1.
The trouble with us is that we've preached a 'cross' religion, and we need to preach a 'throne' religion. By that I mean that people have thought they were supposed to remain at the cross. Some have received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, have backed up to the cross, and have stayed there ever since...The cross is actually a place of defeat, whereas the Resurrection is a place of triumph. When you preach the cross, you're preaching death, and you leave people in death.
Kenneth E. Hagin
2.
And this food is called among us the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins and to regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined.
Justin Martyr
3.
The Lord was Baptized, not to be cleansed Himself, but to cleanse the waters, so that those waters, cleansed by the flesh of Christ which knew no sin, might have the power of Baptism.
Ambrose
4.
Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whispering lacks of what might called the absolute beginning of the personal life. He lacks what at moments is indispensable for the personal life, lacks both the regeneration and rejuvenation, the cleaning baptism of irony that redeems the soul from having its life in finitude though living boldly and energetically in finitude.
Soren Kierkegaard
6.
Most of us like thinking we are God's only children...At least one of the purposes of church is to remind us that God has other children, easily as precious as we. Baptism and narcissism cancel each other out.
Barbara Brown Taylor
7.
Let us, then, who in Baptism have both died and been buried in respect to the carnal sins of the old man, who have risen again with Christ in the heavenly regeneration, both think upon and do the things that are Christ's.
Cyprian
8.
Baptism separates the tire kickers from the car buyers.
Max Lucado
9.
There are two sides to this Baptism: The first is, you possess the Spirit; The second is that the Spirit possesses you.
Smith Wigglesworth
10.
Baptism is an outward expression of an inward faith.
Watchman Nee
11.
Baptism was to put a line of demarcation between your past sins when you are buried with Him by Baptism-you are burying your past sins-eradicating them-putting a line in the sand saying that old man is dead and he is no longer alive any more and I rise up to walk in the newness of life.
T. D. Jakes
12.
The baptism of the spirit will do for you, what a phone booth did for Clark Kent, it will change you into a different being.
Rod Parsley
13.
After many painful trials, which none can know, but those who are taught to relinquish a system in which they had been educated, I settled down in the full persuasion, that the immersion of a professing believer in Christ is the only Christian baptism.
Adoniram Judson
14.
No one can begin a new life, unless he repent of the old.
Saint Augustine
15.
If you are eagerly looking for salvation, and if you believe in God, you may ... become acquainted with the Christ of God, and, after being initiated [a reference to baptism], live a happy life.
Justin Martyr
16.
Baptism is not the work of man but of Christ, and this sacrament is so holy that it would not be defiled, even if the minister were a murderer.
Isidore of Seville
17.
If you have made the good profession, if you claimed to have passed through the gate, if you have received baptism in a public declaration of your faith, and you begin to walk-it doesn't matter how long it appears you're walking in that path-if you step off that path and there's no discipline and you continue on that path, you can have no assurance whatsoever of your salvation. And it is not that you lost your salvation, it's that you're showing now that you never had it. If we would only preach these truths
Paul Washer
18.
Before we go to our knees to receive the Baptism of Fire, let me beg of you to see to it that your souls are in harmony with the will and purpose of the Holy Spirit whom you seek.
William Booth
19.
The duende....Where is the duende? Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odour of a child's saliva, crushed grass, and medusa's veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things.
Federico Garcia Lorca
20.
The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
21.
Wherever the bishop shall appear, let the multitude of also be, just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic [i.e., universal] church. It is not lawful either to baptize or to celebrate a love feast without the bishop, but whatever he approves of, that is also pleasing to God.
Ignatius of Antioch
22.
As a man must be born before he can begin to lead his physical life, so he must be born to lead a Divine Life. That birth occurs in the Sacrament of Baptism. To survive, he must be nourished by Divine Life; that is done in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.
Fulton J. Sheen
23.
God's people should be baptized because God commanded it, not because some church requires it.
John R. Rice
24.
For whenever unbaptized persons die confessing Christ, this confession is of the same efficacy for the remission of sins as if they were washed in the sacred font of baptism.
Saint Augustine
25.
Baptize first the children; and if they can speak for themselves, let them do so. Otherwise, let their parents or other relatives speak for them.
Hippolytus of Rome
26.
