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Reformed.Faithweb.com

Today, it seems that all of the evangelical church scene has adopted the adult-believers-only-baptist position with regards the sacrament of baptism commanded by our Lord. When people say that they believe in baptising infants, indeed new-born babies, members of these adult-believers-only-baptist churches look at them horrified, saying that they are Romanising, and going back to the Dark Ages when all children were "done" out of blind superstition, just as the Roman Catholic and high churches still do today. Indeed, it is true that there are plenty of churches where splashing infants is no more than blind superstition, and all and sundry are allowed to bring their infants to undergo this empty ceremony. It must be said that these are very wrong in their views on the sacrament of baptism. But we must also criticise adult-believers-only-baptist churches when they leave out the little children from becoming members at all (despite Christ's words in Matthew 19:14!), and have only an elete group in membership, namely only those who can all articulate some kind of "born-again" experience.

Many people quite happily have fellowship with adult-believers-only-baptists, thinking that the differences that separate them are so small that they are not worth bothering about. Surely it is only a difference of opinion about an outward visible ceremony, and, after all, "it's the heart that counts!" However, when one really comes to look in detail at the views of adult-believers-only-baptists, one then realises that the extent of the differences are far greater than is at first imagined. The doctrine of baptism leads on to the doctrine of the church which in turn leads on to the doctrine of salvation itself. Nothing could be more important and vital than that. Therefore it is imperative that we see the adult-believers-only-baptist view for what it really is, before we get embroiled in false doctrine which will lead us astray from the strait and narrow way that leadeth unto life (Matthew 7:14).

Children are excluded from church membership.

Firstly, the most obvious problem with adult-believers-only-baptists is that their children are excluded from membership of the visible church. Instead of baptising them they are "dedicated" in an extra-biblical service which has no scriptural warrant. Children have always been in the visible church. God has always promoted the procreation of the human race ever since Adam and Eve's day (Genesis 1:28). The command did not change with the fall, as God repeated it to Noah after the flood (Genesis 9:1,7), yes, this is still the case even despite the fact that "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21). "Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward" (Psalm 127:3).

The adult-believers-only-baptist position has very great difficulty in finding any incentive to procreate at all, as God has commanded us to do. Many of them must see all the evil in the world and lose all desire to bring children into this world, especially as there is no guarantee of them being saved from this evil anyway. Indeed, how can the adult-believers-only-baptist treat his children with love and respect if there is no truth in the idea that, ordinarily, God chooses his people from amongst the generations of his visible church? All children of adult-believers-only-baptists must, in their theology, be treated as "little heathens" and urged to "come to Christ" from the earliest age. It is not surprising therefore that most of them do profess some sort of "conversion experience" at an early age either because of peer-pressure from their friends at church or because of a desire to please their parents who are always badgering them to be converted. Such pressure is most assuredly wrong.

But is it not true that all our children come into the world as totally depraved people in need of regeneration? Of course it is. However, it is totally wrong to try to force them into having some sort of "conversion experience," and it is also wrong to not teach them the truths about Christ until they appear to have had a "saving change" in their hearts. Before this "conversion experience," adult-believers-only-baptists spend all their time evangelising their children, urging them to attain this "conversion experience" (which they cannot make themselves have anyway - did any of us have a choice in whether we were born or not? So it is with the new birth), rather than going through the ongoing process of teaching them doctrine from the catechism and building them up in the truth. This sort of approach is "boring" to the natural man, and not exciting enough for the adult-believers-only-baptist. However, it does pay off in the long term, as if, by God's grace, the children are brought to faith later on, then they will be eternally grateful for the good teaching they had when they were young. But adult-believers-only-baptists think it is a waste of time teaching them anything doctrinal until they have had their "conversion experience."

