Fullness of the Gentiles

Fullness of the Gentiles 
Prophecy - Signs 
Tuesday, April 22, 2014 
Wendy Wippel 



Romans says an interesting thing about the tribulation: ''blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved.'' Which begs at least two questions. What, exactly does "the fullness of the Gentiles mean?  And when, exactly, will that fullness come in?


(I could say it comes in every Sunday afternoon, as we Gentile U.S. believers "buffet" our bodies after church. And I’m as guilty as anybody. But I digress.)


What, exactly, does the "fullness" of the Gentiles mean? The Greek word means to make complete, in the sense of both a numerical goal and as "to fill to the brim". Intriguingly, it's most often translated "fulfilled", e.g., in Matthew, as Matthew repeatedly declares that Jesus "fulfilled" old testament passages, both literally and in the "prophecies-by-analogy" otherwise known as 'types'.


Jesus filled those prophecies up to the brim.


So it would seem that the “fullness of the Gentiles" would be the tribulation salvation of the Gentiles, filled to the brim.


A fellowship retreat I went too in college presented a skit, which featured some intrepid young Christians setting off to locate that one last Gentile that hadn't yet been presented with an opportunity to respond to the gospel, the one Gentile still needing to get saved before we could all go to heaven.  They finally found him-- it was Gilligan, still on the Island.


Pretty funny, at the time. But what does the Scripture tell us about that important turning point in history? The fullness of the Gentiles?


More than you'd think at first glance. Let's pick the story up in Chapter 6, as it sets the stage for what comes. The opening of the sixth seal sets off a chain of events that causes the whole earth to ask,

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"the great day of his wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”  (Revelation 6:17)

God has man's attention, at least, and Revelation 7 describes what God does with it:

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"Then I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying, “Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” And I heard the number of those who were sealed. One hundred and forty-four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel were sealed." (Revelation 7:2-4)

God has the worlds' attention, and He seals the 144,000.  The chain of events proceeds in verse 9:

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After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." (Revelation 7:9-10)

Arnold Fruchtenbuam, in his book Israelology, explains that the word translated "after these things" in Revelation 7:9 ("meta tauta”) signifies cause and effect.
In other words, the great multitude worshiping the Lamb is the direct results of the work of the 144,000 witnesses. That group gets in just under the wire, in a sense, because the antichrist, possessed by Satan himself, would appear to arrive on the scene shortly later.


The trumpet judgments, ostensibly a natural chain of events that transpire rather quickly, follow and it would seem that the reason that men are refused death for five months in the fifth trumpet judgment is because that is the length of time left until the resurrection of the Antichrist and the beginning of the bowl judgments.


Fittingly, the resurrection of the beast, crowned with his ten horns, and the emergence of the second beast (with two horns and the voice of the dragon) are followed directly by Revelation 14:

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"Then I looked, and behold, a Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with Him one hundred and forty-four thousand, having His Father’s name written on their foreheads. … And I heard the sound of harpists playing their harps. They sang as it were a new song before the throne." (Revelation 14:1-3)

The antichrist is in control, and the 144,000, job done, are in heaven. As are the great throng and the two witnesses.


Who does that leave on earth as a witness?  Apparently nobody, as what comes then is this:

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Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people— saying with a loud voice, “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.” (Revelation 14:6-7)

Time's up, and God's giving the world one last chance to think about it.  The next verse gives them some incentive:

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And another angel followed, saying, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”

Translation: The fount of wickedness has already been judged and destroyed, but you can still avoid that fate.


Another angel offers some final advice:

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a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God…"

Translation: If you take the mark of the beast, you're toast.


And a final angel offers some encouragement:

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Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus….: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on". "Yes" says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”

Translation: Standing firm is the path to a happy ending.


But we only really understand the significance of those angelic pronouncements by what follows on their heels. Two paragraphs, which most Bible versions title "Reapings”.


The first one goes like this:

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Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud sat One like the Son of Man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, “Thrust in Your sickle and reap, for the time has come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” So He who sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped. (Revelation 14:14-16)

Jesus Himself is reaping, and given that He told His disciples to work toward His harvest to come (Matthew 9, Luke 10), it would seem that this reaping is the gathering in of all believers (Gentile and Jew) who heeded the word of the three angels and put their faith in Christ and refused the mark that would pledge allegiance and worship to the beast.  (And were therefore put to death, which is why God encouraged them with the angelic message, "Blessed are those who die in the Lord from now on.")


The second passage goes like this:

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Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle.And another angel came out from the altar, who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, “Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.”  So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.  And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the horses’ bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs. (Revelation 14:17-20)

Although this is often titled a reaping (ostensibly because it involves a sickle), the Bible consistently describes the separation of the righteous from the unrighteous as a reaping or winnowing. What is reaped is consistently what is valued and kept, while what is undesirable is the chaff that is burned up or blown away.  What happens here is that what is undesired is likewise destroyed.


Notice that the text itself never calls this a reaping. What is described is a destruction of the worthless product of the fields (as opposed to the previous, true reaping.) And this tramping of the winepress, i.e., "the grapes of wrath" occurs (we are told in Chapter 19), directly after the marriage of the Lamb.


Psalm 45, in fact, describes the Messiah's wedding, followed then by the charge to the bridegroom to;

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Gird Your sword upon Your thigh, O Mighty One, With Your glory and Your majesty, And in Your majesty ride prosperously because of truth, humility, andrighteousness. (Psalm 45:3)

The Psalm goes on to tell us the He goes forth to put the nations under His feet. An event that precedes by just a few shakes of a Lamb's tail (I couldn't resist that) the inauguration of the Millennial Kingdom. The Kingdom promised by God to His chosen people thousands of years earlier.  The Kingdom ruled by the Messiah, Jesus (as promised to His mother, Mary, by Jehovah Himself).


But back to the question to which I promised an answer. (Or at least an educated guess.) When does the fullness of the Gentiles come in?


God made the nation of Israel a promise through the pen of Paul that all Israel would be saved.  He made another through the pen of Jeremiah:

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In those days and in that time, declares the Lord, iniquity shall be sought in Israel, and there shall be none, and sin in Judah, and none shall be found, for I will pardon those whom I leave as a remnant. (Jeremiah 50:20)

Another version says, “I will pardon those whom I reserve." The Hebrew word translated as "remnant" or "reserved" is also translated as "left behind" or "those who survived".  The "all" Jews that are saved, as described by Paul in Romans 11, are all the Jews left alive at the end of tribulation.  Just as Jesus Himself said when He warned His disciples of the coming tribulation: "he who endures to the end shall be saved".


And if the Jews that are left behind (the ones that survive to the end) are the ones that are saved, the "fullness of the Gentiles", would seemingly have come in during the reaping in Revelation 14, the one that Jesus, while He still walked the earth, described to His disciples as "the harvest".


But what, you may ask, about the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25?  We get a hint in Luke 21:24:

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”Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled."

The fullness of the Gentiles represents the Gentiles saved during the times of the Gentiles. It is true that the sheep in Matthew 25 are Gentiles that are saved because of their righteous concern for Jews during Satan's attempt, during the tribulation, to wipe them from the earth.  But this is after Jesus comes in His kingdom. A different dispensation.


And really, just another picture of God's character, as dictated in 2 Peter 3:9:

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The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

I, personally, have been convinced that the fullness of the gentiles is when the northern part of the whole house of Israel, the lost ten tribes, come to the realization of who they are. Once I believed the fullness happened when the last predestined person outside of Judaism accepts Christ as savior but I have learned a lot since then. I am learning still and have a lot more to learn but I think this prophesy has something to do with the lost ten tribes and their "rediscovery."