Ethnically a Jew, politically a
citizen of Rome, and religiously a Christian, the apostle Paul stood in Athens,
the birthplace of European philosophy and proclaimed the God we serve.
Paul said:
Acts 17: 26 And
He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the
earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their
dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope
that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one
of us;
28 for in Him we live and move and have our
being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His
offspring.’
In the first century, the
church was explaining to Europeans that no matter what our races,
nationalities, or geographies, we are all children of the same God and
descendants of the same bloodline. From the very beginning, this has been the
message of the church---- but somehow over the last 2,000 years, somebody got
confused.
Somebody got mixed up and
started talking about a White Jesus and calling the Bible a White man’s
book.
Somebody got confused and said
that there are no Black people in the Bible or if there are, they’re all slaves
and servants.
Somebody got off-track and said
that Africans didn’t know God until Europeans showed up to trade Christianity
for their freedom.
Somebody missed something
somewhere and began to think that the world is divided into Black and White and
that White folks have power and Black folks have problems, and that’s the way
God wants it to be.
Well, the Bible is God’s direct
Word about what He wants and thinks about humanity, and I happen to own a
Bible. And I’ve read it—the whole thing;
and the Lord told me to tell you that
“Somebody done told you wrong.”
Today we look Into the Bible
and Beyond Black & White.
We will survey, some (but by no
means all) of the key references to Black people in the Old Testament as we
work our way back to the book of Acts.
Our journey INTO THE BIBLE AND
BEYOND BLACK & WHITE has 3 overlapping stages:
1) Black presence
2)
Black Power
3)
Black Piety
First, to answer those who say
that there is no Black presence in the Bible or that it doesn’t
matter: Of course it matters.
It matters so much that slave
traders and colonialists went to extreme efforts to create the lie that the
Bible is only for White people. They
created illogical and self-contradictory stories about Black people being
descended from the murderer Cain. They
claimed that Noah had cursed his son Ham, the patriarch of African and Middle
Eastern nations, even though the Bible clearly states that Noah cursed CANAAN,
not Ham, which explains why the Jews conquered and displaced the people in the
land of Canaan.
The Black Presence in the Bible
is so important that slave states made it illegal for slaves to learn to read
or even possess a book, including the Bible.
They knew that if you knew that you are present, powerful, and important
to God’s plan--- then the enemy couldn’t destroy your self esteem or trick you
into believing that the Bible is only for White people.
But, if you get into the Bible,
you’ll know about :
•
Zerah
the Ethiopian, who led an army of a million men. (2 Chronicles 14:9-15)
•
The
ambassadors of Ethiopia, whom God calls a
people tall and of smooth skin from a powerful nation prophesied to bring gifts
to the Lord in Mt. Zion (Isaiah 18:1,-7)
•
Asenath,
the Egyptian wife of Joseph, and mother of the Israelite tribes Ephraim and
Manasseh (Genesis 41:45, 51, 52; 46:20)
•
Moses' (2nd)
wife who was Ethiopian, when Moses’ siblings objected to Moses marrying a Black
woman, God struck Moses’ sister with leprosy. (Numbers 12:1)
•
The
Queen of Sheba whose kingdom included parts of Africa and Arabia(1 Kings
10:1-13).
•
Tirhakah,
the Ethiopian, who brought an army to
support King Hezekiah of Judah against the Assyrian invasion (2 Kings 19:8,9;
Isaiah 37:8,9)
•
The
Prophet Zephaniah whose daddy was Cushi.
Cushi means Black. (Zephaniah 1:1).
•
Solomon’s
favorite wife the Shulamite whom the Bible describes as “Lovely and dark. (Song
of Solomon 1: 5,6)
•
And the
multi-national force of African warriors who served as the hand of God’s
judgment against the Jewish people in 2 Chronicles chapter 12.
Now turn to 2 Chronicles 12:
1. Let’s talk about Biblical Black
power.
2 Chronicles 12, takes place in
the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah, under the rule of King Rehoboam. Rehoboam was Solomon’s son and successor, but
verse 1 says that when Rehoboam had established the kingdom and had
strengthened himself, that he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel along
with him.
