Fullness of Time

THE KINGDOM

It’s critical that we understand the unique time we are in. Time is one of those things where man has no control. No matter how hard man tries, he will never be able to stop the ticking away of the hours, minutes, seconds, days, months, and years. The clock is always advancing… propelling us toward a goal.

In a previous article “Royal Road to New Life” (http://wp.me/p158HG-vV ), we discussed how we are currently experiencing a global shift in the earth’s administration. We have ended one macro season and begun a new one. I am using the term “macro” to designate a whopping two-thousand year cycle. The whole world has become engulfed in an atmospheric climate of change. Earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanic activity, et cetera are some of the signs accompanying the birth pains. We shouldn’t be surprised. The Lord told us that the end days would be like this (please refer to Matthew 24). We are in a macro season described in Romans Chapter 8 where all creation groans for the manifestation of the sons of God. It’s a time when the Lord is beginning to reveal many previously hidden truths regarding God’s Kingdom.

The mysteries of God’s Kingdom have always existed, but their vast reality has barely been delved into. The Lord is unveiling much more about a mystery, which He calls His pure and spotless Bride (sometimes called the Bride of Christ). Her code name or alias is the New Jerusalem (Rev. 3:12; 21:2) or the One New Man in Christ (Eph. 2:15).   Please don’t get hung up on gender specific terms; because both men and women are called to be sons of God, the Bride of Christ, and the One New Man. Let’s contemplate how the perfect resurrection of Christ’s Body will inaugurate the age of the Bride of Christ or the New Jerusalem or the One New Man in Christ – these three being one as diverse aspects of the same consummation. In Him and in fellowship with one another, we are actually being built according to His time and His way into an eternal dwelling place for the King of kings.

The promises, which have regulated human affairs for the past two-thousand years, are not going away; but shifting to prepare God’s people for our coming King. A very appropriate word for the season we just entered is the word “dispensation,” which simply put means an administrative system. It’s an ordering of events under divine authority.[1] Any change of management can be disconcerting, whether one has worked for a company six months, two years, or twenty; because once we get to know all the ins and outs of our job, it can be difficult to adjust to changes in procedures, rules, and even the game plan. Sometimes new ownership accompanies new management. Obviously, there is no change in ownership in relation to our new dispensation: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Ps. 24:1 KJV).

God is in charge of this and any shift in the divine order of earthly things. He has been, and will always be, large and in charge. He is simply administering things on earth a bit different than before, and it affects everything we do and who we are. That’s the point. God is making adjustments so that His resurrected Body of believers and bridal company can come into their fullness. If God can measure the waters of the earth in the hollow of His hand, and with the breath of His hand mark off the heavens … If He has held the dust of the earth in a basket, and weighed the mountains on the scales (Isa. 40:12); then know that a small thing for the Lord, like a global shift in the earth’s administration, will probably be massive, even revolutionary, to us.

The whole world has entered the latest season of administration where Christ Himself, together with His Beloved (those intimately tight with Him), is managing the execution, use, and conduct of God’s Temple in a new-fangled way. Several keys to deciphering the purpose behind each macro season reside in the concepts of: a Temple, its stones, the adoption of sons and the Father heart of God.

TEMPLE BUILT BY SONS

Spiritually speaking, the people of God are “a royal priesthood” (1 Pet. 2:9) and at the same time we are being built into a spiritual house [i.e. temple]” (1 Pet. 2:5). From heaven’s point of view, God’s people aren’t in a temple; we are the temple with each of us being a living stone. We are also its priests, but only the sons of a King can be considered royalty. When the term “temple” comes up throughout this book, keep in the back of your mind that the Bible says that those who believe in Jesus Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection become sons of God. The adopted sons of the Heavenly Father are the fundamental building materials and builders of God’s Temple.

