Did Pr. Yang Say You Could Baptize in a Dug-Out Pool? Reviewing the Case Against YM Yang: Part 2

For context behind this posting, please read the first post in this series. 

With that, I'll start posting the analysis that was used as the incontrovertible proof to put Pr. Yang out of the church (in blue italic text) and provide my own thoughts (in black text, following).

YM’s DEVIANT TEACHINGS        By Chin Aun Quek

(2013.10.13 Board of Ministers Meeting, Singapore)

(A) Does Baptism in a dug-out pool have any efficacy?

YM answered to the question whether baptism in a dug-out pool has any efficacy.

This was spoken in 19/5/2013 at a seminar in Kaoshiung, Hebrews 01 (63:16-63:44)(mp3.4.1) (65:10-70:05)(mp3.4.2)[(Summary of  mp3.4.1 and 3.4.2) YM says that during the Cultural Revolution, people were locked up in jail. During that time, they were baptized in dug-out pools. When they were released, some people in the church condemned these people for deviating from the truth, saying this is heresy. YM quoted the incident of Acts 16, when the jailer wished to commit suicide after the earthquake. Paul preached to him, and subsequently, the bible records that the jailer brought them home and Paul baptized them. The assumption YM made is that since the baptism was at night, the city gates would be closed. How then would they have left the city to be baptized? Therefore if we look at the Cultural Revolution and see those who have been baptized in the pool, we should not condemn them and say that they are wrong. Rather, God should be able to accept their baptism. We can take this as an exception rather than the rule, since these churches have gone back to baptism in living water, and we should accept them.

Analysis:

First, the truth is only one. You cannot compromise it because you are in a special situation. You may think that we can change the truth under a special situation, thinking that it doesn’t matter if you conduct baptism in a dug-out pool because God will surely have compassion since you are not sinning willfully and you have not thrown away the truth nor your faith, just that the external environment has made it difficult to obey the truth wholly.  However, God will not be happy with such doings as you have changed the biblical baptism.

Second, if during that time, you really cannot go to the river to conduct baptism, then don’t be baptized. Do not change baptism. In this way, God will have compassion on you since He knows that you insist on the true biblical baptism and do not dare to change the baptism. Baptism is strictly to be done in rivers or seas. We do not compromise this even for those who are severely ill.

Third, how can YM, just for the sake of comforting them, defend their deviation from true biblical baptism? He forces the issue regarding the jailer into this. Luke did not say that Paul went out of the city to be baptized and come back. Although YM says that this is just a reference, he only uses this to support his argument that under special situations, you can waive baptism in a river and can conduct baptism in a cistern.

One who believes in the baptism preached by our church will not explain like YM did. Instead, he will direct those who were once baptized in a cistern to be baptized in the right biblical mode, just like Paul instructed the Ephesians to receive the Lord’s baptism. Although the baptism of John similarly came from God, it was only the baptism of repentance. We should receive the baptism of Jesus.

YM says that up to today, these people still conduct baptism in living water and there are still miracles. This may happen, but it does not mean that in the past, baptism in a cistern was correct.

In 2013, between June and July, I was in Adam Road church conducting the China Members’ Fellowship. There was a sister from China who came to visit her relative. I heard that YM was in China attempting to unite the churches not affiliated with the north or the south. I asked this sister if this was true. She said that she knew this but that the Elder that YM seeks to associate with had already gone against the truth, conducting baptism in a dug-out pool. She asked, why does he still want to unite with them? So I thought even a young girl like her understood this.

First of all I don't know Preacher Chin, but again I have no reason to doubt that he's a devoted man of God and that he conducted his analysis with pure motives and a sincere desire to discern the truth. However, with all due respect, to me much of this analysis epitomizes so much that is wrong with our church today.

By the 1960s the churches in China had been in existence for 50 years, and for almost two decades they'd been driven underground. While we hear some stories here and there about what our brothers and sisters in China had to endure during the communist revolution in China and the Cultural Revolution that followed, remember that most of the stories of what they went through remain untold. Despite the steps that China has taken in recent years to open up, I suspect that even to this day older believers who lived through the persecution do not dare to recount the stories of what they went through as long as government monitors continue to be everywhere looking for signs of dissent.

