The Gentiles in History & Prophecy

We're going to talk about the Gentiles this week and the next week Hal is going to talk about Israel. So we're going to trace through scripture in the next couple of weeks the Gentiles, which for me personally, I'm not sure about you, is something I haven't studied much. I haven't really focused much on the Gentiles in my Christian life.

Even though, if you think about it, everything starts from the Gentiles. We're going to see that. And God is concerned about the Gentiles. And we're going to see that kind of over and over again. And if you think about it, Israel was called out from the Gentile nations. So there's a lot about the Gentiles, and there's a lot more in Scripture than you might think.

So we're going to be looking at that today. And then along that line, I took one of Hal's charts from a previous lesson here. And so in Scripture, Scripture talks about three groups of of people. The Gentiles, which we're going to trace through today.

It talks about Israel. It talks about the Church. And there's a progression, you know, in that. And God has a plan and a purpose. And the problem you have is that we spent most of our time down here and hopefully we separated Israel and the Church. Hopefully we've done that. Some people want to combine Israel and the Church. They want to combine those together and treat them as the same. And then, it seems like very few of us, including myself, have thought much about the Gentiles. and about their history as recorded in scripture. So that's sort of the plan today.

We're going to try to trace through what God has to say about the Gentile nations. I got overdue here in the PowerPoint. side to side. So in looking at this, I looked at what the book had, and I sort of like to follow what Hal did and kind of expand upon it and kind of look at maybe snapshots in time in the Gentiles' history, starting with the call of Abraham out of the era of Chaldees, looking at the Gentiles after Pentecost, some of these we know better than others, looking at the Gentiles' judgment at the end of the Tribulation period, looking at the Millennial Kingdom, and the Gentiles in that time period, and then looking at the eternal state and the Gentiles there. So we're going to trace through these five areas. And one thing to start off with, it's important to kind of get our bearing here and look at the different words that Scripture uses to describe the Gentiles. And the word in the Greek is I'm supposed to be getting better here, but I don't know.

This is the translation, Ethnos, I think, Ethnos. It's a multitude or company of people of the same kind or same nature or genus. The word in the New Testament is translated either Gentiles or nations. Occasionally, there's a few other translations. Sometimes it's in the King James, it's heathen and maybe pagan, very few times. Most of the time, it's Gentiles or nations, and then in a couple of places it's translated Greeks, and it's actually the word was used of Gentiles who had a Greek background, who spoke Greek.

And then in the Old Testament there's a Hebrew equivalent to that word, G-O-Y, and it's actually a singular and plural. And one little note that I found is that When you look in scripture, in fact, maybe we want to do this in just a second. When it's in the singular, especially with nations, when nation is in the singular, it refers many times like to the nation of Israel or to a particular nation. When it's in the plural, it refers to the vast company of Gentiles out there, the nations plural, where it says nation, many times it's just the nation of Israel. Let's just look. I think it's worthwhile. I may spend a little bit of time just looking at that quickly. Let's look at Luke 23. Luke 23. Luke 23 and verse 2.

Okay, and this is Jesus before Pilate. I'll just go ahead and read it. It says, Then the whole body, starting in verse 1, Then the whole body of them arose and brought him before Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this man misleading our nation, singular, and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ. He himself is Christ, a king. So here it's referring to the nation of Israel in the singular, because that's a singular case. Then if you look in Let's look in Romans chapter 3.

And one thing to point out, and I couldn't find an explanation for this. Maybe at the end of the Greek class I'll understand it maybe. The same word, ethnos, is translated either gentile or nations. And I couldn't, I don't know why in some cases it's one way and why it's the other. Maybe there's a reason. I just don't know. So here we're going to see a plural Gentile. Let's look at Gentiles, I should say.

Romans 3.29. And it says, Or is this the God of the Jews only? He is not the God of the Gentiles, plural also, yes, of the Gentiles also. So here in the case it's comparing that God is the God of the Jews and the Gentiles. So you're going to see, sometimes you'll see nation singular, nation plural, gentile. You always see gentiles plural, I think.

