| It is not possible for people to be rebaptized in a church which insists that rebaptism by immersion is a condition of membership without them admitting that their first baptism was invalid. The people may be trying to excuse their action as a simple rededication which does not reject their first baptism, but this is not the view of the church that demands baptism by immersion. Even if the other church was willing to allow the interpretation that this is just a rededication, it still reveals a false belief about baptism, since it is treating baptism as our promise to God rather than as a means of grace in which God makes a promise to us. The real problem here is that your friends are submitting to the unscriptural demands of a false-teaching church. You say nothing about their religious background or their degree of biblical knowledge, so we can't say where the best place is to begin with them. Perhaps the place to begin is with a discussion of what is the nature of baptism. The best place to begin depends on how much biblical knowledge they have and how open they are to listening to you. You also need to understand why they left their former church and why they are going to a new one. You need to have a better understanding of the "big picture" of their spiritual situation. |