As children are not allowed to be members, of adult-believers-only-baptist churches, they must feel quite left out. Israel of old (which, despite what adult-believers-only-baptists think, was the "church in the wilderness" (Acts 7:38)) always had time for their children. The whole family was set apart for an holy use, not just those who could articulate a profession of faith. God gave his promises to believers and their seed (Genesis 17:7). The adult-believers-only-baptists would say that this applied only to the nation of Israel at the time. Again this is the wrong view of the church which clouds their views. Scripture constantly talks of the promise to the seed of believers. Of course this does not mean all of them will be saved unto eternal life, Romans 9:6 tells us that not all Israel are of Israel, also in v.13, God says that "Jacob have I loved but Esau have I hated." But the promise remains that God will ordinarily select his chosen elect people from within the lines of the visible church of believers. Therefore it is vital that the children see that, although they are not necessarily all regenerate, and this fact must always be taught them, yet they are federally "holy," or "set apart" from other children and should be treated as such.

This does not mean that we should treat them as presumed regenerate until it becomes obvious that they are not. This is another criticism that adult-believers-only-baptists hurl when they see children being baptised. Rather, they should be taught the truth, in full, and it should be made clear to them in the ongoing work of the church what their position really is in it.

Wrong doctrine of the church.

Adult-believers-only-baptist churches by definition have a completely wrong view of the church as an institution. They would believe, quite rightly, that only God's elect are members of the one true church that is going to be saved by God unto eternal life. This is right. But the adult-believers-only-baptists then go on to assume that these elect are the only people eligible for membership in a visible instituted church. This is the error. They would examine all persons requesting membership to see if they are indeed one of the elect or not. This is a terrible thing to do. Scripture shows us clearly that no-one can discern who the elect are. It is not up to us to do so. God has revealed that there are an elect out there, but he has not shown us who they are, that is one of the secret things of God (Deuteronomy 29:29). Therefore rather than examining all prospective church members to see if they are in the faith (and this is usually done by trying to find out if they have had some kind of religious "experience" or not), the true visible church must, in all conscience, accept all persons into the church on profession of faith, even if that faith turns out to be a hypocritical one. The only exception to this of course is if that person is continually living an openly profligate life, and shows no sign of repenting of it. This would be outward proof of unbelief.

So, rather than the elders spending all their time examining people to see if they have had some sort of religious experience, they should rather be spending their time in disciplining members who show by their actions they are not believers, by overtly living sinful lives and not showing any kind of repentance for it. This is the way to keep the visible church pure, namely to purge those who show themselves not to be true believers out of the church, rather than to stop people from coming into the church in the first place. This latter action is wrong, because firstly, it could stop many people who do have true faith, but cannot express it very clearly to the adequacy that the elders would like, from getting membership in the visible church. Secondly, it makes those who are inside the visible church rest on the fact that they "made it" into the church. This would hinder them from then making much of an effort to giving diligence to make their calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10). So many people in adult-believers-only-baptist churches don't care about the things of God at all, and just sit back and live very worldly lives knowing that they have been approved of by the church, that they have been "born-again," and that they are going to heaven anyway, so why bother exerting oneself unduly any further?

The adult-believers-only-baptists would argue that it is the paedo-baptists that are allowing all the unbelievers into the church and ruining it, but the paedo-baptist must stand firm and say it is the lack of discipline in all the churches that has allowed unbelievers not only to stay in the churches, but to reach the highest levels of authority in them.

As has been pointed out already, because it has not been given to any of us to be able to discern who the elect are, then we must accept people into the church on profession of faith, so long as they have an outwardly upright walk in life. All these we must give the sacrament of baptism to. But more than this. We not only believe in accepting these folk into the church through the sacrament of baptism, many of whom we admit are hypocrites, but we also believe in accepting infants, who cannot profess any faith at all, where one or both parents are believers. We do this without shame, knowing that we have the vast majority of church history behind us. All the Reformers such as Calvin and Luther accepted it, indeed the Belgic Confession calls the doctrine of the Anabaptists, who condemn the baptism of the infants of believers, a "heresy to be detested" (Belgic Confession article 34). Adult-believers-only-baptists are very few and far between in history. Not that tradition should be our authority of course, but we merely state the fact. We see also, in scripture, that God in the Old Testament accepted children into his visible representation of the church, in that day, namely the nation of Israel. God commanded that all infants at eight days old be given the sign of the covenant, i.e. circumcision, (Genesis 17:12). A useful time can be spent looking at the similarities between the two "signs of the covenant," circumcision in the Old Testament and baptism in the New Testament. They signified exactly the same thing! Unless God has given us a specific command that children are no longer allowed to become members of the visible representation of the church today in the New Testament, which he has not, then we must assume that things continue as before and children are allowed into membership of the visible church. The adult-believers-only-baptists come up to us and say that we should produce a warrant that children should be baptised, and they point out that there is no evidence of a child being baptised in the New Testament. However, the onus is on them to show from scripture that such a change is warranted, not on us to prove that it is not.

