The New Testament teaches that water baptism of a penitent believer is unto the forgiveness of sins.

Thought I'd post again since the last debate on this topic was forfeited by the negative due to time constraints. I will simply advance the first affirmative arguments as before, and anyone who wants to accept is most welcome. By "New Testament", I mean the twenty-seven books from Matthew to Revelation, inclusive, as found in the KJV, ASV, or equivalent versions. By "teach", I mean "to set forth the concept as true", whether by direct command, approved example, or necessary inference. By "baptism", I mean "immersion" - the baptism of the Great Commission. By "penitent believer", I mean a person who has faith in Christ and has repented of his sins. By "unto", I mean "in view of an as-yet unreached end." "Remission or forgiveness of past sins" is, I think, self-explanatory. Questions/requests: 1. Please provide one grammatically-parallel sentence in English to Mark 16: 16 in the form, "He that (a) and (b) shall (c) receive $1,000, but he that does not (a) shall not (c) receive it", that you believe supports your position. 2. Is the figure of speech "synecdoche" utilized in the New Testament? 3. Please place the following in order of occurance: believing, loving God, repenting, confessing faith, being baptized, and receiving forgiveness of sins. 4. Were the chief rulers of John 12: 42 saved men at the point of John 12: 42? 5. Do you accept the ASV translation of 1901 with reference to Acts 2: 38, "...Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." Alright, with that out of the way, I shall begin by introducing a negative: what the issue is not. The issue is not, "Are men saved by faith", but, rather, the issue is, "When are men saved by faith?" And I submit an example, Heb 11: 30, "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down ..." So the walls fell by faith. I do not deny that. When did they fall by faith? At faith's inception, before obedience? At faith alone or faith only? No, "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days." This introductory example sets forth my contention: the walls of Jericho fell by faith - an all-inclusive faith, a working faith, a living faith - that obeyed whatever God had instructed in order to receive the reward. The same concept is suggested by the healing of Naaman the Leper and many other examples. 1. Mark 16: 16. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned." (ASV). Jesus Christ, just prior to his ascension to the right hand of the Father, spoke these words along with the parallels Matt 28: 19, 20 and Luke 24: 46, 47. I have requested a grammatically-parallel English sentence in the form described, with $1,000 as the reward, which lends support to the negative, and I will submit that no such sentence exists. It would indeed be strange if the only English sentence in the entire world in which the (b), in this case "is baptized", were not necessary to the (c). Further, both "believeth" (or "having believed") and "is baptized" (or "having been baptized") are aorist participles, the action of which may be described as follows: "The kind of action in the aorist participle is punctiliar, i.e. finished action. The time of the action is antecedent to the action of the main verb; therefore, the time of action is a relative matter." (Summers, Ray, Essentials of New Testament Greek, 1950, p. 94) The "leading verb" of Mark 16: 16 is the future passive indicative "shall be saved." The "shall be saved" in Mark 16: 16 is equivalent to the "remission of sins" in Luke 24: 47. The action of the two aorist participles, "believeth" and "is baptized" is, to use Dr. Summers' phraseology, "antecedent to the action of the main verb." There is positively no way, in Greek or English, to translate the verse "He that believeth shall be saved, then be baptized", and there is no way in Greek or English to invert the positions of "shall be saved" and "is baptized" (or "believeth either, for that matter): such is not possible grammatically nor logically. Thus, baptism is placed squarely between an unsaved person and salvation, and, in all candor, about the only way I've ever seen of so-called "answering" the passage is simply to deny the authenticity of the verse, and thereby try to force the affirmative to launch into a tangential defense of Biblical credibility and authenticity. I trust such will not be the case here. 2. Acts 2: 38. The entirety of Acts 2 teaches salvation by faith, not faith only, but nonetheless by faith: "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that this same God hath made that same Jesus, who ye crucified, both Lord and Christ. Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter .... 'What shall we do?' " (Acts 2: 36, 37) I'll ask: "What shall we do for what?", and submit the answer, "to get the penalty of this awful crime off of our hands, now and eternally, if at all possible." Were those "devout men" who had crucified Christ, either literally or by association, believers in Him at the point of verse 37, "What shall we do?" Certainly they were. They had faith, but the penalty for their sins was still upon them. Now if Peter had been a more modern preacher, he would have said, "Well, you've been pricked or cut to the heart. Just trust in Christ, pray about it, and we'll put your case before the brethren, and you can relate your experience. We'll vote on it, and baptize you in a month or two when we get a group together." "Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." (Acts 2: 38). Please note that the reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit occurs after baptism, also, yet a common order of events is "repent, remission, gift of the Spirit, then baptism." What do grammarians and lexicographers say? "In order to the forgiveness of sins (Matt 26: 28, Luke 3: 3) we connect naturally with both the preceding verbs. This clause states the motive or object which should induce them to repent and be baptized. It enforces the exhortation, not one part to the exclusion of the other." (Hackett, H. B., Commentary on the Acts, 1882, p. 53) In fact, Dr. Thayer says, "eis aphesin hamartion, to obtain the forgiveness of sins" and specifically cites Acts 2: 38 as the example. (Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 1977 ed, p. 94). "To obtain the forgiveness of sins." Thus, Acts 2: 38 parallels Mark 16: 16 which parallels Matt 28: 19, 20 and Luke 24: 46-47. Any passage which predicates salvation upon "faith" without a specific mention of repentance and baptism necessarily includes repentance and baptism; the synecdoche is employed in which "faith" or "belief" is the "part for the whole", an all-inclusive living, acting faith, and repentance and baptism are necessarily implied, even if each is not specifically stated. Thus, when the Bible speaks of walls falling by faith, we cannot really tell by that alone just when the walls fell. That they fell by faith is certain. What kind of faith? When? Those walls fell by a living, acting, inclusive faith after - not before - but after that faith led the people to do exactly what God had commanded.