3071.— Preached in All Creation under Heaven. Col. 1: 23
By Editor
Will you be so kind as to explain Col. 1:23? I met some persons who decided from this that it was wrong to give money for foreign missions to-day, as that Gospel work had already been fulfilled in Paul's day, and they are taking this text as Bible proof. Now admitting all this is true, the same people who lived in the days of the apostle Paul do not live now. Paul declared himself to be debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and the foolish, and therefore he preached the Gospel everywhere. It is true, emphatically so, that God's Gospel has been preached in all the world through all the ages all the time; for "the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork." Day and night, summer and winter, year in and year out, God's great glory is held before mankind in order that they may learn from the visible things of God to regard the things that are invisible. See Psalm 19, and the quoting of this psalm in its application in Rom. 10:18, where the apostle declares, "Yes verily, their sound went out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." Even more than this. It seems that the preaching of the apostles sent the Gospel through converted men out into all the nations of the earth, as indicated not only by this text, but by such expressions as Col. 1:6. In this we ought to rejoice, that God's servants were so active and so earnest in spreading the Gospel; but just as truly as they wrought earnestly to fulfil the commission which was given to them, so God's children of the last days ought to labor just as earnestly to fulfil the mission of the Gospel for the last days. For our Lord expressly tells us that "this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." Matt. 24:14. And the same thought is expressed in Rev. 14:6, 7, in the everlasting Gospel which is to go to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, declaring not simply of a "judgment to come," as declared the apostle Paul and his fellow laborers, but of a judgment which "is come," showing that that great world-wide message is for the very last days. And as the people who heard the apostles are not those who are living now, God would have every soul to be reached which it is possible for His people to reach. No Christian discharges his duty to Christ by any work which has been previously done, just as long as a soul remains unwarned in this world.