The government of adult-believers-only-baptist churches also leaves a lot to be desired. They always organise their churches along the lines of independency. They have their associations and broader bodies to be sure, but in the end, decisions are made at individual church level rather than in the scriptural presbyterial church government system. This spirit of independency leads to chaos. For example, a church may "feel led" to start an outreach group in a certain area, totally unaware that half-a-dozen other churches have targetted that area for the same reasons. This spirit of independency in church government is developed from the spirit of individualism that exists in these churches, i.e. it is the individual's "born-again" experience that counts, and we must outreach so other individuals can experience this for themselves. This individuality is wrong. Yes, the elect must be born again, we have no doubt about that, but God performs this function, there is nothing we can do to hurry that along or otherwise. Our role surely is to fit into the church that God has put us in, in the role that God has put us in and not spend our time just thinking of ourselves and our own spiritual experiences. That leads to pure selfishness, which cannot be of God. Of course we must examine ourselves, whether we be in the faith; and prove our own selves (2 Corinthians 13:5) as there is always room for improvement within ourselves, but that is not the same as spending all our time looking for the next "experience" which will make us feel good. That is not of the essence of true religion at all.

Most of these independent churches make their decisions through democratic voting by the congregation at large. This may fit into the modern way of doing things but it is not scriptural, and so cannot be of God. It is never justified to have any Tom, Dick and Harry voting on vital matters of the church. New believers, despite the remarks of some of the more forceful members of the adult-believers-only-baptist churches, know nothing. Look back to when you became a believer. Did you know anything much at all about spiritual things in the first few weeks? or months? or even years? Yet the spirit in these churches uses the texts which speak of becoming as a little child (Mark 10:15, Luke 18:17 etc.), to justify not only giving very young believers a vote, but putting them in positions of authority very quickly. Indeed, it almost seems to be a virtue in adult-believers-only-baptist churches to be a new convert. Overt enthusiasm is counted for godliness. Of course this cannot be the case. All major church decisions must be made by the eldership, i.e. mature people with experience in the faith. In a true presbyterial church system there should also be higher courts (Presbytery, Synod and maybe General Assembly) with real authority, otherwise elders in one church could use the power they have over the flock they are in charge of, to behave like little Hitlers in their own community. Without a higher court to whom these men are accountable, no-one can stop them, despite all their false humility saying that they are only under God's authority, not man's. What arrogance!

Dispensationalism

All adult-believers-only-baptist churches, whether they realise it or not, are guilty of dispensationalism. What is meant by this word is that they would divide history into several "dispensations" so that the rules applying to one dispensation no longer apply in another and so on. Thjere are some adult-believers-only-baptist churches, who are extreme in this regard - the "Brethren" movement seems to be the worst, believing in several or many dispensations throughout history. Maybe they would see, for example, one dispensation in the time of Adam and Eve before the fall, then another from Adam to Noah, then another from Noah to Abraham, then one from Abraham to Moses, then one from Moses to Christ which they may call the Dispensation of Law, another from Christ to the "rapture," which they term the "Dispensation of Grace" and which we are in now, then (and this is where it gets complicated!) another dispensation when the Jews will be back at Jerusalem having built a new temple, reinstating the sacrifices and so on. All of this is tedious in the extreme, but the idea of "dispensationalism" is established.

