78
CHURCH--
BRIDE-KINGDOM.
ner Judaism was chuck full of watery catharisms, symbolie of the work of the Holy Ghost in the Gospel dispensation. These were all denominated baptisms. Heb. 9: 10, "Which stood onJy in meats and ilrinks and divers washings," ( Greek, divers baptisms). Verse 19 tells us that Moses -sprinkled all the people at the Tabernacle door on the ratification of the Sinaic covenant. This was baptism by wholesale. Luke 11 : 38 says the Pharisees who had invited Jesus to dine with him was "astonished that He was not· baptized before dinner." Here E. V- says wash). the Greek is ebaptisthee ). the passive aorist t~nse baptizoo., the regular word for baptism constantly used in the N. T. In this passage you see it simply meant to wash the hands-, which the Pharisees held pertinaciously as a religious ceremony. There were so many ways by which Jews might contract ceremonial defilement; e. g .., contact with d.ead bodies, lepers, unclean animals, Gentiles, etc., in which case they were inhibited from the Tabernacle service, till the water of purification was sprinkled on them by some ceremonially clean person; that their baptisms were constantly and copiously transpiring, all of these watery ablutions and aspergations symbolizing the real purifications wrought by the Holy Ghost in the Gospel dispensation. Ev~n in Judaism. where they had so much watery catharism, symbolizing the sanctification of the Spirit,