Jesus gave our age a name: “the times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24).
At Jacob’s well, He gave a mixed, half-Israelite town two days: “he abode there two days” (John 4:40). And “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years” (2 Peter 3:8).
Put those together and you have this article’s thesis. The times of the Gentiles run two thousand years, from about AD 30, when Christ began His ministry, to about 2030. The last two hundred, from 1830, when the Church was organized, are the fulness of the Gentiles, a tithe of the whole. If the pattern holds, we are living in its last years.
Here’s the story, the scriptures, and the case. You decide how much weight it carries.
Early in His ministry, Jesus “must needs go through Samaria” (John 4:4). He stopped at a well outside a town called Sychar, “near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there” (4:5–6).
Joseph’s ground. In the old territory of Ephraim and Manasseh. (Sourced claim: the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia places nearby Shechem “in the territory of Ephraim… on the boundary of Manasseh,” with Jacob’s Well to the south and the traditional tomb of Joseph nearby. Joseph’s bones were buried there: Joshua 24:32.)
A woman came to draw water, and He asked her for a drink. She was startled: “How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans” (4:9).
The Samaritans were the mixed people of the north. When Assyria carried Israel away, it “brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah… and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel” (2 Kings 17:24). What remained was Israel and the nations, mixed. If you’ve read our companion article on Joseph and Ephraim, you know Hosea’s word for that: “Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people” (Hosea 7:8).
Jesus offered her “living water” (4:10), “a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (4:14). She ran back to town. The town came out. And then this:
“So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days. And many more believed because of his own word; and said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” (John 4:40–42)
“Now after two days he departed thence, and went into Galilee.” (4:43)
He abode there two days.
What Jesus called it
Jesus said Jerusalem would be “trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (Luke 21:24).
He used the same words again in our dispensation. The scattered Jews “shall remain until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (D&C 45:25), and “in that generation shall the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (45:30). Paul named its end from the other side: “until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in” (Romans 11:25).
Two days at the well, measured in the Lord’s days, is the length of that age. (Interpretation. The dating is Ken Krogue’s, built on Rhonda Pickering’s research. The case, and the guardrail, are below.)
Rhonda Pickering’s question
Rhonda Pickering has taught seminary and run private schools for over thirty years. She and her husband Farrell run Prophetic Appointments, a teaching ministry on Isaiah, the feasts of Israel, and biblical astronomy. (Sourced claim, from her own site, propheticappointments.com.) For years she’s been keeping a list. Its title is “Scriptures about ‘2 Days’ of the Gentiles,” and the last copy she shared runs to 38 entries.
Her question is simple. What if the two days Jesus gave the Samaritans are two days of the Lord’s time?
Scripture tells us what a day of the Lord’s time is:
- “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past” (Psalm 90:4).
- “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).
- Abraham learned, “by the Urim and Thummim,” that one revolution of Kolob “was a day unto the Lord, after his manner of reckoning, it being one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest” (Abraham 3:4).
- And the Lord told the Prophet Joseph Smith that the earth’s temporal existence runs “seven thousand years,” the first seal holding “the things of the first thousand years, and the second also of the second thousand years, and so on until the seventh” (D&C 77:6–7).
Two days of the Lord’s time is two thousand years. The reading: Jesus abode with a mixed, Israel-and-nations people for two days, and the gospel has now abode among the Gentiles for nearly two thousand years. (Interpretation. Rhonda Pickering’s research; we report it, and you decide.)
The two days aren’t alone
Her list keeps finding the same shape: two days, and then the third day the Lord comes or raises up. Here are the strongest, checked against the text.
Hosea, the Ephraim book. The Lord says, “I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face” (Hosea 5:15). And the people answer:
“Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us… After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.” (Hosea 6:1–2)
The Lord withdraws. Two days pass. On the third, He raises them up.
Sinai. “Sanctify them to day and to morrow… And be ready against the third day: for the third day the LORD will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai” (Exodus 19:10–11).
The Good Samaritan. Another Samaritan, another two. He pays the innkeeper “two pence,” two denarii, roughly two days’ wages, and says, “Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee” (Luke 10:35).
Lazarus. “This sickness is not unto death” (John 11:4). “He abode two days still in the same place where he was” (11:6). Then He came, and raised him.
King Lamoni. He “lay as if he were dead for the space of two days and two nights” (Alma 18:43). As they were about to bury him, Ammon told the queen, “He is not dead, but he sleepeth in God, and on the morrow he shall rise again” (Alma 19:8). He rose testifying of his Redeemer, and the conversion of the Lamanites began (19:12–13).
Jesus Himself. “I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected” (Luke 13:32). “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).
The comma in Isaiah 61. In the synagogue at Nazareth Jesus read Isaiah 61, “To preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:19), and stopped. “And he closed the book” (4:20). Isaiah’s next words are “and the day of vengeance of our God” (Isaiah 61:2). He read the first half of the verse and left the second unread. “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:21). Rhonda’s list calls the space between the two halves “the 2,000-year comma.” (Interpretation.)
Who else has read “two days” as two thousand years
The Talmud reads Hosea 6:2 exactly this way. In Sanhedrin 97a, the rabbis discuss how long the world will last. Rav Ketina says it lies in ruins for one thousand years. Then:
“Abaye says: It is in ruins for two thousand years, as it is stated: ‘After two days He will revive us; in the third day He will revive us, and we shall live in His presence’ (Hosea 6:2).” (Sefaria, Sanhedrin 97a)
Two days, read as two thousand years, in the Talmud itself.
On the same page is the teaching Rhonda’s list calls the Epistle of Elijah:
“The school of Eliyahu taught: Six thousand years is the duration of the world. Two thousand of the six thousand years are characterized by chaos; two thousand years are characterized by Torah… and two thousand years are the period of the coming of the Messiah.” (Sefaria, Sanhedrin 97a:14)
The early Christians read the creation week the same way. The Epistle of Barnabas: “the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for a day is with Him a thousand years” (Barnabas 15). Irenaeus: “For the day of the Lord is as a thousand years; and in six days created things were completed: it is evident, therefore, that they will come to an end at the sixth thousand year” (Against Heresies 5.28.3).
And on the other side. We report it, and you decide: – Augustine read the woman at the well as a type of the Gentile Church: “this woman, who bore the type of the Church, comes of strangers: for the Church was to come of the Gentiles” (Tractate 15.10). But he read the two days differently: “He stays with them two days, that is, gives them two precepts of charity” (15.33). – Rashi, the great medieval Jewish commentator, read Hosea’s two days as the two destroyed temples, and the third day as the third temple (Rashi on Hosea 6:2). – We found no Church Father who reads John 4’s two days as two millennia. That reading is Rhonda Pickering’s insight, not ancient tradition. Its closest ancient cousin is Abaye on Hosea.
The fulness is a tithe
Here is the heart of her research, in her own words. It’s item 34 on her list:
“The fulness of the Gentiles (200 years) is a tithing of the Time of the Gentiles (2,000 years) and the 49 years of Herod’s temple building is a tithing of the 490 years from Ezra’s decree (Israel)—both point directly to Christ’s atonement.” — Rhonda Pickering
Two numbers to sort out.
The 2,000 and the 200. – The times of the Gentiles are the whole stretch, two days of the Lord’s time. – The fulness of the Gentiles is the last tenth of it, two hundred years.
The scripture behind the idea of a returning tenth is Isaiah’s own: “But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return… so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof” (Isaiah 6:13). (Linking Isaiah 6:13 to the tithe is our interpretation.)
The 490 and the 49. Daniel’s seventy weeks are 490 years “from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem” (Daniel 9:24–25). And Daniel’s own verse divides off the first “seven weeks,” forty-nine years (9:25). That’s a tenth of 490, built into the text.
Rhonda ties the 49 to the building of Herod’s temple. The sources give different figures. When Jesus cleared the temple the first time, His opponents said, “Forty and six years was this temple in building” (John 2:20). Josephus says the work wasn’t finished until about AD 62–64, some eighty years after it began (Antiquities 20.9.7). (Disputed. We report all three numbers.)
The dates: we report, you decide
What the scholars say. The standard summary of current scholarship: “Jesus’ preaching began around AD 27–29 and lasted one to three years.” (Wikipedia, “Chronology of Jesus”, citing the Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, Craig Evans, Paul L. Maier, and Paul N. Anderson.) The leading candidates for the crucifixion are AD 30 and AD 33.
What the Restoration frame says. – The revelation organizing the Church dates it “one thousand eight hundred and thirty years since the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the flesh” (D&C 20:1). – Elder James E. Talmage wrote, “We believe that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea, April 6, B.C. 1” (Jesus the Christ, 1915). – Luke says that when Jesus began, He was “about thirty years of age” (Luke 3:23).
Put those together and His ministry begins around AD 30. (Sourced claims; the arithmetic is ours.)
Not every Latter-day Saint voice reads D&C 20:1 as a birth date. Hyrum M. Smith’s 1919 commentary said the verse only “means to say… that the Church was organized in the year commonly accepted as 1830, A.D.” (as quoted by Jeffrey R. Chadwick, LDS Living, 2017).
Where I set the dates. Rhonda’s list gives the shape: two thousand years, with a tithe of two hundred at the end. It doesn’t name the years. Here’s how I place them, and this part is mine, not hers: – The Samaritan ministry begins about AD 30. – Two days of the Lord’s time: AD 30 + 2,000 = 2030. – The tithe, the last 200 years: 1830 to 2030. – The Church was organized in 1830.
And one more date from her list. Moroni delivered the plates on “the twenty-second day of September, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven” (Joseph Smith—History 1:59). By the Hebrew calendar, that day was 1 Tishrei 5588: Rosh Hashanah, the Feast of Trumpets (Hebcal). (Confirmed fact. Lenet Hadley Read published it in the Ensign, January 2000.)
And the guardrail, which we hold without apology. “The hour and the day no man knoweth, neither the angels in heaven, nor shall they know until he comes” (D&C 49:7). Elder M. Russell Ballard: “I do not know when He is going to come again… And I would humbly suggest that if we do not know, then nobody knows, no matter how compelling their arguments or how reasonable their calculations” (Ensign, Dec. 1996).
This isn’t a date for the Second Coming. It’s a pattern, and if the pattern holds, we are living in the last tithe of the Gentiles’ two days. You decide how much weight it carries.
Four fulnesses
Scripture uses the word fulness four ways about our day, and they fit together.
The fulness of times: the when. “That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10). The Lord committed to the Prophet Joseph “a dispensation of the gospel for the last times; and for the fulness of times” (D&C 27:13), a “welding together of dispensations, and keys, and powers, and glories” (D&C 128:18).
The fulness of the Gentiles: the who. Jacob promised that Ephraim’s seed would become “a multitude of nations,” in Hebrew melo ha-goyim, “the fulness of the Gentiles” (Genesis 48:19). Paul: “until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in” (Romans 11:25). The risen Lord to the Nephites: “through the fulness of the Gentiles, the remnant of their seed… may be brought in” (3 Nephi 16:4).
The fulness of the gospel: the what. “When the times of the Gentiles is come in, a light shall break forth among them that sit in darkness, and it shall be the fulness of my gospel” (D&C 45:28). Moroni told Joseph that the plates held “the fulness of the everlasting Gospel” (Joseph Smith—History 1:34).
The fulness of the priesthood: the power. The house the Lord commanded the Saints to build at Nauvoo was to restore “that which was lost unto you, or which he hath taken away, even the fulness of the priesthood” (D&C 124:28).