However, in non-Brethren adult-believers-only-baptist churches we also have a form of dispensationalism, even if these churches would distance themselves from the Brethren-style premillenial dispensationalism described above. All adult-believers-only-baptist churches firmly believe that a new dispensation came in after the days of Christ. Most put the date and time of this occurence at Pentecost (Acts 2). At that point, they would say, the new dispensation began. The Old Testament era passed away and the new one came into being. The Old Testament dispensation, they would say, was God giving promises to the nation of Israel, all of which have now been abrogated. The rule now is for the New Testament church to come into its own. So on this view there is no connection at all between the two testaments. This is where they go very wrong. To be sure, at the death of Christ, the one true sacrifice for sin had been made, and therefore we no longer need the shadows. So the ceremonial law has now indeed been abrogated (Hebrews 10). This includes circumcision (Galatians 5), the animal sacrifices, the musical instruments and the ceremonies around the temple. But adult-believers-only-baptists would go further than this and claim that the judicial and even the moral law is also abrogated now Christ has come.

For example, adult-believers-only-baptists have a contempt for believers who go into politics, and they tell us that Christ's kingdom is "not of this world" (John 18:36). A lot of adult-believers-only-baptists, although not all, are pacifists and would never take up arms against anyone. All of this is contempt for the Establishment Principle, which is clearly described in scripture. We agree that our home is in the heavens, and true believers are only ever strangers and pilgrims on the earth (Hebrews 11:13). However we have a duty, as all men do, to see righteousness exalted and wickedness abased even whilst we are still in this world. A major fault with the adult-believers-only-baptists is that they run away from their duty in this life. They shun all kinds of lawful worldly activity and cocoon themselves up in their cosy ghettos looking to heaven and espousing "peace. peace, when there is no peace" (Jeremiah 6:14). The judicial law was only done away with when Israel ceased to be a nation, in A.D.70. It was not abrogated at Christ's death at all. There is no reason to suggest that these civil laws are no longer necessary. Adult-believers-only-baptists would say that they are all done away in Christ, but they must ask themselves: How were people "saved" in the Old Testament era? By Christ! They looked forward to a Messiah, whereas we look back. That is the only difference. Yet God gave them his judicial laws to live by in their community. Yes, these will be abrogated at the last day, but we must continue framing laws and campaigning for laws in this world in accordance, in general terms, with the Mosaic judicial law, because this is the way God wants people to live in this world, so it is right. So many people today wince when they see these laws and come out with emotive arguments that it condones stoning children to death, and so on. But in the passage where that is mentioned (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) we see that this is no small, helpless infant being stoned, rather he is a thug, a juvenile delinquent who has not listened to authority and is uncontrollable. Such, after sufficient admonitions, should be put to death, to "put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear." Because no laws today are anywhere near this godly, we have the appalling crime rate that we do. We must always remember that these laws were given by God. No matter what else we think about whether Israel of old is the same as the church today or not, we must surely see that these laws were given by God and God does not change, so we must come to the conclusion that this is the God with whom we will have to do. So it is right to frame laws along these lines so we may "hear, and fear."

Even more seriously, the adult-believers-only-baptists would also claim that the moral law, i.e. the Ten Commandments, is not for the church today either. They would argue that it is only a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24,25), and that it is no longer necessary any more as we now have Christ in us (Colossians 1:27) and the law written on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). As we intend to go into this in a bit more detail later on, we will pass over it here, but it must be said that anyone who has such contempt and disregard for the moral law of God must have something seriously wrong with their theology, and cannot be a true believer.

The Belgic Confession states that: "...we detest the Anabaptists and other seditious people, and in general all those who reject the higher powers and magistrates, and would subvert justice, introduce community of goods, and confound that decency and good order, which God hath established among men." This is the Reformers' view of such anarchy!

Experience of Christ is all.

