Israel's Blindness & the Fullness of the Gentiles — Romans 11:25

Welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, let's go right back to where we left off in our last program, and that would be in Romans 11, still in verse 25. We got about a half a verse that last time, didn't we? And again, for those of you joining us on television, we'd just like you to know that we're an informal Bible study. I don't know how many different denominations we've got represented here in the studio, but I imagine quite a few. And all of our classes in Oklahoma are a mixture of various groups, and so we do not wear a denominational handle. We just simply teach the Word, and we trust that anyone, regardless of your background, can create an interest and become a student of the Word. This is the most fantastic book that's ever been written, but most people judge it without ever looking at it. And I've often asked people, have you ever made comment about a book of fiction that you never read? Do you ever tell somebody that that book isn't worth reading? Well, no. And I say, why do you do it to this book? Because it's still a book, and all we ask is that before people begin to criticize it and scoff at it, that they take some time and study it. Again, all the last programs, of course, are available on videotapes, and the tapes have been transcribed over into the little booklets. They are corresponding, they're not authored per se, they're not footnoted and so forth. They are just simply word for word from the program tape, but we appreciate the fact that so many are enjoying the little books. All right, let's get right back into the text now then. Romans chapter 11, and we're going to look at the next part of verse 25. We just looked at the first and the last program, for I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, that you should be wise in your own conceits. Now the next part, that blindness, in part, has happened to Israel. Now that's the core of this particular part of the mystery. This is something that nowhere else in Scripture was ever revealed, that the nation of Israel would be sovereignly, judicially blinded by God for a long period of time, which is now of course over 1900 years. Now we know the Old Testament certainly warned Israel that if they were disobedient, God would chastise them, He would bring in their enemies, and so on and so forth. But I can think of nowhere in the Scripture where God actually told Israel that a day would come when they would be spiritually blinded. Now we get a little brief preview back in Acts chapter 13, I think it is. Acts 13, beginning in verse 6. Now just for a little bit of background, Paul now is beginning his missionary journey out amongst the Gentiles, and the church in Antioch is going to send him and Barnabas out. And now when they came to the island of Paphos, up in verse 6, they ran across a sorcerer, a false prophet, but he was a what? He was a Jew. Now remember the island of Paphos is primarily Gentile, and no doubt under Roman dominion, and this sorcerer's name was Bar-Jesus, who was with the deputy or the governor of the country, who was a Roman, Sergius Paulus. A prudent man, he wasn't any dummy, and so for some reason or another he called for Paul and Barnabas, because he had some spiritual interest and questions, and so he desired to hear the Word of God. Now verse 8. But Elimas the sorcerer, this Jew, for so is his name by interpretation, withstood them. In other words, he did everything he could to keep that Roman deputy from hearing the Word of God from the lips of the apostle Paul. And so he tried to turn away the deputy from the faith. Now verse 9. As a result of this Jew's imposing opposition, then Saul, who is now called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit. In other words, he didn't do it just as a human reaction in anger or anything like that, but filled with the Holy Spirit, he looks at this Jew, this sorcerer, and he set his eyes on him. Now verse 10. And he said, "...O fool of all subtlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease or stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?" In other words, are you not going to stop the Gospel from going to a Gentile? And evidently the answer was no, because you go right into the next verse, and Paul doesn't want to stop. And he says, "...and now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee," Paul didn't do anything but turn it over into God's hands, "...behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be physically blind, not able to see the sun, not for the rest of his life, but for a season, a protracted period of time, but not for the whole man's lifetime. Thou shalt not see the sun for a season. And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness, and he went about seeking some to lead by the hand." Now you know what I think that is? That is a preview of what the nation of Israel would do from that point on, because you see every place that Saul, later Paul, every place he went, and if the Jews would reject it in the synagogue as he would normally go first, and he would go out