Go ahead. Okay, okay. Okay, great. Thank you. So now the plan is we're going to go through each of these five, look at the call of Abraham, look at the Gentiles after Pentecost, and so on. Okay. If you think about what happened when the Lord called Abraham, at that point in history, before that point, we had one group of people.

But God called out a nation for himself, a people for himself. He called out Abraham. And this is basically, I kind of just cut and pasted in scripture in there. I left just the first part out. It says, Go forth from your country, from your relatives, from your father's house, to the land which I will show you, I will make you a great nation, singular, I will bless you, make your name great, and you also will be a blessing, I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all families of the earth will be blessed.

So God separates the people for himself, and that begins Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and so on, that separation is maintained all the way into eternity. And God has a plan and a purpose for Israel, and he made this, and this is still in force for Israel, and that's going to be executed. But then, who's left, so to speak? Well, Scripture doesn't talk about... It talks about some particular nations in particular.

And I found this picture, just digress here for a second, It didn't come out real good when I scanned it in, but I'll just give it a shot here. It might get better than I thought, actually. Plus, my cartridge is going out, so it kind of colored in all the green. So, let's see, what do I have my...

Ryan's not here. I get to use his pointer. Okay, there we go. Hey, cool. There's Jerusalem right there. Now, according to... This is the back of one of our Bibles at home. This is... There's Assyria. This part is Assyria. Boy, you know, this is history in the making, right? Here's Babylon, there's the Tigris and Euphrates, there's Iraq, right, today. There's Babylon, here's Egypt down here.

So the nations that were left were, you know, Scripture talked a lot about Egypt, Abraham's going to go down to Egypt, sojourn in Egypt for a while, then later on Assyria's going to come into power. I just don't, my Old Testament is understanding that, well, Babylon, I pretty well understand, they take the nation of Israel into captive. Assyria is in there too, and I haven't really been able to sort out exactly the time periods of the Assyrian powers coming to be, but then Babylon comes into play and takes Israel into captivity. So those are the Gentile nations that are left when Abraham's called out.

Okay, so let's just go back here. for a second. So I just listed some verses in there, basically, that talk about when Abraham went down to Egypt. And then you'll see about Assyria, there's certain kings, there's a king called Pul, It's funny, I haven't read a lot of this stuff.

This is a great... And he comes to power in 2 Kings, they talk about his power. And most times it's always in relation to Israel. Scripture is focused on... God's focused on his people. And these kings come in and they... Israel is confronted by these kings and they trust the Lord for this. So there's a lot of interplay with that. And then we see the Babylonian captivity in 2 Kings 25. It's kind of in view there.

I didn't waste a lot of time on this, but just to kind of point out the other nations that are left when Israel is called out. Now, this particular part, We've looked at the call of Abraham, so the line of people in scripture are now the Gentiles and Israel. If you think about it, God stepped into time and called out people for his own, the nation of Israel. Now God, when the Lord Jesus is resurrected in 50 days after the resurrection at Pentecost, the Gentiles, as described prior to that, and let's just look at that.

Let's turn to Ephesians for a second here. And it shows you that the Gentiles were living on the earth at that time. There are five negative statements there in Ephesians chapter 2. Can I get someone to read, even though I have it up here, Ephesians chapter 2, 11 and 12.

Sue, thank you. So in that passage it talks about the Jews, the ones that are circumcised and the uncircumcised, and it talks about in 12 the fact that they were, that you Gentiles were at that time separated from Christ, excluded from Israel was the only way to God at that time period, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. So that's where the Gentiles were at. And then when Christ came and went to the cross and died and was resurrected, a whole new plan is in place, a whole new, and this is called the mystery, something that was not revealed in the past, a whole new plan is in place that was not revealed in the Old Testament, that the Gentiles are now fellow heirs. And in Ephesians, just turn over to Ephesians chapter 3 there, you'll see that, and I have the verse up there, but you'll see that it talks about the fact that they were, to be specific, the Gentiles are fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, fellow partakers of the promises in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

And there's like three declarations in terms of this commonality. It's like they're heirs. They're heirs on equal basis. I think that word means they're fellow heirs, heirs on equal basis. They're fellow members. They're fellow partakers. And that means they're joint owners. So there's now this togetherness, if you will, between Jew and Gentile in Christ Jesus.

