Is the great commission possible?

I think a stronger argument can be made that the Great Commission has been accomplished. There is hardly anywhere that the Gospel has not yet been preached, Egypt included. That country was among the first to hear it, as we know. So the issue here is whether the Great Commission was to go into all nations...or speak with every living inhabitant. I personally do not think it means the latter.

DamianWarS said:

there are a lot of unreached people groups and even full nations in the world. Let's take for example Egypt, there are about 95% Muslim and 5% Christian (rounded numbers) and about 100,000,000 people in the country so 95,000,000 Muslims and 5,000,000 Christian. In order to reach these 95,000,000 there needs to be a lot of churches planted.

If an organization planted 100 churches a year with 50 new believers in each church this would be great news (5000 new believers a year) If this continued for 100 years you would have 500,000 new believers (many of which would have died within the 100 years). This is a fraction of the population and it is not enough to reach the nation.

To reach the nation with 1 church per 1000 people (of this 95,000,000 Muslim) within 50 years there would have to be 1900 churches planted every year and this doesn't consider population growth. If we wanted a more aggressive approach and say within 20 years it would be almost 5000 new churches planted every year and within 10 years it would be almost 10,000 new churches planted every year.

Do these numbers sound impossible? Either we're doing something wrong or the great commission is unrealistic. (I'm banking on the former)

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I don't think that we can even begin to imagine what is about to happen as the Holy Spirit is poured out more and more and more on all flesh as some gifted Christians have been shown. Their idea sure fits with the predictions in Joel that are repeated in the book of Acts.

Here is one interesting variation on why an outpouring of the Holy Spirit might occur over the coming months and years?
Do you believe a massive Holy Spirit tsunami is coming?

DamianWarS said:

Do these numbers sound impossible? Either we're doing something wrong or the great commission is unrealistic. (I'm banking on the former)

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Promoting a religion rather than the Gospel of the Kingdom as commanded is the likely cause. It's not hard to teach the world all of our systems are backyards. The hard part is getting the oppressors and greedy to step aside.

We weren't commanded to spread a religion. We were commanded to spread the ethics of the Kingdom and set the example.

DamianWarS said:

there are a lot of unreached people groups and even full nations in the world. Let's take for example Egypt, there are about 95% Muslim and 5% Christian (rounded numbers) and about 100,000,000 people in the country so 95,000,000 Muslims and 5,000,000 Christian. In order to reach these 95,000,000 there needs to be a lot of churches planted.

If an organization planted 100 churches a year with 50 new believers in each church this would be great news (5000 new believers a year) If this continued for 100 years you would have 500,000 new believers (many of which would have died within the 100 years). This is a fraction of the population and it is not enough to reach the nation.

To reach the nation with 1 church per 1000 people (of this 95,000,000 Muslim) within 50 years there would have to be 1900 churches planted every year and this doesn't consider population growth. If we wanted a more aggressive approach and say within 20 years it would be almost 5000 new churches planted every year and within 10 years it would be almost 10,000 new churches planted every year.

Do these numbers sound impossible? Either we're doing something wrong or the great commission is unrealistic. (I'm banking on the former)

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The Lords word has never been more available nor more easily studied that it is of today .... hello INTERNET

With God ... all things are possible ... and so it will be.

eleos1954 said:

With God ... all things are possible ... and so it will be.

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Only if the right message, the Gospel of the Kingdom is spread as commanded. Didn't go over so well 50 years ago. Definitely won't go over well today, especially with politicised Christians.

timothyu said:

Only if the right message, the Gospel of the Kingdom is spread as commanded. Didn't go over so well 50 years ago. Definitely won't go over well today, especially with politicised Christians.

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Isaiah 46

for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
10declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’

I have no doubts ;o)

Oh i will come as those on the faux wide path obliterate those on the narrow one. Just look around you today. Look on this site.
"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" (Matthew 24:14).

It need be preached. No one need follow. If they did, no need for Jesus to return.

DamianWarS said:

there are a lot of unreached people groups and even full nations in the world. Let's take for example Egypt, there are about 95% Muslim and 5% Christian (rounded numbers) and about 100,000,000 people in the country so 95,000,000 Muslims and 5,000,000 Christian. In order to reach these 95,000,000 there needs to be a lot of churches planted.

