Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. -- Mark 16:15 (KJV)
The story ends in water, the way every revival in Acts ends. The new Gentile believers go down into baptism in the name of Jesus Christ. The same name spoken over the three thousand at Pentecost, over the Samaritans, over Saul in Damascus, is now spoken over a Roman officer's household. In a single afternoon, inside that house, God took down walls the early church did not know it had been carrying, and He finished before the day was out.
The Catch Is in the Deep Water
Jesus had told Peter at the start that he would fish for men. Any fisherman knows the real catch is not in the shallows by the dock. It waits out past where the bottom falls away, in water you have to be sent into. Cornelius was Peter's deep water. The Roman, the officer, the enemy, the last house Peter would have picked on his own, was where the gospel went next.
Mark records the command as all the world, every creature, not the handful near your own boat. The size of it should unsettle you, because the people who stay where it is comfortable never leave the harbor.
Every Creature Means the One You Left Off
Take the word "everyone" and refuse to shrink it. It does not mean everyone in your pew, or everyone who shares your accent and your politics. It means everyone. The Spirit that fell on a centurion's household, over every prejudice loaded in that room, is the same Spirit moving in the rooms you walk into now.
There is a person, or a kind of person, you have been leaving off the list. Put them back on it. God sent that gospel into the enemy's living room, and He means it just as much for the door you keep walking past.
