Gospel preached to all nations

[Guest]

Matthew 24:14 "And this gospel of the kingdon will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."

I would like to learn more about preterists views on these matters. Was this statement of Jesus supposed to be fulfilled before AD 70 ? Was it, in the preterist view, fullfilled before AD 70 and if so, how was it fullfilled?

Thank you,

Roger

[Guest]

There is full preterism which believes everything was fulfilled in 70AD including His second coming and there is partial preterism that believes his second coming is still a future event. Full preterism believes "in all the world" means Rome since it was the civilized world and it believes Jesus returned spiritually in 70AD.

[Guest]

What about anient India and China ....which go back long before Christ. Aren't these and other places part of "all the world"?

[Guest]

Hi Roger,

I think some partial-preterists see this verse still as a future. Others believe that Jesus is speaking figuratively here to generally describe the bounds of the Roman Empire, which is sometimes referred to as "all the world" in the bible (Luke 2:1).

It's interesting that Paul used this same sort of hyperbole to describe something that has already occured:

Col 1:3-6
3 We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints; 5 because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, 6 which has come to you, as it has also in all the world,
NKJV


And again:

Col 1:23
23 if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.
NKJV


It's important that we recognize the use of hyperbole in the bible so that we are not misled by our 20th century western paradigm of taking things too literal. It's a very difficult barrier to get over sometimes. I still often times struggle with my cultural conditioning when reading the bible.

Lord bless.

[Guest]

What about anient India and China ....which go back long before Christ. Aren't these and other places part of "all the world"?Yes your right but the full preterist would say "the world" refers to the Roman Empire and the resurrection at His coming in 70AD is a spiritual resurrection.
A good book on the subject is "Preterism: Orthodox or Unorthodox?" by Jay E. Adams.

[Guest]

I think it is best to let Scripture speak for itself.

Jesus said,
"And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."

And the rest of the NT shows this occurred, using (as christopher pointed out) very similar language.

Acts 2:5 tells us who was present at Pentacost:
And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven.


They took the Gospel BACK to their homelands as is declared in the following verses:

Romans 1:5-6:
Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ

Romans 16:25-26
Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began but now made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith

And then add the verses Christopher posted from Colossians.

Also, we should remember that Hebrew people talk that way all through the Bible. For example:

Cyrus the King of Persia said, "The Lord, the God of Heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth." (Ezra 1:2; 2 Chron. 36:23)
David writes, "All nations surrounded me." (Psalm 118:10)
God "brought" the fear of David on all the nations." (1 Chron. 14:17)
It is written of Hezekiah King of Judah "that he was exalted in the sight of all nations...." (2 Chron. 32:23)
The Chaldeans are said to "march throughout the earth." (Hab. 1:6)
"The people from all the earth came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph." (Genesis 41:57)
"All the earth was seeking the presence of Solomon." (1 Kings 10:24)
"And all the nations shall serve him and his son, and his grandson until the time of his own land comes." (Jer. 27:7)
Nebuchadnezzar addresses his decree as "the king to all the people, nations, and men of every language that live in all the earth." (Daniel 4:1)

Most of this info was compiled from:
http://www.preteristsite.com/docs/warre ... l#matt2414

[Guest]

I appreciate all of your comments...Thank you.

Roger

[Guest]

Hello,

I have been having some friendly discussion with an acquaintance of mine who holds the futurist view. The verses mentioned above came up in our discussion about whether Matthew 24:14 could be considered fulfilled in the past.

In response to these verses, he pointed out the following weaknesses in using these verses to make the point about Matthew 24:14 being fulfilled in the past. I am trying to discern the truth in this area, and I would appreciate any information that could be shared about the following points:

1) "If Paul in Col or Rom meant to say unambiguously that the gospel had already gone out to all the world, he would have used the perfect tense of the verbs, which he does not."

2) In the Majority Text reading, which I prefer, Col 1:6 associates "the whole world" with the preceding present participle. The critical reading associates it with the following finite clause, which is also in the present tense. In both cases, Paul is saying that the spread of the gospel to all the world is currently underway, not that it has been accomplished.

3) In Col 1:23, the verb is aorist, which carries no intrinsic time marking. This reference is consistent with either view--that the gospel has already gone to all the world, or that it is currently being preached, consistent with 1:6.

4) The participles in Rom 16:26 are also aorist. In this case, we have clear data that Paul does not think the process of evangelization is complete, for in 15:24 he is planning a trip to Spain.

