No: they were to go forth
and preach the gospel of it, the good news of it, to every creature--
to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God. The good news that God
was the King of men, after all; that cruel tyrants and oppressors,
and conquerors, were not their kings; that neither the storms over
their heads, nor the earth under their feet, nor the clouds and the
rivers whom the heathens used to worship in the hope of persuading
the earth and the weather to be favourable to them, and bless their
harvests, were their kings; that idols of wood and stone, and evil
spirits of lust, and cruelty, and covetousness, were not their kings;
but that God was their King; that He loved them, He pitied them in
spite of all their sins; that He had sent His only begotten Son into
the world to teach them, to live for them--to die for them--to claim
them for His own. And, therefore, they were to go and baptize all
nations, as a sign that they were to repent, and change, and put away
all their old false and evil heathen life, and rise to a new life,
they and their children after them, as God's children, God's family,
brothers of the Son of God. And they were to baptize them into a
name; showing that they belonged to those into whose name they were
baptized; into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Spirit.
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