Currently, our individual bodies provide a house for our spirits and souls, which are temples of the Spirit of the Living God (1 Cor. 3:16-17). Additionally, corporately, those of us who overcome (i.e. move onto perfection) will literally become the eternal dwelling place of God. After Yeshua’s resurrection approximately two-thousand years ago, Jesus Christ was seen by his disciples in His glorified or resurrected Body. Somehow this mystery is expanding into a new supernatural dimension in our day to include the Head, who is forever the Messiah, and His resurrected Body of believers. We have entered the season where an elemental change is occurring so that a corporate Body will be prepared for Him (Heb. 10:5). I know that I am simplifying all this due to me catching a mere smidgen of the mind of Christ. I feel that this new way of life being ushered in is far above what we can even think or imagine.

IN THE DISPENSATION OF THE FULLNESS OF TIME

Due to the revelatory nature of the topics we’re discussing, let’s review the elemental points made in the “Royal Road to New Life” article (http://wp.me/p158HG-vV ). A radically new dispensation has arrived upon the scene of human history every two-thousand years since the dawn of time. Around two-thousand years have come and gone since the fullness of time had come for Yeshua being born so we might be reconciled to God: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).

Two-thousand years before the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Abraham walked up Mount Moriah to worship God by offering up his son of promise – Issac. Many experts agree that God’s physical temple in Jerusalem – the city of our great king – was built upon the same Mount Moriah.[2] The Biblical pattern appears to be first an only son volunteers to become a burnt offering; then a stable dwelling place for God is gradually built.  This seems to be some sort of divine building pattern.

Let’s try to clarify this divine building pattern a little more by running through it chronologically. We begin with a man of flesh and blood who against hope believed God’s promises. We have seen in previous articles (“Royal Road to New Life” http://wp.me/p158HG-vV ) that this man was the first person to come out of Babylon. His name was Abraham.

Our Heavenly Father’s heart responded to Abraham’s obedience and sincerity by forging a unilateral covenant with him and his descendants. This covenant of faith was, and is, only dependent of God’s faithfulness. God called out a people – Abraham’s people – as His sons. This promise was extended first to his natural sons; and then, spiritually to all who believe. Thus, Abraham became the father of many nations. After Abraham miraculously became God’s son and father to his promise, we are told in Genesis 22 that both the father and the son ascended the mountain of God to worship. Of their own free will, they both obediently and sacrificially placed Issac on God’s altar. Full of faith, Abraham offered up his only begotten son. It was a Messianic foreshadow of an unprecedented event literally fulfilled around two-thousand years later.

After Abraham was tested by God, his descendants grew. They prospered. Long story short, a portable temple was erected by Moses and company. The latter chapters of the book of Exodus discuss how the Wilderness Tabernacle was built and how it became a fitting resting place for the Shekinah (i.e. God’s glory/presence).[3]

The book of Leviticus shows us the first revelation in the new Tabernacle. God’s people were made aware of their responsibility to maintain a high level of holiness. So significant was the Wilderness Tabernacle’s earthly image that God warned Moses to make all things according to the pattern shown to him on another mountain of God – Sinai (Exo. 25:40; Heb. 8:5). We are told that the Wilderness Tabernacle served as a copy and shadow of heavenly things to come. This is the same pattern Solomon used around a thousand years after Abraham and Issac ascension up MountMoriah. Note that the temples built by Moses, Solomon, and Herod still speak of eternal truths, which can help us understand the spiritual realties behind what God is fashioning in our day. This king’s son, who was a king himself (i.e. royalty), built God’s first quasi-permanent residence. It was made of stone. One stone was laid upon another. But when God’s people rebelled and their time for change had come, the stones were dismantled here on earth to make room for the next temple and the next and the next.

About another thousand years pass after Solomon’s reign, when another time of reformation came, the only begotten Son of our Heavenly Father comes to earth as a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 5:5-6). We all know the story. Both the Father and the Son voluntarily lays down Yeshua’s life on the cross so that the world through Him might be saved. Hebrews 3:6 tells how “Christ was faithful as a Son over His house whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.” Check out the entire book of Hebrews for keys to the mysteries of the divine building pattern. It’s loaded with gems.

