Book of Common Prayer (1559 by Thomas Cranmer) Infant Baptismal Liturgy:

Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerate, adopted, and grafted into the body of Christ, let us receive him in Christ’s name. We do indeed welcome this child into the congregation of Christ’s flock and family, and pray that he will never be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and will manfully fight under the banner of the cross against sin, against the world, and against the devil; and will continue to be Christ’s faithful soldier and servant to life’s end, living the rest of his days according to this good beginning. Amen.

Read the Bible How It Was Written:

Modern Christians rarely do this. We read snippets ranging from a single verse to at most 2 or 3 chapters at a time.

But this is not how its original audience would have heard it (and they would have generally heard, not read it).

For instance, almost all the NT letters would be read beginning to end as a sermon or homily to a church. The prophetic oracles would have been delivered in full, one at a time. Many of the Psalms are war chants, 180 degrees from the soft, effeminate melodies we moderns typically sing to God with.

We disassemble Scripture into so many jigsaw pieces and then wonder why people don't get the big picture.

Does “Baptize” Mean “to Immerse” in Greek?
 
In the Septuagint, Bapto and baptizo occur five times. Thus, Dan. 4:33, Nebuchadnezzar is said to have been wet (baptized) with the dew of heaven. Ecclus. 34:30: "He that baptizeth himself after the touching of a dead body;" -- but this purification was performed by sprinkling. Num. 9:9, 13, 20…. In the New Testament, baptizo is used interchangeably with nipto, which only means to wash. Compare Mark 7:3-4; Luke 11:38; Matt. 15:2, 20…. When John's disciples disputed about baptism, it is expressly said to have been a dispute about purification. John 3:25; 4:2. The same idea is uniformly expressed by the word baptism, or baptisms, in the New Testament. In Mark 7:2-8 we read of the baptisms of cups, pots, brazen vessels, and tables (couches upon which several persons reclined at table). These things could not be, and were not, immersed.

-- A. A. Hodge, Commentary on the WCF

Tragically, many modern Christians agree with the Pharisees that their understanding of the law accurately represents the Old Testament. This is not the case at all– their view was a radical misreading of the Old Testament. Jesus did not praise them for reading the Old Testament correctly, but then urge them to adapt themselves to the coming changes. Rather, He rebukes them for never having had a clue.

– Doug Wilson, "Reformed" Is Not Enough

America Hates Children:

We kill the unborn by the millions. We also have fewer children than ever before because we deem them "inconvenient." To remedy the inconvenience, we separate from their families immediately and send them to day care.

This imprisonment continues through the school years, and then we send them to yet another version of school where they are indoctrinated, saddled with debt, and subject to their unwise decisions.

We refused to teach them and discipline them to become adults, and now the children pay for the sins of the parents. And make no mistake, it was the church who taught the culture this hatred, not the other way around.

Most Christian parents who baptize their children completely renege on their baptismal vows, and many don't even baptize them in the first place. We have been excluding children from the sanctuary, pulling them back from the welcoming arms of Christ. If we do allow them into sanctuary, we still exclude them from the central moment of Christ's presence with us and our spirital entrance into heaven itself -- the celebration of the Lord's Supper.

America absolutely hates children, and the church taught her to. God help us.

For the story here written, showeth us how we be in God’s hand, and that it lieth in him to determine of our life, and to dispose of the same according to his good pleasure: and that it is our duty to submit ourselves unto him with all humbleness and obedience: and that it is good reason that we should be wholly his, both to live and die, and specially that when it pleaseth him to lay his hand upon us, although we perceive not for what cause he doeth it, yet we should glorify him continually, acknowledging him to be just and upright, and not to grudge against him, nor fall to striving with him, assuring ourselves that we shall always be vanquished in pleading against him.

– John Calvin, Sermons on Job

In constituting human nature and ordaining the propagation of infant children from parents, God has in all respects made the standing of the child while an infant to depend upon that of the parent. The sin of the parent carries away the infant from God; so the faith of the parent brings the infant near to God. Every covenant God has ever formed with mankind has included the child with the parent.