amongst the Gentiles, who would become his chief opposition? Well the Jews would, and they just opposed Christianity left and right. And then as we saw, now come back to me again with Romans, as we saw then back in Romans chapter 11, and this is exactly what God did to the nation, just like Paul did to Elymas the sorcerer, because he was opposing the Gospel going to a Gentile, and he said, "...you shall be blind for a season." Not for the rest of his life, but for a period of time. Now this is exactly what has happened to the nation as a whole. They opposed the Gospel, they did everything they could to keep it from going to the Gentiles, and now then the Scripture tells us in verse 7 of chapter 11, "...what then Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for, the election, those that were believing it, and that were accepting it, hath obtained it, and the rest were..." "...blinded." Well who blinded them? God did, and He set a spiritual blindness on the nation that is holding until this day, but it's not going to last forever. One day that blindness is going to fall from the nation of Israel, and God will once again pick up where He left off with them. Now let's come back to the verse 25 that we're dealing with, but this was part of the mystery. Nothing in Scripture foretold that there would be a long 1,900 and something year period of time that Israel would be spiritually blinded, as we have seen them be. But it's going to come to an end, and now we're going to see what the Scripture says that's going to be. That blindness in part, again in verse 25, "...that blindness in part," not forever, not absolute from here to eternity, but for a period of time, blindness has happened to Israel. Now what's the next word? Until. Now those of you who've heard me teach for many, many years, what kind of a word is until? It's a time word. I shocked one of my classes here a couple of weeks ago. They all know that I've always taught that there's no way we can know the day or the month of the year that the Lord is coming for the church. It's an imminent return, but we never set dates. And then I just shocked them. You could just about see their mouths drop. I said, You're all wondering when the church is going to be raptured. Well, as I'm going to tell you, exactly when it's going to be raptured. And they thought, Oh no, Les has gone out and left field. Alright, when is the church going to be raptured? When the last person has been saved and completes the body. Now I don't know what day and month and year that will be, but that is the until. That Israel is going to remain blinded until the fullness of the Gentiles is brought in. Now what's the fullness of the Gentiles? The Body of Christ. Those are the only Gentiles that God is filling, and filling, and filling, and He's bringing them in. Now let's go back to Acts chapter 15 this time. Go back to Acts chapter 15, and of course this is the big controversy now between Peter and the eleven down at Jerusalem with Paul, and his dealing with the Gentiles up at Antioch. And telling them that they were having salvation apart from Judaism, without circumcision, without commanding them to keep the Law. And so they've brought Paul all the way up to Jerusalem and Barnabas, and really trying to settle the matter. Are you not going to stop teaching these Gentiles that they can be saved without keeping the Law? If you doubt me, come on up to verse 5 of chapter 15 in Acts. There rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees, who believed they were part and parcel of a Jewish congregation at Jerusalem. And they said it was needful to circumcise them, that is the Gentile believers up there at Antioch, and to keep the Law of Moses. And Paul said, No way, there's no way that's going to be part of my message. And so there was a great confrontation, there was a big argument, and then as we studied the Book of Acts several months ago, Peter finally came to Paul's defense, remembering a long time ago, about fourteen years back, that he had gone to the house of Cornelius, and he had witnessed that God would save a Gentile without ascribing to Judaism, without repentance and water baptism. They were saved even before Peter even got that far. Now Peter wakes up here in Acts 15, which is a long time after that, and he says, Acts 15, and you know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that is from amongst the Jewish believers, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the Word of the Gospel and believe. Now after Peter goes through all of his explanation, you come down for sake of time to verse 12. Then all the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles. Now verse 13, after they had held their peace, James who was moderating evidently the meeting, answered saying, Acts 15, And men and brethren hearken unto me, Simeon or Peter hath declared how God at the first, that would be at the house of Cornelius, how God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them, the Gentiles, a people for His name. Now what is that? The church, which is His body. So for the last 1900 and plus years now, the