<p>13:10 <i>And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations</i>- This could be read as a commandment, not a mere prediction. In this case, the idea is that&nbsp;<i>when</i>&nbsp;the Gospel is preached to all the world, then &ldquo;the end comes&rdquo;. The marvel is that this amazing preaching will be undertaken by a minority within the believing community, since, according to the preceding verses, the majority will have fallen away. And even amongst those who remain faithful, some will be in prison, others killed. It could be argued that this Gospel preaching occurs specifically during the tribulation period. If we were to take the Gospel to the whole world now, then perhaps this would not be necessary. But in the first century, it was persecution which was necessary to get the disciples to obey their Lord&rsquo;s command to spread the Gospel outwards from Jerusalem to the world. And it was persecution which made the fleeing Jewish Christians rub shoulders with Gentiles, and thus share the Gospel with them.&nbsp;</p><p>&quot;All the nations&quot; is &quot;in the whole world&quot; in Matthew. The first century fulfilment of these words mentioned in Rom. 10:18 and Col. 1:6,23,26 was because there was the potential that the Lord could have come in AD70. But the Greek word literally means &lsquo;the inhabited&rsquo;, and more naturally refers to the whole planet. He envisaged the possibility that the disciples would not have gone preaching over the cities of Israel before the end came (Mt. 10:23). But He did come in AD70, and so the Lord's words here about a genuine worldwide witness must come true before He returns. Note the Gospel is to be preached &ldquo;in&rdquo;,&nbsp;<i>en</i>, all the world, and not &lsquo;to&rsquo; the whole world. This may envisage there being believers in all the world who preach where they are. This would nowhere near have been fulfilled in the first century. Also, Col. 1:6 speaks of the Gospel having gone to the&nbsp;<i>kosmos</i>, whereas Mt. 24:14 requires the Gospel to be preached in the&nbsp;<i>oikoumene</i>.&nbsp;<i>Kosmos</i>&nbsp;is frequently used in the NT with reference to the&nbsp;<i>Jewish</i>&nbsp;world.&nbsp;<i>Oikoumene</i>&nbsp;has a more global and universal context and sense. Mk. 13:10 says that the Gospel must be published &ldquo;among all nations&rdquo; (Gk.&nbsp;<i>ethnos</i>), and this hardly occurred by AD70. Some parts of the Olivet prophecy had a limited application in the first century (e.g. Mt. 24:14 = 10:18), but this doesn't mean that this is the&nbsp;<i>only</i>&nbsp;fulfilment of it. It is a feature of prophecy that it often has a short term fulfilment in order to validate the prophet in the eyes of his own generation. It would be strange indeed if the Olivet prophecy had&nbsp;<i>only</i>&nbsp;a short term fulfilment.</p><p>The great commission bids us go into all the world with Gospel; note the evident connection with Mt. 24:14: &quot;This Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come&quot;.&nbsp; This definitely suggests that the great commission will be mightily obeyed in the last days. There are many other Biblical implications that there will be an unprecedented spread of the Gospel to the whole planet in the last days. Thus Dan. 12:4 speaks of a time in the very last days when &ldquo;many shall run to and fro (an idiom often used concerning response to God's word: Ps. 119:32,60; 147:15; Amos 8:11,12; Hab. 2:2; Jn. 8:37 RV; 2 Thess. 3:1 Gk.), and knowledge shall be increased the context is of Daniel wanting to understand about the second coming of Jesus... many shall be purified, and made white, and tried (in the tribulation); but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand&quot; . This increase of knowledge of the Gospel is to be spread world-wide by many running to and fro in the last days. The great commission will be fulfilled then as never before. Dan. 11:32,33 speaks of how in the time of the end &quot;The people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits... instruct many&rdquo;. &nbsp;Before every 'coming' of the Lord there has been a period of persecution and zealous preaching: Noah preached righteousness before the flood, as Lot probably tried to before the Lord's coming down in judgment on Sodom (would God have wrought such wholesale destruction without giving the people a chance to repent? Cp. Nineveh and Jonah). The schools of the prophets preached from the street corners and temple steps to warn of the coming of the day of the Lord at the hand of the Babylonians and Assyrians. And of course the dramatic coming of the Lord in judgment upon Israel in AD70, was heralded by Paul and his committed band of zealots staging the greatest preaching campaigns this world has seen. The crucial question, of course, is whether the Gospel has truly gone into all the world. One perspective to bear in mind is that in the preaching of Paul, ecclesias which he founded are taken as representing a whole area- e.g. Philippi is called &quot;Macedonia&quot; (Phil. 4:15); Thessalonica is &quot;Macedonia and Achaia&quot; (1 Thess. 1:7); Corinth is Achaia (1 Cor. 16:15; 2 Cor. 1:1); Ephesus for Asia (Rom. 16:5; 1 Cor. 16:19; 2 Cor. 1:8). In this sense Paul felt that he had fully preached the Gospel in a circle, moving from Jerusalem through Asia to Rome, and projecting onwards to Spain. Perhaps the Gospel goes into all the world in the sense that believers, however small in number, are to be found world-wide. And that seems to be where we're now up to in the 21st century.</p><p>Paul seems to have seen in Christ's prophecy that the Gospel would be fully known world-wide in the last as being a specific, personal command to him (Mt. 24:14 = 2 Tim. 4:17).&nbsp;He saw prophecy as command more than solely prediction; and this is why prophecy has a degree of variation in how and when it is fulfilled. The words of Mk. 16:15,16 are clear: &quot;Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved&quot;. Commands to repent, all men, the Lord&rsquo;s resurrection... these ideas all recur in Acts 17:30, proving they are not solely relevant to those who first heard them; God now commands all men to repent, through our words. These words clearly don't apply to the first century only, for they are intended to be linked with Mt 24:14, which uses the same language about the preaching work of the very last days (even though the context may imply that as a community we will only be obedient to this command once egged on by major persecution). What all this means is that the great commission will be fulfilled in the last days. The connection with the great commission means that the Lord sent out the disciples in order to fulfil this aspect of the Olivet prophecy; but their failure to do the job fully meant that the prophecy had to be delayed and rescheduled in fulfilment.</p>