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Response to Questions About Baptism & Communion

Below are my responses to questions I received from a person who had read our information about "Ritual Immersion" (baptism) in the time of Yeshua. Thought you might find them of interest.

For Yeshua, his Jewish followers and the Jewish audiences he addressed, “ritual purity” was the most important thing on their minds. They understood that the prerequisite for obtaining forgiveness of a sin was TESHUVAH (repentance – stop doing the sin, regret the harm that has been done, do what is needed to repair the damage and do what one is supposed to do). Ritual immersion could only take place after that and it was to restore ritual purity in certain Jewish sects.

Response 
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Ritual immersion was also required for other reasons according to the Torah – before priests performed certain rites, after a woman had a period, etc. In other cases, for example touching a dead body, a period of time was required to return one to being ritually pure.

It is important to understand that there has never been form of the Israelite religion or Judaism. There have always been groups of Israelites (1st Temple Period), Judeans (people usually call “Jews”, from the 2nd Temple Period, and Rabbinic Schools (Rabbinic Judaism after 200 CE). So, thinking there is or has been a “single Jewish standard for determining what is `right’ is a misunderstanding of the periods in which they lived.

I also want to address your question “Am I allowed to take communion?” “Communion rituals & doctrines) developed long after Yeshua. They were primarily influenced by non-Jewish Christians who controlled Christian groups in different places – Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, etc. Add to that, the doctrines created about communion by Protestant sects after the 16th century and there are a number of conflicting positions about who participants, how they do it and why. All of which have one thing in common – Yeshua did not create them.

Now let me response to your final question – “How would a person immerse his or her self that's physically unable to?” I do not know of a reference to that situation in the Second Temple Period. I asked my associate Rabbi Leynor and he didn’t know of any references either. He said that today a disabled person would do it with help from others in a swimming pool, lake or ocean.

Thank you for contacting us. Hope this helps.

Shalom,

Jim Myers

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