So, these weren't simply "believers" or GENTILES but JEWS from all over the world!
Gentiles didn't become accepted until Paul MADE them acceptable.
I just sighed when I read this and do you know why? Because it shows that we really need to go right back to the beginning.. to creation and to the period before, during and after the Abrahamic covenant and I really don't have time to do this right now.
God didn't just start dealing with mankind after Jesus' death and resurrection. God didn't just start dealing with mankind at the Garden of Eden. God's purposes for mankind and the reason we are here, and the reason why we have need of the revelations, began in eternity past. Every question, every comment, every so called corruption has it's basis not in how I interpret the Bible now... not in church history, not in the Qur'an or in Islamic history, but only in God and in the eternity before creation.
Gentiles were part of God's plan from before time.. but we will do some Bible Study to prove that and I just don't have time today.. hence my sigh!
There was no time or way to consider the implications of this new, non-Jewish disciple. In addition, different historical precedents made it possible to accept him and his worship of the Lord without great dismay or puzzlement. Almost a thousand years earlier, an Ethiopian queen had come to Jerusalem "to test Solomon with difficult questions." (2 Chr. 9:1) After Solomon answered all her questions with wisdom, this queen responded by praising God, saying, "Blessed be the Lord your God who delighted in you, setting you on His throne
as king for the Lord your God; because your God loved Israel establishing them forever, therefore He made you king over them, to do justice and righteousness." (2 Chr. 9:8)
There was also the precedent of Ebed-melech, another Ethiopian eunuch. During the reign of Zedekiah, before the destruction of Jerusalem, Ebed-melech had rescued the prophet Jeremiah from a muddy cistern where he had been left to die. (Jer. 38:1-13) Because of this, the Lord told Jeremiah, "Go and speak to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, "Behold, I am about to bring My words on this city for disaster and not for prosperity; and they will take place before you on that day. But I will deliver you on that day," declares the Lord, "and you shall not be given in the hand of the men whom you dread. For I will certainly rescue you, and you will not fall by the sword; but you will have your own life as booty, because you have trusted in Me," ’ declares the Lord." (Jer. 39:15-18)
It was not incomprehensible, then, for an Ethiopian eunuch to trust in the Lord God of Israel and to recognize the voice of His prophet. It was unusual, but there was already a Scriptural way to understand it. As is written in Tanakh, "Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from His people.’ Neither let the eunuch say, ‘Behold, I am a dry tree.’ For thus says the Lord, ‘To the eunuchs who keep My sabbaths, and choose what pleases Me, and hold fast My covenant, to them I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial, and a name better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off.’ " (Is.56:3-5)
( I found this at
http://www.elijahnet.org/Ethiopian.html
saved me typing it)
The Eithiopians and the Hebrews had long had relationships with each other.. I don't think it at all inconceivable that the Book of Isaiah should have found it's way to Eithiopa at all.
and by the way.. besides the Eunoch.. the first known conversion of a Gentile was Paul himself and the best known confrontation to the Jewish believers that the Gentiles were included as the People of God is in Acts chapter 10. Peter was confronted with the conversion of Cornelius.. and he declares
I know now how true it is that God does not show favouritism, but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right."