Matthew 24:14 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

This Gospel—shall be preached in all the world—and then, &c.— Then shall the destruction of Jerusalem, and the end of the Jewish polity, come to pass; when all nations shall be, or may be, convinced of the crying sin of the Jews in crucifying the Lord of glory, and of the justice of God's judgments upon them. Some imagine that by all the world is meant only the whole land of Judea, the very words of the text being used bythe Septuagint and by Josephus himself in this sense. But that something more than this must be meant will appear, if we consider, that though the Acts of the Apostles contains only a small part of the history of a few of the apostles, yet even in that history we see the Gospel was disseminated, and had taken root in the most considerable parts of the Roman empire. As early as the reign of Nero the Christians were grown so numerous at Rome, as to raise the jealousy of the government; and the first general persecution commenced against them under pretence of their having set the city on fire. The Gospel was preached by St. Paul in Arabia, and through the vast tract from Jerusalem to Iconium, in Lycaonia, and in Galatia, through all Asia Minor, in Greece, round about to Illyricum, in Crete, Italy, Spain, and Gaul. Clement, who was his cotemporary and fellow-labourer, says of him in particular, "that he was a preacher both in the East and West; and that he taught the whole world righteousness, and travelled as far as the utmost borders of the West." And if such were the labours of one apostle, what must have been the united labours of them all? We have still remaining the Epistles of St. Peter to the converted Jews in Pontus, Asia, Cappadocia, and Bithynia. The Ethiopian eunuch converted by Philip probably carried the Gospel into his own country. It appears, indeed, from the writers of the history of the church, that before the destruction of Jerusalem the Gospel was not only preached in the Lesser Asia, and Greece, and Italy, the great theatres of action then in the world, but was likewise propagated as far northward as Scythia, as far southward as Ethiopia, as far eastward as Parthia and India, and as far westward as Spain and Britain. Our ancestors of this Island, though as remote from the scene of our Saviour's actions as almost any nation, probably heard the preaching of St. Simon: there is indeed much more probability that the Gospel was preached here by St. Paul; and there is absolute certainty that Christianity was planted in this country in the days of the apostles, before the destruction of Jerusalem. The evidence of Eusebius and Theodoret abundantly prove itto have been a fact; and St. Paul himself, Colossians 1:6; Colossians 1:23 speaks of the Gospel's being come into all the world, and preached to every creature under heaven. See also Romans 10:18. Though the success of the apostles was so great, yet the difficulties which they had to encounter were no less than the superstition, the prejudices, and the vices of the whole world. From a view of the Jewish and Gentile world it is evident, that every thing which most strongly influences and tyrannizes over the mind of man, religion, custom, law, policy, pride, interest, vice, and even philosophy, was united against the Gospel; enemies in their own nature very formidable and difficult to be subdued, had they even suffered themselves, to be attacked upon even ground, and come to a fair engagement; but, not relying upon their own strength only, they intrenched themselves behind that power of which they were in possession, and rendered themselves inaccessible, as they imagined, to Christianity, by planting round them, not only all kinds of civil discouragements, but even torments, chains, and death. These were the difficulties which Christianity had to struggle with, and over which she at length so prevailed, as to change the whole scene of things, overturn the temples and altars of the gods, silence the oracles, humble the impious pride of the emperors, confound the presumptuous wisdom of the philosophers, and introduce into the greatest part of the known world a new principle of religion, holiness, and virtue. But what were the instruments of so stupendous a work! a few illiterate persons, many of whom were fishermen! The state of the first preachers of the Gospel, and of their opposers, was this: the latter were possessed of all the wisdom, authority, and power of the world; the former were ignorant of human science, contemptible, and weak. Which of them then, according to the natural course of human affairs, ought to have prevailed? The latter, without all doubt! and yet not St. Paul only, but all history, and our own experience assure us, that the ignorant, the contemptible, and the weak, gained the victory over the wise, the mighty, and the noble. See Bishop Newton, West on the Resurrection, and Dr. Young on Idolatry, vol. 2.