Corpus-Paul

["Bill Ross" <wross AT farmerstel.com>]

{Jake}
Help me understand why Jesus in Matthew 10 specifically charged his apostles
to "go ONLY to the Jews, and NOT go to any Gentiles" in their spreading the
Good News of The Kingdom, and yet Paul ignored those instructions.

{Bill}
Matthew 10 was a specific mission.
Matthew 28 contains the more general commission:

Matthew 28:
18  And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me
in heaven and in earth.
19  Go ye therefore, and teach all nations [gentiles], baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
20  Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you:
and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Paul said the Gospel was "to the Jew first and also to the Gentile."

Romans 9-11 goes into great detail that the "failure" of the Gospel to reach
the Jews is indeed the result of a temporary judicial hardening upon the
Jews (except the elect), as prophesied in Isaiah 29 and Psalm 69:

Psalm 69:
22  Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have
been for their welfare, let it become a trap.
23  Let their eyes be darkened, that they see not; and make their loins
continually to shake.
24  Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take
hold of them.
25  Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents.
26  For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten; and they talk to the
grief of those whom thou hast wounded.
27  Add iniquity unto their iniquity: and let them not come into thy
righteousness.
28  Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written
with the righteous.

Romans 11:
7  What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the
election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded
8  (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber,
eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto
this day.
9  And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a
stumblingblock, and a recompense unto them:
10  Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, and bow down their
back alway.
11  I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but
rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to
provoke them to jealousy.

He was specifically commissioned as an apostle to the gentiles:

Galatians 1:
16  To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen;
immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:

Galatians 2:
7  But contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was
committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter;
8  (For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the
circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles:)
9  And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the
grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands
of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the
circumcision.