“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

UNLIKE WARS, FAMINE, PLAGUES, AND EARTHQUAKES, which Jesus called “the beginning of sorrows,” He said that this particular sign—the Gospel being preached in all the world—was a specific sign that would indicate when the actual end of the age would be upon the world.

According to The Almanac of the Christian World, Christians and Christian churches now exist in every country of the world.⁵⁹ Missiologists estimate that between 75 and 85 percent of the world’s population have heard the Gospel at least once.⁶⁰ Over 50 million Bibles are distributed every year, as well as nearly 80 million New Testaments. Four billion Gospel tracts are also printed each year.

According to the United Bible Societies, the entire Bible or parts thereof are now available to about 98 percent of the world’s population, having been translated partially or entirely into 2,303 different languages.

Other Christian books are also proliferating. Books primarily about Jesus in today’s libraries number 175,000 different titles in 500 languages, increasing by four newly published every day.⁶¹ The Gospel is also preached in 38,000 Christian magazines and on 4,050 radio and television stations.⁶² Ninety-nine percent of the world’s population have the Gospel available to them via Christian radio stations.⁶³

Meanwhile an innumerable number of Christian websites, cyber churches, Gospel webcasts and podcasts, and other Christian ministries evangelize, inform, and pastor via the Internet.

The story of Christ’s sacrifice reached millions worldwide with Mel Gibson’s retelling of The Passion of Christ (2004). But its viewing audience is dwarfed by the Jesus film: Shot on location in the Holy Land in 1979, it is a straight-faced retelling of Luke’s gospel. Starring a white British Jesus, and with mostly Yemenite Jews in the cast, it is an unlikely candidate for the title of most watched—and most translated—film.⁶⁴ Yet it is now translated into over 1000 languages with over 200 more translations in progress. It has had an estimated combined viewing and listening audience of over 6 billion.⁶⁵

Never in the course of history has the Gospel been preached in all the world to all nations as it is right now. If not directly by missionaries, it is certainly being preached by the modern mediums of radio, television, telecommunications, and the Internet. It would seem this precondition to the End has been fulfilled.