**does the typical member of the churches of Christ believe it is Biblical to be baptized by an unbaptized elder or minister?****
I remember listening to Basel Barret Baxter many years ago and he always ended his TV show with the request that people go the CofC and be baptized by immersion for remission of sin.
Then he would say..”If there is not a CofC near you a friend can baptize you.”
And I used to think, what if that friend was a satanist or mormon or JW and secretly considered the person being baptized in the name of the satanist church.
After all, it would seem to me that a person doing the baptizing should be authorized to baptize, just like a person marrying a couple needs to be authorized to perform marriages.
this is a question i always wondered about.
think about what the coC teaches, there were NO Christians on earth for over 1,000 years before the 19th century.
so whoever finally “restored” the church ( Campbell? )would have to be baptized according to their doctrine. ok, fair enough. now, who was able to baptize him? after all, everyone in the NT was baptized by a baptized believer already. so unless, Jesus Christ appeared to him and baptized him, who did or could?