Commenting on his conversion in 1842, Richad Ballantyne interpreted the Bible, in light of the Book of Mormon, as teaching baptismal regeneration:
And as to repentance I could see
that I not only had to forsake sin, which I then believed, but that I had to
forsake Babylon with all its glory and pollutions and renounce allegiance to
all her false and corrupt teachings which they said were not authorized of God.
I had not much difficulty in understanding the scope of these two principles.
But when I came to baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, I was
totally in the dark, though this seems now the simplest of either. But upon
this subject the scriptures seemed to have been robbed of their plainest
teachings. Antichrist’s have used so much sophistry to blind the minds of the
people regarding the form and virtue of this saving ordinance that I could not
for a long time understand it. But when I read the Book of Mormon I got the key
by which I was able to understand the meaning of Christ’s teaching to Nicodemus
regarding the baptism of water; in other words, what was meant when he said ye
must be born of water before ye can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And
what Paul meant when he taught baptism, as a burial. When I afterwards
read of Christ’s going down into the river and of His being baptised of John in
Jordan and of many other plain and simple references to this subject in the New
Testament, I was amazed at my former stupidity. For now it seemed nothing else.
(Richard Ballantyne, “1895
Reminiscences of Richard Ballantyne [4th Account],” February 12,
1895, p. 11, emphasis in original)