Was the Gospel preached to all the world before the end of Israel in 70 AD in fulfillment of this verse?
Mat 24 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.
Paul seems to think so:
23 if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.
Was Paul being literal? By the time he made this claim, did every creature on the planet receive the Gospel? Maybe, just maybe, Paul was speaking about the known world to him. Was there any early church leader to confirm this? There sure was. Writing about the period after the ascension but before the invasion of Rome, Eusebius writes:
Chapter 3: The Doctrine of Christ soon spread throughout All the World
1.Thus, under the influence of heavenly power, and with the divine co-operation, the doctrine of the Saviour, like the rays of the sun, quickly illumined the whole world; and straightway, in accordance with the divine Scriptures, the voice of the inspired evangelists and apostles went forth through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
2.In every city and village, churches were quickly established, filled with multitudes of people like a replenished threshing-floor. And those whose minds, in consequence of errors which had descended to them from their forefathers, were fettered by the ancient disease of idolatrous superstition, were, by the power of Christ operating through the teaching and the wonderful works of his disciples, set free, as it were, from terrible masters, and found a release from the most cruel bondage. They renounced with abhorrence every species of demoniacal polytheism, and confessed that there was only one God, the creator of all things, and him they honored with the rites of true piety, through the inspired and rational worship which has been planted by our Saviour among men.
3.But the divine grace being now poured out upon the rest of the nations, Cornelius, of Cæsarea in Palestine, with his whole house, through a divine revelation and the agency of Peter, first received faith in Christ; and after him a multitude of other Greeks in Antioch, to whom those who were scattered by the persecution of Stephen had preached the Gospel. When the church of Antioch was now increasing and abounding, and a multitude of prophets from Jerusalem were on the ground, among them Barnabas and Paul and in addition many other brethren, the name of Christians first sprang up there, as from a fresh and life-giving fountain.
4.And Agabus, one of the prophets who was with them, uttered a prophecy concerning the famine which was about to take place, and Paul and Barnabas were sent to relieve the necessities of the brethren.
Oh no, a major blow to the futurists. See how important it is to understand the way first century Christians talked? Their way of saying things is not the same as ours 2,000 years later.
