Just...if the baptized before salvation are just getting wet...
These three cases are still not all cases for all time. Elsewhere in scripture, we have others who were said to be filled with the Holy Spirit but did not speak in tongues in those situations. (Luke 4:1; Acts 4:8, 31; 7:55; 13:9) Also, not all believers have hands laid on them before receiving the Holy Spirit either, as in Acts 8:17 and Acts 19:6. Exception, not the rule.
You don’t have to convince me to be baptized. I agree with baptism. We simply disagree that we are saved because faith vs faith plus baptism. I say there is nothing we can do and you say there is something we have to do. You see baptism as the point where Jesus’ work on the cross cleanses and I see the moment I hear and believe as the point His work cleanses.
That's called EISEGESIS.
Picking and choosing indeed. Speaking of playing with snakes, I once heard a joke entitled: "Top 10 signs you know you're in a bad church." I can't remember all 10 but here are a few:
The word ALL isn’t in Mark 16:17. Also mark 16:17 says “these signs will follow believers” not “these signs will define believers”. If tongues or any signs defined our salvation, then that would mean that our assurances rests on our experience. But scripture says our assurance rests on Christ (John 19:30, Eph 2:8-9). He said “it is finished” not “it is almost finished, now go get baptized to complete it”
Except it says WHEN, not since which is what most translations say and they had to be told about Jesus. So, they had no Gospel which is the power of God unto salvation.
Paul didn't hear the Gospel on the Damascus road, he was confronted by the risen Christ and Paul had to ask who it was.
The trouble in all this though, is that it never addresses the fact Christ told His disciples that His baptism was with the Spirit not with water. They were about to come under a New Covenant where the old ways of doing things was finished and a new way of living was going to be the norm. It required different methods. Water simply doesn't do anything and the scriptures teach there is one baptism for the Church, not two. Those who insist on two baptisms never address these facts just as those who insist on tongues never address all the times tongues are not mentioned at conversions.
That the early Church continued baptizing in water like John? I have no doubt, that is what they were use to, but here we are 2,000 years later and we still have not cottoned on to the fact that Christ's baptism is with the Spirit and water baptism was a shadow, a preparation for what was to come.
Being baptized with the Spirit is the only baptism that does what is needed for the new way of life we have been given.
Ephesians 4:4-6
4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Not one of you would argue there are more than one of the others Paul speaks of in those verses so why do you argue there are two baptisms?
