Thank you Helen,
Our preacher explained this to us , and I know it is true, but hard to make people understand ....
You know, people say we ought to be water baptised, because Jesus was. Why? Do you want to be a priest? And why was all the nation of Israel being baptised? Remember the covenant God made with the nation of Israel: “Ye shall be a kingdom of Priests” Exodus 19:6. That’s why water baptism belongs to the nation of Israel.
We are now all Gentiles, and in the time of Grace and some just cant understand this !
“Ye shall be a kingdom of Priests” Exodus 19:6 has nothing to do with baptism. The type of baptism the Jews have is circumcision. Baptism is the NEW circumcision, unless you disagree with Col 2:11-12:
11 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God …
Gen. 17:12, Lev. 12:3 – these texts show the circumcision of
eight-day old babies as the way of entering into the Old Covenant –
Did the parents wait for the baby to be old enough to decide for himself???
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In both Old and New Testaments, there are three ranks of priests, which are commonly referred to as the high priests, the ministerial priests, and the universal priests.
At the time of the Exodus the high priest was Aaron (
Ex. 31:30), the ministerial priests were his four sons (
Ex. 28:21; the sons were Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar, the first two of which were killed for abusing their priestly duties), and the universal priests were the people of Israel as a whole (
Exodus 19:6).
Prior to this time, there had been neither a high priest nor had God elected all of Israel as universal priests. There was only the ministerial priesthood, which appears to have resided in the firstborn male of each family. The existence of the pre-Aaronic ministerial priesthood is shown in
Exodus 19:22 and
24, which differentiate the priests from the people but occur before the establishment in the Aaronic priesthood in Exodus 28. The fact that the ministerial priests were held by the firstborn is suggested (though not proven) by the exchange of the priestly tribe of Levi for the firstborn of Israel in Numbers 3.
In any event, the three-fold model of the priesthood which was in use at the time of Aaron
was carried over into the New Testament and thus we find there also a high priest, ministerial priests, and universal priests. In the New Testament age the high priest is Jesus Christ (
Heb. 3:1), the ministerial priests are Christ’s ordained ministers of the gospel (
Rom. 15:16), and the universal priests are the entire Christian people (
1 Peter. 2:5,
9).
So the Bible clearly states that all Christians are priests (
1 Peter 2:5,
9),
as the Catholic Church clearly teaches for all who bother to read its teachings, see
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1141-4, 1268, 1305, 1535, 1547, 1591-2 on the common priesthood. But the Bible also said the same thing about the Israelites (
Ex. 19:6), yet this did not prevent there from being a separate, ministerial priesthood even before the Law of Moses was given (
Ex. 19:22,
24).
The Office of New Testament Priest – Jimmy Akin