Baptized Twice

Baptized Twice?

by Tom Woodard

When I was a child, and then a teen, I went to my family's Church, Mineral Springs Missionary Baptist Church, near McShan, Alabama. Three generations of my family are buried there, including my great-grandparents, my maternal grandparents, and my father.

When I was thirteen, there was a revival meeting at Mineral Springs, and they had one of those old-fashioned fire and brimstone preachers preaching the revival. Well, folks, he scared me half to death, and I walked the aisle out of sheer fear of going to Hell! They baptized me that night and I thought I was alright (safe).

Years later, when I was in law school, I had gotten to the point where I was in total rebellion against God. I was so anti-God that some of the things I said made people move away from me out of fear of being killed incidentally when I was struck by lightning! After graduating from law school, I came home, started dating the girl who would later become my first wife, and also started going to Church, down at Stansel, just to be with her. I still had my anti-God, anti-religion attitude, but she bought me a Bible and for some reason I started reading it. Her grandmother, in answer to a question I had one day, told me to read the Bible, and I believe that's what got me started.

Well, I got from Genesis through Second Kings when I came upon another question for Grandmother Findley, and she said "Read the New Testament". So I started with Matthew, and while I was reading the Book of John, Christ entered my heart and I was saved. I walked the aisle the next Sunday at Stansel Baptist Church, and the following Sunday I was baptized. I was twenty-six years old, and the Lord has been with me ever since, through thick and thin, and through some very tough times.

Anyway, several years later I was at a funeral at Arbor Springs Baptist Church, above Reform, Alabama. It was a big funeral, and there wasn't room for everyone there to get inside the Church. There must have been a hundred people outside, including me. Also outside were Mr. Rubin Estes and my Uncle, Morris Manning. The three of us, along with some others, were talking about salvation and baptism, and I said that I had been baptized twice, giving a brief review of each time, whereupon my Uncle Morris, a devout man of God, said "You were only baptized once. You just got wet the first time".

I had never thought of it that way before, but Uncle Morris was right! I didn't walk that aisle at the age of thirteen because I had made a genuine profession of faith and asked Jesus to come into my heart and life. I had just gone up there because I was frightened into it, and was scared I might die and go to Hell, like that old preacher said. But when I was reading the Book of John, having been prepared by reading through Second Kings, and then through the first three Gospels, Jesus knocked at the door of my heart and I opened that door and allowed Him to come in and save me. I wasn't saved in Church; I was saved lying in my bed that night, reading John.

So when the preacher at Mineral Springs plunged me beneath the water that night, I just got wet. But thirteen years later, when Brother Richard Mason plunged me under at Stansel, I was baptized as a testament to my true and eternal salvation!

Funny what sticks with you through the years, but I'll never forget the day that Uncle Morris told me I just got wet the first time! Both Uncle Morris and Mr. Rubin have since passed away. Both were moral giants, men of immense character and integrity. I will always be thankful for the examples they set for me as I was a boy and a young man. How fortunate I am to have known them!

If you just got wet the first time, make it real. Don't let anything stand in your way!

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