And then it goes on in Acts, it talks about the fact that the Holy Spirit, when he was given, and we can turn over there for a second, Acts chapter 10, Acts chapter 10. May I just read part of this? It says, While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message. And all the circumcised believers who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon the Gentiles also. And it goes on from there. So basically, there was amazement. They were startled by the fact that the Gentiles were included.

The Gentiles would have the same blessings that the circumcised, or Jewish believers, had. And it goes on a little bit later in Acts 11, talking about, therefore, if God gave to them the same gift as he also gave after believing in the Lord Jesus, So they say, who can stand in God's way? It's something that we would say. If that's his plan, if that's his purpose, who can stand in his way? And they glorify God and they say, well then God has granted the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life.

So if you think about it, the nation Israel was called out from the existing Gentile nations. Then God once again interacted with the Gentiles. They were included with Israel. in what's called the church, so God interacted again. And then we're going to see again that God's going to interact again with the Gentiles. So it's kind of back to the picture, our timeline here. So what kind of, you know, God is interacting when Abraham was called, when Pentecost, and then we're going to see when, at the end of the Tribulation period, just shortly here, we're going to see about the judgment of the Gentiles, that God's once again going to go back to the Gentiles, and a group of Gentiles are going to be saved. And those Gentiles are going to continue on to the Millennial Kingdom, we're going to see that, into the Eternal State.

It seems at first, well, there are all these other nations out there and God has not thinking about them. Many times people will say, well, what about all the people out there in the world? God's not concerned. He's only concerned with a certain group of people. Well, Scripture is showing that God is constantly coming back and constantly interacting and calling out a people for his name based upon their faith in Christ.

Okay. Okay, now let's go back. Okay, so now let's look at the Gentile judgment when Christ returns. And let's just go ahead and look at, even though it's up there, let's go ahead and look at Joel for a second here. Turn to Joel. Joel chapter three. Can I get someone to read maybe, let's see here. Why don't we just read, maybe a couple people read like 1-6 in Joel chapter 3 and then 6-12.

For behold, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of my people and my inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations. And they have divided up my land.

They have also cast lots for my people, traded a boy for a harlot, and sold a girl for wine that they may drink. Moreover, what are you to me, O Tyre, Sidon, and all the regions of Philistia? Are you rendering me a recompense? But if you do recompense me swiftly and speedily, I will return your recompense on your head. Since you have taken my silver and my gold, brought my precious treasures to your temples, and sold the sons of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks in order to remove them far from their territory." I am going to arouse them from the place where you have sold them, and return your recompense on your head. Also I will sell your sons and daughters into the hands of the sons of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, to a distant nation, to the Lord of the broken.

Proclaim this among the nations. Prepare a war. Rouse the mighty men. Let all the soldiers draw near. Let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, I am a mighty man. Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations. Gather yourself there, bring down, O Lord, your mighty ones. Let the nations be aroused, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat. For there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. Thanks, Jerry.

So, I don't claim to understand everything in this passage, but I think the parts that do, that I think I do have some handle upon, is the fact that if you look in verse 1, it talks about that Right before the judgment, which we're going to get into in Matthew 25, the Lord is restoring the nation of Israel. He's going to restore the nation of Israel in the Millennial Kingdom. He talks about that in verse 1. He says, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, and then following that, in verse 2, I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat.

In my Bible, I have a little note that says that Jehoshaphat means Yahweh judges. Interesting. Jehoshaphat means Yahweh judges. I will enter into judgment with them on behalf of my people and my inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations and they have divided up my land. So God is going to restore the forces of Judah and Jerusalem. He's going to bring down all the nations.

And the nations, if you think about it, what are the nations' view today of Israel? Is Israel a real popular nation? Does Iraq and Iran and Syria, are they good buddies with Israel? I mean, it's just incredible. I mean, every opportunity, there's this constant, Israel is the target of just countless gentile nations, if you will, in that area.