Adult-believers-only-baptist churches believe that our "experience" of Christ is the most important thing, over and above our knowledge of him and our ongoing teaching of truth to our children. This is totally wrong, and brings into the church all kinds of errors, despite the elders trying to discern the elect before membership! Chapter three of John's gospel is by far the adult-believers-only-baptist's favourite chapter, particularly v.16 (always given a false, Arminian interpretation!). Of course, Christ said "Ye must be born again" (John 3:7). The problem with this text is not that it is untrue, but rather the problem is in the understanding of what this new birth is all about.

The adult-believers-only-baptist would look for evidence of some sort of religious experience before one could be considered a believer. This he would define as the "new birth." However, the new birth, i.e. regeneration, is actually invisible. None of us knew the moment we were born of our natural parents, we only became vaguely aware of a change sometime afterwards. So it is with the new birth. We can only discern such a thing has taken place after the event, when we then look back on our lives and discern a change really has come about. So rather than emphasising this verse too much and looking for an "experience," as the adult-believers-only-baptists do, we must rather simply encourage all men to seek the Lord and his ways. God will have mercy on his elect. Our job in the meantime is to continue our lives in the path of our duty, which is to keep the moral law and encourage, even command, others to do so too.

"Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph."

Amos 5:15

"Seek ye the LORD, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the LORD'S anger."

Zephaniah 2:3

The adult-believers-only-baptists however, would have little time for the law, rather they would exhort all men to seek an "experience" of Christ. However, no-one can seem to define this experience rather than using vague phrases like "resting in Christ" and "trusting in Him." So all unbelievers are exhorted to do these things, which are very difficult, if not impossible, to define, let alone to actually perform! This would be at the expense of bothering telling them that their duty is to keep the law.

It is the church's duty to command all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30) and turn to Christ (Acts 17:27). The only way people can see to do this in their unregenerate state is through the clear duty that God has given all men, i.e. to keep the law, and then they will see how far short they fall of it. It is therefore the church's duty to teach on all aspects of the things of God, not just give an "evangelistic" sermon every week. God will then choose his own out of those who hear and are of his elect by giving them the new birth, after which they will respond. We do not exhort men to make themselves "born-again," that is Arminianism.

The main problem with this experience-based religion is that so many people can claim to have had some sort of religious experience. Whirling dervishes and followers of Indian gurus have had some sort of experience, and they would claim it to be a spiritual one. Indeed many Roman Catholics, particularly devout ones, would claim to have had an experience of God, as well as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. To have had an "experience of God" therefore is no sign of having been born again.

But, you say, adult-believers-only-baptists are looking for a particular kind of experience, one where the person feels themselves to have a great weight of sin taken off their back and a "resting in Christ." But the problem is not whether they have had an experience or not, but rather how one may actually discern whether this experience is a genuine knowledge of having been regenerated or not. This is impossible for anyone to tell, except the person to whom it has happened. Anyone can fake this, especially those who have grown up in these churches. They have learned the right words to say, and they can present a good case for having undergone this experience, indeed they are pressurised into doing so by the fact that all their friends in the church have done so before them. Spurious conversions is the problem with these churches They say that paedo-baptist churches are full of unbelievers becausethey baptise infants, but the adult-believers-only-baptist churches are no better! They fall down in their strict entry procedure by letting into the church those who have had a spurious conversion. The problem then is that these people really do think they have had a genuine experience and they rest on that experience as evidence of their having been born-again, when they haven't been born again at all.

These churches, because they rely on experience-based religion, are no better than the mediæval mystics. Even the so-called hyper-Calvinistic adult-believers-only-baptist churches, who do not command all men everywhere to repent (contrary to the church's calling), accept John Wesley and Billy Graham, gross Arminians, into the communion of true believers, not because of their theology, they know it is wrong, but because both men have had an "experience!" Amazingly, hyper-Calvinists and Arminians are in league together against true Calvinist believers, simply because of their emphasis on the "experience" over and above theology.

Ignorance is bliss.

