A Bible History of Baptism

Such are the most pertinent Scriptures to which I find reference made, to prove that, by fire, John meant, the Holy Spirit, or his gracious influences. That they wholly fail to establish the point, is evident; and a further independent examination induces the conviction that no others more pertinent are to be found.

4. A comparison of the four evangelists on the language of the baptist strongly confirms the interpretation here maintained. Mark and John, in giving account of the baptist’s preaching, direct attention more particularly to the gospel aspect of his mission; as he was the herald of the atoning Lamb of God. Neither of them, therefore, mentions his impressive warnings to the Pharisees and Sadducees, respecting the trees cast into the fire and the threshing floor purged by burning. And, while they both record the testimony of John concerning Jesus, as he that should baptize with the Holy Ghost, they are both silent as to the baptism of fire. (Mark i, 8; John i, 33.) But Matthew and Luke enter more into the sterner aspects of John’s office, as coming in the spirit and power of Elias, to announce judgment as well as mercy. They both, therefore, report his words of warning to a generation of vipers, words which the others omit. They both tell of the axe laid to the roots of the trees, and the threshing floor purged with fire; and both of them interpose between these passages the announcement of the two baptisms, “with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.” The omissions of Mark and John, and the harmony of Matthew and Luke show that the baptism of fire belonged to the judicial and avenging aspect of Christ’s mission, as emphasized by the latter evangelists, but only lightly touched by the others.

5. The inseparable relation of these two functions of Christ’s office as the enthroned Son of man is certified in all the Scriptures. It is prominent in those which had immediate relation to the coming of John, and the purposes of his ministry. We have seen this, as to the first announcement made of the Angel of the covenant, to Israel at Sinai. On the one hand, he was described as the Guide and Deliverer, who should bring them into the promised land. On the other, they were warned to “Beware of him… Provoke him not; for he will not pardon.” – Ex. xxiii, 20, 21. In the second Psalm, the terrors of the Son are almost exclusively signalized, in warning to the rebellious nations. “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, O ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.” Especially does Malachi emphasize Christ’s two contrasted functions. A careful examination of the third and fourth chapters of that prophecy, particularly the latter, will satisfy the intelligent reader that not only do they contain John’s commission, as the forerunner of Christ, but give the keynote and substance of his preaching. He is there announced as the Lord’s herald, to go before the face of the Messenger of the covenant, who is described as coming to execute two opposite but inseparable functions. On the one hand, he is to be the refiner and purifier of the sons of Levi; on the other, a swift witness and avenger against the wicked. (Mal. iii, 2-5.) Particularly did John have in his mind the fourth chapter, the first verses of which are thus given in the admirable translation of Dr. T. V. Moore. “For behold! the day comes! burning like a furnace! and all the proud, and all the doers of evil are chaff! and the day that comes burns them, saith Jehovah of hosts, who will not leave them root nor branch. And then shall rise on you the sun of righteousness, and healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth and leap as calves of the stall. And ye shall trample down the ungodly; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet, in the day which I make, saith Jehovah of hosts.”82 The “stubble” of Malachi and the “chaff” of John refer to the same thing. The threshing floor was a spot in the field which was beaten hard and smooth. The grain was threshed by the treading of cattle, or by dragging over it “a sharp threshing instrument with teeth.” The process of winnowing with the fan separated the grain into one heap, and the broken straw or “stubble” and “chaff” into another. To clear the floor, the latter were burned. From this custom was derived the vividness and beauty of the prophet’s imagery. He represents the wicked as thus separated and consumed, and the righteous, like calves let forth from the stalls in the brightness of the morning, skipping over the fields where the threshing floor lay, and thus treading among and trampling under foot the ashes of the wicked. Compare Rev. vi, 10; xi, 18; xv, 3, 4. It was with a view to the portentous character of the day thus described, that Malachi announces the commission of John to preach repentance to Israel. “Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of that great and dreadful day of the Lord.” From the prophecy, which sets forth in such vivid colors, the tremendous issues depending on his ministry, John derived the imagery of his own warning, which is, in fact, a running paraphrase of Malachi.