So God is kind of recognizing how they have mistreated his people, and he kind of goes through all that. He talks about it, and you get down toward the end, to verse 12, and he talks about, let the nations be aroused and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat, for I will sit there to judge all the surrounding nations. And actually I found in going through this and other verses, we're going to get to in the next slide, to talk about the Millennial Kingdom, we're going to see a picture that God is going to call Syria and Egypt He's going to save them, it says. I mean, it just kind of blew my mind.

And He's going to bring them in and they're going to become His people. Not everyone, but based upon this judgment we're going to see here. He's going to bring in Gentile nations and save the sheep on His right, so to speak. That's going to happen. And it's just incredible.

These ones that have been against His people, treated them terribly, they're going to become part of His of a believing group of people. And he calls them by name. And we're going to see some verses a little bit later on. So I mean, it's just, there's a wealth of prophecy in the Old Testament about God's dealing with the nations and how he hasn't, even though they've treated Israel badly and terribly, he's going to save a significant portion of those.

And I don't know how many it is at the end of the tribulation period. Okay. So, the next thing I want to do is go to Matthew 25. Any questions? I'm sure I can answer all of them. I would say, this is me speaking, looking at it, it takes time, like I read through these verses, and there's a lot going on in the verses. Many times Israel is in focus, but then you'll see the nations are in there too, and it's the interaction between the nation, God's chosen people, Israel and the nations that's in view in many of those passages. And it's hard to sort out sometimes exactly.

I mean, just looking at it. But it's there. I mean, he's talking about his plan to save these nations. So now let's look at Matthew 25. Let's turn there for a second. Matthew 25. I'm kind of curious, Matthew 25, how many folks have heard people present this as a judgment of Christians? Hands? I have too.

I've heard people will take this passage and they'll compare this passage with the Great White Throne. They'll say, well you see, this is talking about the Great White Throne, and this is just another little additional information about the Great White Throne Judgment. And they'll try to merge Matthew 25, this section, I didn't include it all, they'll try to merge that with the Great White Throne Judgment. So you see, those are the same, talking about the same issue. If you think about it, this judgment that's being spoken about here, this occurs at the end of the Tribulation period.

The one, the Great White Throne, is at the end of a thousand years. This talks about living nations, all nations will be gathered before him. The one in Revelation talks about the dead are brought up and judged. They're brought out of the graves and the tombs.

And we can look at both of those if you want to. But there's a stark difference between this Matthew passage and the one in Revelation talking about the great white throne. But people have tried to merge those two together. They try to make them the same. And I think it makes it very confusing, very hard to see God's working with the nations. So let's just read through. starting in verse 31. I'll just go ahead and read that.

In verse 31 in Matthew 25, it says, But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne, and all the nations will be gathered before Him. And He will separate them from one another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goat. And He will put the sheep on his right, and the goats on his left. And the king will come, and the king will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. So God had a plan in place, just like, if you think as Christians, we were chosen in him before the foundation of the world. God had a plan for the Gentiles before the foundation of the world. The same care and concern is there for the Gentiles, that He has a plan and a purpose.

The sheep on His right, the ones that, and it goes through this dialogue here, and if you go down to verse 40, the focus here in verse 40 says, And the king will answer and say to them, Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did this to one of these my one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me. So what do you think these brothers of mine are? Who are those people? Now depending upon how you put this verse, if you put this verse making it the same as Revelation, you may get a different view of who these brothers of mine are.

I think it is. I think it is. And we're going to see that the, you know, critical that the Gentile nations are going to be, you know, they're serving, they're going to be serving Israel. They're going to be servants to Israel. And we're going to see that in a little bit. They're going to be servants to Israel in the Millennial Kingdom.

So it's their interaction or their, to the extent that you did this to one of these, one of these brothers of mine, Even the least of them, he did it to me. So when they gave the cup of water or they gave whatever, it turns the nation of Israel. What they did to that, that will be the reason that they are the sheep on his right or the goats on his left. Thoughts or questions on that?

Let's see if I want to put something else. And just for comparison, we kind of alluded to it. Let's just read a little bit of the, let's go to Revelation here for a second. I kind of alluded to this and I didn't want to look at Revelation chapter 20. We'll just read the Great White Throne Judgment here, just for comparison. Okay, in Revelation 20, in verse 11.