Because of this emphasis on the "experience," adult-believers-only-baptists accept unlearned men into their pulpits, because they argue that such preachers as William Huntingdon, the "Celebrated Coalheaver," was unlearned, also the disciples of Christ were mainly fishermen. Of course they forget that the disciples sat at the feet of Christ himself for three years! We are told that God sometimes raises up unlearned men to lead the church, so we must accept God's guidance as he gives it to us. This is no excuse however for true learning. We people who believe in an educated ministry are ridiculed by adult-believers-only-baptists for believing only in "head-religion" (as opposed to "heart-religion"). But this is not so. Firstly, the difference between "head-religion" and "heart-religion" must be one of ignorance. There is no such thing as two different kinds of religion along these lines. True believers are those who "believe with all the heart" (Acts 8:37). But this does not mean to believe facts with the fleshly organ in the centre of our bodies, that cannot be. Rather it is to firmly believe with the mind, the only part that can believe and understand statements of logic, that these things are so. All belief is therefore of the mind, all else is false religion because it is either superstition or emotionalism.

Ministers should be educated in the things of God much more than the laity, so that they can teach. How can a teacher teach anything if his pupils know more than him? Adult-believers-only-baptists define good preachers as those who can stir the emotions with oratory, rather than those who can expound the truth from the scriptures clearly. They are therefore propagating a religion based on experience and emotion rather than logical statements and deductions from scriptural truth. So-called "heart-religion" is therefore nothing else but sheer emotionalism, and not true religion at all.

Ignorance then is thought of as a virtue in adult-believers-only-baptist churches. They are told that all that is necessary is to "lean on Christ," without having it explained to them what this is. This of course makes the adult-believers-only-baptist dull to his duty in this world. He is told that nothing matters except that he "trust in Christ." So he spends his time looking for the next experience of having "leant" on Christ rather than doing anything comstructive with himself. This leads to a false sense of security, as this mysterious feeling of "Christ," which they are supposed to be leaning on, comes and goes at random. As long as we are putting our trust in a feeling, we have got it very wrong, and we will always be frustrated as feelings come and go as they do. This cannot be true religion. True religion is trusting in the truths of the gospel, something we can do if only we spend a bit of time studying God's word in order to obtain these truths. We should want to do this. Our longings should be towards God's word and knowing truth, not towards getting the next "high" from a gooey feeling when we next think of Jesus.

Ignorance is not a virtue at all. Of course some people are less capable of understanding things than others, but here is where the parable of the talents comes in. To those, God has only given one talent, they will only be expected to make one talent more. This is not laziness on their part. They are still working at knowing truth to the best of the ability God has given them, just as much as the one who has been given five talents. Capacity to understand is not the problem. Adult-believers-only-baptists, however, think that we must all get down to the lowest common denominator, and keep things simple. So all sermons are set at the level of the simplest amongst the congregation, and as a result no-one grows in the faith, they just get more of the same slop dished out every week.

All adult-believers-only-baptists must be Arminian at heart.

Despite the fact that many adult-believers-only-baptist churches call themselves "Reformed," it is a fact that the doctrine of the adult-believers-only-baptist always results in an Arminian theology.

Firstly, in the offer of the gospel, we see hyper-Calvinists again in league with Arminians in their belief that responsibility is dependent on ability. In other words, they believe that God only calls those to repentance who have the ability to do so. The Arminian would say that all men have this ability, so all men must be called, whereas the hyper-Calvinist would say that only the elect will be given this ability by God, so they are the only ones that should be called. Both have the same error. The truth is that God commands all men everywhere to repent and turn to Christ, knowing full well that he will only give some of them the ability to do so. Those God commands to whom he does not give this ability will be damned to hell to the praise of God's glorious justice. Their sole purpose is to display God's justice in damning sinners. The sole purpose of saving the elect, is to display God's mercy in the salvation of the elect. Both glorify God.

Again, going back to this call that adult-believers-only-baptists give to "trust in Christ" or "rest in Him," they do not see that "trusting" and "resting" are works! They believe they are passive things, and that man can do these things for himself. The agree that faith and repentance themselves are given by God, but they still exhort to "trust" and "rest" claiming that the believer can do this of himself, which is not so. This constant caling to "be born-again" is treated as something the person can do, otherwise, why harp on it all the time?

