I recently told a group of fifth graders that it is actually possible they might never die.
I wasn’t joking. I wasn’t trying to be provocative. One of them had asked a sincere question, and I answered it with a straight face.
“Yes,” I said. “And it is actually possible that you might not have to die.”
They just stared at me.
It’s fascinating how deeply death is woven into our assumptions about life. When it comes close, it devastates us. We grieve. We mourn. Our worlds are disrupted. But most of the time, death sits quietly in the background as an unquestioned certainty. We know it’s coming, so we rarely spend much energy thinking about it until we’re forced to.
Which is why suggesting that an entire generation of people might never experience death sounds almost absurd.
But what if it were true?
The question that prompted this conversation was about something these students had heard: that the Great Commission could be completed within the next fifty years.
That’s actually a slight misuse of the term.
When we say “the Great Commission,” we’re usually referring to Matthew 28:18–20:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations… And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Those verses give the Church her marching orders, but they don’t describe when the task reaches its conclusion.
More often, when people speak about “completing the Great Commission,” they’re really referring to Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:14:
“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
I’ve spent a lot of time talking with these fifth graders about that promise. For many people, the end of the age sounds frightening. But for followers of Jesus, it is ultimately a promise of redemption—the day when Christ makes all things new.
I’ve written elsewhere that Matthew 24:14 functions almost like the mission statement of the Church. It gives us a message—the Gospel. It gives us a mission—to take that Gospel to every nation. And it gives us a motive—the return of Christ and the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom.
One remarkable implication of that promise is easy to overlook.
Scripture teaches that when Christ returns, those who are still alive will not experience death in the way every previous generation has. There will be people who simply never pass through it.
Who will they be?
Whoever is alive when Matthew 24:14 has been fulfilled.
So how close are we?
No one knows. Jesus Himself warned against date-setting. But asking whether we’re making measurable progress is a very different question.
In 1974, missiologist Dr. Ralph Winter introduced the global Church to the concept of Gospel Access—the ability for someone to hear the message of Jesus in their own language from people within their own culture.
At the time, Winter estimated there were roughly 12,000 people groups without meaningful access to the Gospel, representing nearly sixty percent of the world’s four billion people.
That insight fundamentally reshaped modern missions.
Over the last fifty years, thousands of churches, mission agencies, translators, researchers, and local believers have intentionally focused on reaching those remaining peoples. Today, the number of unreached people groups has fallen to fewer than 5,000, despite the world’s population more than doubling.
That statistic is only one of many sophisticated measures used by missiologists, anthropologists, and sociologists to evaluate global Gospel progress. And while no responsible leader is claiming that the task will be finished within the next fifty years, an increasing number are willing to say something that would have sounded impossible a generation ago:
It could be.
It is no longer outside the realm of possibility that there could be a viable, indigenous church within every people group on earth within our lifetimes.
Pause and think about that.
When was the last time someone suggested that the Church might actually accomplish the mission Jesus gave her during your lifetime?
When was the last time you heard that there are more followers of Jesus alive today than at any other point in history?
When was the last time you allowed yourself to imagine what that might mean?
Not simply the end of war.
Not only the end of disease.
Not merely the end of famine, injustice, or suffering.
But the end of death itself.
Imagine today’s children.
Your children.
Your grandchildren.
The fifth graders asking earnest questions in Sunday school.
Young men and women, boys and girls who we are currently watching as they grow up.
Imagine them never knowing the sting of death—not because death wasn’t real, but because Jesus finally brought it to an end.
For perhaps the first time in history since Jesus gave His Church this mission, that possibility no longer feels unimaginable.
I’m not saying it will happen.
I’m saying it could.
And I’m saying that you and I may get to play a part in whether or not it does.