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It is ever welcome to any right-minded person to be asked to speak about himself. So John the Baptist found it. He readily told them he was not the Messiah, that he was not Elias; yea, that he was not even the prophet. But they would have a positive answer. "They said unto him, Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself?" Little indeed had he to say of himself. "I" had a very small place in John's thoughts. "A voice." Was this all? Yes; this was all. But these Pharisees were not satisfied. John's self-hiding spirit was entirely beyond them. "They asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not the Christ, nor Elias, neither the prophet?" Here again the Baptist makes short work. "John answered them, saying, I baptize with water; but there standeth one among you whom ye know not. He it is who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose."

John the Baptist, who is considered a forerunner to Christianity, used baptism as the central sacrament of his messianic movement. Christians consider Jesus to have instituted the sacrament of baptism. The earliest Christian baptisms were done by immersion.

Recently, while replying to an email, I had opportunity to review several of John Nelson Darby's letters concerning Christian baptism. Several themes in these letters merit careful consideration: (1) that baptism is not the act of him that is baptised, (2) that there is no command to be baptised, and (3) that baptism is the appointed way that a person is received into the church or formally admitted into the house of God.