The Importance of Spiritual Harvest Among the Gentiles

Paul anticipated that after a period of spiritual harvest among the Gentiles, then ethnic Israel would also experience a turning to God and be saved. So in Paul's thinking during this interim period there is a kind of spiritual dullness or hardness that has come upon ethnic Israel whereby they refuse the gospel and reject Christ. After the full number of Gentiles come into the kingdom, then he says Israel will also be saved and there will be a turning to Christ among ethnic Jews. Jesus said things at the end of the Olivet Discourse in Mark 13 and in certain other passages that suggest that in fact he thought that the return of the Son of Man was going to happen within the lifetime of his he