BAPTISM: RETURN TO FUNDAMENTALS.

Since to the Baptism are assigned the rebirth and the beginning of a new life, it would be prudent to review some of the fundamental truths of faith upon which this new life is to be built.
 
Man was created as a receptacle of life from God, and nothing more than a receptacle!
God endowed this receptacle with two faculties by which it operates. These are the Freedom of Choice and Rationality, which God has given to mankind and never takes away. Thou, these are two faculties; nevertheless, they must function in man as one. For what is freedom without rationality? It is simply an ability to choose without knowing what and how. Or what is rationality without freedom of choice? It's like knowing what is the right thing to do without an ability to do it. These two faculties enable man to be filled with Divine good and truth by God through Heaven.

However, the state of being of the modern man is complicated by the fact that he/she is born into evil, making the receptacle that he/she is from birth, already filled from Hell, and not from Heaven. The vessel full of the dirty water cannot receive the clean water, for it is full.

Therefore in general, and particularly in Christianity, the Baptism was instituted as a rite for the starting point of the rebirth (born again). This is not to be understood that to be baptized is the same as to be reborn (regenerated) by God. Baptism, as a ritual, is a procedure symbolizing beginning of journey of emptying out one's receptacle of all of the inherited and later added on evil impurities for the purpose of making the receptacle, which one is, clean again; as if transparent. Only then the Lord could fill the receptacle with Divine, from and by Himself, and thus, regenerate.

Every one understands that from the house unclean, nothing clean could come out. So, in order to clean the house, the receptacle, one looks for the dirt to be taken out, as well as for the dirty areas to be washed. So, through Baptism, one looks within one's soul for all evils, compiles the list of one's sins before God and runs away from them, as if by oneself (it is, of course, by the Lord's power), looking to the Lord our God for help through out the entire process of cleansing.

You may send us questions by filling in the form below: