Two of the most important words in Bible prophecy are small ones: two “untils.” Jesus said Jerusalem would be “trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (Luke 21:24). Paul said “blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in” (Romans 11:25). Between those two untils lies the entire present age — the time we are living in now.
Jerusalem trodden down
“And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” — Luke 21:24
Jesus foretold it and history delivered it: in AD 70 Rome destroyed Jerusalem, the people were “led away captive into all nations,” and for most of the next nineteen centuries the city lay under one Gentile power after another — Roman, Byzantine, Persian, Arab, Crusader, Ottoman, British. The scattering and long treading-down are not disputed history.
The fulness of the Gentiles
Paul looks at the same era from the other side. Israel’s hardening is partial and temporary — “until” a set point — and during it the gospel goes to the nations and the “fulness of the Gentiles” is gathered in:
“That blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved.” — Romans 11:25–26
This is the clearest New Testament promise of a future national turning of Israel to the Messiah. The present Gentile age — the church gathered from every nation — is not God abandoning Israel but the very window in which the nations come in, before Israel’s “until” expires.
The two untils, side by side
| Luke 21:24 | Romans 11:25 |
|---|---|
| Jerusalem trodden down of the Gentiles | Israel hardened toward the Gentiles’ gospel |
| “until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” | “until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in” |
| Then: the treading-down ends | Then: “all Israel shall be saved” |
Two clocks, one age. When they run out, the focus of the prophetic story turns back to Israel and to the return of the King.
The Apostolic (Oneness) reading
Apostolic (Oneness) Pentecostals read the times of the Gentiles as the present age of grace — the church, gathered from every nation through the Acts 2:38 gospel, is the “fulness of the Gentiles” coming in. The “until” is decisive: it is sequence, not replacement. God has not cast away His people (Romans 11:1); the Gentile ingathering runs its course, and then Israel turns to the One they pierced (Zechariah 12:10). The same one God who scattered and preserved Israel is gathering the nations now and will save all Israel then — one plan, one Saviour, two peoples made one in Him.
The honest part
Two questions are genuinely open. First, has the treading-down ended? Many read Israel’s recapture of Jerusalem in 1967 as the times of the Gentiles being fulfilled; others hold the phrase concerns the whole Gentile church age and is not tied to a single date, and caution against reading the newspaper into prophecy. Second, what does “all Israel” mean? — the nation restored (dispensational and much of historic Christianity), or the full number of the elect Jew and Gentile (some Reformed readers). The site sets the options out and lets the “untils” stand as Scripture wrote them.