Just today (Monday, May 5th) in our local newspaper, I saw a picture of a man having water poured on his head.  The article beneath the picture spoke of this man being baptized.  From the Bible we all can know that baptism is an immersion in water for the remission of sins following a confession that Jesus is  the Son of God.  Simply and without a doubt, the Bible teaches us that baptism is one going down into the water and coming up out of the water.  Read every page of the Bible.  Try to find an example or even an inference of someone having water poured on them for salvation.  You simply cannot find even one.  We  do find that Jesus “came up from (out of) the water” at His baptism (Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10).  We find in  Act 8 that Phillip baptized a man from Ethiopia.  They both “went down into the water” and then “came up out of the water” as the eunuch was baptized (8:38-39).  In John 3:23 we find from the Bible that       John was baptizing in an area in Aenon near Salem.  Why did he choose this particular area?  The Scriptures tell us.   He baptized there “because there was much water there” (3:23).  Much water was and is needed in order to baptize because baptism is an immersion, a burial in water.  This fact is simply and plainly stated in the Bible.  Paul writes in Romans 6 concerning baptism.  Look at verse 3.  We are baptized into Christ Jesus, into His death.  We are “buried with Him through baptism into death”  (4).  Baptism is a burial and a resurrection with Christ.     Let us all maintain the integrity of the Bible by reading and doing just what God directs in His word.  We are living in the “last days.”  The writer to the Hebrews states this fact in Hebrews 1:1-2,  “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds…”  This means that the Old Testament of God is not for our keeping today.  We live under the New Testament of God.  Hebrews 7:13 simply and powerfully shows us that the old covenant has been made obsolete and vanished away in the new covenant of Jesus Christ.  Hebrews 10:9 shows us that “He takes away the first (will, covenant, testament) that He may establish the second.”     Paul wrote to us in 1 Timothy 4:1 concerning “the latter times” when “some will depart from the  faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons.”  Paul told Timothy to “hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me” (2 Timothy 1:13).  He told him that “evil men  and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).     Paul warned that “the time will come when they will not endure sound  doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers and they will turn their ears away from the truth” 2 Timothy 4:3-4).     In these last days at St. Andrews Road, we are fully dedicated to following the pattern of the Scriptures in every aspect of life and living.  Paul told Timothy to “Preach the word!  Be ready in season and out of season.  Convince, rebuke, and exhort with all longsuffering and teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2).     We must not become confused, distracted, and led away from the clear, simple, and eternal gospel of Jesus Christ by anyone or anything, by family and friends, by the media, or by the world’s liberal  culture.     The baptism that God commands of each person for remission of sins is an    immersion, a going down into and a coming up out of water.  Pouring water on someone’s head may be convenient, but it is not the baptism of the Bible.