Christianity: the religion of the white man?
Martin Luther King referred to Sunday as “the most segregated day in America.”
No real words were ever spoken.
A few years ago I was preaching and, Lord help me, my opening words were, “Look around you. What do you see? I see a church full of white people.” Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and others… they had all been there, but we had holes in our network and we hadn’t been able to maintain them. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is like a net, which catches ALL kinds of fish…” (Matthew 13:47) and that includes black, brown, red, yellow, Protestant and Catholic, young, old, male. and female
As Americans, we often project an imperialist attitude that the rest of the world detests. Regarding American CHRISTIANS, I have often heard and read about third world pastors who say they wish they had the money Americans raised to go on their “mission trips” so they could better care for their own families and congregations… buy bibles and study tools, attend seminary. Can we even imagine a bunch of half-naked primitives walking into our churches to share the latest “revelation” God had given his tribe? Yet we spend a fortune crossing the pond for these “life-changing” (whose life?) short-term missionary experiences. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in missions, especially those that are geared towards helping the sick and children, but I have heard too many stories of missionaries who admitted they felt they made NO difference to their mission trip and of nationals who could have used a good healthy love offering instead.
I once taught a Sunday school class to a room full of mostly black African pastors, their little bodies lost inside their oversized and outdated suits and ties. Between them, their congregations hovered in the area of 40,000 people. These humble men were taking notes, asking questions, hanging on my every word. I don’t know about them but, for me, THAT was life changing! God bless those who were wise enough to bring these African pastors to the US so they could return home and teach those they already had a relationship with (keyword).
Regarding this so-called “white man’s religion”, it is true that some mistakenly believe that Christianity is the religion of whites, just as others believe that Islam is the religion of blacks. Friends, Hosea 4:6 declares, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…” Let us strive to KNOW the truth because Scripture says, “you shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). I think what you are about to read will be VERY liberating.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR ANCESTRAL
Black Christianity did not begin in the United States with slaves who converted to their masters’ religion. Genesis 10 shows us where all the races originated. The black lineage is presented by family, languages, places and nations. The Bible tells us, in Genesis, that it all began with Adam and Eve. ALL! Genesis 2:7 tells us that Adam was made from the earth. Science has shown that we are all made of the same materials found on earth. The Hebrew word for Adam is Adahm, which means “red” or “of red soil.”
Yes, Adam was a person of color!
After the flood, it was Noah and his kids who populated the earth (Acts 17:26; Genesis 9:18,19). His sons were called Cam, Sem and Jafet. These names mean Black, Dusky, and Bright, or “fair,” respectively. Biblical historians agree that Ham is the ancestral father of the black races: the Mongoloids, the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Canaanites, and the Indians. From Shem descended the Jews, Arabs and Persians. From Jafet came the Greeks, the Caucasians, the Russians, the Indo-Europeans.
Is a black out of three? Well, we don’t know exactly HOW dark the pigment of the other two was, but is that even possible? With God, everything is possible. Face it, if YOU were the Supreme Creative Being, wouldn’t YOU be creative in creating people and animals?
Look around. Look in the mirror… God has been VERY creative. Medical research tells us that it IS possible to have children of very different color, especially if one or both parents are dark-skinned, but it is impossible for a light-skinned person to have a dark-skinned child. So, for Noah to have had a “black” child, he or his wife had to have been dark-skinned as well.
logically speaking.
Noah’s son, Ham, father of African and black races, had four children… Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan, Genesis 10:6. Cush was the father of the Ethiopians (Gen 2:13; 10:6) and of the people who lived in Asia and Africa. Cush means “black” and Ethiopian means “man with a sunburned face”. Jeremiah 13:23 says: “Can the Ethiopian shed his skin…?”
Mizraim spawned the Egyptians and his name means “sons of the sun.” Eventually, they even started to worship him, but that’s another story. Ham is derived from the Egyptian name “Kam”, the strongest word in the Egyptian language for “black”. The Book of Psalms refers to Egypt as “the land of Ham” (Ps 78:51; 105:23, 26.27; 106:21,22). Phut was the father of the nation of Libya (Ezekiel 27:10; 38:5; Jer 46:9 and Nahum 3:9). Libya also means “black”.