There was and is and is to come a perfect Son. Yeshua was true to all covenants that came before and after Him in our time-space continuum through perfectly loving His Father with all His heart, all His soul, and all His strength. He told us that doing the will of the Father is His food and drink – His sustenance.  The shift that Yeshua brought to the divine building pattern was a quantum leap in the spiritual direction. An entirely natural picture of solid stones was destroyed, so a revised version of God’s living stones could come forth. After Christ’s resurrection, it was like the natural and supernatural realms overlapped even more. They became wedded in a profound new way. God’s people have always been the living stones of His presence. They are His Temple; but once the stone temple in Jerusalem was destroyed a monumental global transformation ensued due to a change in God’s administration of His Temple.

Consider the Hebrew word for stone: !b,a, even.[4] It has the appearance or is akin to two Hebrew words: ba;; for ‘father’ and !B,, for ‘son’ which if placed together would be pronounced av-ben and carry the nuance of ‘Father and Son’. We should note that the word even is used to refer to God. “But his bow remained firm, And his arms were agile, From the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob (From there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel)” (Gen. 49:24 NAS). The Hebrew word for stone additionally has a Messianic touch: “Therefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, A costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed” (Isa. 28:16 NAS). Therefore, the Hebraic language shows us that a stone represents the concept that the Father and the Son are like a rock. They are inseparable. It communicates what Jesus declared: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9b). Here’s a mystery that will manifest in our newest dispensation: the Heavenly Father, His Son the Messiah, and the sons of the Living God will actually be made one… so will everything in heaven and on earth.

Note how those in the first century, who believed that Yeshua was the fulfillment of the atoning Messiah, didn’t worry about the animal sacrifices still being performed in Jerusalem’s Temple. They had to trust that the Lord Himself would take care of this practice. They had to trust God; because the Temple sacrifices were initially given by God, and they had become a deeply ingrained institution. And in 70 C.E., the heavens and the earth moved. No stone was literally left unturned. A great slide from the natural toward the supernatural began with Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection on earth; but God’s grace allowed the Temple’s animal sacrifices to continue another thirty to forty years.

It’s funny how Herod’s Temple was finally finished in 62 C.E., then eight years later it was destroyed. The number eight is the number in scripture that symbolizes new beginnings. It’s where we begin again. Even though a macro new beginning was inaugurated at the cross for the transformation of God’s Temple, historically, we also know that there was also a comparatively gradual turning after Jesus’ atonement so God’s people could transition into the new dispensation. Its promise was, and still is, the adoption of sons (Gal. 4:5). This promise is eternal; therefore, it will continue.

Now in our day we have a fresh dispensation dawning, which encompasses and expands upon everything that has gone before it. I predict that another quantum leap in the spiritual direction will take place. I anticipate that it will result in something completely enveloped by the heavenly realm. God’s royal priesthood still has confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, which was a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through tearing the veil of His flesh (Heb. 10:19-20). According to the Bible, our new macro dispensation’s hallmark will be the Messiah gathering all things together in Him: “that in the dispensation of the fullness of time He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth – in Him” (Ephesians 1:10).

Christ’s Body and His Bride will hold center stage for all creation groans for the manifestation of the sons of the living God. A manifestation is more than professing faith. It’s a walking, talking many member organism that’s readily perceived by the senses. Not only will people know the genuineness of God’s sons, but all of creation – the birds, the bees, the flowers, and the trees – will recognize this new and living phenomenon. Can I say that we aren’t there yet? As individuals some of us may have partially already entered into this reality; but corporately, and I mean universally, there is still too much gunk. Please note that we have already begun this journey two millennia ago, but somehow the metamorphosis is going to be kicked up a quark or two.

FULLNESS OF HIM

The macro dispensation we just entered is the second time the phrase “fullness of time” is mentioned in the Bible.  This fullness of time will result in the fullness of Him, and the fullness of the Gentiles is a door to it all. “For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in” (Rom. 11:25 NKJV).

I have heard consistently from others that the “fullness of the Gentiles” means that a certain number of people from the nations have become part of God’s household.[5] While I agree with this explanation, I believe that it is the easiest and minimal interpretation of the phrase. Missionologists are saying that we are within reach of fulfilling the Great Commission having preached the gospel and made disciples of every tribe, tongue, and nation.

The Greek word translated as “fullness” in the phrase “the fullness of the Gentiles” is plaroma,[6] which conveys a sense of completion. My Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary says that completion is the act or process of completing. It is also the quality or state of being complete. The word “complete” carries the meaning of: to make whole or perfect; to mark the end of; fully carried out; and having all parts, elements or steps. Therefore, the fullness of the Gentiles is a time when the Gentile outreach has reached God’s predetermined state of completion having all necessary elements to proceed to the next step.

As I have contemplated the meaning of the “fullness of time” for years now, I have seen where it is not just limited to a quantified number or to a fixed moment when something occurs. The fullness of time is also a measurable period during which a condition exists or continues. It is a season of time (a non-spacial continuum) measured in terms of events. For example, when Cornelius and his household were saved, I believe that the overarching season called the fullness of the Gentiles began;[7] and it will continue until the Lord says it has ended. “He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart without which man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end” (Eccl.3:11 NASB).

Let’s recap. The fullness of the Gentiles appears to be a fixed event in time, a quantifiable stopping point determined by the Lord; but it can also be defined as the season in which an end to a determined fullness will come. I believe that in addition to marking the end of a season in terms of a quantifiable number of people, the fullness of the Gentiles is a season within a season.  I personally believe that when the fullness of the Gentiles season ends, it does not mean that no more Gentiles will be saved for that would contradict scripture. Just as there were Jews saved through faith by grace during the Church Age (i.e. the time of the Gentiles), so will Gentiles receive salvation in the emerging age: “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (1 Peter 3:9).

SEISMIC SHIFT

I don’t think anyone, but God truly knows what we are in for. But I do know that we can look back about two-thousand years ago to pull out some principles that can guide us in the coming days. There’s a new door opening to the age of God’s Kingdom; therefore, I think it behooves us to study the time when the door opened to the Gentiles. Shortly after Jesus final ascension to the right hand of the Father, the Gentiles began to join the people of God in much greater numbers than before. Yet on this vital issue, Jesus remained silent while He was still walked among us in flesh and blood. Only after divine revelation did divine intervention for the Gentiles and a new paradigm shift take place.

Acts chapter 10 marks a turn of something new and amazing. It’s when the door of faith opened to all nations. Similarly, we are turning anew to the age-old foundation of the Kingdom of God in our day. It is very telling how the gospel was brought to the Gentiles (i.e. nations) astounded the very ones who were personally taught by Yeshua. Note to self: The next move of God should be a surprise to everyone. The Gentiles speaking in tongues surprised them all, but the circumcised believers additionally had a feeling of uneasiness.

What the Lord our God will require of those who are His in this kingdom day will probably surprise us, make us feel anxious, uncomfortable, and possibly even perturbed. Nevertheless, not our will, but thine be done. Had the Jews understood the scriptures that pointed to the Spirit being poured out on all flesh, they probably would not have been so astonished by Cornelius’ unprecedented encounter with the Holy Spirit. Had us Gentiles consistently practiced the Essential Commandments for All Believers, we probably would not be so astounded at what the Lord is requiring of us this day.

Jews understood and believed that the God of Israel was, and is, the God of the nations; and that Gentiles would be brought into God’s household. These spiritual realities had always been spoken of in the scriptures, but it took a supernatural vision from God to both a Jew – Peter – and a Gentile – Cornelius – to prepare both of them to go forward into God’s new dispensation. “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). When a new divine system of administration comes around, God seems to share things, which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has previously understood. It is a very unusual kairos (i.e. right) time that appears to come around every two-thousand years.[8]

Peter’s vision in Acts 10:9-16 was not as plain and to-the-point as Cornelius’ vision due to Peter’s closer relationship to God. Recall that Peter fell into a supernatural trance or some people call it an ecstasy of contemplation. He was caught up into the heavenly realm. I think that it’s crucial that something very similar happened to me when Yeshua revealed: “Christmas will be the golden calf of America.” (Please refer to “North Pole Going South?” http://wp.me/p158HG-kH ).

