36 BAPTISM, valid, C. H. Cayce Suppose I join the church, and the preacher is sincere at the time of my baptism, and afterwards he turns out a public drunkard and swearer— should I fear I had not been baptized by a legal administrator?
We do not think Brother Freeman’s conclusion is correct every time. Such a conclusion would be equivalent to saying a minister could not be so overcome by the temptations of Satan as to give way to them through the weakness of the flesh. A child of God— a true minister of the gospel— may yield to temptation and go far from the path of rectitude and right, so far that there may be but little outward evidence that he is a child of God.
Indeed, we do not know how far wrong the Lord may sometimes suffer one of His children to wander away in sin and wickedness. We think that if one is called of God (and the best evidence we have that a man is called to preach is that he does preach) and is set apart by the church to administer the ordinances, so long as he is in order, baptism administered by him to a proper subject in water is gospel baptism.
We do not think that what the minister may do after the baptism is administered could in any way affect the validity of the baptism. If it could, then it is very doubtful if there is one living today who has valid baptism; for if the wrong doing of the minister would invalidate the baptism administered before the wrong was committed, the wrong would also invalidate all the other official acts which he may have performed.
This would result in no one having gospel baptism or valid ordination. If an officer does a wrong for which he is impeached and deposed from office, that does not affect the acts performed by him while in office before; they are all just as valid as though he had not done the wrong. These things are worthy of careful thought. The Primitive Baptist, November 26, 1907.