Originally Posted by Esaias
Wanted to respond a bit more in depth. The church is God's ecclesia, or qahal, congregation. That congregation is Israel, and is composed of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israelites, all 12 tribes). Ten of those tribes were divorced and cut off in the 8th century BC or thereabouts, and scattered from Palestine by the Assyrians. They were Biblically now "gentiles". These gentiles increased in number and spread abroad. Eventually, they were rejoined with the believing remnant of Judah by faith in Messiah. Or, at least many of them were. These are the "gentiles" and "Greeks" of the New Testament, with but few exceptions (usually stated in the text).
As Isaiah and other OT scriptures indicate, Israel's mission was and is to bring the knowledge of God to ALL nations, tribes, families, tongues, etc. Under both the Old (Mosaic) Covenant and the New (Messianic) Covenant, people of all nations, tribes, families, languages etc were and are being joined to Israel under the headship of Messiah.
Unfortunately, when most people hear or read about Israel, Israelites, etc they automatically think "Jews", and automatically think of the people TODAY known as Jews. But those are all very different terms with very different meanings. Likewise, when they read or hear "gentiles" they assume it means "anyone not descended from Jacob", and apply it to all modern non-Jews. These errors lead to other errors, compounding as one goes.
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