We are in the last days, and the end will come in the fullness of time. God will bring the end when He is ready, when we reach the fullness of time. (See God’s Timetable)
Old Testament
It was 400+ years before God was ready to move the Israelites from Egypt.
God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.” (Genesis 15:13–16)
Among other things, God was waiting for the fullness of the Amorite’s iniquity.
Jesus Christ
When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. (Galatians 4:4–7)
It was a long time from Genesis, and the first prophesy of Christ’s coming in Genesis 3:15, until Christ’s birth.
The Last Days
We are in the last days, and God is still working.
We are in God’s administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. (Ephesians 1:10)
But how long? At least this still needs to be done.
For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.” (Romans 11:25–26)
As we wait
We are to be alert and ready. We are to trust and worship. We must wait expectantly.
Come Lord Jesus!
