Baptism: a real Christian has to be strict on what it is and does

Ritual water baptism is a visual parable. The real thing is regeneration effected by the word and the Spirit. Move toward God, and He'll move toward you (God tells us this many times in the Old and the New Testaments). Engage the living, quickening language of the word of God. Don't bank on ritual. Read the Bible, get understanding of doctrine, pray, practice godliness (which is not moralism)...

Baptism as a visual parable means: if you need it, OK. If you don't need it, that's OK too. Just don't think that ritual regenerates. (Zwingli said baptism was for "stupid people." I see his point, but I disagree. What he should have said is it's there if someone needs it. Others don't. He was probably out of patience with the baptismal regeneration types.)

If you're a blood-drenched Viking in a clearing in the forest in 920 A.D. and you submit to water baptism it just may induce an overwhelming, abiding feeling or sense in you that carries you forward to actually getting direct understanding of the faith from the Bible and acting from the faith. The ritual is not without use or power. But it doesn't regenerate.

Or I should say, God can regenerate any way He wants, but look at the evidence in how Satan acts. When Satan has power over Christians (as during the Roman Catholic tyranny) Satan allowed people to be baptized all day and all night. What, though, did Satan withhold from people upon penalty of torture and death? He withheld the word of God. The Bible. Regeneration of God's elect is what Satan hates the most as our enemy, and he knows what regenerates, and it's not ritual water baptism. It's the living, quickening language of the Bible, and the Holy Spirit. Satan loves it when people think they're regenerated just because they got baptized.