the tail end all that work is on you.
Not my playpen, so have at it.
It’s one reason I don’t go to a mega church.
Also a friend of mine went to a big church and was on the worship team for two years and one day he bumped into the pastor and the pastor greeted him as a new comer.
Mega-churches are for entertainment and comedy, it seems. I’ve heard that Joel Olstien is anti-Trump. What’s up with that? Is he okay with Hillary?
Baptism is not a joke or a game, it is a serious step in the life of a Christian, though I’m not sure if it is a requirement. Do your own research on that. This seems like a distraction from what baptism is all about.
You can do baptisms in a river, lake, or bath tub. They use water barrels in some countries where Christians are heavily persecuted. I’ve seen pictures from Voice of the Martyrs taken in countries where they just dig a hole in the ground and line it with plastic, then fill it with water. They do it like this because if they get caught by their government they could be killed or tortured and thrown in prison. Especially in moslem nations and North Korea.
I wasn’t Baptised until late in life, and it was a very serious event, in a large tank on the stage with the whole congregation watching.
But had I known that my name would go into a national registry of Baptisms, I would have probably tried to find a church that doesn’t do the registration. I ask myself, what do they need this list for? God keeps His own list.
You don’t need man’s authority to get into heaven. But it would be a good idea to be very familiar with the Word of God so that the devil can’t trick you when the time comes to head that way.
🙂
Also, it looks to me like a person could build up enough speed going down that slide to bash into the side of the pool and break their neck.
Kind of like building a stairway to heaven, eh?
I’d be more impressed if they got on at the bottom and were propelled up!
U.R.,
“But had I known that my name would go into a national registry of Baptisms, I would have probably tried to find a church that doesn’t do the registration. I ask myself, what do they need this list for? God keeps His own list.”
You didn’t ask but I must speak on this, so please forgive me.
I’m an ex-indie fundie Baptist. I did not know then, but have verified since, that all Baptists (as well as many others who water baptize people) use how many people get in the tank, or are sprinkled, for their yearly convert calculations. For example, Southern Baptists for years have worried over declining annual baptisms.
The problem with that is, most churches do not preach the saving Gospel of the grace of God anymore, but false gospels. That’s why every single one of them believes, in some sense, that water baptism is necessary for one’s justification, even though they realize submitting to any form of baptism for that reason is a work.
So what? Well, the apostle Paul that salvation today is WITHOUT works of ANY kind…it is by grace we are saved, through faith, without works. Water baptism was in force in the N.T. during God’s reaching out to Israel, which ended in Acts ch. 28. So the centuries of baptizing traditions is all a contradictory mess but goes right along with the worthless ear-tickling doctrine these preachers preach.
Today there is only ONE baptism (Ephesians 4:5). This one baptism has nothing to do with physical water but is spiritual, when a believer of the Good News is saved and then baptized [immersed, placed into, identified with] Christ by the Spirit and becomes a member of His Body. Physical water has nothing to do with this and by that measure, any who say a form of water rite is required to please God is lying and preaching a false gospel, putting them under the curse of Galatians 1:8-9.
A person who submits to any form of human [water] baptism is still saved IF they’ve heard and believed the saving Gospel of grace. Getting wet has nothing to do with that.
But if they count on being water baptized as having any merit with God — as is usually the case, as that’s what’s always said or strongly implied — then they are grievously deceived.
Unruly, you’ve given me another reason to dislike Joel Olstein other than being a huge phony with his prosperity gospel. He’s worried about his bottom line under Trump that he might not find enough suckers to fall for his bs. I can’t stand the man.
Also, the Babylon Bee makes some funny and timely observations but appears to be run by Reformed types, who got their own grave issues and really shouldn’t be going around pointing out splinters.
The beginning of Romans 6 says, “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” This idea that we are made one with Christ through baptism is reiterated by Paul in Colossians 2:12, and in Galatians 3:27 he likens baptism to “being clothed with Christ.”
Furthermore, the fuller idea of salvation being a union with Christ fits with much more of the New Testament, which speaks time and again of being in a profound union with the living Lord—rather than simply being saved or justified by a personal belief in Christ.
The sacrament of baptism takes the believer from the simple repentance, belief, and profession of faith into a more mysterious identification with Christ, in which he is the vine, and we are the branches, in which we die with him so that we might rise to new life. Baptism is not simply the addition of a meaningful symbol to the act of faith: It is an action which takes the believer’s whole body, soul, and spirit into a new relationship with God.
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/baptism-saves-you
It’s stories like this that inspire me to thank the Lord each and every morning that I was born and reborn into His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Baptism is necessary for a person’s salvation, to get into Heaven. Making light of such an integral step in a person’s spiritual life is a sacrilege.
Having a form of Godliness but denying his power- lovers of pleasure more than lovers of GOD- from such, turn away.
I know you two won’t believe this but it’s not my problem. This is the whole counsel of God according to His Word.
The miraculous signs and wonders had one primary purpose: to verify the Good News to Israel that the long-awaited Messiah had finally come (“Jews require a sign” because God had TRAINED them to require signs).