What have I done with my baptism and confirmation? Is Christ really at the center of my life? Do I have time for prayer in my life? Do I live my life as a vocation and mission?
Pope John Paul II
27.
FRYING-PAN, n. One part of the penal apparatus employed in that punitive institution, a woman's kitchen. The frying-pan was invented by Calvin, and by him used in cooking span-long infants that had died without baptism; and observing one day the horrible torment of a tramp who had incautiously pulled a fried babe from the waste-dump and devoured it, it occurred to the great divine to rob death of its terrors by introducing the frying-pan into every household in Geneva. Thence it spread to all corners of the world, and has been of invaluable assistance in the propagation of his sombre faith.
Ambrose Bierce
28.
By Baptism we are made flesh of the Crucified
Pope Leo I
29.
Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God. No one is excepted, not [even] the infant.
Ambrose
30.
Baptism is rich in meaning. It suggests cleansing. When you are a disciple, you understand that you are cleansed by Christ. You understand that Christ died in your place on the cross, paying for your sins, fully forgiving you for all your wrongs. You are cleansed from guilt, and you are becoming a cleaner, healthier, more whole person.
Brian D. McLaren
31.
Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.
Abraham Verghese
32.
If anyone without the right faith receives Baptism outside the Church, he does not receive it unto salvation ... From the comparison of the Church to Paradise, we learn that men can receive her Baptism even outside her fold, but that out there no one can receive or keep the salvation of the blessed.
Thomas Aquinas
33.
If, therefore, there is any grace in the water, it is not from the nature of water but from the Spirit's presence there.
Saint Basil
34.
Baptism with water is the sign and seal of baptism with the Spirit, as much as it is of the forgiveness of sins. Water-baptism is the initiatory Christian rite, because Spirit-baptism is the initiatory Christian experience.
John Stott
36.
Fascism wants Baptism coast to coast.
Ken Kesey
37.
Christian living means dying with Christ and rising again. That, as we saw, is part of the meaning of baptism, the starting point of the Christian pilgrimage.
N. T. Wright
38.
Baptism is the door of the spiritual life and the gateway to the sacraments.
Thomas Aquinas
39.
The Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants. The apostles, to whom were committed the secrets of the divine sacraments, knew there are in everyone innate strains of [original] sin, which must be washed away through water and the Spirit
Origen
40.
In baptism, new Christians become part of a body of fellow believers who are called to spiritually encourage one another and hold one another responsible for consistent Christian living.
Tony Campolo
41.
Time would fail me were I to try to lay before you in order all the passages in the Holy Scriptures which relate to the efficacy of baptism or to explain the mysterious doctrine of that second birth which though it is our second is yet our first in Christ.
St. Jerome
42.
The earthly form of Christ is the form that died on the cross. The image of God is the image of Christ crucified. It is to this image that the life of the disciples must be conformed; in other words, they must be conformed to his death (Phil 3.10, Rom 6.4) The Christian life is a life of crucifixion (Gal 2.19) In baptism the form of Christ's death is impressed upon his own. They are dead to the flesh and to sin, they are dead to the world, and the world is dead to them (Gal 6.14). Anybody living in the strength of Christ's baptism lives in the strength of Christ's death.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
43.
Baptism is just as essential to salvation, as Faith and Repentance. Without being immersed in water no man can enter into the fullness of Celestial glory: for baptism is instituted for the remission of sins; and if a person does not take the necessary steps to obtain pardon of sins, of course, he cannot be saved in the kingdom of God.
Orson Pratt
44.
Indeed, baptism is a vow, a sacred vow of the believer to follow Christ. Just as a wedding celebrates the fusion of two hearts, baptism celebrates the union of sinner with Savior.
Max Lucado
45.
Only what coronation is in an earthly way, baptism is in a heavenly way; God's authoritative declaration in material form of a spiritual reality.
Frederick William Robertson
46.
There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration.
George Eliot
48.
Baptism into this Church is a serious thing. It represents a covenant made with our Heavenly Father. It is much more than a right of passage. It is a gateway to a new manner of living, and a new road on which to walk that leads to immortality and eternal life. It was never intended as a dead end. It was intended to open a glorious and wonderful way of life to all who would walk in obedience to the commandments of God.
Gordon B. Hinckley
49.
We are called to live our baptism every day, as new creatures, clothed in Christ.
Pope Francis