Thanks once again to Bud Hancock for an insightful and wise article. I had really not considered this matter myself in depth, perhaps because of my alleged Chimpanzee heritage.

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

The Three Groups of People
By Bud Hancock

What is race? What IS ethnicity? What determines a person’s “race”? What determines a person’s ethnicity? How many races and ethnic groups are there in the world today?

With more than 190 “member states”, or nations, in the United Nations, one might think there are actually 190+ ethnic groups in the world. In an online search for this info, you can find as many different opinions as there are so-called “experts” on the subject, so the conclusions presented by these online “experts” are somewhat confusing; but fear not, there is one source of Truth that can explain these issues and provide the answers to all the questions above.

Having developed, over a period of many years, a more mature outlook on life and the many questions and problems life presents, I am still somewhat amused that there are so many intelligent, educated men and women who pride themselves on knowing the answers to every question. One must consider where they received their educations and how their massive troves of knowledge were attained. I am being somewhat facetious, but I recognize ONE source of Truth above all others on this Earth, so it is always amusing to read the information by experts who obviously have never gone to that ONE source to look for answers to life’s questions. My source, of course, is the Almighty, Jehovah God, the creator of all things. In His word, He clearly explains everything one could ever hope to know about life and its many mysteries. It must be remembered that God exists outside of time, so He is able to see the past, the present and the future with perfect clarity. His perspective is not marred by human emotion or the human knowledge that so many people pride themselves on possessing.

THE UNITED NATIONS LOGO

Sometimes the most difficult endeavor for a Christian is to view everything from God’s perspective. It is extremely easy to allow our own human emotions and our own minute (by comparison) knowledge to cloud the way in which we view the issues we encounter on a daily basis. But, since God created this Earth, all the people ON the Earth, and every other living creature, it behooves us to look, to the extent possible, at things as viewed by Him. No other approaches to understanding life make any sense, nor will any true knowledge be gained from them.

I want to take a look back at God’s explanations and try to relate them to what we are seeing today. God explains in a few words the main difference between Him and we humans. In the Book of Isaiah the prophet, we are told this:

“Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:6-11).

Most of the people on Earth believe there are over 193 individual nations, as seen by the membership in the United Nations. And strictly from the geopolitical view, they would be correct. But, again, from God’s perspective , they would be wrong. Historically, every human being on Earth descended from either Shem, Ham, or Japheth, the three sons of Noah. These settled in different areas and began their lives after the flood. As the number of humans began to multiply again, many new “families, or ethnic groups were formed by the offspring of the three sons, through marriage within their families. From these, many of the “nations” we now recognize on Earth can be traced back to their original lineage. Others are merely clans or tribes that were established by conquest and migration, but ALL of them, including the current nations, came from those three.

In His word, God often discusses the people that inhabit His Earth (Psalm 24:1), and He mentions many of them by name, sometimes in terms of the judgment that He, as the rightful owner of the Earth and everything that lives on it, has the right to dispense. Many of those “nations” have already experienced His judgment and some of them have ceased to exist. But God very explicitly describes several “groups” of people who will earn His judgment for their attempts to destroy His chosen Earthly people: the Jews.
There are today, ONLY three groups of peoples inhabiting the Earth; one of those is the “nations” that existed before God chose out and separated Abraham from His own purpose. As a result of God’s choice of Abraham to be the father of His chosen people, and thus the one from whom the Messiah would come, He separated the people of the Earth into two groups: the Jews and the “nations”, or the GENTILES.
In the Old Testament, the word for Gentile is the Hebrew word “gowy” (Strong’s 1471, pronounced “go’-ee”) and it means literally, a “massing” (in the sense of a body) of foreign peoples or nations who were pagan and not a part of the the Jews/Israel. The word Gentile in the New Testament is the word “ethnos” (Strong’s 1484, pronounced “eth’-nos”) and it means a tribe, or clan, a foreign (non-Jewish) nation or people. In the Old Testament, the word seems to mean that those designated as such are simply non-Jewish, whereas in the New Testament, the writers mention the Gentiles as being the nations or peoples who are living in the darkness, without the Light of God’s word, and this makes sense since Jesus was called the “Light of the World” (John 1:1-4). The Light of the gospel, Jesus, was the vehicle through Whom God reintroduced His light as the means of His salvation. Since Jesus Himself declared that He was sent only to the “lost sheep of the House of Israel” (Matthew 15:24), meaning that, at the time Jesus appeared on Earth, God considered the Jews to be as lost as were the Gentiles, how then was the Light from God to be sent to the nations, the ethnos, the Gentiles?

We have shown how there were only two groups of people in the Old Testament, the Jews and the Nations, or Gentiles. Now we must determine who makes up the third group of people. Since that group is not mentioned directly in the Old Testament, they must be a “mystery group”, one not understood by even those who penned the Books of the Old Testament, even though they understood that there were mysteries not given to them to see.

The Holy Spirit claimed that God “so loved the world” that He gave His only Begotten Son for them. The word translated “world” in John 3:16 is the Greek word “Kosmos” (Strong’s 2889, pronounced kos’-mos) and it means the “orderly arrangement”, in other words, the “world” (NOT the Earth) and its inhabitants, or the people who live on the Earth. This makes sense when you consider how perfectly God “arranged” the inhabitants of the Earth after the Flood of Noah, dispersing them across the entire globe, partly as punishment for the sins of Nimrod, and partly to once again, encourage humanity to “Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the Earth” (Genesis 1:22 and Genesis 9:1). After God sent the nations to their respective habitations, God, through His chosen, Abraham, presented His Light to the Jews and fully intended that they would share that light with all the world, but alas, their sins brought them into the darkness along with the pagan Gentiles.

