We believe it to be a common failing of the present, and all times, for men to believe certain doctrines because others did so in whom they had confidence... Truth seekers should empty their vessels of the muddy waters of tradition and fill them at the fountain of truth - God's word (C. T. Russell - Millennial Dawn Volume1)
In Christian churches all over the world they say:
I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
This is taken from Jesus' famous last words to his apostles recorded by Matthew:
19 Go therefore and make disciples of people of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit (Matthew 28 NWT).
How many times have we heard or read this? Many, many, many times. We have heard it in English from Protestants and in Latin from Catholics. But how many times have we understood what it is saying? Never yet once. Because, as in the case of Matthew 24:36 (The classic mistranslation which has prevented sincere Christians believing that God would tell them when this system ends - see U237), the above is an incorrect translation. It was corrupted by Catholic theologians to support their false trinity doctrine - see I39. Every single existing Greek Manuscript of the bible containing this verse (the Siniaticus, the Alexandrinus, The Vatican B, The Codex Rescriptus the Codex Bezae and all the relevant Papyri) has the Greek word 'eiV' meaning 'into' rather than the Greek word 'en' meaning 'in'. Any Greek Interlinear Bible (Such as Kingdom Interlinear Bible, from the Watchtower or the Greek-English Interlinear of Brown and Comfort), translates verse 19 as below:
19 Having gone your way therefore, make disciples of all the nations, baptising them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28 Kingdom Interlinear Bible of the Watchtower).
baptizonteV autouV eiV to onoma tou patroV kai tou uiou
Baptising them into the name of the father and of the son
kai tou agiou pneumatoV
(Matthew 28:19, KI from Wescott & Hort, and Nestle Aland 26th ed.)
and of the holy spirit
The Greek preposition for ‘in’ is en, and it takes the dative tw onomati. The Greek preposition for ‘into’ is eiV and it takes the accusative to onoma
The Literal bible (J P Green, www.sovgracepub.com) also available from this site as a download translates this verse as:
19 Then, having gone, disciple all nations, baptising them into the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy spirit (Matthew 28 - Green's Literal Translation - GLT).
May the late J P Green be blessed for his unpresumptuous fidelity. Here are all the translations in our Bible Linguistics software of Matthew 28:19
TYN Go therfore and teache all nacions baptysinge them in the name of the father and the sonne and the holy goost:
KJV Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
ASV Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit:
NWT Go therefore and make disciples of people of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit,
GLT Then having gone, disciple all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
YLT Having gone, then, disciple all the nations,
baptizing them -- to the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
ED Going forth disciple you all the nations, immersing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit;
KIT Having gone your way therefore make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them [persons]
into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit (Matthew 28:19).
Now baptising someone in the name of Jesus, is very different from baptising someone into the name of Jesus. Baptising in the name of Jesus is an action done with Jesus' authority. For example the statement, 'in the name of the President I command you to open this door', is a command made with the authority of the President. But the statement, I have entered into the name of the President, means you have either become the first lady or been adopted into his immediate family. In the former case it is an action with his authority, in the latter case it is the entry into his family name.
So in fact in the latter case of 'into' we are talking about three different baptisms, into three different family names, whereas, in the former case of 'in' it could be one baptism with the authority of all three of the names. In fact this one baptism three name authority interpretation is how the whole Christian world currently regards this scripture, and all of us believe that we are baptised in water, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, rather like Inspector Clouseau arrests people in the name of the law.
In the case of Clouseau his incompetence was hysterical. In the case of all Christians the incompetence is lamentable and it is unforgivable. For example, we read:
5 He is the one whom God has chosen out of all your tribes, to stand to minister in the name of Jehovah (Deuteronomy 18).
32 And he went on to build the stones into an altar in the name of Jehovah and to make a trench, of about the area sowed with two seah measures of seed, all around the altar (1 Kings 18).
