Matthew 24:14
And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
The early church believed very much that the Lord Jesus would return during their time. So much so that some in the church at Thessalonike began to literally separate themselves from this world, including not working. However, in terms of the timing of Jesus’ return, there are a number of things that He and other Bible writers said must happen before. The most crucial of all is captured in our passage for today. That the Gospel must be preached to all the nations before the end finally comes. The early church must have missed this since there were many nations still that had not heard of the death and resurrection of the Christ in the first century AD.
Horatio G. Spafford, in his song ‘It is well with my soul’, pens these words:
And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.
This communicates the pilgrim’s longing while on this sin-infested world. However, believers can, in a sense, ‘hasten’ the coming of the Lord. This we can do by ensuring that the Gospel has been preached to all the nations. Modern advancement and technology have favourably placed us for this, and we must take full advantage. Whereas many have heard the message of the Gospel preached to them, there are still many more that haven’t. According to the Joshua Project, there are approximately 17,446 unique people groups (read nations) in the world, with 7,391 of them considered unreached (over 42% of the world’s population). This is staggering, and until the Gospel reaches these nations, the end is yet to come. We have work to do in making disciples among these ethnicities (which is what the Bible calls nations). If we don’t, how else will the words of Revelation 7:9-10 come true:
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Reflections
1. Does the fact that 42% of the world is still unreached bother you? What will you do about it?