Since Jesus claimed that He was sent only to the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel, God must have had a plan ready to get that Light to the Gentile nations, whom God claimed to love. Jesus carefully called several Jewish apostles (and one Gentile doctor, Luke), to take His message of love and salvation to the Jewish people, but the gentiles would also need a messenger sent to them. It seems that this mission was mainly given to Paul, who was not one of the original disciples, but was converted in a face to face confrontation with the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus as he was on his way to persecute and kill those who espoused the idea that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. That confrontation, leaving Paul blinded, was the beginning of the great outreach to the Gentile nations through the ministry of Paul. Though hesitant to welcome Paul as a Christian brother, due to his prosecution of Christians, the disciples eventually accepted him and aided him in his many journeys into pagan lands where the Holy Spirit led him. Through the obedience of Paul, God’s message of light to the pagan nations, was begun so that they too could experience God’s love and salvation.

The word of Jesus’s resurrection spread through a large area in a short time, and by the time of Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus’s resurrection, large numbers of Jews were in Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost. At the command of the Lord, shortly before His ascension, His disciples were gathered there to await what Jesus instructed would be the gift from God, another Comforter, Who would empower them to continue His ministry on Earth. As they waited and prayed in the Upper room, the Holy Ghost fell on them all and they were immersed in and filled with His presence. This was the moment the third group of people on Earth was formed:

The Church: God’s Unique Purchase

In 1 Peter 2:9-10, we read: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light; Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy”.

The Church of God, being built by Jesus could not have been formed until the arrival of the Holy Spirit, without Whom the mission to reach the world with the message of Love would not have taken place. Also remember that the Church is NOT one or another “denomination”, but is made up of every believer in Jesus Christ, whether they were born Gentiles or Jews. This third group is truly special among the groups in that, it is made up of many members from the other groups: Jews and pagans/Gentiles. It is the only group that, according to the Bible is “peculiar”. Now many today accept the English definition of the word to mean strange, not usual or not ordinary and that is partially right, but the literal translation is from the Greek word “peripoiesis” (Strong’s 4047, pronounced per-ee-poy’-ay-sis), and it means, “purchased, an acquisition, denoting the Church as a body that was purchased or bought. The blood of Jesus that was shed on Calvary was the awesome price paid for this group.

THE DAY OF PENTECOST Painting

Each of these three groups has its own particular characteristics. The Nations were created, the Jews were chosen and the Church was purchased. The nations, those who are still seen a Gentiles in God’s eyes, are still in the darkness, not having experienced the mercy that is available from God through the blood of Jesus. These nations will be on Earth even after the tribulation period and on into the Millenium. The Jews, still God’s chosen earthly people, are themselves living in darkness, having rejected the salvation and the Light that is available through Messiah. The greatest characteristic of the Church is its mission to take the Light of the Gospel to all the world; the Church is the Holy Nation as described by Peter, that is growing via those who flee the darkness and receive the Light. When Gentiles, or Jews, accept Jesus, they are then no longer Gentiles or Jews, but are members of the Holy Nation, the Church of God, better called the Body of Christ.

So even though the World may recognize hundreds of “ethnic” groups on Earth, looking at the issue from God’s perfect perspective, we can conclude that there are three, and ONLY three, groups of humans on this planet: The Jews, the Gentiles and the Church of God (not the “denominations”, the REAL Church being built by Jesus). When people who identify as Christian openly mock, or denigrate the Jewish people, or do anything that causes hurt, harm or offense, whether out of an inner hatred they have been taught (no one is born hating another person, hatred is always taught), or out of ignorance that originates from either poor teaching or no teaching, they should be identified as “Gentile”, and NOT as Christian. On the other hand, people who are true born-again believers in the Messiah, Jesus Christ, are no longer Gentiles, but are Christians, each an individual member of the Church. It would certainly be helpful if the Jewish people were taught this fact, but it would require that all Jews give up their innate fear of Christians, a tough one because of all the terrible things done to the Jewish people “in the name of Christianity” (mostly by the Church of Rome, certainly NOT Christian).

We are entering the time known as the Last Days, or the End Times, and Paul taught us that these will be perilous times, with many false prophets, wolves in sheep’s clothing, working to deceive even the elect; the more knowledge a believer has, knowledge based on God’s word, the better equipped he or she will be to fulfill the mission given to the Church:

“…Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned (Mark 16:15).

Since the foundation of the Church, that mission has not changed. Only through the guidance and help of the Holy Spirit ill the Church be able to do as Jesus commanded us.

Let us pray that ALL the Church will learn what our mission is and “…work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work (John 9:44); Because the night surely is coming. Get Ready!

Maranatha and Blessings!

Bud Hancock

Born and raised in a small textile town in North Carolina, Bud’s family moved to Michigan in the hope of finding better employment with General Motors.  After graduating from high school, Bud began an apprenticeship with General Motors to become a Metal Modelmaker.  Retiring after a 30 year career, which included an eight year stint as a Metrologist (Science of high precision measurement), he and his wife moved back to North Carolina to be near his elderly parents.  Shortly thereafter, with both of his parents having passed, he began a new career in the bank security/ATM business, advancing from an entry level technician to one of two North Carolina customer service managers for his employer.  Retiring again after 13 years, he and his wife of 51 years relocated to Tennessee where Bud began writing articles emphasizing Biblical teaching and geopolitical issues.  At age 75, he and his wife relocated to South Carolina with their Miniature Schnauzer, Baxter.  Bud continues to study God’s word and write articles on Christian living and geopolitical issues from the Biblical end times  perspective.