Antinomianism - contempt of God's holy law.

The adult-believers-only-baptist's theology always results in Antinomianism, i.e. contempt for God's holy law. The moral law given in Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai is despised by the adult-believers-only-baptist. He claims that the moral law is no longer necessary once a person has been born-again, because it is now written on his heart (Jeremiah 31:33). This is however a great mistake. No-one can ever say that we do not sin, even most adult-believers-only-baptists would agree to this (although we know of some who say we do not sin, rather we have "faults"!!). The adult-believers-only-baptist misinterprets Jeremiah 31:33. Jeremiah here is contrasting the Old Testament form of religion to the true form of religion, which is spiritual and is brought into place by the coming of Christ. True religion existed in Israel before Christ came, and the contrast relates to the believers then as well as those after Christ's coming. Adult-believers-only-baptists would say that this verse teaches that a new dispensation is brought in after Christ's coming. Before he came salvation was by the law, and after he has been it is now by grace in the heart. This is totally wrong. Salvation is always, and always has been the same way, with the law "written on the heart" of the true believer. Old Testament visible religion is not abrogated by any means, just the form has changed. No longer do we circumcise and sacrifice animals, but we have baptism and the Lord's Supper instead. This visible religion is the ongoing duty of the church, namely to teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, "Know the LORD." True religion is, and always has been to the elect, God putting his law in their inward parts, and writing it in their hearts; and being their God, and they being his people.

Because of this dispensationalist view of the adult-believers-only-baptists, the law of God is despised, and not considered necessary for the Christian to be bothered with any more, because God guides his people directly nowadays by direct leading of the Spirit instead, they would say. This is nonsense. This results in neglecting our duty to teach the law that all men should "know the Lord." The moral law is eternal, it shows what pleases God, it shows us what is right or wrong. No ethereal "leading of the spirit" can teach us this without the knowledge of the written law. The ongoing work of the church is to teach all men what is right and wrong in God's sight. Adult-believers-only-baptists are antinomian because they lead people into believing that the law does not matter to the true believer any more.

Adult-believers-only-baptists would call us "legalists" on this point. They say we are teaching "works-religion", i.e. that salvation is by our own works. Nothing could be further from the truth. We do not teach that keeping the law is the way to get to heaven, no man can do that since Adam fell. We teach instead that the law shows us our inability to keep it and our need of a saviour. We then teach that it is the reception of the obedience of Christ imputed to his elect that saves a man.

However, we do spend a lot of time working out in our lives what keeping the law is. The adult-believers-only-baptist would say that this was a waste of time to the believer because God "looks at the heart" not our outward actions. However, if we have true religion in our hearts, we will want to keep the law and spend all our time talking about it and trying to do it. Look at how the believer should love God's holy law in Psalm 119, for example, especially v.126. Also, 1 Thessalonians 2:10-12 teaches:

 "Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe: As ye know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children, That ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory."

No amount of "resting in Christ" or "trusting in Jesus" can substitute for a bit of hard work. The adult-believers-only-baptist would shirk at this because it looks from the outside no different from the true legalist, who is trying to get to heaven by his own efforts. We, however, are not working hard at it to obtain our salvation, but we work hard at it because we have already received that salvation which has made us to love God's holy law. Anyone who shows contempt for making a bit of an effort to order our outward lives into conformity to the law of God, cannot truly be born-again, his heart cannot be "right with God," his religion is vain.

Therefore, we see that adult-believers-only-baptists may seem on the outside to merely have some small dispute over subjects for an outward ordinance which is of little real consequence, but it turns out that their whole theology is wrong. Any religion that despises the law of God, thinks man can have some ability to do something towards his salvation and that has a chaotic, unlearned view of the church, must be seriously wrong. We therefore exhort all men to shun such societies as independent, adult-believers-only-baptist churches before they poison the mind into believing these wicked things.