So it is apparent that 'in the name of' has the meaning of ‘in the authority of’ or 'with the authority of', but 'into the name of' has a very narrow meaning, namely that the candidate ends up wearing that name as a family name. The candidate takes that name for himself as a kind of spiritual surname. As we saw in section I27, being baptised into the name of Jehovah makes you a God to be worshipped. And only Jesus has achieved this baptism so far. Whereas any one of us can do something with Jehovah's authority. In fact Paul says:
17
Whatever it is that you do, in word or in work, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, thanking God the Father through him (Colossians 3).
In other words keep his law in all you do. Incidentally this does not mean that when we thank God we should do it through Jesus. It means that whatever we do, we should bear in mind that we are doing it in the name of Jesus, and act accordingly, and acting in this way is thanking God through Jesus.
So of course we do baptise people in water in the name of Jesus, just like we do the preaching work in his name, just like we wash our dishes in his name. We make cups of tea in the name of Lord Jesus. But this however is not what Jesus commanded at Matthew 28:19. He was commanding baptisms into 3 different names. Therefore he was commanding 3 different baptisms.
There is no instance in the bible of the phrase 'in the name of the holy spirit', no one said: I order you in the name of the holy spirit to get up and walk, or suchlike. Only God can do this, because the holy spirit is his wife, and not anybody else's wife. So he alone has authority over her and men do not. No Christian is recorded as doing anything and verbally proclaiming it to be in the name of the holy spirit. In fact both Peter and Paul did do something in the name of the holy spirit (they resurrected a dead man), but neither one of them is recorded as being presumptuous enough to verbalise this.
39 At that Peter rose and went with them. And when he arrived, they led him up into the upper chamber; and all the widows presented themselves to him weeping and exhibiting many inner garments and outer garments that Dorcas used to make while she was with them.
40 But Peter put everybody outside and, bending his knees, he prayed, and, turning to the body, he said: Tabitha, rise!" She opened her eyes and, as she caught sight of Peter, she sat up.
41 Giving her his hand, he raised her up, and he called the holy ones and the widows and presented her alive (Acts 9).
9 Seated at the window, a certain young man named Eutychus fell into a deep sleep while Paul kept talking on, and, collapsing in sleep, he fell down from the third story and was picked up dead.
10 But Paul went downstairs, threw himself upon him and embraced him and said: Stop raising a clamor, for his soul is in him.
11 He now went upstairs and began the meal and took food, and after conversing for quite a while, until daybreak, he at length departed.
12 So they took the boy away alive and were comforted beyond measure (Acts 20).
These resurrections were performed by the holy spirit, with the authority of God through the prayers of Peter and Paul. Neither of the two said to God's wife, the 2nd Holy Spirit: Resurrect this one for me love! They begged Jesus in prayer who then asked his father's wife, the holy spirit, to resurrect.
For completeness we now consider all the other 7 (4 then 3 below) references in the bible to baptism in or into or upon the name of somebody or something, are as follows (The Greek preposition for ‘upon’ is epi and it takes the dative tw onomati):
baptisqhtw ekastoV umwn en tw onomati Ihsou Cristou
Let him be baptised each of you in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38 Kingdom Interlinear from the Wescott and Hort Greek manuscript, based upon the oldest know large Greek text, the Vatican B).
baptisqhtw ekastoV umwn epi tw onomati Ihsou Cristou
Let him be baptised each of you upon the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38, Nestle Aland 26, based on the majority of known texts, not the oldest text).
de bebaptismenoi uphrcon eiV to onoma tou kuriou Ihsou
but having been baptised they were into the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts 8:16 KI &
NA26)
prosetaxen de autouV en tw onomati Ihsou Cristou baptisqhnai
He commanded but them in the name Jesus Christ to be baptised (Acts 10:48 KI & NA26)
akousanteV de ebaptisqhsan eiV to onoma tou kuriou Ihsou
Having heard but they were baptised into the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts 19:5 KI & NA26)
The reader will notice that there is a discrepancy between the oldest Greek test which reads: In the name of Jesus Christ, and the newer texts which read: Upon the name of Jesus Christ. The two readings mean more or less the same thing however.
