Imagine God forbidding babies and the mentally retarded from entering heaven when they die all because they were never sprinkled with water by a Catholic priest in a baptismal ceremony.

This has been the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church since the Middle Ages, identified under their theology heading of "children's limbo."

Last month, 30 theologians from around the world met at the Vatican to discuss "disposing" of the Church's notion of limbo, defined by Merriam-Webster's "Encyclopedia of World Religions" as a "border place between heaven and hell where dwell those souls, who, though not condemned to punishment, are deprived of the joy of eternal existence with God in heaven."

Catholicism is experiencing most of its growth today in impoverished lands like Africa and Asia, where infant mortality rates are high, and this is most likely the reason they've suddenly decided to address their invention of "children's limbo."

"While the concerns of the experts reconsidering limbo are more theological, it does not hurt the church's future if an African mother who has lost a baby can receive more hopeful news from her priest in 2005 than, say, an Italian mother did 100 years ago," says a front-page article in last week's New York Times.

As the Times points out, "the controversy over limbo began with one of (the new Pope) Benedict's spiritual heroes: St. Augustine."

Augustine, influenced by Neoplatonism, is the one who championed the unscriptural allegorical method of studying the Bible (as opposed to God's method of literal interpretation) and is responsible for developing the pagan heresy later known as Calvinism.

". . .Augustine, believing in mankind's original sin, persuaded by a church council in 418 to reject any notion of an 'intermediary place' between heaven and hell," writes the Times. "He held that baptism was necessary for salvation, and that unbaptized babies would actually go to hell, though in his later writings he conceded that it would entail the mildest of conditions."

I know I wouldn't want on my list of heroes anyone who conceived of a God so cruel and unfair. Augustine makes God no better than all the pagan gods of history who mothers sacrificed their babies to.

First of all, the Bible makes it clear individuals must first reach an age of accountability before God judges their unbelief upon death. God knows our every thought and motive, and so He would obviously know whether or not we'd been given a fair chance to discern His truth about Him and His Son.

Secondly, and this is a shocker for the vast majority of Christians, water baptism has no part in the plan of God today.

Today, under Paul's ministry both Jews and Gentiles are to follow, baptism is an operation of the Holy Spirit that occurs when a person becomes saved and is thereby made one with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection.

There is no ceremony whatsoever involved. It's a faith commitment made in a person's "inner man."

Paul even says in I Cor. 1:17, "For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel."

In Romans 6:3, he writes, "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?"

Being baptized into Jesus Christ can't be a visible thing because how do you get baptized into another person? Besides, Christ isn't even here—He's in heaven.

It has to be a purely spiritual, supernatural transaction and Paul even says this when he writes in I Cor. 12:13, "For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit."

"It's a blasphemy against the grace of God to put water into that passage," my pastor, Richard Jordan (Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill.), pointed out in a recent study he did on the subject of baptism in the Bible. "It's teaching heresy beyond heresy to say some water ceremony performed by some sinner could put you into Jesus Christ. No Catholic pope ever taught anything more blasphemous than that and that's exactly what they teach."

The Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed churches, etc., believe you're literally regenerated through a water ceremony, but that's not at all what the Bible teaches.

In the Bible, there are actually 12 different kinds of baptism. They include baptism by fire and a "dry" baptism into death.

Paul writes in I Cor. 10:1-2, "Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea."

When the children of Israel escaped across the Red Sea in their exodus from Egypt, they came out the other side baptized "in the cloud and in the sea" under Moses' leadership, but how many of them got wet? The bad guys were the only ones to get hit with water.

"Israel went across on dry land, so there's a dry baptism," says Jordan in his study. "And they weren't dipped or immersed in anything. They were identified under the leadership of Moses. In the Bible, the term 'baptism' carries the idea of being identified. It doesn't carry the idea of dipping, immersing or aspersing."

When Jesus Christ was near the end of His ministry, He said in Luke 12:50, "I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straightened til it be accomplished."

From the context of the passage, it's clear Jesus Christ, who had already been water-baptized three years earlier, was talking about his death. He had a baptism into death to be identified with us and He's on His way to Jerusalem to have that accomplished. So this is an example of a "dry" baptism into death.

Matthew 3:11 reveals three different baptisms in one verse. John the Baptist testifies, "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire."

