D. Bercot.
What the Early Christians Believed About Believer’s Baptism
The Catholics, Orthodox and other churches make the claim that infant baptism was the normal practice of the early Christians. In this three-audio message set, Bercot demonstrates that believer’s baptism was the normative practice of the early Christians until the mid-third century. In fact, the evidence indicates it was still the predominant practice until the fifth century.
Three 60 minute audio messages
Description
D. Bercot.
What the Early Christians Believed About Believer’s Baptism
The Catholics, Orthodox and other churches make the claim that infant baptism was the normal practice of the early Christians. In this three-audio message set, Bercot demonstrates that believer’s baptism was the normative practice of the early Christians until the mid-third century. In fact, the evidence indicates it was still the predominant practice until the fifth century.
Bercot begins this series of messages with the baptismal instructions of Jesus and then looks at every baptism described in the Book of Acts. He demonstrates that these were all believer’s baptisms. He then looks at all the passages of Scripture that discuss the meaning of baptism—nearly all of which assume believer’s baptism.
Bercot then quotes from the primary writers of the second century and demonstrates that there is no concrete evidence of infant baptism in the second century. In fact, the universal belief in the 2nd century was that infants and children are innocent, and therefore do not need baptism.
Bercot then looks at the quotations from the 3rd century that are commonly brought forth by infant baptizers. He shows that nearly all of these quotes are talking about baptism of young children—not infants. In fact, there is only one quotation in all the pre-Nicene writings that specifically talks about infant baptism, and this is a quote from Cyprian in A.D. 250.
As Bercot shows, the evidence indicates that believer’s baptism was still the standard practice throughout the 4th century. It was not until the 5th century, when Augustine declared that all unbaptized infants are condemned to hell that infant baptism became the normative practice, and it was eventually mandated by the state church. (The 3 audio message set does not contain the message “Bercot VS Bercot”.)
Three 60 minute audio messages
Three Audio CD $13.95
Three Digital Downloads $11.95
Reviews
In this new CD set “What the Early Christians Believed About Believer’s Baptism,” brother David Bercot hits another one out of the ball park. In this message, he focuses less on the original purpose of baptism (which he has done in a prior message) and more on who was originally considered to be the proper recipient of baptism. He thoroughly examines a great deal of the relevant evidence in these messages and comes to the most logical conclusion.
Although I probably need to listen to these messages one more time to be sure of this, I don’t recall brother David mentioning the appeal that pedobaptists often make to Polycarp.
For those who might be interested in this issue, supporters of infant baptism usually give Polycarp’s life span as being from 69-155 A.D., and then quote from The Martyrdom of Polycarp (chapter 9) where Polycarp says “Eighty and six years have I served Him [Christ]”—and then they conclude that Polycarp was baptized in 69 A.D. (as an infant) and was killed in 155, when he was 86 years old. But Polycarp’s lifespan and age of death is debated. Some scholars say that he was born c. 65 and that he died c. 167 (and if they are correct, this would mean that he could have been around 102 years old at his death). After all, Polycarp is not necessarily giving his current age in The Martyrdom of Polycarp, he is only saying how long he has been serving Christ. No record has been found that states exactly what age Polycarp was when he was baptized. But even if Polycarp was dating his period of serving Christ from the day of his baptism, if the evidence contained in a “new” ancient text referred to as “The Harris Fragments” is accurate, then it is possible he was baptized when he was 18 years old–because in the Harris Fragments, it is stated that Polycarp was 104 years old at the time of his death. For the evidence of Polycarp’s age of death contained in the Harris Fragments, see the book by Frederick W. Weidmann, Polycarp & John: The Harris Fragments and Their Challenge to the Literary Traditions (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), 44, 84.
See also different:
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Review 3 Audio Set: What the Early Christians Believed About Believer’s Baptism – New!.