Acts 10:9-16; NKJV
9 The next day, as they went on their journey and drew near the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour.
10 Then he became very hungry and wanted to eat; but while they made ready, he fell into a trance
11 and saw heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth.
12 In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air.
13 And a voice came to him, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat."
14 But Peter said, "Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean."
15 And a voice spoke to him again the second time, "What God has cleansed you must not call common."
16 This was done three times. And the object was taken up into heaven again.
Notice that no where in the three times Peter saw the animals in his trance did God say, "The animals represent the Gentiles." Peter "wondered within himself what this vision that he had seen meant" (Acts 10:17; NKJV). The events that followed led Peter to draw a necessary inference from the vision, namely that the animals represented the Gentiles and it was time to take the keys to the kingdom and open it to them (see Matthew 16:18-19).
If Peter was not supposed to necessarily infer from the vision that he was to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, don't you think that God would have corrected him before he preached to Cornelius and his household?
Jehovah did not directly command Peter to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. He showed him a vision and expected Peter to draw a necessary inference. Peter did and in so doing he fulfilled the will of God.