Ham’s youngest son was Canaan, cursed by Noah in Genesis 9:20-26. Although we have all heard of Ethiopia, Egypt and Libya, it is strange that Canaan does not exist today. Note: Contrary to the teaching of SOME, it was NOT the entire black race that was cursed, only the Canaanites, due to Canaan’s sin. They were the original inhabitants of Israel (1 Chronicles 4:40), but they no longer exist. My, how could they have been hurt! Yes, there ARE long-term consequences for sin, even affecting our descendants.
Noah’s sons migrated, spreading throughout the earth: Japheth’s people to modern Europe, Shem’s to the Middle East. Ham’s descendants went to southern Arabia, Africa and India. Cush had a son named Nimrod (Gen 10,10) who built the tower of Babel, as well as Erech, Acad and Calne, near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the starting point of all civilization (Gen 10,10; 11,1 ).
Cush’s descendants founded mighty Assyria, builders of Nineveh.
The Bible gives no record of Phut’s genealogy.
Ham’s descendants included Menelik, son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, to whom the Ethiopians trace their historical roots.
Joseph married an Egyptian woman (Genesis 41:50-52), so his sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, definitely had Hamite (black) blood.
Jethro was Ethiopian and converted to Judaism through the testimony of Moses (Ex 18,1-12).
Moses was also married to an Ethiopian woman (Numbers 12:1). She Was she black she? She Could she have been her! In Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron began to oppose Moses because of his Cushite (Ethiopian) wife, showing contempt for her ancestry. This angered the Lord and Miriam became ill with leprosy (oddly enough, this disease would not only make MIRIAM the outcast of the community, but her skin would turn ACTUALLY white as a result of the disease. Poetic justice? After Moses interceded because of her, God healed her and returned her to the camp). NOTE: My argument is that Miriam’s REAL problem was not so much with Moses’ wife as with her prophetic gift and her special relationship with God. She perhaps went for the obvious (Miriam’s skin tone) rather than humble herself and admit to Moses that she envied him.
Scripture does not indicate any prohibition for Jews to marry Cushites (Ethiopians) and they seem to have had good relations with them (Amos 9:7; Ps 68:31; Zeph 3:10; Is 11:11).
Jehudi was a secretary in the king’s court during the time of Jeremiah and was a descendant of Cushi (Jeremiah 36:14,21,23) as was the prophet Zephaniah.
From Ham’s lineage comes Joshua, and David’s grandmother, Rahab, a Canaanite. Bath-sheba means “daughter of Sheba”. Sheba appears in Ham’s family record, Genesis 7.
Bath-sheba was married to Uriah the Hittite, whose roots go back to Ham’s grandson Het (Gen. 10:15). King Solomon’s complexion and hair are described as black but beautiful (Song of Songs 5:10,11).
Moving to New Testament times, scholars believe that the wise men who searched for the baby Jesus (there is no Biblical record that there were only three) were Ethiopians because gold, frankincense, and myrrh were abundant in southern Arabia and the East Africa.
The Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26-39 undoubtedly brought Christianity to Ethiopia.
Simon the Canaanite was considered a black apostle (Matthew 10:4).
Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus carry his cross, was probably a descendant of Ham since Cyrene was in North Africa.
Apollos (Acts 18:24) also came from Ham. Indeed, the nations that descended from Ham were there at Pentecost (Acts 2) with the establishment of the Church.
Simeon, or Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene were leaders of the Church of Antioch (Acts 13:1). The people of these regions were black. These were the men who ordained and commissioned the great apostle Paul.
JESUS: Man of many colors
Jesus was of mixed ancestry. You heard right… Jesus was mixed up! Our Lord was a person of color! Although he was primarily a Semitic, of the five ladies mentioned in his genealogy—Tama, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary—the first four descended from Ham, Noah’s black son (Matthew 1:1-16).
Let’s face it friends, man looks outside, but God looks at the heart (1 Sam 16:7). It doesn’t matter if you’re green with orange spots! He is not looking for complexion or physical features. He is not impressed by how we look, how we talk, or where we live. He doesn’t care how religious we are or how beautiful our church is. He doesn’t care how we dress, how we drive, or what denomination we claim.
You see, there was no room at the Inn when our Savior was born and now He is looking into our hearts, regardless of our skin tone, to see if there is room there for Him to rule each individual’s life as Lord.
No matter what color our epidermis has, the question we must answer is: are we available?
Do you need pastoral counseling and prayer? Write or IM me at [email protected]
Every blessing!
