Raf

I'm not sure that's true, Oakspear. Marks, yes or no, no verse quotes, no long explanations, etc. If a person truly believes Christ and has made him Lord, yet for some reason chooses not to be baptized (say, to your way of thinking, he was wrongly taught), yet he witnesses, wins others to Christ, prays, believes, etc... is he saved?

Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doodoo doo doo.... Hungry Like The Wolf Duran Duran ==== "Where do we go from here? This isn't where we intended to be."

Oh come on? This is a genuinely hard one. I haven't the slightest idea. Oliver & Co.?

WE ARE OUT OF THE CONE!

Oh, and Moaning Myrtle is a ho-ho-ho! Merry Christmas!

Ah, it's pushing south. Much better for West Palm Beach, and pretty dang good for us here is Fort Lauderdale, too.

Good points and bad points. On the bad side, Hermione seemed overly stressed through the whole movie, and the surprise of the ending is telegraphed so often that you wonder why they even bothered to keep it a secret. Another bad point is that we know Ron and Hermione have a thing for each other, but she has so much more chemistry with Harry that you wonder if the actors haven't started something on the side. Finally, the very, very end is so flat you could write on it. I really thought the three main characters were going to start singing We Go Together. On the good side: Daniel Radcliffe does an outstanding job. I mean outstanding. I mean outstanding. The rest of the cast is terrific, too, particularly Jason Isaacs, the Weasley twins and the boy who plays Neville Longbottom. Mad Eye Moody is a hoot, and Alan Rickman has one scene in particular that he plays so well he'll need to use extra floss to get the scenery out of his teeth. And the return from to the stadium at the end of the tournament simply could not have been played better. Plenty of tears in the audience at that one, especially among the younguns. This is really the part of the series where people start objecting to these being called children's books. These are coming of age books, and that scene puts a definite nail in the coffin of Harry Potter as a children's book series. In some ways, Peter Jackson could have directed this movie. I mean, parts of it were that good.

You know you live in Florida when: You're taking a word association test, and the therapist says "cone," and you DON'T say "ice cream."

A few seconds. As I said, I stole it off the other site. :)

Right now the prediction is tropical storm strength, at most, when it rolls through.

Thanksgiving should be fine.

Oh joy, lookie there. Coming right for us. Hooray!

I'm stealing this one...

Umm, okay, find the honest source that says the Patrick Henry quote is accurate. You note that Snopes has "an agenda" (a laughable assertion clearly coming from someone who doesn't read Snopes). Yet you fail to note that Snopes didn't even make that statement, they are quoting another source, historian David Barton. I know, Amazon.com's "about the author" has an agenda, as does David Barton. Unfortunately for your point, David Barton's agenda would lead him to verify the Patrick Henry misquotation, not to dismiss it. That he dismissed it is telling. That you accept it in the absence of evidence while slandering the source is equally telling.

So, Mark C, how about joining me and Mark O. for a "we're not going to convince each other" adult beverage?

Like this: it is not necessary for salvation, which was paid for by his blood, not by your actions. But if you're going to profess him as Lord, then you should do the things he asks. Like baptism, like witnessing, like beating a dead horse, like hitting your head against a wall... None of those things save you, but you do them because they're his commands.

Mark, I said I did it to demonstrate my faith. Had I not done it, I still would have had that faith, and I still would have been saved. I have demonstrated my faith in many ways over the years. Recently, I demonstrated it by getting baptized. If YOU think I was not saved until Sept. of this year, that's very nice. But it is not true. I was saved years ago, praise God, by the work of Christ on the cross, not by the work of mine on Pompano Beach.

We've already gone over that. The Romans Peter witnessed to were saved before they were water baptized. The subsequent baptism in that case was normal, agreed. Expected, agreed. But they were not saved "pending subsequent water baptism." They were saved. They were filled with the holy spirit. And they were not water baptized. It is therefore possible. That's why I did it. But I was saved long before that.

Expected, yes. Normal, yes. Necessary, clearly not.

Woohoo!

Belle, We are not in agreement on that issue. We agree that it was promoted, condoned, practiced, etc.

==== Mark, it's clear we're not going to persuade each other. Care to move on to something else?

Because Paul was not sent to baptize! The immediate context is entirely in keeping with the remote context. Your shock is utterly misplaced. The fact that Christ sent him not to baptize explains why he did not baptize so many of these people. People were using "who baptized whom" as evidence of some kind of greater spirituality, and Paul is telling them that the person performing the baptism is of no importance. Why? He wasn't even SENT to baptize! They were putting the emphasis on the physical, the carnal, rather than the Christ, who performed baptisms on none of these people. He was putting the focus back on Christ and taking it away from the ritual.

Paul writes, "Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel." Now, if baptism is sooooo integral to the salvation experience that one cannot be saved without it, then Christ DID send Paul to baptize. Else, what good would preaching the gospel do without the subsequent required baptism? Ah, but Paul did perform water baptisms. He just seems to have put it in its proper place: a good outward expression of inner faith, but not a salvation experience in and of itself. It's by grace we are saved through faith. See it? Not of works, lest any man should boast. What meaning could these words have? If someone has faith, he will do what God asks of him, but it is not the doing that leads to salvation: it is the FAITH. Water is no more necessary for salvation than hyssop. Thank you for proving my point. The water has ALWAYS been symbolic of what was taking place within.