Acts 1:8 "Bearing witness" is not "winning souls."
No, it is being a witness, a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ.
The application of the verse as far as you personally are concerned is:
"And you (Biwald) shall be a witness
unto me both in Everet, and in all Washingtion, and in California, and unto the uttermost part of the earth"
Are you that witness? How are you going to be that witness to the uttermost part of the earth if you know not their languagues. The Apostles did know their languages. The universal language of the known world at that time was Greek. Everyone knew it. The world today does not have a universal language--thus the need of Bible translators--unless you have the ability to learn all the languages of the world.
Great Commission. The problem in the Bible is the pronouns!
Perhaps the problem is that the pronouns are offensive to you.
The pronouns are in the second person.
YOU (Biwald) Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
--Yes when put that way it is offensive to you. For it is a command that you don't want to keep. You will do everything in your power to stop from leaving the comfort of your home and to go to a nation where the temperatures reach 120 Farenheit, where the floors are made out of cow dung, where the food is so spicy it burns your tongue, where you don't know what others are saying because you don't know the language, where it is hard to teach them because in their language there is no Bible. And those are only a fraction of the obstacles a person may come across. But you don't want to do that. That is part of that nasty word called "sacrifice."
The Orthodox and Catholic Churches can logically claim that the apostolic authority has been passed on to them, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magisterium
but Baptists don't "believe in" such stuff.
The Orthodox and Catholics have perverted the Word of God.
Look at this concept Biblically.
The Greek word is apostolos = apostle. It means: one sent with a message. The 12 Apostles were sent with the message of Christ, the gospel. The Great Commission was given to them. But if you study the Bible there are more than twelve apostles. The word apostle was used in a more general sense. After Matthias, the 12th chosen to replace Judas, we encounter Paul, and then Barnabas. Sylvanus is also called an apostle. There are a number of others referred to as apostles.
When the Greek was translated into the Latin the Latin word for apostolos is mittere, from which we get our English word--missionary--one sent with a message. Every Christian ought to be a missionary--sent with the message of Christ. Even if you don't look at it that way our apostles of this day and age are our missionaries. The English word missionary can be traced right back to the Greek word for Apostle.
Our "apostolic authority" stands on the Bible and not on tradition. We have authority behind our message; the RCC and Orthodox have no such authority. All tradition is sinking sand.
On Christ the solid rock I stand;
All RCC tradition is sinking sand.
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