Is the Gentile Church "hidden" in the OT? Paul says: yes it is in Romans 10.....

Rom 10:19
But I say, did Israel not know? First Moses says:

“I will provoke you to jealousy by those who are not a nation,
I will move you to anger by a foolish nation."


Rom 10:20
But Isaiah is very bold and says:

“I was found by those who did not seek Me;
I was made manifest to those who did not ask for Me.”

That is not to say that the NT is absolutely required to rightly interpret all OT prophecies....it is not.

Lord Jesus is head of the church. God promised Abraham that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him. (Genesis 28:14.) Lord Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise.

Eve could be looked at as a type of the church.

The truth that the Lord was going to include the Gentiles was prophesied in the OT, but how it was going to play out was a mystery. If the nation of Israel would have received Jesus as their Messiah, then the Lord would have used the nation as a light to the Gentile world. Instead, Israel rejected their Messiah and God would use the Paul as an Apostle to reach the Gentile world.

Is the Gentile Church "hidden" in the OT?

Click to expand...

The whole point of the "mystery" of the Church is that it is NOT "the Gentile Church". The Church is the Body of Christ composed of BOTH Jews and Gentiles. And in fact it is the "Jewish Church" into which the Gentiles have been "grafted".

Believing Israel is called "the good olive tree" into which branches of Gentile the "wild olive tree" have been grafted. Therefore the Church began in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost and was purely a Jewish Church, where believing Jews received the gift of the Holy Spirit. The New Covenant was given first to Israel.

Even Peter -- the leading apostle to the Jews -- was not fully convinced that the Gentiles should be added to the Jewish Church. God had to persuade him through a vision to go the Gentile house of Cornelius and preach the Gospel. And even then the Jewish Christians who accompanied him had to be shown -- through the gift of tongues -- that the Gentiles had also received the gift of the Holy Spirit. Had all Jews in Israel believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Church would have been primarily a Jewish Church. But because of their unbelief, the Church is now primarily a Gentile Church.

Getting back to the prophecies in the OT regarding the salvation of Gentiles, there is no question that God told the Jews that He would also be saving Gentiles. But that did not automatically translate into both Jews and Gentiles being in one spiritual Body, with no distinctions whatsoever. This truth was hidden from all the OT saints and prophets, and was only revealed to Paul. And he makes it crystal clear in Ephesians 3:1-21.

EPHESIANS 3: THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH NOW REVEALED
1 For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles,
2 If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward:
3 How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words,
4 Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ)
5 Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;
6 That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same Body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the Gospel:
7 Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power.
8 Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;
9 And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:
10 To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God,
11 According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:

Given the fact that the Gentiles (including the Samaritans who were part-Gentile) were despised by the Jews since the time of Ezra-Nehemiah, this was a shocking revelation to the Jews. And it took some time for Hebrew believers to accept this as God's plan for the Church. Even today, Messianic Jews believe that they should not be a part of the Gentile Church, and they worship separately and continue to be Torah observant.

“The called out” is the means by which “let Us make man in Our own image and likeness” is fulfilled. They are called out of the kingdom of darkness and, in Christ, are placed in the kingdom of the Son.

The Torah begins with a man talking with God face to face. Yet, the Jews were given the Law that veiled the presence of God from only but a few. Instead of lamenting this regression, the priests restructured their position as privilege and used it as influence over the people.

I was given the following words in a dream, "Now the Children of Israel, while they were in the wilderness, were disobedient, and by their disobedience, salvation was gained by the nations." There is not secret in understanding, and what you post supports how I understood perfectly. God bless you and thank you for this affirmation.

That's easy to say in hindsight. Not very many people got it until the Lord revealed it after His resurrection.

Those were unable to seee through the veil of Moses. How3ever some were quite aable to see the graqce of our Maker. Read the Psalms and you will see grace many times ov er. Psalm 32 is a good place ot study this.

What makes you think I haven't read Psalms? Do you think you're the only one who has ever read Psalms?

Is the Gentile Church "hidden" in the OT? Paul says: yes it is in Romans 10.....


The Church is neither Jewish nor Gentile-ish anymore...

Galatians
3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
3:27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
3:28 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 Jesus.
3:29 And if ye [be] Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

I was directing to the subject at hand. I think you may not have understood. Just recently I reread another of the Psalms that speacks of the grace of God, and this is why I mentioned it. Please forgiv emy contribution. May you always be blessed with the understanding provide by Go, Hismself, amen

"all".....

Gal 3:28
Col 3:11
Rom 10:11
To be more precise what I meant to say is that Gentiles were to be integrated into the Church, where there is no more distinction made between Jew or Gentile, bond or free, male or female.

It is also true that the gospel is to the Jew FIRST......Rom 1:16

I'm no good at guessing games, I'm gonna need a little more.

For example prophecies uttered by Jacob regarding his sons, prophecies uttered by Moses regarding Israel, Old Testament prophets speaking to the captivity of the nation and desolation of Jerusalem. Etc. etc.

Of course prophecies pertaining to the universal nature of the Church, were (for the most part) only fully understood after-the-fact.

I still don't see your point but that's okay. I'm no longer interested.

