To openly accept the message of Workers as God’s Only True ministers is to professing. This step is usually taken by standing to one’s feet or raising one’s hand in a Gospel Meeting when a Worker extends an invitation (called testing the meeting“. To make this decision is also called to profess, make your choice, decide or make a start.
This profession or choice cancels and supersedes beliefs in any other church doctrine and baptism which the convert may have previously been a part of. By the act of professing, converts are repenting and renouncing their belief in any other church or baptism. Sometimes referred to as the convert’s beginning of days.
The professing person becomes a full member after they have been baptized or re-baptized by immersion by a Worker, and is then allowed to take part in communion. It is not necessary for one’s names to be removed from various religious registers, rosters, lists, etc. The newly professing are sometimes called “babes.”
1 Timothy 6:12 – Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.
Hebrews 10:23 – Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering;
Worker Quote: So the meeting was tested again this afternoon and three more stood. I believe it was a total of 28 that professed in the three meetings. There were many other outsiders who were there but those who made their choice have been in many meetings and seem to be committed (Lyle Schober, Haiti, 2010).
Worker Quote: We know that in the family of God there is equality of relationship, but there is not equality of responsibility. Those who are babes in Christ have not the same responsibility as those who are older. This is the same with the servants of God (Jack Carroll, Seattle, WA, April 23, 1952)
Quote: When the meetings were tested, eight women professed. Besides Granny there were Mother, Aunt Minnie, Aunt Jennie Anderson, Aunt Sophie, Aunt Barb, Allie, and Hattie Evans, our teacher. It wasn’t long after they professed, when on a Sunday morning, they were baptized in a cove. It was in back of where Uncle Bobby Anderson lived. It must have been so cold for it was early spring, but those poor souls were willing for anything (West Point Newfoundland, 1915).
Worker Quote: You might say you got saved when you make your choice at Gospel meetings, and then as you go along, and then finally saved at the finish. “Endure to the end, the same shall be saved” (Lloyd Wilson, Menominee conv., 1972).
Worker Quote: “It was special to see Arnold Scharmen once more. He decided in Michigan in 1914 in Arthur Benton and companion’s meetings” (Eldon Tenniswood Letters 1984, Tour of Africa & Europe).