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Archiver > QUAKER-ROOTS > 1998-10 > 0908991592
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Subject: Re: QUAKER-ROOTS-D Digest V98 #454
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 13:39:52 EDT
Barb Locker, Mark Dixon and others interested,
Nice idea! I like your religion chart! I'll look forward to reading the "happy
and loving" responses!
Mark , I agree with you as far as my Quaker ancestors were concerned for the
most part. I believe they used that verse you spoke of: "I indeed baptize you
with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I,
whose shoes I am not worthy to bear; he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost,
and with fire; whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his
floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff
with unquenchable fire."
Matthew 3: 11 KJV (King James Version) to mean that technically the physical
water wasn't the important factor to salvation (which means being saved away
from going to the lake of fire after earthly death and instead going to
heaven).
I believe from what I know of them, writings and all, that they believed that
the only really important and significant event was to invite Jesus Christ
into the central part or "heart" of one's Spirit so that His Holy Spirit would
then intermingle with our Spirit and result in the "INNER LIGHT" which is a
God given
treasure gift given freely to anyone who asks God of it and squelched only by
our own bad choices. The New Testament has many other verses that speak to
this same type of thinking like: Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, John 1:26, Matthew 28:19
etc.
Speaking of the "INNER LIGHT", I believe that as more and more thorough study
of the Bible continued and my Quaker ancestors began to discover some of the
mysteries of the Bible teachings, they realized that "water" was symbolic of
Jesus (I am the Living Water and they that drink of Me will never thirst
again, etc) Then they found more passages(Phillip and the eunuch etc.) to
indicate that immersing in water was symbolic of burying the old sinful self
and letting the new self in Jesus be born to be filled with His Holy Spirit.
It was a good testimony to viewers of showing that they wanted to let others
know that they were turning their lives over to Jesus' Holy Spirit control,
and mine eventually became Baptists with that added dimension of feeling.
This is just how I believe it all happened with my Quaker ancestors and was
passed down to me, a descendant.
Thanks!
Love in Christ,
Trudy Elise
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