Much more than the Gentile Church is hidden in the Old Testament. For a fact, Jesus Himself is forshadowed in the Old Testament. Jesus Himself confirmed the fact that He is in the Old Testament. In John 5:46 He explained to some religious leaders who had challenged Him that the Old Testament was talking about Him: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.”


The Bible consists of the Old Testament, Scripture before the time of Christ, and a New Testament, Scripture which includes writings about Jesus and His early Church. But the whole Bible is one story, a story in which God reveals Himself to the world. It’s said that Jesus was being written about, but hidden in the Old Testament and that He was fully revealed in the New Testament. Jesus told us that when Moses and the Prophets of the Old Testament spoke, they were speaking of Him.


As we near Good Friday and Easter, we can see how Jesus' entry into Jerusalem fulfilled the Old Testament teaching of the Passover.

First, we need to understand a little bit about the Jewish Passover Commemoration, the most important celebration of the Jewish faith. The Jewish people were slaves for 400 years in Egypt. In order to free Israel from this slavery, God sent His Angel of Death to kill the first born sons of all Egyptian families. But to protect themselves, the Israelites were told to splatter lamb’s blood above their doors, and the Angel of Death would pass over, and not harm their families. They would be saved by the blood of the lamb.

God commanded that the Israelites observe a Passover Celebration yearly, as a remembrance that God freed them from slavery of the Egyptians. During this Passover celebration each Jewish family was to choose a lamb, one that was perfect and without blemish. Not a bone in it’s body was to be broken, but after 4 days this lamb was to be slaughtered and offered to God as a sacrificial offering.

Jesus came to fulfill the Old Covenant Passover in Jerusalem. His entry into Jerusalem would parallel the Jewish Passover and take it to a higher level of God’s Plan of Salvation.

Understand that when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the city and it’s temple were the very center of all Jewish religious worship. And when Jesus entered the city it was the time of the Jewish Passover Celebration and the crowds in the city were huge.
As He approached the city, a great multitude came out to Him. The crowd went wild and chose Him as the promised Messiah of God, the One for whom they had waited thousands of years. And Jesus was the Lamb of God, perfect and without the blemish of any sin.

Jesus entered Jerusalem and four days later, Jesus, the Lamb of God was crucified and sacrificed for the delivery of man from the death of their sins. And at the very time that Jesus was being crucified, the slaughter of the Passover lambs had begun in Jerusalem.

And to hasten Jesus’ death, it was ordered to break the bones in His legs. But, instead a spear was thrust into His side and it was clear that He was already dead. And so not a bone in His body was broken.

Man would be freed from the slavery of sin and saved by the Blood of the True Lamb of God. The perfect sacrificial offering to God, for the atonement of our sins.

As a side note, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, tears were in His eyes. It wasn’t because of the cross which awaited Him, but because of the woes that would come to those whom He came to save and who rejected Him.
Instead, His tears were for the people of Jerusalem. Jesus said, “If only you had known on this great day the way that leads to peace. But, no, it is hidden from your sight.”
He looked beyond His own suffering and fixed His eyes on the city that would reject Him, His love, and His mercy. His tears for the people of the city showed Him as a Lord of love who would offer men salvation, but Jesus would never take away the free will of the people to reject Him. It will always be man’s freedom, our freedom of choice to accept or reject Jesus and His teachings.
But in rejecting Jesus, men destroy themselves. In denying Jesus it is themselves, their cities, and their nations that they bring to ruin. Jerusalem turned on Jesus, the city rejected and crucified Him four days after He entered the city.
Only forty years later, the Romans attacked Jerusalem and slaughtered almost all of its inhabitants, over one million people. The Jewish temple, the center of Old Testament worship was razed to the ground, completely destroyed, never to be rebuilt.
The rejection of Jesus was the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem.
But a new religion, a New Covenant would rapidly spread across the world. That religion was Christianity. This religion offers the gift of Jesus mercy and salvation to all who accept Jesus and His teachings, to you and me.
Despite all of Jesus’ humiliations and sufferings that He underwent in Jerusalem, His visit to the city turned out to be a great victory for our sakes. He accomplished the reconciliation of heaven and earth and opened the gates of heaven to us. Saved by the Blood of the Lamb of God.

To which fact might you be referring?

The fulfillment of given prophesy? Some prophecies seem to be pretty clear-cut to me.

Don't mean to be picky. Just wondering if prophecies are necessarily mysterious and hard to be understood.

Another excellent example of Jesus being foreshadowed in the Old Testament was with the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of his son Isaac.

Isaac was Abraham's only son and God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering. Abraham obeyed and took Isaac to the place of the sacrifice. Isaac gathered the wood and carried the wood on his back. Isaac asked where was the sacrificial lamb and Abraham said that God would provide the sacrificial lamb. Abraham was at the point of sacrificing his only son, when God sent an angel to stop him.

Abraham was willing to sacrifice his only son.

Moving forward to the fulfillment of this Old Testament story to the New Testament, Jesus, God's only Son, carried the wood/cross on His back. God did provide the sacrificial lamb, as Abraham said He would. And that was Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.

God the Father so loved the world that He was willing to sacrifice His only Son, for the salvation of mankind.