In Acts 2 and Acts 8, the proselytes and the Samaritans respectively were baptised in water, not in spirit. So they were not baptised into the name of Jesus, which is a spirit baptism, but they were baptised with his authority in water - actually into the name of John the baptist, the father of the water baptism of the first church.
The context of the last one above in Acts 19 is:
2
And he said to them: Did you receive holy spirit when you became believers? They said to him: Why we have never heard whether there is a holy spirit.
3 And he said into what therefore (eiV ti oun)
were you baptised. They said into the baptism of John.
4 Paul said: John baptised with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is in Jesus.
5
Having heard this, they were baptised
into the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts 19).
The Revised Standard Version (RSV) provides a fascinating insight into the trinity inspired mistranslation of in and into. It evidently needs a little more revision. it actually says:
2
And he said to them: Did you receive the holy spirit when you believed? And they said: No, we have never even heard that there is a holy spirit.
3 And he said into what then (eiV ti oun)
were you baptised. They said into (eiV)
John's baptism.
4 And Paul said: John baptised with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is Jesus.
5
On hearing this, they were baptised in (eiV)
the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts 19 - RSV).
So the RSV correctly translates the first two incidences of the Greek word (eiV) as 'into' in circumstances which have little doctrinal significance to simple Christian belief, but then mistranslates the third incidence as 'in', in the phrase 'baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus) which has great doctrinal significance to simple Christian belief.
The Ephesians in Acts 19 were not actually baptised by Paul into the name of Jesus, because Paul was not a new covenant saint. Paul merely conferred the gifts of the spirit upon them by laying his hands on them. They were baptised into his name by the angels as soon as they heard about Jesus, and so were able to put faith in him. One cannot be baptised into the name of Jesus without putting faith in him
17 For Christ dispatched me, not to go baptising, but to go on declaring the good news (1 Corinthians 1).
Now there is a scripture which looks like it is contradicting this, namely:
12 Furthermore, there is no salvation in anyone else, for there is not another name under (upo) heaven that has been given among men by which we must get saved (Acts 4).
Did Abraham get saved by getting baptised into Jesus to by putting faith into Jesus? Paul himself declares that he was declared righteous due to faith.
6 And he put faith in Jehovah; and he proceeded to count it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15 NWT)
20 But because of the promise of God he did not waver in a lack of faith, but became powerful by his faith, giving God glory
21 and being fully convinced that what he had promised he was also able to do.
22 Hence it was counted to him as righteousness
(Romans 4).
And we know that his faith was in God not in Jesus.
The Greek says...
12 And not is in other no one (or no one else) the salvation, neither for name is different under the heaven the having been given in men in which it is necessary to be saved us. (Acts 4 KIT)
12
kai ouk estin en allw oudeni h swthria oude gar onoma estin eteron upo ton ouranon to dedomenon en anqrwpoij en w dei swqhnai umaj
(Acts 4 VatB)
So the NWT translates a double negative as a negative just like a cockney would. However if we translate this as a non cockney. It means: And not is the salvation in no one else. Which is to say it is in other people. That is the true statement. For Methuselah and Melchizedek have ransomed Noah and Adam respectively. So many in the Kingdom of God will be saved by having a Melchizedaic or a Methuselaiain body - which body is their salvation into the Kingdom..
The Greeks do use a double negative as a negative. But also they can be logical and use it as a positive.
Everlasting salvation is all dependant on Jesus' ransom sacrifice. He saves us all everlastingly, being the mediator of the angelic ransom covenant which is the master covenant for angelic life between God and mankind. Jesus is the father of all who are saved everlastingly. But he is not the only name into which we can be baptised, because the angelic ransom covenant has many subcovenants. And so do the CRC and the FRC.
