“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” – Mark 16:15
Every creature…what would it take for every person in the world to hear the Gospel? How many soul winners would it take, and how long would they have to work? How many missionaries would we need, and how long would they need to be on the mission field? How many pastors and churches would it take to train the numbers of soul winners and missionaries needed to tell every person? How many Bible translators would we need, and how long would they have to labor over each translation?
Obviously, God wants everyone to be saved, because He is “not willing that any should perish” (II Peter 3:9). But the command in Mark 16:15 is to get the good news to everyone. In the strictest sense, that means each person would have to hear it only one time. However, people are constantly on the move; so it would be a challenge to tell everyone in one city or village. Some pastors can say that the people of their church have knocked on every door in their town at least one time, and that is a great accomplishment; but that does not mean that every person has actually heard the Gospel. Over the last week or so, the people of the North Valley Baptist Church have passed out 100,000 invitations to church with the plan of salvation printed on the back; but that does not mean that everyone in Santa Clara has heard the Gospel.
Think about how many times you would have to knock on every single door in a given town before you had told every single person. Once you accomplished this, it would be a very short time until another child reached what we call the age of accountability or until someone new moved into town.
When you really think about it, every Christian must do his part in order for us to be able to accomplish this great task. We need missionaries who will go to the foreign field. We need pastors who will train soul winners. We need evangelists who will stir up the people of God to prayer and revival. We need people who will write Gospel tracts and translate the Bible into other languages. We need every Christian to tell the people he knows about Jesus.
Is it even possible for all the world to know about Christ? I believe it is possible, and I believe that God’s people must find a way to get involved in getting the job done. At Golden State Baptist College, our aim is to train as many people as we can to help fulfill the Great Commission.