But it's not hard to imagine the sorts of things they, especially the churches in the North, went through. In a society where all religious belief was punishable by public humiliation, imprisonment, torture, or death, how do you baptize? How do you gather together? How do you find Bibles to give to new believers? How do you preach? How do you pray?

It's easy for us to sit in our comfortable seats in countries like the United States, Singapore, and Taiwan and pass judgment. We can wag our fingers at our brothers and sisters and scold them for disobeying the Truth in the Bible.

But put yourself in their shoes for just one second. If they dared to go out and hold a baptism in public, everyone would have been arrested on the spot. And so what would you have done in that situation?

Remember that some of the underground churches in China at that time had members who traced their spiritual heritage back to the early days of the church, during at a time in our church's history when signs and miracles and the abidance of God were clear every day. Many members were surely filled with the Holy Spirit, and surely under these dire circumstances they would have prayed to God for guidance. 

And maybe, just maybe, the direction from God was that given their extraordinary circumstances, He would accept their baptism even though it didn't follow the letter of the prescribed doctrine. Maybe just as God wouldn't condemn David and his companions for entering the house of God and eating the consecrated bread, God wouldn't condemn these believers who faithfully continued to spread the gospel and converted new believers in the most difficult circumstances, when they held on to their faith despite seeing their families ripped from them and their brothers and sisters carted off to prison camps and to death. 

Preacher Chin suggests here that it would have been better for these believers to not baptize at all instead of baptize in a cistern. But where's the logic in that? In both cases a suggestion is being made to go against the doctrine of baptism—in the latter case the suggestion is made that the members should baptize in water that is not "living water", but in the former case the suggestion is made that the member should not baptize at all! Who is to say that withholding baptism altogether is preferable to baptizing in a cistern?

Ultimately the one question I have for anyone who questions the acts of our church in China under persecution is this. Whose job is it to judge? Is it yours? Is it mine? No, that job belongs to one only, the Lord Jesus Christ.

On the day of judgment, do you really think that someone who received the gospel in an underground church in China and in defiance of the communist government, and at the risk of imprisonment, torture, or worse, repented of their sins, accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into their hearts, made the decision to be baptized, was filled with the promised Holy Spirit, and for the rest of his or her life followed the guidance of the Spirit to become like Christ--would that person be condemned by Jesus Christ because her baptism happened to not have been in living water?

I don't know the answer. And guess what? Neither do you. But I do know one thing. The Lord Jesus Christ I know once said these words: Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. And in the book of James, it says that mercy triumphs over judgment.   

We take it for granted that we will not need to make the same kinds of decisions one day. But whether you live in Singapore, the United States, or Taiwan your religious liberty is something you should not take for granted, especially in the coming age. And if heaven forbid you find one day that the religious liberty your government gives you today is gone—or your government itself is gone--pray that the measure you use to judge will not be used against you. 

Sometimes it feels as if those who are being so defensive about "defending" our Basic Beliefs forget that it's God who they worship, and not the Basic Beliefs. Yes, I personally believe the Basic Beliefs, and in particular the Five Basic Doctrines, were a gift to our church from God. And I believe under normal circumstances, we would do well to follow that which we received from God as obediently and faithfully as possible. And from everything I read above and heard from Pr. Yang himself, he never suggested anything to the contrary. All he did was provide an alternate point of view to a very, very exceptional and isolated situation. Is that truly someone speaking "heresy" and "deviance"?

Ultimately I think questions like this are a waste of everyone's time.  Are you in a situation today where you can't get to living water?

If yes, then get on your knees and pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance. Don’t bother searching the scriptures because you won't find the solution there. Don't bother trying to find precedent in history because you won't find anything there that's relevant to the situation you're in. And whatever revelation God gives you, pray that if you follow it, you or your progeny will not one day be subjected to judgment from people who have never lived a single day in your shoes.

But if no, then you're wasting everyone's time by asking hypothetical questions like this. What's been done in the past is past, and it's in God's hands. If there is no other outcome than to provide a little love and comfort to our fellow brothers and sisters whose fathers went through a fiery ordeal, what in the world is the harm in that? And if the same church that once baptized members in cisterns is once again baptizing in living water today, then why vilify them? Praise God with them.