But the names of Melchizedek and Methuselah had not been given among men for salvation at the time that Peter spoke in Acts4.
These are a fascinating part of the bible code - Codec13. The principle states...
Any unanswered question asked in the scriptures with two possible answers (normally yes and no), has the answer in one word symbolic thread, being the opposite of the answer in the literal meaning or straight symbolic meaning (the event symbolism).
In other words whichever answer is true in the literal/event symbolic meaning, the alternative answer must be true in the greater meaning (the word symbolic meaning). The principle follows from the Power Principle of the code which basically states that every word of scripture has power.
12 For the word of God is alive and exerts power (Hebrews 4).
All scripture is alive and exerts power, even literally false alternatives. Therefore these alternatives must be true in a further meaning. In fact one can deduce that the bible is in a code just from the fact that every word must exert power and it contains literally false alternatives.
Paul mentions a baptism into his name with sarcasm...
12 But I say this, that each of you says, I am of Paul,
and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ.
13 The Christ has been divided. Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul?
14 I give thanks to God that I did not baptize one of you,
except Crispus and Gaius,
15 that not anyone should say that you were baptized into
my name.
16 And I also baptized the house of Stephanas. For the rest, I do not know if I baptized any other. (1 Corinthians 1 LWT)
In the literal meaning, Paul was not impaled for anyone at the time, and no people were baptized into Paul's name in this account. But in the greater meaning Paul was impaled for people and people were baptized into Paul's name. For Paul actually mediated the ELC - see I35.
Therefore since we know that Paul, in the literal meaning, was baptising people into the name of John the baptist, in fact into the 1EC, not into his own name, then, in the symbolic meaning, he will baptise another group of people into his own name!
But we must consider Paul's statement, not his question, his statement: The Christ has been divided !!!
12 But I say this, that each of you says, I am of Paul,
and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ.
13 The Christ has been divided. Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul? (1 Corinthians 1 LWT)
12 legw de touto oti ekastoj umwn legei egw men eimi paulou egw de apollw egw de khfa egw de cristou
13 memeristai o cristoj mh pauloj estaurwqh uper umw& h eij to onoma paulou ebaptisqhte (1 Corinthians 1 SinaiO)
12 I am saying but this that each (one)
of you is saying I indeed I am of Paul, I but of Apollos, I but of Cephas, I but of Christ.
13 Has been parted the Christ. Not Paul was put on stake over you, or into the name of Paul were you baptized? (1 Corinthians 1 KIT)
He is divided into those of Paul, those of Apollos, those of Cephas and those of Christ. So all in all we have 4 mediators of 4 spirit covenants (for the anointed, the Christ, the saints, the sons of the JAC). These are Paul (ELC of Bilhah), Apollos (HLC of Zilpah), Cephas (meaning stone/rock - this is Peter, who became the mediator of the 1NC of Leah, after Jesus became the 2nd God to be worshipped - Peter is the head of the 3rd Holy Spirit, the head of Jesus' wife), Christ (Gordon, the mediator of the 2NC of Rachel - we are all Christs) - see I35. Behold the power of Paul's words! So at last we have the mediator of the Zilpah covenant, the HLC, he is Apollos!
4 For when one may say, Truly I am of Paul, and another, I of Apollos; are you not fleshly? [A Binary question. Yes fleshly literally. But spirit covenant mediators symbolically!]
5 What then is Paul? And what Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, and to each as the Lord gave?
[Well they are mediators of spirit covenants,
the ELC and the HLC]
(1 Corinthians 3 GLT)
Returning to the literal meaning, we see that Paul used words showing that baptism is into a name.
In fact when one is sealed into a blessing covenant then one gets the name of the mediator of that covenant as one's surname.
