Mark 16:15
The context
This command stands within Mark 16:9-20, the longer ending, which is absent from the earliest manuscripts and from the oldest witnesses to the Gospel. In that ending the risen Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, then to two disciples, then to the eleven at table, and rebukes their unbelief before giving the commission.
What it establishes
The sentence gives the mission a universal scope: the proclamation is not confined to Israel or to a single region, and the audience is described as the whole creation. It also assumes a message already in hand rather than one to be invented.
What it does not establish
It does not establish its own textual status. The verse belongs to a passage whose place in Mark is disputed, and it cannot bear a doctrine alone. Nor does it define the content of the gospel; the rest of the book supplies that.
Short note, first pass, October 2026. Corrections welcome.
Cited in these answers
Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.