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After His resurrection, Christ taught the disciples, and it says in Luke 24:45, "Then opened He their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures." Solomon said, "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get under- standing" (Pr. 4:7). Since we can see how important under- standing is, what was it that Christ gave the disciples to understand?
In the verses after Luke 24:45 above, we read , "And
said unt
o
them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise
from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should
be preached in His Name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem." Not
ending at Jerusalem, but beginning at the city of Jerusalem, and not beginning
2000 years later when a people who call themselves Jews occupy the city, but
beginning right then. "And ye are witnesses of these things.
And, behold, I send the promise of My father upon you: but tarry ye in the city
of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high."
This is verified by the account in Act 1:8, "But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto Me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth." In Acts 2 is the great story of Pentecost, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on Israel, beginning at Jerusalem. Peter called it, "this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel" (vs.16). Then he quoted Joel 2:28, which of course was a prophecy to Israel.
Let us compare Christ's instructions after His resurrection with instructions He gave His disciples during His ministry. After His baptism, Jesus instructed the twelve disciples to go "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matt. 10:6). The word "lost" here is translated from the Greek apollumi, which means: apo ("put away") and ollumi("punished"). It signifies a voluntary losing, which of course is correct, since God deliberately put Israel away into the Assyrian captivity as a punishment (see 2 Kings 18 & Hosea). Apollumi is used 13 times in the New Testament, and every time it is used in connection with the house of Israel. (See Strong's Concordance #622).
Then after His resurrection, Christ told Simon Peter three times, "feed My lambs…feed My sheep…feed My sheep" (John 21). Now if Peter and the others were to obey Christ and feed the "sheep of the house of Israel," they would have to go to where the sheep of the house of Israel were, would they not?
So, the question here is - and you cannot understand the difference between the old Jerusalem and the new Jerusalem unless you have the correct answer to this question - did the disciples obey Christ's explicit instructions to "go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" and "feed My sheep," first in Jerusalem, then in Judea, then in Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the earth, or did they not? I say they did!
History and scripture verify that the disciples preached the Gospel first in Jerusalem, then in Judea, then in Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the earth where the Israelites had gone. British, Roman and other European historical records show that some of the disciples who had known Jesus in the flesh went directly to the British Isles. Paul preached in Spain, France and Eng- land. Joseph of Arimathea established a church in England within 5 years of Jesus's death. Others who went to England were Mary Magdalene, Mary, mother of Jesus, Maximin, Trophimus, Lazarus, Simon Zelotes, Clements, Martial, Sidonius, Zacchaeus, and Mary, wife of Cleophas.
Timothy, who had been ordained by Paul, baptized his own nephew, the British King Lucius, on May 28, 137 A.D. That same king then declared all England Christian in 156 A.D. at the National Council at Winchester! (For a more complete study of this fascinating subject see my "Paul and Joseph of Arimathea, Missionaries to the 'Gentiles' ").
Information such as that in the above paragraph has been completely expunged from our school, church, and seminary text- books. Christian's do not know their race's Christian history! If they did, they would begin to realize that they are Israel. Our race reacted just as Christ said His Israel sheep would. We heard His voice, and we followed Him. Our race became known as the Christian peoples and are now the great Christian nations of the world, includ- ing our own United States of America. We are the only race which has reacted to Christ in this manner.
It was not until about 1500 A.D., after the entire White Race had had the opportunity to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that the Lord moved upon Israel, the Anglo-Saxon and kindred peoples, to then carry it to the heathen, as He had said they would. They obeyed.
Ministers who preach that the Jews are God's chosen people defy the plain teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Speaking to the Jews, Christ said, "He that is of God heareth God's Words; ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God" (John 8:47). And to make it very certain we understand the Jews are not His sheep, it is record- ed in John 10:26 that He said to the Jews, "But ye believe not, be- cause ye are not of My sheep."
Then after Jesus told the Jews they were not His people, he described how His true Israel sheep would react when they heard His Word: "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me." What race has followed Jesus to the exclusion of all other gods? There is only one - God's true Israel, the Anglo-Saxon race.
No, my friends, the disciples did not go to some heathen race. They obeyed their Master and went to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The New Testament calls us Gentiles, which means tribes or nations. We were the Gentiles among the Gentiles, the lost tribes of Israel after the dispersion.
My Christian friends, there is another serious side to this unscriptural teaching that we are not Israel. If your minister teaches that the Jews are Israel, the chosen people of God, and that the Anglo- Saxon, Celtic, Germanic, and other European Caucasians are not, then your minister is saying that all of the disciples disobeyed their Lord Jesus Christ and that the Gospel prospered in disobedience! That is not Scriptural. In fact, it is a very poor way to demonstrate obedience to Christ.
To continue our study on Jerusalem, turn to John 4 for a very symbolic meeting between Christ, the Redeemer of Israel, and a Samaritan woman. They met at a well, identified as "Jacob's well" in verse 6, and the woman identified herself as a descendant of Jacob in verse 12 by asking Jesus, "Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well?"
"Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." She immediately answered, "Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw." This is not the response of a Jew to Christ; neither is it the response of a heathen. It is the response of an Israelite.
Before we go on in John 4, I will quote what the concordance in the back of my Bible says about the Samaritans at the time of Christ: "The Samaritans were a mixed race, composed of imported colonists and the Israelites who remained when the bulk of the ten tribes were carried into captivity. They had a temple to Jehovah on Mount Gerizim, their sacred mountain, they accepted Moses as their law- giver and the Pentateuch as their law, but they rejected the traditions and rules of the Pharisees. They observed the rite of circumcision, the requirements of the Sabbath, and refused to accept Jerusalem as the one place where the temple of Jehovah should stand."
So Israelites lived in Samaria, they worshipped Jehovah, the God of Israel, but knew enough about prophecy to refuse to accept the Jewish priesthood with its traditions or worship at Jerusalem (Would to God ministers knew that much today!). This woman was an Israelite, and in this meeting she is symbolic of all Israel meeting Christ, their Messiah.
In verse 16 Jesus said to her, "Go, call thy husband, and come hither. The woman answered and said, I have no husband." Jesus said unto her, "Thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou has had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband." She had no husband and she had many husbands. Who, in the Bible, had no husband, and had many husbands? Israel, of course, who left her first husband, her God, and as Scripture says, "they have gone whoring form under their God" (Hosea 4), and "thou has played the harlot with many lovers" (Jer. 3:1).