Is baptism needed for eternal life? There are three separate apostolic commissions.
1. On unnamed mountain in Galilee: Matthew 28:19 baptism invoking trinity. [Not known to the Church of the Apostles. Not practiced until the 3rd Century Church of Rome.
2. On unnamed mountain in Galilee: Mark 16:16: compulsory baptism threatening damnation to non-conformists. Scholars of literati say passage is a replacement for original.
3. On Mount of Olives at Jerusalem: Luke 24; John 20; Acts 1: no water baptism required.Judea is incontrovertibly the official place of the ascension not Galilee.
St.Mark is the only place in the New Testament that baptism is listed as a compulsory prerequisite to gain salvation. This comes from the Old Testament’s ‘water of separation’, wherein the non conformist would fail to be cleansed of ceremonial sin and thus put out of the camp for a period, not damned to hell as Mark uncharacteristically records. Nowhere in Mark’s Gospel was Jesus recorded as baptizing anybody after he yielded to John the Baptist’s water rite in faithful loyalty to the last prophet of the Law. He had no sins of which to repent or confess. He merely, up to that moment, assiduously complied with Jewish ritual and ceremony of the Levite priesthood. When John had finished God anointed him as High Priest to found a new priesthood after the order of Melchisedek. The Lord Jesus was born in the tribe of Judah, not Levi. (Refer Hebrews 9 & 10)
CREDIBILITY OF MARK 16: 16.
This enforced link between water and sin’s remission, under threat of damnation for non-compliance, is unique to the whole New Testament. This was not even hinted by John the Baptist or Jesus.
A cross section of Bible literati and academia with the best scholars versed in original languages agree that this last half of the chapter was lost and replaced during or after the 4th century A.D. This was about the same period in which the first Latin Bible was scribed by Constantine’s scholars.
The most ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament originated at this time. They are the Codex Vaticanus now in Rome and the Codex Sinaiticus in the British Library, the only entire copy of the original Greek New Testament in existence.
Though Peter’s first sermon, nearly links repentance with water, his second sermon disavows its connection. Neither he nor any apostle linked sins’ remission with water. Only, Ananias at Damascus believed the Old Testament water of separation for cleansing still applied (Acts 22:16).
Paul writing in Galatians could not endorse Ananias’ words, though he accepted his healing touch. His sins has been buried in the cleansing sea of God’s forgetfulness when he was converted in the roadside to Damascus. Paul believed sin’s cleansing was through the atoning blood of Christ: Romans 4.
Paul viewed baptism differently from Peter after Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:17).
PAUL’S UNIQUELY SINGULAR VIEW OF BAPTISM
1 Corinthians 12:13; Ephesians 4:5; and 1 Corinthians 10; etc. To the apostle there was only one baptism: Christ’s promised baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost, beginning at Jerusalem, ten days after he ascended. Paul in his epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians and Colossians constantly alludes to baptism as that of fire not water. He followed Jesus concept and example given to the Eleven at his ascension on the Mount of Olives (Acts 1).He also links Christ’s passion and rising to the believer’s death (of self), burial (of self) and rising (of the new self) as in Romans 6 etc. Paul does not even hint at the merit of water or its ritual to be any part of repentance, remission, regeneration, or inundation of the Spirit’s fulness. `
Paul’s changed baptismal views were in marked contrast to his early practice at Philippi, Corinth, and Ephesus etc. recorded by Dr. Luke in Acts of the Apostles. His views were affected by his disagreements with Peter and the Jerusalem assembly (Acts 15 & Galatians 2). Unlike Peter (Acts 2:38) he could not endorse either compulsory baptism, or Peter’s link of repentance to water, much less Ananias linking water to remission. The apostle to the Gentiles thus wrote the fourth chapter of Romans to set the record straight.
http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/vexing-questio…baptism-6-of-9/