It says, And I saw a great white throne, and him who sat upon it, from whose presence the earth and the heavens fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead. Yeah, real critical. The other ones, these are living, all nations were gathered before him. Living, I mean, I don't see any other context here. This says, In Revelation 20, 12, I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne. And the books were opened. No books are talked about here.

And another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them, and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. And death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire." So in this judgment, there's only one conclusion. They all go to the lake of fire.

In this one, the sheep in his right, they will sit with 34. The king will say to them, on his right, come, you are blessed, my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. So there is a dividing of the sheep. The ones that are saved, that know him, and the ones that are not, will go into the lake of fire. In the great white throne, they all go there. They're all judged. There's no separating the sheep from the goats in the Revelation passage.

Yes, yes, right. Well, and how do we know that? I think if you go back to Matthew, it says when the Son of Man comes in His glory, He comes in His glory, and actually we covered that a little bit before, if you go back to 24, this is when He comes at the end of the tribulation period. verse 24-29, but immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened. Actually back to 27 even in Matthew 24-27. So Christ is coming at the end of the tribulation period. That's what I would conclude from that passage. And that's a good point. Right. That's good. The question is, is the believer judged on his works? Is it our works that save us? Our works don't save us, our faith saves us, our faith in Christ. So these people here are judged based upon their works. There are several books that talk about the Book of Life. Right. Right. Right. Right. And I guess the question is why does, in the Matthew passage, it talks about the fact that they did deeds to my brethren, right? To the least of mine, they gave them, and the question is why?

And they don't know they even did that, right? If you read that passage carefully, they don't know why. They ask the question, why? What did they do? They didn't know what they even did. And this is not easy, but it seems like that they're acting in response to coming to know who God is, or coming to know who Christ is. They're acting in response, and they're treating his people Why would they befriend their enemy? Why would someone befriend an Israelite? There has to be some motivation for that. And the motivation is that they've come to realize, they've come to know God.

And that's their brother. I think in the Revelation passage it talks about the fact that it's like God is so concerned. He knows that they're not there. He knows that their names are not written. I think verse 15 in Revelation 20 is making a statement that's basically saying that their names, and if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. So, I guess your point is, that leaves open the possibility that there may have been some there that their names were written, right?

Yeah. Right. mm-hmm here okay that's why I love mm-hmm right Yeah, and that's a real critical point here. There really can be no believers in this picture. And that's really important. Because if you see believers, if believers are in view here, then what you're saying about verse 15, there's a few in there, this is only talking about a group of people that are not believers, then their fate is sealed.

Okay, actually, okay, I do have a note. I have a note on that. Okay, I have, I copied down what Wiest had to say, but I always go back to Wiest. And he has, he has, and whomever, this is not going to be a great thing, he doesn't have the if in there, he has whomever was not found. And whomever was not found. He doesn't have the if, it's not there. And whomever was not found written in the book of life was thrown in the lake of fire. No, that's okay.

But I think the point is, and I think she mentioned, there's a judgment or a reward ceremony for believers. That's the Bema. And then there's, God has a, it seems maybe redundant in our minds, why would you even have this event? Because these people are already unbelievers, their lot is sealed. And this is just maybe a testimony to that, if you will. This is the details of that.

All the unbelievers from all of history will appear before God. And it's like God looks one more time and says, no, your name's not there. Not to imply that there's some that... There are none in this view, none in this passage that are in view that are believers. If you interpret that way, then you've got a whole bunch of other issues you've got to deal with. And that's probably another study. I hope I haven't helped you too much. Was there a question back in Matthew about Christ? When was that?

In the Tribulation Theory. And if you want, I do have a little thing where it kind of compares The believer's judgment with the judgment of the dead, the ones who are unbelievers. I mean, you can go through it, and you need to have it in your mind. You need to convince yourself, or not convince yourself, that that's true. It's just looking at, are believers in view here? It's just critical. If you say they're in view, then you've got some issues to deal with. Now, this is sort of a summary of looking at the Millennial Kingdom. There are a lot of scriptures in the Old Testament that talk about the promise of Gentiles in the Millennial Kingdom.

