I see what you're thinking, but here's where you are making your mistake...
The word doesn't mean all those things at once, doesn't mean that to baptise one must comply with some list of actions. That kind of definition means that it's this general idea--dip, immerse, submerge. It's not as though if you do one of those you have to do the others.
I was not suggesting that you have to do all of them. Looking at the context and root definition of the word we can still derive that baptism involved being placed under the water. And either way, even with all of those definitions, you still don't get sprinkle or pour. If you pour water on something that object hasn't been dipped into the water.
In this thread the question is SHOULD baptism be by immersion ONLY.
And my answer is still yes. Prior examples of people being dipped in the bible comes from the story of Naman(sp?) He had to dip in the river Jordan, and the word used there is baptizo(sp?). We still don't see anything mentioning sprinkling or pouring.
Well, no. No more than we'd say "yes" to a question like "SHOULD baptism be done on Sunday ONLY." If you want to do it that way, it's fine and valid. If you want to do it otherwise, it's also fine. Immersion is an old way of doing it, but there's no indication that Jesus was immersed, nor were all the Jews who were baptised in those times immersed, nor are there any instructions in the NT saying to immerse. If it was NECESSARY, we'd expect this.
Oh no it's not. There is nothing specific but neither is there any "obvious" context that suggests immersion.
No, the bible is indeed clear. Disagree with immersion or not, there is still no record in the bible of any type of sprinkling or pouring on of water. Why would John need the river Jordan? He could have simply filled up a skin with water and walk around pouring or sprinkling.
And this means that Jesus came up the bank of the river, not that he was coming up from below the water's surface as you must have been told in some church or other. That's not the meaning.
In fact, if you read the verse carefully and with no preconceived notions, you will see that it CANNOT mean that he came uip from below the water's surface. It says "As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went out of the water." "As soon as he was baptised" means it's done. But the ceremony is not done the minute you hit the water. And consider the part that says "came up OUT OF THE WATER." Do you suppose he exploded out from the water like a rocket? No, he was still IN the water according to your theory, standing in it. So, he could NOT have been OUT OF THE WATER unless the phrase means what it does--that he came away from the river by climbing the bank of the river...out of the water.
I think you misunderstand my understanding of this. I was using this text as an example to show that whatever the case, Jesus was
in the water. I believe He went into the water, went under the water and came up out of the water (this was the completion of the baptism) and than went on to the wilderness.
So you may not agree with immersion as the only way to baptize. However, even if you don't you can't dispute that fact that Jesus was in the water. So even if you want to sprinkle or pour, (which I believe is unbiblical) you still would need to be in the water when the rest of it was sprinkled or poured on you.
