18b All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son
20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
And surely I will be with you always,
These verses, when seen in the context of the entire passage in Matthew 28 which has come to be known as the "Great Commission" (vv. 16-20), have become the primary impetus for Christian evangelism since the time of the first Pentecostal event following Jesus' ascension into Heaven. These two verses, particularly v. 19, have also led to considerable confusion in the churches concerning the relationship, manner, and mode of baptism to one's salvation.
To a certain extent, the choice of language employed by Tyndale and the translators employed by King James as the Bible was first translated into the English language, based principally on the limited scholarship of the 16th and 17th centuries, is at fault. However, the divisions which have grown up between the various Christian denominations since the time of the Reformation can also be attributed to the question and problem of baptism. It is well known now that the word baptism is merely a transliteration of the original Greek verb stem ((((?((, employed deliberately to evade the issue of "baptism" by affusion (as in the Roman tradition) or by immersion (as was gaining in popularity among some of the Protestant churches).
Modern biblical scholarship has its roots in the spiritual enlightenment of the nineteenth century, first in Germany, and spreading to England and America. Among the most respected scholars and theologians of the nineteenth century are John Peter Lange and Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer in Germany, Adam Clarke and Matthew Henry in England, and John Broadus in America. Each in his own way carefully examined the original Greek texts which were then available and prepar...