In essence, John's saying, "I'm baptizing with water, but then the Messiah's going to come and baptize with the Holy Spirit, and for those who choose not to believe in what He's saying, He's going to use fire to get rid of them."

The common idea among church denominations is that John was preaching what's called "New Testament baptism," but that's simply not the case.

"You have to understand that when you're reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you're not on new testament ground—you're still in the 'old testament economy,' " says Jordan.

Explaining this is Hebrews 9:16-17: "For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth."

Jesus Christ dies at the end of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and a testament, as the verse says, is of force after the death of the testator. Just before Christ's death, He says, "This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many." Obviously, the new testament made by His blood cannot be in effect until after He's shed his blood in death."

Since John the Baptist did his preaching before Christ died, his ministry is part of the old testament, not the new.

(Jordan gave an interesting aside to this matter when he recalled a meeting with a professor from the world's largest evangelical seminary, located outside Chicago, who wanted to sit down with Jordan after hearing his weekly radio program. "He didn't like what he was hearing and he wanted to talk me out of it," Jordan explained. "When I showed him Hebrews 9:17, he looked at it like he'd never seen it before! The man's got a doctorate degree from Princeton University. He tried to tell me baptism was a New Testament ordinance that's not found in the Old Testament because the Greek word " baptiso" doesn't occur in the Hebrew language. I said, 'But brother, don't you know that there's more to the old testament than just Genesis through Malachi?' He said, 'You're nuts.' ")

The Old Testament word for baptism is "wash," which the word "baptiso" is sometimes translated as in the New Testament.

John the Baptist came along and was teaching the ceremony of cleansing or purification through washing. In John 1:19, he was asked by the Pharisees, "Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?"

They asked this because they had expected the Messiah, along with the witnesses announcing His presence, to be doing just the things John the Baptist was doing, including the washing ceremony.

John's ministry was about calling Israel to repent, urging the people, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths." Baptism was the means for identifying together the people in Israel who wanted to set themselves apart from the apostasy and sin and make themselves a holy nation.

So John was identifying together this group, or the "little flock," who'd be willing and ready to receive their Messiah, even as the Pharisees and lawyers rejected his counsel.

Over and over in the Old Testament, the prescription for the cleansing of the nation Israel to become what God created them to be, had to do with washing. It was designed for the believers who wanted to say, "God's right, we need to repent and get right."

The day of Pentecost in the Bible has to do with Jesus Christ, as the Messiah ascended into heaven, receiving from the Father the promise of the Spirit and sending it down on the 'little flock' He's chosen. He baptizes his 'little flock.'

In Acts 10, a man named Cornelius, who hadn't been baptized, received the Holy Spirit, prompting Peter to go, "Now, I got no idea what's going on here. Things are changing."

"You know the first person in your Bible who ever thought about water baptism not having any part in the program of God was Peter—it's right there in that passage," says Jordan. "Because they couldn't think of any reason not to baptise him, they went ahead and baptised him, but obviously a change in the importance of water baptism occurred because now some people got the Holy Ghost without being baptised. Things are different because of the change in the program that's come in with the Apostle Paul."

In all of Paul's epistles, there is only one reference to water baptism ( I Cor. 1:14) and what he says is, "I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius."

If you followed the commission given in the Four Gospels and Acts, there'd be no way you could possibly say such a thing. Paul couldn't have said, "I thank God I didn't do what God told me to do?"

The answer, as Paul himself states, is, "Christ sent me not to baptize." No one following the commission given to the 'little flock' in Christ's post-resurrection ministry could say this because He sent them all to baptize.

Plain and simple, Paul didn't follow that commission. He was given an entirely different ministry in which water baptism doesn't figure in.

The few times Paul baptized it was as part of his early ministry aimed at "provoking Israel to jealousy," using things from the former program to show God was now behind Paul's ministry. Other "signs" designed to accomplish this purpose during the time the nation Israel was "diminishing away," included tongue-talking (demonstrating possession of the Holy Spirit), circumcision and the keeping of some of the Jewish feast days.

In Romans 11, Paul writes of this early period in his ministry, "I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. . . I magnify mine office: If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them."

As my pastor explains, "God held forth a longsuffering hand to a wicked, despised people who didn't love Him or trust Him, and He gave them one last opportunity to get into the new program, having despised the old program."

Whereas in the old testament economy the cut-off Gentiles were to emulate Israel, now Israel's been cut off and must emulate the Gentiles.