The years between AD70 to AD 70 were both a beginning and an end. The Jewish leaders of the Apostle Peter’s time had murdered their long-promised Messiah, but his resurrection revived Peter and added urgency to his preaching, in which there was now a sense of impending doom. The disciples knew that they had to reach their generation before God’s judgement fell on Jerusalem!
The “world” to which the gospel of the kingdom would first be preached was to the Jews, and then to others in the Roman Empire. Luke writes of the “world” in the second chapter of his Gospel. “And it came to pass in those days, that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.”
Scholars inform us that it was a census, and that the people were enrolled so that the authorities could tax them. That census did not, of course, include the wider world beyond the Roman Empire (not to mention the even greater unknown world beyond).
It’s important that we make this distinction, because, less than 40 years after Jesus spoke these words the Apostle Paul wrote that the mission had been completed (Colossians 1:6 & 1:23 and Romans 1:8 & 10:18). So, did Paul get it wrong?
No, he did not. The great apostle’s missionary journeys took him throughout Asia Minor and Southern Europe. And what of the lesser known beginning journeys of the original apostles? (The Apostle Thomas was martyred in faraway India!)
There is a difference between this mission, which lasted only 40 years, and what we know as The Great Commission. The lesser commission was accomplished in the lifetime of the original apostles. The Apostle Paul writes that the Gospel message had come to Colossae “as it has in all the world.” In Colossians, chapter one, verses 6 and 23, Paul writes that the Gospel had been preached to “everyone under heaven”. Paul’s reference is to the Roman world-empire of the first century AD.
The Great Commision of Matthew 28:19, 20 takes in those countries and nations far beyond the time of the apostle and his generation. Jesus had said: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go you therefore and disciple all the nations, baptising them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
To many Christians, The Great Commission is the Christian brief to make individual disciples “out of” every nation. In other words, not whole nations but many from within those nations. But Matthew Henry comments that it means: “do your utmost to make the nations Christian nations.”
Of course, to disciple entire nations individuals need to be won one by one. Disciples are not won but are made so from new converts. Is it possible to disciple entire nations? Well, the early church did turn their world upside down! (Acts 17:6) Throughout Church History, entire nations have been won to Christ. The two Welsh revivals, for example, not only changed the people of Wales but also those of Britain and so many others worldwide.
So, the question is not “Can it be done?” but rather, “Are we willing to do it?” The End for the Jews came in the time of the first Apostles, in between AD 30, when Jesus was crucified and rose again, and AD 70, when the Roman army destroyed the Jerusalem Temple. Forty years is a biblical generation; and forty is a biblical symbol of probation.
That 40-year-long unbelieving generation had the opportunity to lay hold on God’s “great and precious promises” but like their ancestors in the wilderness died in unbelief — despite the dire warnings to them (and to us) recorded in the Book of Hebrews.
When Jerusalem fell and its Temple was destroyed, not one stone was left upon another. (The Wailing Wall is its underground foundation.) It was both an End and a Beginning. The “birth pangs” now over and the Christian Age birthed:
The Church age has lasted for 2,000 years and is soon to end with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Make sure that you and your loved ones are ready!