If an organization planted 100 churches a year with 50 new believers in each church this would be great news (5000 new believers a year) If this continued for 100 years you would have 500,000 new believers (many of which would have died within the 100 years). This is a fraction of the population and it is not enough to reach the nation.

To reach the nation with 1 church per 1000 people (of this 95,000,000 Muslim) within 50 years there would have to be 1900 churches planted every year and this doesn't consider population growth. If we wanted a more aggressive approach and say within 20 years it would be almost 5000 new churches planted every year and within 10 years it would be almost 10,000 new churches planted every year.

Do these numbers sound impossible? Either we're doing something wrong or the great commission is unrealistic. (I'm banking on the former)

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I see that it is possible, but see it much more as a long term project. (Of bringing it to areas, but often actually remissionizing areas where it was once preached)


Like @Albion I will note that the Gospel has actually gone into many locations where later it was largely supplanted by Islam and other native religions. In this case, if you actually look to places where the Gospel has never gone at some point in time, your looking at some remote jungle or other wilderness locations that have rare languages and cultures that are very small geographically to the rest of the world.


East of the Euphrates: Early Christianity in Asia – Religion Online

Pavel Mosko said:

In this case, if you actually look to places where the Gospel has never gone at some point in time, your looking at some remote jungle or other wilderness locations that have rare languages and cultures that are very small geographically to the rest of the world.

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Put all the nations in context. Who did Jesus say they were to go to? The 12 tribes who were scattered.

Precisely what part of the Great Commission was not accomplished a long time ago?

DamianWarS said:

I can pick a different nation if you wish.

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No. I referred to Egypt only because you did.

Take Indonesia, 260 million and 90% Muslim. Egypt just worked with more round numbers.

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But now we are back to the point that I was making. Is the Great Commission accomplished when the Gospel is taken to all nations (which is how the KJV words it)...OR is it only when every last individual has had it put up to him personally (and then once more when these people are replaced by new ones and so on)?

My hunch is that it is the first of these.

Indonesia was, by the way, a colony of the Netherlands, so it is not as though that area of the globe was overlooked by Christian missionaries!

DamianWarS said:

nations is "ethnos" referring more responsibly to people groups rather than political boundaries.

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Which would tend to support the view that I said was the one I lean towards.

I'm not so sure why you are fighting the point, there are unreached people groups in the world, and there are many. If you don't like the example I gave you I'm sure you know 20 more can be given with no deep searching and the same numbers. Apathy is not the response to this.

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Fighting? Apathy? I have no idea what you are talking about there. This goes back to the post of mine in which I suggested that the Great Commission may well have been accomplished since there is hardly any place or people on Earth which have not been reached by the Gospel...which is what the passage in Scripture is saying, NOT that every last human must personally be confronted with the Gospel (the more common POV). If you favor another view of the matter, that's fine with me.

DamianWarS said:

but there are places on earth where the gospel hasn't reached and that's the point.

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Identify some of the ones you have in mind, please.

DamianWarS said:

I'm really not interested in debating who unreached people are.

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I wasn't asking for a debate. I was asking you to substantiate--just with a name of some group, that's all--that there are people who have never been reached with the Gospel, as you said exist.

So you cannot. I cannot do so either. The Eskimos have been evangelized. The people of Papua New Guinea have been evangelized? So who were you talking about?

The fact is that there probably are a few people living in some remote areas, but not whole ethnic or national groups whose people might never have heard a radio or seen an outsider, but they are very few.

So this gets us back to the point of it all. The verse in question speaks about the Great Commission as bringing the Gospel to nations. Because that has effectively been done, I suspect that the Great Commission has been accomplished.

To argue that it has not...simply because there might be some family somewhere whose ancestors never, ever heard of Jesus and his mission, etc., and that this means the Great Commission has NOT been accomplished therefore, seems just silly.

When the Bible speaks of nations or peoples, etc. it clearly is not counting noses and meaning that there is some kind of technicality in a legal contract to leave not a single person out of whatever it is.

Albion said:

Is the Great Commission accomplished when the Gospel is taken to all nations (which is how the KJV words it)

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Again... Put 'all the nations' in context. Who did Jesus say they were to go to? The 12 tribes/nations of the House of Israel who were scattered, not to the Gentiles.