So for example if John Smith was a sealed 2NC saint in the Lords Witnesses his full name would actually be: John Smith Abraham Adam Melchizedek, Gordon Isaac Noah Methuselah, Gordon Jacob, Adam, Michael
Jesus/Michael, through the ARC, becomes our eternal angelic father, rather than Adam. Jesus regains what Adam lost, for us:
6 For there has been a child born to us; there has been a son given to us; and the princely rule will come to be upon his shoulder. And his name will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9)
So people are baptised into the name of the mediator of a covenant, becoming sons of this mediator as regards their spiritual life, their non adamic ageless human life, their angelic life, their everlasting life, their second life. And this process, baptism, is a cleansing for entrance into the covenant mediated by the mediator whose name one is baptised into.
It is the trinity doctrine - see I39, that has denied mankind any knowledge of the relationship between baptisms and covenants disclosed above. One does not need to be a Greek Scholar to see that the Greek word 'eiV' Matthew 28:19 should be translated as 'into'. It is truly a disgrace that this nonsense doctrine has fooled us all for 1,700 years. Here is the definition of the 3rd century logical con trick which has blinded Christianity...
The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion -- the truth that in the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another. Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed:
"The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God."
In this Trinity of Persons the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Yet, notwithstanding this difference as to origin, the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal: all alike are uncreated and omnipotent. This, the Church teaches, is the revelation regarding God's nature which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came upon earth to deliver to the world: and which she proposes to man as the foundation of her whole dogmatic system.
This is a false doctrine adopted by the council of churches at Nicea in 325 AD - see Code#c12a.
The Catholic Enclyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15047a.htm, says regarding it's 'proof' that the 'trinity' is correct:
II. PROOF OF DOCTRINE FROM SCRIPTURE
A. New Testament
The evidence from the Gospels culminates in the baptismal commission of Matthew 28:20. It is manifest from the narratives of the Evangelists that Christ only made the great truth known to the Twelve step by step. First He taught them to recognize in Himself the Eternal Son of God. When His ministry was drawing to a close, He promised that the Father would send another Divine Person, the Holy Spirit, in His place. Finally after His resurrection, He revealed the doctrine in explicit terms, bidding them go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matthew 28:18). The force of this passage is decisive. That "the Father" and "the Son" are distinct Persons follows from the terms themselves, which are mutually exclusive. The mention of the Holy Spirit in the same series, the names being connected one with the other by the conjunctions "and ... and" is evidence that we have here a Third Person co-ordinate with the Father and the Son, and excludes altogether the supposition that the Apostles understood the Holy Spirit not as a distinct Person, but as God viewed in His action on creatures. The phrase "in the name" (eis to onoma) affirms alike the Godhead of the Persons and their unity of nature.
So the Catholic 'proof' relies on Matthew 28:19 meaning: baptising them in the name of... But it does not mean this. What we find very distasteful is that the Catholics even quote the Greek scripture: (eis to onoma) yet still mistranslate it as "in the name", when it says "into the name". So please beloved reader, pick up a Greek Dictionary, ask your favourite Greek Scholar. Keep on seeking and ye shall find. A Shorter Greek Lexicon by Liddell and Scott is the famous one, but the Analytical Lexicon of the New Testament by William Mounce is better for New Testament Greek in our opinion. You will find that 'eis', meaning 'into' takes the accusative case and 'en' meaning 'in' takes the dative case and 'onoma' is in the accusative case. That really is the end of the trinity, not that it even had a beginning because it is defined in such a way as to be non-existent - see Codec12.1.
May we draw the readers attention to the
last sentence in the quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia above, which reveals
that the mistranslation of Matthew 28:19 (sic) supports 'the Godhead of persons
and their unity of nature'. This is Catholic theobabble dreamt up in support of the trinity
doctrine. A doctrine which condemns mankind to be ignorant idolaters of a non
existent contrivance of crafty theologians, who have succeeded in playing God
with the vast majority of 'Christians' for 1,700 years, by using this cunning
diversion.