Students of American literature are familiar with Edgar Allan Poe’s famous fictional story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” in which a woman is mistakenly buried alive by her twin brother, only to escape from her coffin and cause her brother’s death by the shock of seeing her again. Today, premature burial is extremely rare, at least in a physical sense. In a spiritual sense, however, it happens more often than we realize! Baptism is a ceremony described in the Bible as a symbol of conversion—the death of our sinful past as we rise to experience a new life of joy and victory in Jesus. Our former life of self-pleasing and rebellion against God is buried and left behind. Jesus made clear that it is important to know what the Bible says about baptism. And without understanding the true meaning of baptism, many people are being buried alive!