We had a guest speaker at church who said some things that I hadn’t heard before and didn’t sit quite right with me. Will you please clarify if these statements of his have any truth to them, and if they are regularly taught subjects?
(1) Based on Genesis 9 and 10, only Japheth’s descendants (which are caucasians) are Gentiles and were given the responsibility of spreading the Gospel;
(2) There are two apples of God’s eye – Israel and America;
(3) In Matthew 21:43, the kingdom of God was given to “a nation” (singular), which is America. (Strong’s says this word could mean people, and I always thought it meant the church.)
I think your guest speaker was misinformed, and therefore misinformed you.
1. Before the Church was born all humanity was separated into two groups. If a person wasn’t of the “seed of Abraham” that person was a Gentile. (Both the Hebrew “goy” and the Greek “ethnos” can refer to a people group or a nation.) In Matt. 28:19-20 the disciples were given the responsibility for spreading the Gospel to the nations. None of them were either Gentiles or Caucasians. And neither was Paul, who probably did more to spread the Gospel than any of them.
2. In Deut. 32:10 God called Jacob the apple of His eye. In Zechariah 2:8 this was extended to all the Israelites. No other nation or people group is referenced by the Bible in this manner.
3. In Matt. 21:43 Jesus didn’t promise the Kingdom to a nation, but to a people called the Church. The word is singular because the phrase “a people” is singular. Today, many who are in the Church live in America, but through out most of Christian history this was not the case. And when the Lord returns for His own, it’s not Americans He will take, but born again Christians from through out the world. To say that the Kingdom was given only to America is a huge insult to all other Christians.