church is being formed by predominantly Gentiles who are being called out from amongst whatever they are, pagans or whatever, and becoming members of the Body of Christ. Now as we've already seen then, as soon as that began, the Jews got envious and began to oppose it everywhere that Paul went, and God put a blindness upon the nation. Now remember I'm always teaching and I always remind people, God deals with the Jew on two levels, national and personal. Now when He blinds them nationally, that does not take away the personal opportunity for salvation. So don't ever think that God's being unfair, a Jew still has every opportunity for salvation that we do, but it's on a personal basis, not on the national. So God is now calling out Gentiles as a people for His name, which is what we refer to now then from Paul's epistles, as the church which is His body, the Body of Christ. I like to use this analogy, I used it in one of the classes again the other night, and I had just read an article, I think it was by a physiologist. He might have been an embryologist, it doesn't matter, he dealt with the fetus in the womb. And of course I'm not going to tell you anything you don't know, but I think it's such a beautiful analogy that at the beginning of pregnancy, that mother's body immediately begins to put all different kinds of cells into exactly the right place. And by the time that nine month period is over, that little fetus has got all his little fingers and the fingernails, the eyes, and everything is now complete. And isn't it amazing, as this author pointed out, that the body rarely makes a mistake by making one finger much longer than it should be, or making toes longer, but everything stops it's cell making process at just exactly the right time. And when it's all completed, and that little baby is finally complete, and the cell making process stops, then what? Well delivery! See? Delivery! Now the church is the same way, God has been adding individual believers from all around the world, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Germans, French, British, Americans, Canadians, whatever. Believers are coming into the Body one at a time. But isn't it amazing, just like the fetus in the mother's womb, one day the Body of Christ is finally going to have the last person in place. We don't know where it'll be, but one day the last person is going to be put into the Body of Christ. It's complete. Now what's God going to do? Well He's going to deliver it from it's confines here on earth, and we're going to be raptured out as we saw in our last program, and that then becomes the until of Romans 11.25. Because you see, as soon as God has completed His work with the Gentile Body of Christ, where is He going to turn to? Well the Jew. Now of course, the Jew is going to have to go through those seven years of tribulation before he enjoys all the blessings of Christ's return. But nevertheless, as soon as the Church is gone, we know from II Thessalonians chapter 2, that as soon as the Church is gone, the Antichrist is going to make his appearance, and the world is going to go into that seven years, which is predominantly the time that God starts dealing with Israel. And so that's when their blindness is going to fall away, as soon as the Church is gone and the tribulation begins. Now at the same time, since we have the fullness of the Gentiles here in Romans 11, go back with me to Luke 21, and we have the other side of the coin so far as Gentiles are concerned. Luke 21, and this of course is the unbelieving element. Now the fullness of the Gentiles here in Romans are the Church Age believers, but Luke 21 speaks of another group of Gentiles who would be the unbelievers. The unsaved world of Gentiledom. Luke 21, verse 23, and Jesus is speaking, and He says, "...Woe unto them that are with distress in the land, and wrath upon this people." Now of course, He's speaking in Palestine, He's speaking to Jews, and so this is where all this is going to take place, isn't it? But He's not talking about the end time, He's talking about 70 A.D. here. He's talking about Titus' great invasion and destruction of the Temple. We pick that up now in verse 24, and they, the Jews of Jerusalem, "...shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations." Now there's the clue that this is 70 A.D., and not the last of the Tribulation. Because at the end of the Tribulation, the Jews are not going to be led captive into all the nations. They're going to just survive until their Messiah appears. But here they were, and we know they were. They were emptied out of the land, and they were dispersed into every nation on the face of the earth. So they shall fall by the edge of the sword, shall be led away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled. Now what are we talking about? I guess I've got to put this on the board. I just have to. Beginning way back here in 606 B.C. Way back at Nebuchadnezzar's invasion of Jerusalem, is the first time that Jerusalem falls under the complete control of a Gentile empire, Babylon, all the way up through human history, all the way to the