Whoa, what a pity I have only recently joined the boards, and missed out on all this! But well done Les and those others of you who kept their cool; the Father will sort out these folk all we can do is 'love our enemy' and pray for them to be blessed by the Lord. HOWEVER I have noticed on many postings throughout the boards, where Israel and Jew are used, that all of you have unfortunately [not your fault, put it for the moment down to some, 'sneaky history'] been mislead by terminology and the etymology of especially the word; Jew. But first let's look at Israel, and to give you all a bit of exercise turn to your Bibles and look up Matt:10:5-7; then go to Matt:15:22-24. In the first we see Jesus (Yashua) telling His Apostles where to go, where NOT to go and what to do when there; in the second we see the confirmation of why He came. Now herein lies the interesting question; where did the Apostles go for in finding where the 12
really went, we find Israel.
Remember Jesus called them 'the lost sheep' so they were not in Palestine when He was there. The only small part of the former Kingdom of Israel that was there at the time of Christ were from the House of Judah and some of these had returned with Ezra to rebuild the temple following their captivity in Babylon. They were 'true Israelites' being descended from Jacob, but were now mixed in with Chaldeans, and Edomites who were now resident in Palestine known as the Idumaeans. This new admixture of Judah, Chaldeans and Idumaeans became known as, ''the Jews'. Jew was a derogatory slang term for
anyone living in the region of Judea and was given by the Chaldean soldiers to initially, the sons of Judah, but it now embraced everyone. Just think of it in terms of 'Poms', 'Yanks', 'Cannucks', etc etc.... Peoples from different races living in the same country.
When Jesus spoke with Nathanael He recognized him as an Israelite
Quote:
indeed in whom is no guile...
Paul, also describes himself as an Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin, all of the Apostles were of Israelite stock;mainly Benjamin and Judah, but the great bulk of 10-tribed Israel were many hundreds of miles to the Northeast and northwest and had been out of their homeland for several hundred years - these were the 'lost sheep'. So I will put my question again; where did the Apostles go?