Let's just look at, we can't look at all of these, but just real quickly, let's look at Jeremiah 16. Okay, in Jeremiah 16, now let me just read starting in verse 14, Jeremiah 16 verse 14, it says, Therefore, behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will be no longer, it will no longer be said, as the Lord lives, who brought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but as the Lord lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north and from all the countries where he had banished them. For I will restore them to their own land and will give which I gave to their fathers." So this is talking about how he's going to restore Israel to the land that he gave to their fathers. Let's just keep reading.

Going to send for many fishermen declares the Lord and they will fish for them and afterwards I will send for many hunters and they will hunt for them From every mountain every hill and from the clefts of the rock for my eyes are are on all their ways They are hidden from my face nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes and I will First doubly repay their iniquities and their sins because they have polluted my lands and they have filled my inheritance with carcasses of detestable idols, with their abominations. O Lord, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of distress. To thee, here we go about the nations, to thee the nations will come from the ends of the earth and say, our fathers have inherited nothing but falsehood, futility, and things of no profit. You can make gods for himself, yet that they are not gods.

Therefore, behold, I am going to make therefore I'm going to make them know. This time I will make them know my power, my might, and they shall know my name is the Lord." So, this is kind of referring to the fact that the Lord is going to make the nations know Him. They're going to come to know Him. That's kind of made the bottom line there.

And then, Israel being their servants. The Gentiles will be Israel's servants during the Millennial Kingdom. And that's talked about in Isaiah 14. Just real quickly here, Isaiah 14. In verses 1 and 2, then the Lord will have compassion on Jacob and again choose Israel and settle them in their own land.

Then strangers will join them. I believe that's talking about the Gentiles. And attach themselves to the house of Israel. And the people will take them along and bring them to their place. And the house of Israel will possess them, these strangers, or Gentiles, as an inheritance in the land of the Lord, as male servants and female servants. And they will take their captors, captives, and will rule over the oppressor.

So it's like God is going to bring these Gentile nations in, and they're going to... Israel has been under this constant besiege of all these nations against them. He's going to reverse that, so to speak. And then thirdly, the Gentiles are saved prior to admission to the Millennial Kingdom.

Now I was just thinking, I can remember people doing a Bible study, reading Isaiah, and trying to put the church in here. It's just, it's, I don't know. Anyway, Isaiah 19. And this is a passage I just want to show you here. Let's just read 24 and 25 in Isaiah 19.

In that day, Israel will be a third party with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, Blessed is Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hand, and Israel, my inheritance. You have to read it over quite a bit, but Israel and Assyria, they're going to be part of it.

He has not forgotten them. I was talking about how about this, you know, the passage, For God so loved the world. He has loved the world. He does care about people. He hasn't given up on the Gentiles. He's going to save, I know, a large portion of them in the end times. And then lastly, the Gentiles will be subject to the Messiah in the end times. End times in the Millennial Kingdom. Okay. And then lastly, we see in the eternal state in Revelation, we see that the Gentiles are in view there.

It says in Revelation 21, I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of the Lord has illumined it. and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring it glory." So the nations are mentioned, are in view in the eternal kingdom.

And then down in Revelation 20, 22, verse 1. Then He showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God, of the Lamb. In the middle of its streets, on either side of the river, was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. and the leaves of the trees were for the healing of the nations." So the nations are in view. Not a whole lot of passages, but a few passages that speak of them. In fact, all three are in view. The Jews are in view, the Church is in view with Christ, and the nations are in view in the eternal state.

This is not an easy topic, and there are some questions, and I appreciate your questions. If you want to talk some more about And the judgments are important, too. I think we need to understand what is being judged. Who are the participants in the judgment? It's critical to understand that.

Let's have a word of prayer, then. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You so much, Lord. We thank You for Your Word, Father. We thank You that You understand all things, Lord. You know the people of this world, Lord. You know the Gentile nations, Lord. And You have a plan for their salvation, Lord. was planned before the foundation of the world, Lord. And we thank you for that. We thank you that we can read that in your word and understand it, Lord. And we thank you for this time. In Christ's name, amen.