“Behold,” says Malachi, “the day cometh.” “It is now immediately at hand,” says John. “It shall burn as an oven,” says the prophet, “and all the proud and all that do wickedly … the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.” John responds: “The axe is laid at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.” Says Malachi, “All the proud and all that do wickedly shall be chaff, and the day that cometh shall burn them up.” John repeats and develops the figure. “Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Thus thoroughly are the thought and language of John imbued with the conceptions and imagery of the prophet, concerning “that great and dreadful day of the Lord,” the description of which derives all its vividness and terror from the manifest and accepted meaning of fire, as an intense figure of God’s consuming wrath. In the presence of these facts, the supposition is at once incredible and revolting that, into the very midst of the prophet’s tremendous portraiture of that fiery day, with the awe and dread of which he had so successfully striven to fill the imaginations and the hearts of his hearers, – John should have injected, abruptly, and without the shadow of explanation or reason, a phrase, in which the same figure is employed in a sense wholly foreign to that in which it is used by Malachi, – foreign to its ordinary meaning in the Scriptures, and to the whole spirit and tenor of the connection alike of the prophet, and of the baptist.

The words of John are, in themselves incapable of being forced into coincidence of meaning. “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” Here are two distinct affirmations connected by the copulative, “and.” The latter, uttered through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, purports, upon the face of it, to be additional to the former. And the more critically it is examined, the more thoroughly it will be found to vindicate that character. It can not be a mere repetition. It can not be explained as interpreting the first clause. What then does it mean, but to announce a baptism of fire, in addition to the baptism of the Holy Ghost? – a baptism of justice and wrath, as well as one of renewing and grace?

Appeal is sometimes made to phraseology employed by the Lord Jesus, in his interview with Nicodemus, as being similar in construction. – “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he can not enter into the kingdom of God.” – John iii, 5. But the resemblance disappears, upon a moment’s examination. With Nicodemus, our Savior first employs the ritual figure of water, which was or should have been familiar to the Jewish ruler. But then, to avoid the possibility of mistake on a point so vital, he explains himself literally by naming the Holy Spirit, of whom water was the symbol. But, in the words of the baptist, the Spirit is first named, in literal terms, which neither needed explanation, nor could be made clearer by it. But the second clause is a supposed explanation of that which needs none; an explanation less intelligible than the words to be explained, – an illustration by a figure, used in a sense directly the reverse of its familiar meaning in the Scriptures, the meaning in which it is used in the same immediate connection, both before and after the clause in question, – an illustration, therefore, at once obscure and embarrassing, shedding no ray of light upon the subject, but involving it in darkness, and turning to weakness, not to say, platitude, the stern energy of the baptist’s warning cry. “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with his gracious influences.”

Whilst the interpretation in question is without precedent or authority in the Scriptures, the arguments in its behalf are of no appreciable force. First, it is said to be “harsh” to understand the baptism of fire to mean Christ’s judicial administration as toward the wicked. As I must confess myself unable to understand the meaning and force of this argument, if argument it be, I leave it without note or comment. Another plea assumes the form of assertion that “the idea of baptism does not admit of any reference to punishment.”83

It may be allowed that baptizo would not admit of such interpretation, if found alone and disconnected from any modifying or explanatory word or expression. But, that, in such connection and with such modifying words and statements as occur in the text of John, it can not be so interpreted, is by no means self-evident, and is supported by no sufficient or probable argument. The fact has already been indicated that the Hellenistic use of the word was predicated upon its employment among the Greeks to express a condition changed by a pervasive and controlling influence. It remains to be proved that the Jews had entirely forgotten this, which was to them the radical meaning of the word; so that, in their vocabulary, it could never have been used in that sense. In fact, however, a remarkable proof remains to us that the reverse of this is the truth. Says Isaiah, the prophet, – “My heart panted; fearfulness affrighted me: the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me. – Isa. xxi, 4. Alexander, with the later Germans, understands this as a personification of Belshazzar, the king of Babylon, on that night when the handwriting on the wall proclaimed his judgment and doom. This, however, is unessential to the present purpose. Whether the prophet spoke of himself or of some other man, the fact of present interest is, that in the Septuagint Greek, the phrase, “Fearfulness affrighted me,” is rendered, “My iniquity baptizes me.” By this language, the Jewish translators express the agonies of remorse seizing and controlling the speaker, and turning the pleasure of the night into fear. Thus he was baptized, by sudden terrors by which he was controlled and brought into a new state of anguish and despair. So will the judgment of the final day seize upon the wicked and control and bring them into a like new condition by the baptism of fire.