Everything about this focused on Christ as Messiah.
What this means is, Christ was being preached to Jews AS JEWS, meaning as God’s priest-nation pronounced through Moses:
And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
THAT is why John came baptizing. It is also why the pharisees did not ask John WHAT he was doing; they knew full well what he was doing. They asked John by what authority he did it. Very telling detail, that.
At this same time, starting with the Cana wedding, miracles came to be in force. Why? To prove Messiah.
But as the Jews’ refusal to repent became final those gifts were gradually withdrawn, leaving the apostle Paul (among whose fellows had been healings with handkerchiefs and shadows) to advise Timothy to take wine for his stomach rather than pronouncing him miraculously healed, and also leaving Trophimus sick at Miletus!
Why did Paul leave someone sick when he’d healed so many?
Because the sign gifts were fading away as the sign NATION was refusing to repent. All those miracles keyed on Israel and God’s prophesied purposes for her (which is why all claims to signs and wonders today are FALSE).
What does this have to do with water baptism?
As with sign gifts, every example of water baptism in the N.T. is correlated with God’s reaching out to Israel as His nation of priests, starting with John the Baptizer, the Twelve, then Paul.
But when Jews the world over (meaning as far afield as Rome) had made their final refusal as seen in Acts 28, that was it. God set them aside, just as Paul feared he was doing in Romans ch. 9-11.
So just as the messianic signs and wonders faded and ceased as Israel was set aside as just another lost nation, Israel’s messianic water ritual was deactivated and replaced with the ONE spiritual baptism of Ephesians 4:5. ONE means ONE. There cannot be TWO baptisms…Spirit baptism into Christ AND any form of water ritual. That would make “one baptism” a lie.
One more thing.
Paul gave explicit, detailed instructions on many things: church hierarchy, orderliness in church services, the Lord’s Table, family matters, sexual relations between spouses, and the use of miraculous gifts during the period in which God gave them.
But did you notice where Paul gave instruction on how, when or whom to baptize?
He didn’t.
ANYWHERE. Neither did Peter, James or John.
Such instructions from God for us on how/who/when/where to water baptize DO NOT EXIST.
There’s a very simple reason for that.
Water baptism is not for today. It was tied to God’s purposes for Israel, and Israel as a nation refused her Christ.
Meaning all such formulae today are 100% man-made. Human tradition…no matter who is doing the baptizing, it’s just like that of the Pharisees who elevated their own inventions to the level of God’s Word.
But everyone today may avail themselves to a far better baptism, one that actually DOES save! But it has nothing to do with physical H20.
And there’s no water in Romans ch. 6.
For anyone who hasn’t figured it out yet, the Babylon Bee is a joke site. Like the Onion, but limited to religious satire.
https://medium.com/@jonathanhollingsworth/the-babylon-bee-transphobia-and-why-christian-satire-still-misses-the-mark-9b361ba6c529#.dc9ige18u
😇
WHY I DON’T ATTEND CHURCH.
1. that money could have been used to actually help people in the congregation, but instead, they built a water slide.
2. “We get there early so we can sit closer to Pastor Stevens.” –FUCK PASTOR STEVENS! This isn’t kindergarten looking for praise and confirmation, grow up.
3. JE$U$ INCORPORATED! More people = more money.
4. Baptism is to be taken seriously, not just push some guy down a water slide and say some magic words.
Glad I quit church years ago, I am closer to God than I have ever been.
According to 1 Peter 3:20-21:
“who had once been disobedient while God patiently waited in the days of Noah during the building of the ark, in which a few persons, eight in all, were saved through water.”
“This prefigured baptism, which now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
In keeping with this language, the Nicene Creed states:
“I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”
The Lord himself affirms that baptism is necessary for salvation Jn 3:5
Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament Mk 16:16.
The necessity of baptism for salvation is broadly recognized among Christians, including non-Catholic ones. For example, Martin Luther wrote:
“Baptism is no human plaything but is instituted by God himself. Moreover, it is solemnly and strictly commanded that we must be baptized or we shall not be saved. We are not to regard it as an indifferent matter, then, like putting on a new red coat. It is of the greatest importance that we regard baptism as excellent, glorious, and exalted” (Large Catechism 4:6).
Before the creation of the earth water and the spirit were present
Genesis 1:2 – “and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters”
God saved all people through Noah, water and the spirit
Genesis 8
Through the water and the spirit of God the people were again saved in Exodus Chapter 14
But we are to believe that God abandons the power of water and spirit?
It would seem to me in John 3:5 that Jesus, knowing the confusion that us Catholics would have would have just said to old Nicodemus “confess with your mouth” instead of “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit”
Yes, we must confess with our mouth and we must be baptized. Its a both and not an either or.
Christians have always believed, including apostolic fathers, in the normative necessity of water baptism, while also acknowledging the legitimacy of baptism by desire or blood.
Hermas, who was alive during apostolic times:
“‘I have heard, sir,’ said I, ‘from some teacher, that there is no other repentance except that which took place when we went down into the water and obtained the remission of our former sins.’ He said to me, ‘You have heard rightly, for so it is’”
The Shepherd 4:3:1–2 [A.D. 80]
Many more examples out there. God Bless you Brother!
