1/5/19

Acts 16: 30-34

³⁰ Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” ³¹ And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” ³² And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. ³³ And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. ³⁴ Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.

 This account of the conversion of a heathen and his baptism presents a difficult problem of immersion for those who support this mode exclusively.

There are three principal difficulties. The first is where does sufficient water to immerse come from? Secondly what do you do with the words "he was baptized at once" or immediately? Thirdly how do you answer the impossibility of the jailer taking Paul and Silas and possibly others out of the jail to the river? He would have to take not only Paul and whoever was with him, but his household also. The removal of these men from the prison cannot be defended.

Therefore there are two alternatives. One is that there was a pool of some sort in this prison of sufficient area and depth to immerse. The attempt to make this argument, (a cistern, a bath, a pool of some description) is so unbelievable almost to be comical. cf A.T. Robertson  on Acts 16.

The other is that they were baptized by effusion. The theologian and Greek scholar, Dr. Robert Reymond told me, “he washed their wounds and Paul baptized them with the same water."