The Bible says Peter “saw heaven open”[9] (Acts 10:11), which signifies the opening of a mystery that had been previously hid or minimally understood (Rom. 16:25). The open heaven also indicated that Peter’s authority to go to a Gentile was indeed from God. We need to grasp how significant this directive was. Before this time the Jews were never allowed to associate with people from idolatrous nations. It had been an unlawful thing for Jews to keep company or come to one of another nation. Notice that this ceremonial law was made by a decree of their wise men not by God, which was no less binding on a Jew.[10]

God’s Word had told them to not become corrupted by the sinful activities of other nations, and to remain separate and holy from these practices. Also, they were told not to intermarry. Jews were not forbidden to converse or traffic with Gentiles in the street or in shops, but they were forbidden to eat with them[11] due to most pagan meals were dedicated to foreign gods before they were served. Peter articulated in Acts 10:28: “But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean.” This is ultimately the meaning behind Peter’s vision of the sheet full of unclean creature not the repealing of the kosher laws. Please note that the kosher laws in regard to food are still part of God’s eternal word. These regulations were not abolished, but fulfilled in Christ (Matt. 5:17); and they are still valid for our Jewish brethren.

Peter totally changed his mind and religious practice by means of this divine revelation. God tore down Peter’s wall of partition that kept a Jew from fully preaching the gospel to a Gentile. By the way, it’s time for another wall of partition to come down.  The disciples of Yeshua in the early first century had some concept of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles before Peter went to Cornelius, but in hindsight it needed some divine adjustments. The Jews most probably imagined that they were to preach only to those Gentiles that came into their synagogues. Groups of Gentiles, who had been convinced that that the God of the Bible was the Only True God, tried to fulfill the ethical precepts of the Bible. They were called “God-fearers.” They became attached to synagogues, mainly outside of Israel (i.e. Diaspora), with some even contemplating or following-through on a full conversion to Judaism.[12]

History shows us that the God-fearers were attached to almost every Diaspora synagogue. When the gospel message was preached to the Jew first and then to the Gentiles by Paul and folks, the first Gentiles, who received the good news, were these God-fearers. The earliest spread of “The Way” (i.e. the earliest form of Christianity) followed the route populated by Diaspora synagogues in Asia Minor, Alexandria, Rome, Syria Greece, et cetera.[13] The book of Acts testifies to this truth as well as the presence of Christian communities circa A.D. 100-300.[14]

“Turning to the Gentiles” did not radically change the missionary procedure of believers, but it was earth shattering in its focus and scope. Paul did not initially address an entirely new audience. He preached in Diaspora synagogues until the Jewish audience split into believing and unbelieving factions, then he began to focus more on the God-fearers when he established his apostolic headquarters somewhere other than the synagogue (Acts 18:5-11).[15] Jewish believers still followed Paul, and to the average person on the street and to the Roman authorities, Paul’s mission to the Gentiles appeared to be essentially a Jewish affair.[16]

In the first century the Jewish paradigm of preaching to all nations had to make a seismic shift to begin to accomplish the Great Commission. Today, another seismic shift on how Jew and Gentile relate to one another is about to, and is even already, taking place. I believe that like in the first century we haven’t even thought much about the adjustments necessary for accomplishing God’s purposes in preparation for Christ’s Body and His Bride.

According to providence, the One New Man of Jew and Gentile in the Messiah will manifest. We will do the Lord our God a disservice if we think that His previous silence about a particular issue or practice means that He agrees with it 100-percent and He will never ask us to change. The cycle of life through many millennia flows. We are all called to live and move and have our being in the way, the truth, and the life.

God repealed a human tradition , a man-made ceremonial law in Acts 10, which enabled the revelation of a mystery: “Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 3:6). At the time, it was revolutionary that Jews and Gentiles were placed on the same level before God. The truth of the matter is that the Lord has never, and will never, reject/refuse any honest seeker (Rom. 10:12-13).

The first apostolic council in Jerusalem sought the Lord and the scriptures on how Gentiles would be taking part in the temple service. Acts Chapter 15 lays out their conclusion. When they sought the scriptures, they saw that the prophets’ spoke about the Gentiles’ participation in end-time salvation. The saved Gentiles were described as “Gentiles” not Jews;[17] therefore, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to the Jerusalem Council to lay upon Gentiles no greater burden than the Essential Commandments for All Believers. Stay tuned, because in my next article, we will discuss these Essential Commandments for All Believers.

