A Labor Day Mikvah

We are now almost three years into our "Messianic" (for lack of a better term) journey. Husband has been getting increasingly anxious to learn about an immersion.

From what we've been able to learn, a Mikvah is a cleansing before entering the temple. Actually, it is the recepticable for holding the immersion water for cleansing before entering the temple.

We have no temple but it is commanded in Leviticus and Numbers.

~Also the Messiah himself was immersed.~

I was recently asked if I felt we needed to perform a Mikvah in place of our childhood Baptist Baptism. Here was my answer:

Yes, actually. We've been studying a lot and, as you have probably already figured out ,(we're just very slow and leaving all we've ever known is, at times, difficult) we have discovered that there are concepts added to scripture that were not there originally.
One concept seems to be the idea of the Trinity.

Even though we have been Messianic for almost three years now, we were challenged over the summer to study if the concept of Trinity is actually scriptural. Here is what we found:

The statements "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" are not in the oldest Greek manuscripts or ANY of the Hebrew NT manuscripts. The updated Strong's has changed their definition of "Echad" found in Deuteronomy 6:4, to actually mean "One" instead of "Unity." A Trinitarian concept does not agree with Torah.

I never realized that in being Baptist, I was very Catholic...

We wanted to be immersed into the Father's Biblical name, YHVH, and into His Son's, the Messiah Yeshua's (or Yashua, Yahosua) Name and character.
And in following the Sh'ma, Deuteronomy 6:4-11, we wanted to symbolically state we believe YHVH is truly ONE, not a unified god-head.
We prayed for the Father to immerse us in His Son's character (name, reputation)
I don't think this is a salvation issue but Husband is thinking it is. We are studying John 3 right now.

Here is something on which I would like your opinion:

How do you interrupt this verse and the whole context surrounding it?

Quote:

John 3:5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

As I see it, the Messiah is using parallelism to answer Nichodemus' question; born of water being of flesh, born of spirit being spirit...

In other words, you certainly can't enter into the Kingdom if you're not first born into this world.

But, then how does that explain the evil one's access to the Throne in the book of Job? He wasn't "born of water."

But, if the "born of water" phrase means baptism, then how can I explain the robber on the cross?

Quote:

And Yeshua said to him, “Truly, I say to you today, you shall be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:43

Do you have any thoughts on this?If you see any error in my logic, please point it out to me so I can study further!

~

Spurred on by John 3, We decided to follow HIM.

We went to the river today and after a simple prayer, immersed ourselves in HIS name and in HIS character.

It was a wonderful experience for our entire family.

k'tiva v'chatima tova!

~wow~