Peter wanted to know if what Jesus said was for everyone or just the disciples. Jesus answered with a parable. His answer should be considered to accompany the previous. Today’s BDBD is a continuation of yesterday’s. The quote below from “The Church and the Tribulation” continues yesterday’s.
“Jesus bases the parable of the servants on the presupposition of a delay in His coming, for without the delay no interval would have provided opportunity for the servants to display their true colors (Luke 12:41-48; Matt. 24:45-51). And when Jesus has the wicked servant say, “My master will be a long time in coming,” He tacitly admits that there will be a delay. As the wicked servant’s eternal judgment “with the unbelievers (or hypocrites)” shows, the contrast in servants distinguishes true disciples, whose characteristic it is to watch, from false disciples, whose characteristic it is not to watch. The necessary delay made no difference to the expectant attitude of the true servant, but it revealed the falsity of the wicked servant. Jesus does not condemn recognition of delay, but the attitude that takes selfish advantage of the delay. Moreover, readiness denotes not so much tiptoe anticipation as faithful service day by day: “Who then is the faithful and sensible steward, whom his master will put in charge of his servants to give them their rations at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes” (Luke’s version).
“We might suppose that the long period of delay required in the parables would be satisfied by “a few years.” But a few years is all the delay post-tribulationism requires. Jesus could not have given in good faith the great commission with its worldwide extent (“all the nations” and “the remotest part of the earth”) without providing a considerable lapse of time so that the disciples might have opportunity to perform the task. The long-range missionary endeavors of Paul may not possess independent argumentative weight (Paul’s journey to Rome was contingent on the Lord’s will, Rom. 1:9, 10). Yet as the Lord’s commission for him to go “far away to the Gentiles” (Acts 22: 21) and to witness before “kings” (Acts 9:15) and as the promise in Jerusalem that he would “witness… at Rome” (Acts 23:11; cf. 27:24) link up with the great commission generally, they gain considerable weight.
“It may be countered, with an appeal to Paul’s statement “the gospel… was proclaimed in all creation under heaven” (Col. 1:23), that “the extensive preaching of the gospel in the first century might… satisfy the program of preaching to the ends of the earth.” However, Paul wrote his statement during his first Roman imprisonment, some thirty years after Jesus gave the Great Commission, an interval more than four times as long as the tribulation. And Paul had not fulfilled his intention of visiting Spain, where the Gospel had not yet been preached (Rom. 15:20, 24). Evidently, he himself did not regard the great commission as fulfilled. Apparently, then, in Colossians 1:23 Paul is not affirming a fulfillment of the Great Commission but is setting the universality of the Gospel (the good news is for all men, even though it has not reached all men) in opposition to the esotericism of the Colossian heresy.
One more quote will continue on a special Sunday BDBD. I normally do not post BDBD on Sunday because I encourage all to attend a Bible believing and teaching congregation near their home.