Thanks VV
takes the pressure off.
According to 1 Peter 3:20-21:
“who had once been disobedient while God patiently waited in the days of Noah during the building of the ark, in which a few persons, eight in all, were saved through water.”
“This prefigured baptism, which now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
* * *
Exactly right.
Question is, who was Peter addressing?
Answer:
“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia…”
Peter wrote to dispersed circumcision believers (Galatians 2:8-9), not to Gentiles and not to the Body of Christ in which Jew and Gentile are meaningless distinctions:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
Two different audiences, both belonging to God through Christ, but still separate in the purposes of God.
The baptism Peter refers to is that which goes all the way back to Moses:
“The LORD also said to Moses, “Go to the people and CONSECRATION them today and tomorrow, and let them WASH their garments; and let them be ready for the third day, for on the third day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people” (Exo ch. 19).
Israel, as a nation, was to fulfill this by consecrating themselves when Messiah came – water baptism would do this – but they didn’t because of unbelief.
Also, carefully consider that whole “wash and be ready for the third day” part, in light of Acts 2:38.
And if it isn’t clear, Exodus is law ground.
Israel alone was given the codified Law.
Water baptism is part of this code.
Water baptism IN THE BIBLE is right out of Law and is inseparable from Law.
But those who are truly in Christ have died to Law:
“Therefore, my brothers, you also died to the Law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God” (Rom 7:4)
“For through the law I have died to the law, so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ…”
(Gal 2:19)
Law has no claim on those who have died, so water baptism has no place in the life of those made alive by the ONE spiritual baptism of Ephesians 4:5.
LMAO: “…behind a large curtain as the worship band began performing TLC’s 1994 hit “Waterfalls.”
Man, I haaaaated that song! But thanks for the laugh anyway. 😀
geoff, I don’t care for Olsteen either, but don’t take what I said about him being anti-Trump for 100% correct. I’ve heard many things:
*he was on a list of people who said they would not support Trump.
*he didn’t say he would endorse Trump.
*he said he couldn’t endorse Trump.
*he didn’t like some things about Trump.
And then I heard that he and Trump used to get along. So I don’t know what to think about him. Maybe he is just not pro-Trump.
Grool, I didn’t know they had a quota. Mine was a non-denominational city church that I went to for a short time. Those people prayed for me and I did get healed.
I could have worded my comment a little differently, but I thought I made it clear enough when I said “You don’t need man’s authority to get into heaven.” That would include being baptized by a man. You don’t need any denominations either.
I started going to church right after I was born. Missed a lot of years later on, but I think I have a pretty good understanding of the Word. Don’t want to give the impression that I am new to the church. But I do learn something new every time I read the Bible cover to cover.
And there is a place for water baptism, though it is not required for salvation; my mother would have had me baptized by the age of three if it were required.
The war in Afghanistan is one example for a place for water baptism, and many troops can testify to that. It does mean a lot to many new Christians, and if that helps them to hold on to the faith, I don’t see anything wrong with it.
🙂
Yes Elevation Church is a joke. But there are a lot of really good churches out there where the pastor and flock are not obsessed with attendance and looking “hip”.
UR,
It’s not so much an actual quota but they do consider the water baptisms they perform an indicator of how many people got saved…not by how many believe the Gospel. There are deep reasons for that, reasons which I did not understand then but do now.
The fact is, every single ministry, church or denomination that water baptizes considers it, at the very least, a sin issue if one neglects or refuses to submit. Most will refuse membership to anyone who will not or has not ever “been baptized.”
Here’s the thing: With every one of them that baptizes converts, IT DOES NOT MATTER if a person says he/she has believed the saving Gospel of grace. IT’S NOT ENOUGH. No…if that person will not submit to the human authority and get wet, they’re told they’re disobeying God. Some are honest enough to say what many really believe: Refuse their baptism? You’re not saved.
I can guarantee you that Southern and independent fundamental Baptists would absolutely doubt my salvation because of my position on water baptism, even though I was once a member in very good standing. And the ONLY thing that’s different is that I now question their adherence to a Messicanic rite God purposed for Israel.
When it’s gotten to that level — when someone believes there’s sin involved in not submitting to them — that’s a false gospel and I don’t care who preaches it.
One last thing.
I have a list of the half-dozen or so reasons baptizing churches say they do it. For example, “To follow the example of Jesus” or “Make a public depiction of a spiritual reality.”
Not one of them stands up to in-context Scriptural scrutiny. If anyone is interested,
grool@maildrop.cc
Excellent grool. Once again you’ve got several points right. Baptism is not required or part of salvation through Christ. Shock! You explained why very well.
Baptism is not harmful in itself, but the abuse, ignorance, corruption, manipulation associated wih the tradition is clearly the problem.
BTW, gentiles believers need to remember Israel is never forgotten or forsaken by God. We must respect and understand biblical history in the correct context.
WOW! I am a Christian, and I don’t know what to say or think about this…re-blogged @ our humble site: https://triggerreset.net/