5) The reference in Acts 2:5 describes the origins of the pilgrims to Jerusalem, not the preaching of the gospel "in all the world" as Mt 24:14 requires. The conduct of the believers throughout the rest of Acts clearly shows that they felt that the Lord's command to go into all the world and preach the gospel had not yet been fulfilled, in spite of the events of Acts 2.

In summary, these verse only mention an ongoing action, not a completed one. So, these do not provide a proof for the fulfillment of Matthew 24:14. My knowledge of Greek tenses is quite limited, and in particular I am wondering if the tense of Mt. 24:14 requires a completed action, or if it can be describing an ongoing action. Does anyone have the expertise to answer this question?

Thanks
Peter

[Guest]

Hi Pete,

IMO, it really doesn't need to be as difficult as all that. It just depends on which paradigm you're looking at it from. It's typical that futurists do not allow for the use of hyperbole in prophetic passages.

If Jesus was talking about the end of the world in this verse, it renders the whole discourse incoherent in my mind. It's always been hard for me to imagine Jesus bouncing back and forth between 70AD and the end of the world, or even changing gears without any lead in.

Sometimes, getting real technical about the tenses in the Greek language causes us to miss the forest for the trees. However, if your friend wants other parallel precedents with the words in this verse, take a look at Luke 2.

Luke 2:1-2
2:1 And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.
NKJV

The word for "world" in this verse is the same as in Matt 24:14. Yet certainly nobody would claim that the whole world was under Caesar's rule at that time.

I don't think Paul ever claimed that the work was literally finished, for why then would he tell Timothy to "do the work of an evangelist" at the end of his life (2Tim4:5)? However, the gospel had certainly been very widely preached throughout the Roman empire in his lifetime and I think we can allow him a little hyperbolic license to emphasize the magnitude of its success. He was writing a personal letter, not a tech manual.

I'm not sure these kinds of points can be proven by comparing language technicalities (try doing that with a parable ).

But for me, it's a matter of coherence within the broader context.

[Guest]

In summary, these verse only mention an ongoing action, not a completed one. So, these do not provide a proof for the fulfillment of Matthew 24:14. My knowledge of Greek tenses is quite limited, and in particular I am wondering if the tense of Mt. 24:14 requires a completed action, or if it can be describing an ongoing action.

Several tenses, including the present tense, can be "ongoing". One of the best Greek grammar books Basics of Biblical Greek by William Mounce, states, "The basic genius of the Greek verb is not its ability to indicate when the action of the verb occurs (time), but what type of action it describes, or what we call "aspect"....

In Greek there are three aspects:

1. The continuous aspect means that the action of the verb is thought of as an ongoing process.

2. The undefined aspect means that the action of the verb is thought of as a simple event, without commenting on whether or not it is a process....[Mounce goes on to say that some argue that "undefined" is not an aspect, but the absence of an aspect, which, he says, may or may not be technically correct]

3.The perfect aspect describes an action that was brought to completion but has effects carrying into the present....
[Page 118]

Mounce states that the aorist tense is undefined, as is the future.

The tense in Matthew 24:14 is future passive, and definitely indicates that the action "this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come", will take place at a time future to that in which the speaker (Jesus) speaks these words. Gramatically the action may be continuous from the time it begins.

Mounce includes in his book a very interesting exegetical insight, by Royce Gordon Gruenler, into the use of the aorist, which in part reads:

The aorist is the indefinite tense that states only the fact of the action without specifying its duration. When the aorist describes an action as a unit event it may accentuate one of three possibilities, as, imagine a ball that has been thrown:
1. let fly(inceptive or ingressive)
2. flew (constative or durative)
3. hit (culminative or telic)

These aspects of the indefinite aorist may shed light on a perplexing saying of Jesus in his Olivet discourse (Mark 13:30 and parallels). "I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away unil all these things genātai" The difficulty lies in the fact that Jesus has already described the end of the world in vv.24f. in vivid terms of the sun and moon not giving their light, the stars fallling from the sky, and the heavenly bodies being shaken. Unless the expression "this generation" is stretched to include the entire age from Jesus' first to his second coming (a less likely option), the aorist genātai must provide the clue. If we view the verb as an ingressive aorist and translate it from the perspective of initiated action, the saying may be rendered, "I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all of these things begin to come to pass." .... page 189

Applying Gruenler's explanation of the use of the aorist tense to Colossians 1:23, we have the following as a possible translation:

provided that you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which has begun to be preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

In this way we can take the passage as it is instead of assuming hyperbole or some other figure of speech in order to make sense of it.