time of the cross. Then it was Rome, and then even as you come on into modern history, Israel has been under the control of various Gentile nations, the Moors, the Turks, and lastly before Israel finally made her independence was Great Britain under mandate. Britain was in charge of the nation of Israel. Now of course they've had a semblance of sovereignty, but for the most part Israel still is under the heavy hand of the U .N. and all the other nations, and so they have been under control of Gentiles ever since 606 B.C., and they will be until Christ returns at His second coming. Now then running sort of parallel to that, not totally, but sort of parallel at least since the onset of the Church Age, which of course would be sometime between 30 and 40 A.D., we'll just say between 30 and 40 A.D. when the body of Christ had its beginning. Now then for the last 1900 plus years, the Church has been accumulating, they've been brought into the body, and it will be filled, and Christ will take it out at what we call the Rapture. Now then, I should have backed this up a little bit I guess, because the Rapture of course will take place seven years before the Second Coming. I guess you all know that, or maybe I better erase it and make sure. But here's what I want all of you to see, and even those out in television, that the Rapture will take place just before the Tribulation, and all the way back to here we've had the outcalling of the Gentiles into the body of Christ, which is the Church. It will end with the Rapture. Now then, these two processes, the times of the Gentiles, during which Jerusalem is under Gentile control, is going to end at the Second Coming. The fullness of the Gentiles will end at the Rapture. You got that? Now then, all the way since 606 B .C., what has the Gentile world been doing with regard to the God of this Book, progressively? More and more rebellion, more and more accumulating wickedness. Now I've been showing my classes here in Oklahoma that many of the writers of the so-called New Age religions began their authoring of books in the late 1800's, and after the big turn of the century more came out. But the average church person never even heard about them. Very few people read their books and so forth. But they've been out there, and now of course it's beginning to snowball. Now with the advent of all these New Age religions, remember it's pagan, and they may talk a good line, but their basic behavior is anti-Christian, it's anti-God, it is wickedness in one way or another. Now just like when God told Abraham in the Abrahamic Covenant back there in Genesis, that He would make of him a great nation, and remember one of the first prophecies in your Bible is that God told Abraham that his offspring would end up in a land that was not theirs, and that they would be there in slavery for 400 years, and then He gave the reason why the children of Abraham would have to stay out of the land of Canaan. What was it? The iniquity of those Canaanites was not yet full. In other words, God gave the Canaanite people 400 years to straighten up their act. But instead what did they do? They went deeper and deeper into wickedness, and so finally when Joshua came across Jordan River, what did God tell Joshua and the children of Israel to do with the Canaanites? Destroy them! Don't spare a single one, because they had gone down so far. The Gentile world is fast approaching the same place. Now I read just as much as anybody I guess of the media and so forth, and you know there's nothing that the press likes to ridicule more than the outpouring of God's wrath. They just think that's totally ridiculous, that there is no such thing as God ever intervening in human history and pouring out His wrath. Well I've got news for them. God is patient tonight, He's gracious, He's kind, He's letting man just take his own way. But listen, there's a day coming when this until is still in Scripture. And when this until happens, and the times of the Gentiles have run their course, in will come that last seven years of tribulation with the horrors of it. And you and I can't begin to imagine what the last three and a half of those seven years are going to be. It is beyond human description, but it's coming. But you see these two parallel Gentile groups, you have the outcalling of the Church here in Revelation chapter 11, verse 25, which is the fullness of the Gentiles. That obedient group of Gentiles who have believed the Gospel, running concurrent with it ever since 6 O.B.C., you have the times of ungodly Gentiledom. And all you have to do is look at human history. What have they brought on the world? Misery, war, famine, disease, despair, that's been there a lot. And it's going to culminate, of course, in those final seven years. And again, the worst will be that last three and a half. And that will end the Gentile domination then of the city of Jerusalem when Christ returns. Just write a little article for our next newsletter. When you pray for the peace of Jerusalem, as Psalms instructs us, you pray for the Lord's return. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.