Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.
Abraham Verghese
When Paul was exhorted to be baptized and to wash away his sins, there was an evident allusion to the use of water in the ordinance of baptism, and had there been no application of water on which to ground such an allusion, we may be certain that we should never have heard of washing away sins in baptism.
Adoniram Judson
Christ commands those who believe to be baptized. Pedobaptists adopt a system which tends to preclude the baptism of believers. They baptize the involuntary infant and deprive him of the privilege of ever professing his faith in the appointed way. If this system were universally adopted, it would banish believers' baptism out of the world.
We should naturally expect that the baptism of infants, if enjoined at all, would have been enjoined in the law which instituted the ordinance of Christian baptism. But this law is silent on the subject of infants.
You will readily believe me when I say that on leaving my country, I little imagined that I should ever become a Baptist. I had not indeed candidly examined the subject of baptism, but I had strong prejudices against the sect, that is everywhere spoken against.
I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own.
Arthur Rimbaud
Religion needs a baptism of horse sense.
Billy Sunday
One of the most fun things for me, as a writer, is when readers ask questions like, 'Oh, I noticed that you have a lot of water and baptism imagery in your book. Did you do that on purpose?'
Celeste Ng
The spirit of revelation is available to every person who receives by proper priesthood authority the saving ordinances of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost - and who is acting in faith to fulfill the priesthood injunction to 'receive the Holy Ghost.'
David A. Bednar
The Holy Ghost is manifested to men and women on the earth both as the power and as the gift of the Holy Ghost. The power can come upon a person before baptism; it is the convincing witness that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer.
The saving ordinance of baptism must be administered by one who has proper authority from God.
That's the dirty little secret of Mormon growth. Lots of baptisms don't necessarily translate into long-term membership.
David Campbell
In Italy, everybody buys silver for every special occasion. Baptisms, weddings, you get silver.
Debi Mazar
I've had a lot of baptism by fire.
Donna Murphy
In the Mexican culture, we never miss a baptism, a birthday, a baby shower, a wedding shower, a wedding. You must show up. Otherwise, you'll be in big trouble.
Eva Longoria
Besides the physical ordinance of baptism and the laying on of hands, one must be spiritually born again to gain exaltation and eternal life.
Ezra Taft Benson
I was raised Catholic. Not just a little bit Catholic, like my wife, Catherine. When she was young, many Catholics in France already barely went to church, except for the big three: baptism, marriage, and funeral. And only the middle one was by choice.
Frans de Waal
But by virtue of our baptism, Peter Akinola and I are brothers in Christ and one day we are going to be in heaven together, so we might as well learn to get along here because we will have to get along there. God won't have it any other way.
Gene Robinson
Jesus said, 'Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' There are no exceptions. Baptism is a necessary ordinance.
Gordon B. Hinckley
Any investigator worthy of baptism becomes a convert worthy of saving.
A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.
The feeling of longing for home is born into us. That wonderful dream cannot become real without great faith - enough for the Holy Ghost to lead us to repentance, baptism, and the making and keeping of sacred covenants with God. This faith requires enduring bravely the trials of mortal life.
I'm not cross about the idea of baptism; I just think the idea that when a child is born it is inherently sinful and carries sin and needs to be cleaned in order for it to be all right and all good with its creator, I just think that's an absurd notion.
Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.
A lot of the futuristic space stuff seemed to me to be a very cool form of science-fiction, so that was my first real baptism in the genre.
Christ hath instituted Baptism as a bath, to wash away the anger, and hath put into us the Noble Stone, viz. the water of eternal life, for an earnest-penny, so that instantly in our childhood we might be able to escape the wrath.
I remember the day of my baptism very vividly. I was baptized in the baptismal font in the Tabernacle on Temple Square. Those who were being baptized put on white coveralls, and one by one were gently taken down the steps into the water.
The full benefit of forgiveness of sin through the Savior's Atonement begins with repentance and baptism and then expands upon receiving the Holy Ghost.
I have always found the baptism of Jesus, with a dove descending and voice from Heaven, one of the great moments in the Jesus story. This is where Jesus hears the deep call from God.
The gift of the Holy Ghost, which is the right to receive the Holy Ghost as a constant companion, is obtained only upon condition of faith in Christ, repentance, baptism by immersion, and the laying on of hands by authorized servants endowed with the Melchizedek Priesthood.
Fascism wants Baptism coast to coast.
I know my own father's business was very dependent on the goodwill and business and trade from people in northern Mexico. We knew their families and went to their weddings and baptisms and balls and picnics, and we had a great time with them.
As however the ancients say that in case of necessity any Christian lay person can administer the sacrament of Baptism, so Luther says the same thing about absolution in case of necessity, where no priest is present.
In all religions, the quickening spirit has been symbolically represented as a bird. At the baptism, when Jesus' body was in the water, the Spirit of Christ descended into it as a dove.
Baptism is not only a sacrament of our union with Christ; it is also a sacrament of our communion as the body of Christ.
Every audition, I walk out the door and throw the sides away immediately. You did it, now go home. And to me, that's kind of a baptism. If they call you, they call you. And if they don't, it's fine.
It was like baptism by fire. There was no school for studying acting. You just have to take it upon yourself to learn from your peers. It's about opening your eyes, listening, and watching.
Fiction is a very powerful tool for teaching history. The Philippines was the first Iraq, the first Vietnam, the first Afghanistan, in the sense that it was the United States' initial or baptismal experience in nation-building.
At Baptism, I received grace - that quality that makes me share in the very nature of God.
When my children were born, I didn't have them baptized because I felt baptism was about erasing Original Sin - something the Church said children got from their mother - and I absolutely refused to believe women carry Original Sin.
Thomas Pynchon surely inaugurated or crystallized a new genre in 1963 when he published 'V.' The seriocomic mystery or thriller with one foot set in the present and one in various historical eras received its postmodern baptism from Pynchon.
I hope not in works. I hope not in ethics. I hope not in baptisms or church membership. I hope in Christ alone.
Thomas More rarely discussed his siblings, and two of them are never mentioned by him. It is likely that they were part of that infant mortality which had provoked such concern for early baptism.
The Church is not self-made, it was created by God and is continuously formed by Him. This finds expression in the Sacraments, above all in that of Baptism: I enter into the Church not by a bureaucratic act, but with the help of this Sacrament.
I had a baptism of fire when I cooked in the Little Paris Kitchen.
The Lord will bless us with more baptisms if you make sure the ones you have are going to keep their commitments. The Lord will not prepare more people for baptism if we are not converting the ones we have.
As we were baptized, so we profess our belief. As we profess our belief, so also we offer praise. As then baptism has been given us by the Savior, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, so, in accordance with our baptism, we make the confession of the creed, and our doxology in accordance with our creed.
All of us who desire the kingdom of God are, by the Lord's decree, under an equal and rigorous necessity of seeking after the grace of Baptism.
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
If you accept the belief that baptism incorporates us in the mystical body of Christ, into the divine DNA, then you might say that the Holy Spirit is present in each of us, and thus we have the capacity for the fullness of redemption, of transformation.
