This birth from above; this birth by water and the Spirit; and this
baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire are all three plainly one and
the same divine operation and there is no water baptism either
mentioned or implied: Yet man who is prone to substitute the letter
which killeth for the spirit which giveth life, long ago perverted this
testimony of Christ to Nicodemus by construing "born" to mean "baptized"
and thus by changing one Scripture word he would close the kingdom of
God against his fellow man who would not come to him and be baptized
with water.[152]

But we trace through history from the beginning a seed or remnant who
constantly protested against such sacramentalism and by legions sealed
their testimonies with martyr's blood.[153]

With the Bible, which was long forbidden, now open to all, how can we of
this enlightened day still adhere to such idle dogma or ever quote these
words of Christ to Nicodemus as authority for any water baptism?[154] By
this whole context and by all of Christ's relevant sayings upon the
Mount and elsewhere he had no allusion to water baptism. Had he meant
baptized he would have said baptized and not born.

Just as Christ said: We must surely be born of water and the Spirit and
we must just as surely be baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire,
but we shall no more be born of material water than we shall be baptized
with material fire.[155]

Neither is Christ's fan material nor his axe at the root of the tree,
nor are the waters which he said should flow from the bodies of
believers, nor the waters which he promised should be in them a well of
living water springing up unto everlasting life;[156] nor the living