If some of the branches (Israelites)

We are not to adopt an attitude of superiority toward the Israelites, the natural branches. We must keep in mind that the Gentile branches are not supporting the root of Israel; rather, the root of Israel is supporting the Gentile branches.

Romans 11:17,18 reveals to us that there is only one Israel, one called-out people, one elect of God, one Church. Some have taught that there is a Jewish church and a Gentile church. This is not true. There is no Gentile church. The new covenant is made only with Israel, and we Gentiles are grafted on the one olive tree.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people (Hebrews 8:10).

The Church of the Lord Jesus, the Body of Christ, began with converted Jews. The writers of the Old Testament and the New Testament were Israelites. The Apostles of Christ were Israelites.

From this fact alone we understand that there is no Gentile church.

If there is a Gentile church, when did it begin?

Who was its first member?

Who were its apostles and prophets?

Was the first member of the Gentile church the Apostle Paul of the tribe of Benjamin?

Or is it true that Paul is a member of the Jewish church and you and I are members of the Gentile church and Paul has no part with us?

One of the concepts related to the doctrine of the two churches separated by race is that God loves the Gentile Christians so much He will not allow them to be harmed by the great tribulation (which itself is nonsensical in that Gentile Christians are suffering cruelly in many parts of the earth today); but He is ready to consign His own firstborn, the Jews to any kind of horrible torture. This teaching is clearly anti-Semitic.

The scriptural truth is, there is only one Church, one Body of Christ, one Kingdom of God, of Heaven. The called-out nation of Israel was God’s "Church" in a natural form. The new-covenant Church, the Church of the Firstborn, began when the Lord Jesus Christ, its first Member, rose from the dead. Then came the Apostles and elders, all of whom were Israelites.

The Jewish Apostles preached the Gospel of the Kingdom. They preached to the Jews first, then to the Greeks and Romans, and finally to the farthest reaches of the earth.

The Gentiles on receiving Christ were grafted onto the root of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

As soon as the full number of the Gentiles has been grafted on the holy tree, on the Church, the Body of Christ, the Seed of Abraham, the power of Christ will be directed once more (as appears to be happening already) toward the people and land of the nation of Israel.

Christ finally will be received by His own race.

And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn (Zechariah 12:10).

The Christian Church began with Israelites and will end with Israelites. We Gentiles have been grafted on that one holy tree.

To create a separate Gentile church is to do violence to the Scriptures, wresting them in such a fashion that any coherent, intelligible interpretation of the Old Testament prophecies is impossible.

Yet today we have Christians teaching that there are two churches of God, one Jewish and one Gentile.

The life and ministry of the patriarch Joseph, which is a major type of the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, includes Joseph’s marriage to Asenath, an Egyptian (Genesis 41:45). Some scholars consider Asenath to be a type of Gentile Christians.

We are in agreement with this interpretation of Joseph and Asenath.

Consider: on marrying Joseph, Asenath became one with him according to God’s Word pertaining to marriage. Asenath became a member of Israel as truly as if she had been born of Jacob. In no manner was Asenath separate from Joseph and Joseph’s family.

Two sons were born to Joseph and Asenath—Manasseh and Ephraim. Manasseh and Ephraim were not considered to be half Israelite and half Egyptian. Manasseh and Ephraim became tribes in Israel with all legal rights and inheritance pertaining thereto, including a portion in the land of promise (Genesis 48:20).

Therefore Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, the priest of On, is a true type of Gentile Christians who are grafted on Israel and are not separate from Israel, nor do they constitute another church or family of God.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ (Galatians 3:28).

But, some have taught, the Gentiles are a heavenly church and the Israelites are an earthly church. If such is the case, of what church were Peter and Paul members—the heavenly Gentile church or the earthly Jewish church? Again, is the Lord Jesus Christ going to rule an earthly Jewish church, the members of which have never been born again?

How can they enter the Kingdom of God without having been born again? (John 3:5).

The moment anyone is born again of water and of the Spirit he enters the one Body of Christ, the heavenly Jerusalem, "which is the mother of us all" (Galatians 4:26). Isn’t that true?

The teaching of a pre-tribulation rapture has created chaos in biblical interpretation, forcing a division between a Jewish elect and a Gentile elect— a thoroughly unscriptural position.

Are we limited to inference when we are teaching that the Body of Christ is one? Not at all. Let Paul speak to this point:

Wherefore remember, that ye [Greeks of Ephesus] being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision [Gentiles] by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands [Jews]; that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the [Jewish] covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: but now in Christ ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one [Jew and Gentile], and hath broken the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace (Ephesians 2:11-15).

"One new man"!

There are not two churches, there is only the one new Man.

Then Paul goes on to say:

Now therefore you Gentiles of Ephesus are no more strangers from Israel and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the Jewish saints, and of the Jewish household of God (Ephesians 2:19).

The oneness of Jews and Gentiles in the Body of Christ, the Kingdom of God, the Church, is far too important a concept to be decided by inference or assumption. Therefore the Holy Spirit had Paul explain (in the second chapter of Ephesians) that the Gentiles, through the blood of the cross, are brought into Israel, into the one chosen family of God.

The separating of the Gentile elect from the Jewish elect is no innocent result of a misunderstanding of theology. It proceeds from Satan who understands that the power of the Kingdom, the renewal of natural Israel, and the salvation of the world, will come from the union of a Jewish remnant and a Gentile remnant who have been made one "stick" (the cross) in the Lord’s hand.

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