Your eyes are open! Not many will acknowledge that. Nationalistic pride usually prevents them from seeing the truth. The Bible explains why the world is in such a mess....and in direct decline as they relinquished more and more power to this world's real ruler...the one pulling all the strings. (1 John 5:19; 2 Corinthians 3:3-4) In this world, there are no good guys in power.....just better liars.
Solomon, as you probably know, was the son of David and Bathsheba. This woman and King David would have been put to death under Israel's laws because David desired her and took another man's wife in adultery. When she became pregnant, David orchestrated the return of her husband from battle so that she could claim the child was his, but this noble man would not leave his men to indulge in marital pleasure with his wife, so David placed him at the front lines of battle where he would surely be killed....essentially orchestrating his murder. Jehovah sent his prophet Nathan to reprove David and to see if he would repent over this gross sin...not hidden from his God. (2 Samuel 12:1-14) David repented and God forgave him.But David's life was never without conflict from that time onward. He lost the blessing of his God.
Solomon was a good man, but not sent from heaven.....Jesus was. You make no mention of Jesus as the son of God or the fact that he was with his Father in heaven before being born as a human child. Have you done no study on this or are you avoiding it because its a touchy subject?
The new covenant never went away...it was just never enjoined on the people of Christendom....the fake Christians that Jesus likened to "weeds" sown in the same field as the wheat.....but they are identified in the harvest time and gathered up and thrown in the oven to be disposed of, before Jesus gathers the wheat. These are the ones he rejects as those he "never knew". He never considered them Christians in the first place, despite their excuses.
What you are seeing is the steady decline in the conduct of humanity alienated from God and disobedient to his laws. The world is falling apart.....we can all see it. All those institutions we thought we could trust were never trustworthy to begin with.....they just got more and more greedy.The Bible tells us where it all ends so that we can make the right decisions.
The Bible is about Jews primarily. Under the Patriarchal system, men like Abraham and Job led their extended families in the worship of Jehovah. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were the forefathers of the nation of Israel, true to God's promise that Abraham's offspring would produce the 'seed' who would save the world.
But after their release from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, God formed his people into a proper nation and gave them his laws exclusively. Their numbers had increased significantly in Egypt so it necessitated dividing them up into tribes.....the 12 sons of Jacob became the 12 tribes of Israel. This is why God kept them separated from the nations and why he punished them for excursions into false worship. He was recording their actions and his reactions in what would become our scripture as an instruction manual.
Gentiles were any person NOT Jewish by birth. It was a broad term for non-Jews. All of the ones Jesus called as apostles were Jewish....not from the educated class, but humble, uneducated (by Jewish standards) fishermen. Matthew was a hated tax-collector. Paul was a former Pharisee but he was not one of the 12. His was a special ministry to take God's message to the nations. Paul was a tentmaker by trade, but his education, Roman citizenship and former place in Jewish society were used by Jesus to take the good news into new territories and to give him more credibility before governors and the Jewish hierarchy. He was educated at the feet of Gamaliel, a highly respected man in Jewish religious society.
It was actually Peter who was directed to the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion who became the first Gentile convert to Christianity. He had received holy spirit even before baptism to indicate God's blessing on this new aspect of the preaching work, now to include both Jews and Gentiles. Previously people of the nations had to convert to Judaism, but now they could become Christians by submitting to water baptism.
We have a body of elders who all share the work of caring for the each congregation. We are told to be in subjection to them and they in turn are subject to Jesus. (Hebrews 13:17) They will answer to Jesus for the role that they are assigned. Like the apostles, they are as imperfect as the rest of us and must humbly acknowledge their own faults to God. They can only help us if we co-operate with their Bible based counsel, which is always based on the scripture, not on their own opinions. They will never tell you what to do, but will guide you to scripture that will help you make any necessary choices.
They have always been a great help to me. A newly baptized person would never be assigned to study with you. We have to study the Bible for quite some time before we would be considered ready for baptism or to conduct a study. Baptism a serious commitment for us, not one to be entered into lightly.
Let us know how you fare.....all the best.