-- A. A. Hodge, Commentary on the WCF

Ten Postmillennial White Pills:

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Gen. 3:15)

And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” (Gen. 15:5)

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. (Ps. 2:8)

He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. (Ps. 72:8)

The LORD said to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.” The LORD extends Your mighty scepter from Zion: “Rule in the midst of Your enemies.”
(Ps. 110:1-2)

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it (Is. 2:2)

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. (Hab. 2:14)

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matt. 28:19-20)

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. (Rom. 16:20)

Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” (1 Cor. 15:24-27)

Time to offend everyone:

Presbyterian
Anglican
Lutheran
Reformed Baptist
Evanjelly Nondenom
Roman Catholic
Wesleyan/Arminian
Eastern Orthodox
Pentecostal/Charismatic

What Is the Kingdom of God?

The Kingdom of God is the realm of the active dominion of Christ.

It is not the church, for the church existed in the Old Covenant before Christ formally established His kingdom, though the church is included in the kingdom.

It is not the entire world, for though Christ has rights to the whole world, and His kingdom will in time include the entire world, yet now we pray for His kingdom to come.

The purport of the [fourth] commandment is, that being dead to our own affections and works, we meditate on the kingdom of God, and in order to such meditation, have recourse to the means which he has appointed.

-- John Calvin, Institutes II.VIII.xxviii

Modern Evangelicalism seems to operate on the assumption that any and all judgment is reserved solely until the Great Day. This is implicit deism. When Divine wrath is poured upon this nation for our manifold wickednesses - from sodomy to infanticide, from idolatry and narcissism to blasphemy and sacrilege - countless Evangelicals, who should know better, are going to be wringing their hands in shock and disbelief as if the unthinkable has happened.

John Calvin on Covenantal Election:

This the sacred history sometimes repeats that the secret grace of God may be more admirably displayed in that change. I admit that it was by their own fault Ishmael, Esau, and others, fell from their adoption; for the condition annexed was, that they should faithfully keep the covenant of God, whereas they perfidiously violated it. The singular kindness of God consisted in this, that he had been pleased to prefer them to other nations; as it is said in the psalm, "He has not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them," (Ps. 147:20). But I had good reason for saying that two steps are here to be observed; for in the election of the whole nation, God had already shown that in the exercise of his mere liberality he was under no law but was free, so that he was by no means to be restricted to an equal division of grace, its very inequality proving it to be gratuitous.

-- Institutes II.XXI,vi

All the duties of piety towards parents are here comprised, to which children are laid under obligation by natural reason itself; and these may be reduced to three heads, i e., 1) that they should regard them with reverence; 2) that they should obediently comply with their commands, and allow themselves to be governed by them; and 3) that they should endeavor to repay what they owe to them, and thus heartily devote to them themselves and their services.

-- John Calvin, Commentary on Exodus [20:12]

Westminster Larger Catechism 161:

Q. How do the sacraments become effectual means of salvation?

A. The sacraments become effectual means of salvation, not by any power in themselves, or any virtue derived from the piety or intention of him by whom they are administered; but only by the working of the Holy Ghost, and the blessing of Christ by whom they are instituted.

Belgic Confession

Article 33: The Sacraments

We believe that our good God, mindful of our crudeness and weakness, has ordained sacraments for us to seal his promises in us, to pledge his good will and grace toward us, and also to nourish and sustain our faith. He has added these to the Word of the gospel to represent better to our external senses both what he enables us to understand by his Word and what he does inwardly in our hearts, confirming in us the salvation he imparts to us. For they are visible signs and seals of something internal and invisible, by means of which God works in us through the power of the Holy Spirit. So they are not empty and hollow signs to fool and deceive us, for their truth is Jesus Christ, without whom they would be nothing. Moreover, we are satisfied with the number of sacraments that Christ our Master has ordained for us. There are only two: the sacrament of baptism and the Holy Supper of Jesus Christ.