~ Robin Main

www.sapphirethroneministries.com
www.santa-tizing.com
www.mysticmentoring.com

Copyright October 2008 – Author: Robin Main.

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[1] Webster’s New World Dictionary

[2] The Dome of the Rock is on the exact spot. Herod’s temple had the Holy of Holies on that exact spot. This is why Jews today pray at the Wailing Wall, as it is the closest point to the Holy of Holies (aka, the Mount). There are other exposed points of the Jerusalem Wall. Why don’t they pray there? They are not the closest point.

[3] The exact term Shekinah is not used in Hebrew Scripture. This is a noun created from the Hebrew verb shakan, which means ‘to dwell’. The term Skekinah/Shakinah is a later Talmud term which describes God’s ‘dwelling’. “Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:35 KJV). “And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:35 NAS). “Abode and settled” are a translation of this Hebrew verb !k;îv’ shacan. In both translations ‘glory’ is dAbK’ kabod or ‘heaviness-honor-glory’.

[4] Harris, Theological Word book of the Old Testament: !b,a, (˒even). Stone. The meaning of ˒even is almost singularly ‘stone,’ and in the cognate Semitic languages both meaning and usage are the same. Stones are common in the Middle East, and the word occurs more than 275 times in the Hebrew and Aramaic of the Bible. In all but a few places, which are cited below, the meaning is simply “stone.”

[5] Biblos.com, Parallel Bible, Romans 11, Wesley’s Notes on the Bible, http://bible.cc/romans/11-25.htm (viewed on 10-03-08): “St. Paul calls any truth known but to a few, a mystery. Such had been the calling of the gentiles: such was now the conversion of the Jews. Lest ye should be wise in your own conceits – Puffed up with your present advantages; dreaming that ye are the only church; or that the church of Rome cannot fail. Hardness in part is happened to Israel, till – Israel therefore is neither totally nor finally rejected. The fullness of the gentiles be come in – Till there be a vast harvest amongst the heathens.”

[6] plh,rwma (plaroma) – the root idea of this word is ‘that which fills or fulfills’ and in that way it is complete.

[7] There is no general eschatological agreement as to when ‘the fullness of the Gentiles’ began. For example, J. Dwight Pentecost states in Things To Come, 303:  “From the standpoint of eschatology, the important point is that the fullness of the Gentiles began at Pentecost and will continue only as long as the present age of grace.” While I understand this stance, I believe the fullness of the Gentiles began earlier when the Holy Spirit’s direction turned in a new way toward Gentiles after Peter received divine revelation on a rooftop in Joppa (Acts 10).

[8] Gingrich, Gingrich’s Greek Lexicon, 98: kairo,j, ou/, o` time, i.e. point of time as well as period of time—1. generally Luke 21:36; Acts 14:17; 2 Cor 6:2; Eph 6:38; 2 Tim 3:1; present (time) Rom 3:26; 13:11. kata. kairo,n from time to time John 5:4.—2. the right, proper, favorable time Matt 24:45; Mark 12:2; Luke 20:10; J ohn 7:6, 8; Acts 24:25. Opportunity Gal 6:10; Col 4:5; Heb 11:15.—3. definite, fixed time Matt 13:30; 26:18; Mark 11:13; Luke 8:13; 19:44; Gal 4:10; 6:9; 2 Tim 4:6.—4. the time of crisis, the last times Matt 8:29; 16:3; Mark 10:30; 13:33; Luke 21:8; 1 Cor 7:29; Eph 1:10; Rev 1:3.” What makes this word so important is that it has the meaning of a “season of time” an “appointed time,” and a “prophetic time.”

[9] musth,rion, mustarion

[10] Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary of the Whole Bible, 2108.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Skarsaune, In the Shadow of the Temple, 82

[13] Ibid., 82-83.

[14] Ibid., 80-83.

[15] Ibid., 172.

[16] Ibid., 173.

[17] Ibid., 177.