Moreover, the connection in which John uses the expression in question, is such as to constitute abundant ground for the vindication of his language, even though baptism were restricted to the sense of purification. The purpose of Christ’s mission, as set forth by John, was, to “thoroughly purge his floor;” by “his floor,” meaning, primarily the people and land of Israel; but, in its ultimate intent, the world and the universe. In order to accomplish this object, not only must the wheat be garnered, but the chaff must be burned. And, as washing with water is none the less a purifying, because it does not cleanse or transform the filthiness, itself, but only removes it, – so, none the less is the baptism of fire a baptism, because it does not cleanse, but punishes the wicked. In so doing, it will purge the race, and cleanse the world, which it inhabits. That the baptism with the Holy Ghost is a real baptism, and that to it in the strictest and most peculiar sense the word belongs, can not be denied. But in that baptism we see the separating of the righteous and the wicked. It is as much the exclusion of the latter as it is the reception of the former. If the one is taken, it means, separation; it means that the other is left. Neither in conception nor in realization, is it possible to separate these two things, nor to eliminate the rejection and punishment of the wicked from that function by which the righteous are called and saved. By both alike, and by the one as much as the other, is the commission of the great Baptizer fulfilled and his floor purged.

Not without a significant bearing upon the present question is the language in which the Lord Jesus himself speaks of the discrimination which he is to exercise and the judgments which he is to inflict in the exercise of his royal authority. “I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I if it be already kindled?.. Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay, but rather division.” – Luke xii, 49, 51. That fire, here, is no symbol of grace, is manifest; as it is, also, that the theme of Malachi and John is the subject of these words of Jesus. Nor is the fact to be forgotten that, in the Levitical system, fire was distinctly recognized, along with water, as a purifying element. See Num. xxxi, 10; and compare Isa. xlviii, 10, and Mal. iii, 2, 3.

From all this it is evident that the baptism of fire is the exercise by the Lord Jesus of his judicial function, in the separation and punishment of the wicked.

Whilst it may be admitted that no absolute conclusion concerning ritual baptism, is to be deduced from the facts set forth in the Scriptures, as to the manner of this baptism, yet are they not unworthy of consideration as one element in the mass of evidence. (1.) The diluvial purgation of the world, in the days of Noah, was by means of rain. “The fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened; and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” – Gen. vii, 11, 12. (2.) Sodom and Gomorrah suffered a destruction, typical in its intent, and “are set forth for an example suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” – Jude 7, and 2 Pet. ii, 6. Its manner is thus recorded. “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” – Gen. xix, 24. (3.) The final destruction of the wicked is predicted under the same form. “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.” – Psa. xi, 6. (4.) More than thirty times the figure of outpouring is used in the Scriptures to indicate the infliction of God’s wrath. It is a pouring out, of wrath, of indignation, of vengeance, of anger and fury. Thus, in the Revelation, the seven last plagues are inflicted by the outpouring of cups or bowls (phialas) of wrath from heaven upon the earth. (Rev. xvi.) (5.) The final destruction of Gog and Magog, is described as being by fire which “came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.” – Rev. xx, 9.

The analogy of all these facts and expressions with those concerning the baptism of the Spirit, as designed to indicate the exaltation of the Son of Man, and point to his throne as the source of the indignation poured out, is apparent. On the other hand, the fact is to be observed, that the eternal state of those wicked is represented under the figure of dwelling in the lake of fire, – a figure which corresponds with the primary classic meaning of baptizo, in that there is no resurrection.