How they fit. – In the fulness of times, the Lord gathers the fulness of the Gentiles, Ephraim mixed into the nations, and gives them the fulness of His gospel and the fulness of His priesthood. – Their job is to carry all of it back to Israel: “unto the Gentiles first, and then, behold, and lo, they shall turn unto the Jews” (D&C 90:9). – And all four fulnesses lead to a fifth: “that you may come unto the Father in my name, and in due time receive of his fulness” (D&C 93:19).
Church leaders date the “times of the Gentiles” two ways, and both fit the two days and the tithe: – President Joseph Fielding Smith: “the times of the Gentiles commenced shortly after the death of our Redeemer… The times of the Gentiles have continued from that time until now” (D&C Student Manual, D&C 45). That’s the two days. – President Ezra Taft Benson: “The phrase times of the Gentiles refers to that period of time extending from when the gospel was restored to the world (1830) to when the gospel will again be preached to the Jews” (BYU, 1981). That’s the tithe.
(Reading the two statements as the whole and its last tenth is our interpretation.)
Are we living up to it?
“For of him unto whom much is given much is required; and he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation” (D&C 82:3).
Four fulnesses is a great deal of light. And the scriptures that promise them don’t flatter the people who receive them.
D&C 45, right after it promises the light: “But they receive it not; for they perceive not the light, and they turn their hearts from me because of the precepts of men. And in that generation shall the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (45:29–30).
3 Nephi 16, the Father’s warning: “At that day when the Gentiles shall sin against my gospel, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel… I will bring the fulness of my gospel from among them” (3 Nephi 16:10). A fulness can be taken back. The fulness of the priesthood already had been once (D&C 124:28).
D&C 84, to the Saints themselves: “your minds in times past have been darkened because of unbelief, and because you have treated lightly the things you have received— Which vanity and unbelief have brought the whole church under condemnation” (84:54–55). In April 1986, President Benson told the Church that this was still true: “the whole Church is under condemnation,” and “we not only need to say more about the Book of Mormon, but we need to do more with it” (Cleansing the Inner Vessel).
But the same chapter that warns also holds the door open: “But if the Gentiles will repent and return unto me, saith the Father, behold they shall be numbered among my people, O house of Israel” (3 Nephi 16:13).
And the Lord told us the condition for any fulness at all: “no man receiveth a fulness unless he keepeth his commandments” (D&C 93:27).
So the honest answer to “are we living up to it?” is the one the Samaritans gave the woman at the well: “Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves.” The fulness doesn’t come secondhand. Two days is a long time to sit by Jacob’s well. The question is whether we’ve heard Him ourselves before the two days end.
Where this lands
The Lord abode two days with a mixed people at Joseph’s well. On the third day, Hosea says, “he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.”
If the pattern holds, we’re near the end of the second day. The fulness of the Gentiles is ours to hold for a little while longer, a tithe of the time, given to carry the gospel home to Israel.
Much is given. The reader decides how much weight the numbers carry. The scriptures leave no doubt about what’s required.
I know the Lord keeps His appointments. I don’t know the day or the hour, and I won’t pretend to. But I believe that when He names a time in the scriptures, like two days, it isn’t by chance. He promised through Amos, “Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). I know He stopped at Jacob’s well for a mixed and broken people, and I know He stayed when they asked Him to. I know He has stayed with us. And I know the fulness He’s given us is meant to be carried, through Him, home to the Father.
“And he abode there two days. And many more believed because of his own word.” — John 4:40–41
Research credit: Rhonda Pickering, Prophetic Appointments. Her list “Scriptures about ‘2 Days’ of the Gentiles” (February 20, 2024) is the source of this article’s central reading. The AD 30 to 2030 dating is Ken Krogue’s. Any errors in presenting her research are ours.
Ken Krogue is a co-founder of The Covenant Project and has been deeply searching Isaiah for more than ten years. He writes with two AI research partners, Orson (Claude) and Nathan (ChatGPT), and approves every word.
