I'm Justin Zier there. What mode of baptism was most often the priority mode, or did early Christians have a specific mode that they held to? OK. You're going to put it up there on the screen? Yeah, I put it up there. Yeah, yeah, OK. So in the Didache, which is very likely was written right at the time of the apostle John, while he was still alive, certainly within a couple of decades after his death. And it mentions, and this surprised me, because I grew up, immersion was the only form of baptism.
And he says, you know, baptized by immersion or baptized, meaning immerse. If there's sufficient water available, living water, if available, if not, any water is fine. And living water would be like moving water, right? Living water was like moving water potentially, or is that? Moving water. And I discovered when I was digging into Judaism, that's actually a requirement on the mikvahs, even today. It has to be living water, which like you say, it's moving. It has to come from a source and move out.
And it's interesting. So that goes back into Judaism, actually. But if that's not available, any kind of water, if you not enough water to immerse, then pour. It was three times, either immersed three times or pour three times. And that to me was so refreshing because growing up Jehovah's Witness, I mean, there was only one way to do everything. If you didn't do it that way, it was false doctrine, false practice. You were not a Christian. And a lot of the other churches I was around, it was the same way.
And the early Christians, so many of these things we fight about, it was like, hey, do it this way. They preferred immersion. Hey, if that doesn't work, pour. The important thing is you get baptized. Like I say, that surprised me so much. But it has changed my spirit from this dogmatic person, if you've known me as a Jehovah's Witness, to, yeah, a person who recognizes we can be flexible because God, we have a flexible God. Our church, we prefer immersion. If someone wants to be poured, we will do that.
We will honor their conscience. We recognize someone coming from a Anabaptist background, Mennonite or Amish are going to prefer pouring. Often they'll change their mind when they see the evidence, but if not, I will say this, the one thing I'm very much against is, and I've seen it personally in some Mennonite churches, they dribble. They take a cup of water and there might be five people being baptized and have a one little cup and dribble a little water on their head. That is not a washing.
Now, I'm not going to say that baptism was invalid. You need to go back and redo it. I'm not going to make a judgment call there. But that is not what the Didache is saying. That in no way is a washing. When Peter says the removal of the dirt of the flesh, he means, I mean, either you dunked down in water or somebody poured a pitcher of water on you. I mean, it was a washing one way or the other. It's not a dribble or a sprinkling. So, you know, if you're going to pour, then it needs to be a drenching.
And if you're going to do that, you might as well immerse. So I'll stop there giving my thoughts on that.
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