The End Will Come

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And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:14, ESV)

I heard most preachers say this line “the reason why the end has not yet come or that it is delayed is that christians are procrastinating in proclaiming the gospel”, and they based it on this verse (Matthew 24:14). Is that a right implication from the verse? Does it mean that humans can control the endtime (like by procrastination of proclaiming the gospel)?

@Mildred-Codilla said in The End Will Come:

I heard most preachers say this line “the reason why the end has not yet come or that it is delayed is that christians are procrastinating in proclaiming the gospel”, and they based it on this verse (Matthew 24:14).

That depends on how you interpret the whole Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24-25! My belief is that Matthew 24:4-28 is referring to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD, and Matthew 24:29-25:46 is talking about the Second Coming of Christ. The first has happened, and the second hasn’t happened.

So that means that the gospel being “proclaimed throughout the whole world” is referring to something that already happened before AD 70. The “world,” then, is not the entire globe but the inhabited world (the word is used elsewhere in the NT with this meaning, so that fits).