Water Baptism is NOT from God anymore!

It is the opposite of Faith, of pleasing the LORD GOD Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 1:17...Paul is talking about his general commission here ["do as I do"], not any "gift" or "ritual practice" of the NEW Body of Christ, which didn't exist in Acts 2...that was the "Kingdom church"
(Only Jews were there, still being offered the kingdom by the resurrected Christ), not the "Body of Christ church"
{There was in those days the overlapping of the old & new covenants, which causes a lot of bad doctrine now}.
The Body of Christ Church didn't start until Saul became the Apostle Paul (years after the "Pentecost" of Acts 2)!
Water baptism is a deception from Satan to keep real Christians powerless spectators & not cause him any trouble...like the powerless Christians in the USA today (We are now THE largest mission field...odd, huh?).
The CROSS is the symbol of "death & burial & resurrection", not water baptism;
if you substitute anything for the cross, you lose the power of the cross.
Paul wrote (God thru Paul) "Everything I do (any H.S. christian, too) I do by the power of the cross".

[[Every time the word "baptize" is used in scripture, it means "to be identified with"; it often does NOT mean water]]

Having ANYTHING to do with water baptism makes a real christian almost totally ineffective.
Christ did not die in water, but on the cross, and it is the resurrection power of the cross that gives us our "power" (Christians these last 2,000 years were miraculously with him on the cross when He died, was entombed & rose from death).
Water baptism was an O.T. Jewish religious ceremony for the cleansing of sin...we have Christ's blood now to cleanse us from sin.
Water baptism was under the Jewish religious "law", and scripture says that we are "no longer under the law, but under Grace"...it even says that we are "free from the law", because Christ completed the "law".
In 1 Corinthians 12:13 scripture says that Christians are baptized ("identified") by the Holy Spirit into the Body of Christ, and in Ephesians 4:5 that there is "one baptism"....one, not two---there is spirit-baptism that gets us saved & indwelled; if there was water baptism as well, Eph. 4:5 would say 'two baptisms', but it does not....just "one baptism". You can SEE water baptism, and Christians are to walk by "Faith, not sight" [Hebrews 11:1 "Faith is the conviction of what we hope for and the evidence of things NOT SEEN"].
The Holy Spirit is invisible, so everything of the Holy Spirit in a Christian's life is to be invisible as well, spiritually discerned.
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~~~Christ and John were under the Jewish religious law, hence water baptism & sacrificing of animals [we are not---we are in grace/faith}; they waded out into the Jordan and John sprinkled him.....the Jews "baptised" their houses and sofas, too; they never immersed anything; they sprinkled either blood or water with a hyssop twig, in any ceremony.
If you practive or recommend water baptism then you must practice animal sacrificing and the other 300+ points of the Jewish religious law (the "10 commandments" are just 10 of them), which God set aside 2,000 years ago, because Christ completed the Jewish religious Law~~~
John and Christ waded out into the Jordan and John sprinkled him [then they waded out ("When He came up out of the water"): they had to be in a place where there was a lot of water {Aenon springs-"many waters", the place of the Jordan river} because so many Jews were coming out to have their sins cleansed that a smaller place might become ritually unclean and they could never use it again!
There is no "sprinkling" now either, the Holy Spirit having replaced any water reference; you can't get anything spiritual by practicing anything physical in the new covenant of faith/grace for 'The Body of Christ', of which H.S. indwelled christians are "members" from the neck down.....Christ is the Head.
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We live in times prophesied about where people "will not stand sound doctrine, just wanting their ears tickled...hearing only what they want to hear" (to avoid sacrifice & persecution & enjoy material pursuits), but the above rebuke to the fatal practice of water baptism IS sound doctrine of the Body of Christ!
~~~REMEMBER, you cannot get anything spiritual by doing anything physical....Spiritual brings forth Spiritual~~~
My best to you!