“The Times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24) and “The Fullness of the Gentiles” (Romans 11:25)
The right understanding of these two phrases gives us the key to God’s public and general ways in this world, enabling the student of Scripture to follow intelligently the prophecies leading up to, and relating to, the future.
In every way at this present time the word—GENTILES—stamps God’s dealings with this world.
The times of the Gentiles “began with Nebuchadnezzar,” and this fact is announced by Daniel in his interpretation of that monarch’s dream of the great image. For centuries God had worked in connection with Israel3 as a centre. But their history had been one long record of lapses into idolatry and rebellion, until at length the kingdom of Judah was broken up, and God’s people carried captive into Babylon.
At this time, as J.N.Darby has pointed out, God’s calling (that was with Israel) and God’s government, which had hitherto been united under Israel, became separated. God’s calling, once given, was not subject to repentance on God’s part (see Rom. 11:29), but His government was transferred to Gentile centres because of Israel’s complete failure to answer to responsibility.
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream illustrates his own Babylonish empire, to be followed by inferior world kingdoms, viz, the Medo-Persian, the Grecian and the Roman. Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar, “Thou, O king, art a king of kings (=emperor): for the God of heaven has given thee a kingdom, power, and strength and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heavens has He given into thine hand, and has made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold” (Dan. 2:37-38).
How sweeping—“Wheresoever the children of men dwell!”
One brief retrospect of history will show the reader how thoroughly God’s government was transferred from Israel as a nation to the Gentiles. With the end of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles the public history of Judah as a nation ceased. For four centuries before the birth of Christ we know nothing of Jewish history save from profane sources.
And when Christ came He found Himself in a land tributary to the Romans, the fourth world power of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The Gentile was dominant.
Consequent on the rejection by Israel of their Messiah, the Lord in Luke 21:20-24 prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place under Titus (A.D. 70); and from that event we read: “Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”
Is not Jerusalem trodden down by the Gentiles at this moment? Are the Jews not wanderers in every nation in the world?
“The times of the Gentiles” began then with Nebuchadnezzar, and will go on till the Lord comes to reign as King over his ancient people. He comes as King of kings, the true Emperor, and Lord of lords, as Son of Man of universal sway. Israel will never have her rights till the Lord has His.
“The Fullness of the Gentiles”
If the phrase, “the times of the Gentiles,” refers to God’s dealings in GOVERNMENT with the nations of the world, the expression, “the fulness of the Gentiles,” refers to God’s dealings in GRACE in the souls of men.
Chapters 9, 10, and 11 form a great parenthesis in the great gospel epistle to the Romans. In it we see the Apostle Paul’s heart going out in deep yearning for the blessing of his fellow-countrymen. Then in connection with God’s ways with Israel he asserts the rights of God’s sovereignty on the one hand, and the righteousness of His government on the other—sovereignty on the one hand, that is the rights of God to do what He chooses, depending on what God is; and government on the other, that is God’s dealings in relation to man’s responsibility, depending on how man answers to his responsibility. Now God’s sovereignty had given gifts and a calling to Israel. God had chosen to do this.
Let the mind travel rapidly over Israel’s history. How unutterably bad it is—a mixture of faithfulness and unfaithfulness—the faithfulness all God’s, the unfaithfulness all Israel’s. And this dreadful history culminated in the world’s greatest crime, the darkest stain on the universe, viz, the murder of the Son of God. And all this only demonstrated what man is. It lets us into the secret of our own hearts.
And shall all this history not be met by the government of God? Assuredly. And yet in the midst of the darkest description of Israel’s failure God’s Sovereignty shines, if anything, more brilliantly because of its dark setting. Like a gem of purest ray flashing in midnight darkness is the verse, “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Rom. 11:29).
But what about the government of God? Israel had been set aside as the political centre of the earth in God’s ways since the days of the captivity in Nebuchadnezzar’s time. That bit of government was pretty severe. But still Israel was the chosen nation to which the Messiah was to come—the fold into which the Good Shepherd was to enter. That had to do with the calling.
And then the sin, black as it was, for which Israel during six long centuries had come under Gentile domination, was thrown completely into the shade. A more terrible sin by far was Israel’s, even the murder of God’s Son. The Old Testament pages glowed with a bright prophetic light, but when He came, of whom they spake, His grace was refused, and His love answered by incorrigible hatred.
In response to such a crime, the greatness and blackness of which cannot possibly be exaggerated, what government is called forth without which God would not be just in His dealings with men? Romans 11:25 furnishes the answer: “Blindness in part has happened to Israel,” often described as “judicial blindness.” If God’s government had been transferred from a Jewish to a Gentile centre as the result of Israel’s sin God’s dealings in grace were now transferred from Jewish to Gentile activities as the result of the rejection of Christ.
How history has proved the truth of this statement! It is notorious how unbelieving the Jewish nation has been. It is the jibe against missions for the Jews how much money per head is expended on each convert to Christianity.
But God has not cast away His ancient people. “There is a remnant according to the election of grace (Rom. 11:5). Many of God’s ancient people have bowed the knee to Christ, and are, thank God, true Christians.
But as to the nation generally, Isaiah’s prophecy, waiting seven centuries, was at length fulfilled: “God has given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear” (Rom. 11:8).
Israel for nearly two thousand years has been set aside in the just ways of God. How long shall this last? The answer is explicit: “Until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in” (Rom. 11:25).
When the Lord went “out of the house, and sat by the seaside” (Matt. 13:1), enunciating the parable of the sower, the great change in God’s ways was clearly indicated. Israel had rejected the Lord, and its rulers were plotting His death.
The fall of the Jew was to result in the riches of the world; and their diminishing in the riches of the Gentiles. Look at the activity of God’s grace since Pentecost. God has been blessing world-wide.
At the great Jerusalem Conference, James in his speech delivered himself thus: “Simeon has declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name ” (Acts 15:14); and we remember how when Paul made his memorable defence on the castle stairs in Jerusalem, and narrated how the Lord had said to him, “Depart, for I will send thee far hence to the Gentiles,” that these words threw his Jewish audience into ungovernable rage.
But such is the case. God has set aside the Jew in His government, not that the offer of salvation is not made to the Jew still, and every Jew who believes in Christ is eternally blessed, but He has set aside the Jew as the centre of His dealings, whether in government or grace. The Jew presents the extraordinary spectacle of a man without a country. They are a scattered and peeled nation. And yet they are preserved, proof of God’s interest in His people, and that nothing can set aside His promises to them, or His purposes respecting them.
Where are the ancient Babylonians? Gone. Where are the ancient Greeks? Gone. Where are the ancient Romans? Gone. All swallowed by time, and lost in the mingling races of men. Where are the ancient Jews, who were ancient before ever Greece or Rome was heard of? In every country! The marvel of the world. The miracle of the ages. Distinguished to this day by their features. Persecuted yet indestructible. More numerous now than in the palmy days of King Solomon.
Meanwhile God is blessing the Gentiles, and when their fulness comes in, then God will again take up the Jews, and fulfil all His promises to them, and they will be fulfilled when great David’s greater Son, their Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, shall reign as King of Israel, and wield universal dominion as the Son of Man.
These present dealings of God in setting the Jew aside, and blessing the Gentile, began when Cornelius and his friends were baptized by the Apostle Peter, and their fulness will practically come in when the Lord comes for His church at His second coming, for the Gentile nations blessed in a future day will be blessed in reference to and through Israel. “For if the casting away of them (Israelites) be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” (Rom. 11:15).
No wonder that the Apostle Paul, moved in his deepest depths at the thoughts of God’s ways—His sovereignty and His government—should burst forth:
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” (Rom. 11:33).