So, God punished Judah. Verse
2.
2 And it happened in the fifth year of King
Rehoboam that Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, because
they had transgressed against the Lord,
3 with twelve hundred chariots, sixty thousand
horsemen, and people without number who came with him out of Egypt—the Lubim
and the Sukkiim and the Ethiopians.
Egypt was the lead country in a
coalition of African nations.The Lubim were from modern day Libya in
north Africa. The Sukkiim were a group of desert tribes, also from North
Africa. Ethiopia was an empire of central and southern Africa.
Note that this pan-African
force came BECAUSE Judah had sinned against the Lord. The Africans were God’s instrument of
punishment against the Jews.
Africans were God’s instrument
of punishment against the Jews.
2 Chronicles 12: 5 Then Shemaiah the prophet came to Rehoboam and the leaders of
Judah, who were gathered together in Jerusalem because of Shishak, and said to them, “Thus says the
Lord: ‘You have forsaken Me, and therefore I also have left you in the hand of
Shishak.’ ”
This pan-African coalition was
militarily victorious and spiritually obedient.
God sent them to conquer, so they conquered.
2 Chronicles 12: 4 And they took the fortified cities of Judah and came to Jerusalem.
When God told them to show
mercy, they were merciful.
2 Chronicles 12: 6 So the
leaders of Israel and the king humbled themselves; and they said, “The Lord is righteous.”
7 Now when the Lord saw that they humbled themselves, the word
of the Lord came to Shemaiah, saying, “They have humbled themselves; therefore
I will not destroy them, but I will grant them some deliverance. My wrath shall not be poured out
on Jerusalem by the hand of Shishak. 8 Nevertheless they will
be his servants, that they may distinguish My service from the service of the
kingdoms of the nations.”
So, in verse 9, the African
armies carried away the treasures of Jerusalem, stripping Rehoboam of his
father’s riches, but they left the Tempe, the city, and the lives of the royal
family intact. BLACK POWER is a great
thing when BLACK POWER is obedient to
God’s will.
But, Black Power outside of
God’s will leads to trouble.
Jump over to 2 Chronicles
chapter 14.
2 Chronicles 14: 9 Then Zerah the Ethiopian
came out against them with an army of a million men and three hundred chariots, and he came to Mareshah. 10 So
Asa went out against him, and they set the troops in battle array in the Valley
of Zephathah at Mareshah.
When you compare verses 8 and 9
you see that Judah had 580,000 soldiers.
The Ethiopians had a million. The
Africans outnumbered the Jews by almost 2 to 1, plus the African had chariots,
which were the ancient equivalent of tanks.
-
2 Chronicles 14: 11 And
Asa cried out to the Lord his God,
Hmmm. I bet he did!
Asa said, “Lord, it is nothing for You to help, whether with many or with
those who have no power; help us, O Lord our God, for we rest on You, and in
Your name we go against this multitude. O Lord, You are our God; do not let man
prevail against You!”
2 Chronicles
14: 12 So the Lord struck the
Ethiopians before Asa and Judah, and the Ethiopians fled. 13 And Asa and the people
who were with him pursued them to Gerar. So the Ethiopians were overthrown, and they could not
recover, for they were broken before the Lord and His army. And they
carried away very much spoil.
Wait. The Africans lost? But in chapter 12, the African armies were
God’s powerful hand of judgment again st Judah.
How could they lose, especially with chariots and a 2 to 1 advantage? What happened to BLACK POWER?
In chapter 12, the people of
Judah had turned away from God, and the African army was obeying God. In chapter 14, it’s exactly the
opposite. Judah was doing right in God’s
sight, and Ethiopia invaded just because they felt like it.
Jews can be wrong. White folks can be wrong. And Black folks can be wrong, too. Our place in God’s favor is not determined by
our skin, our culture, or our ancestry.
Our place in God’s favor is determined by our OBEDIENCE to God.
When our culture lines up with
God’s will, we can change the course of a nation. That’s what happened in the civil rights
movement. It isn’t a coincidence that the leaders of the movement that ended
legal segregation had titles like reverend and minister. Without Christ, we can do nothing. But we can do all things through Christ who
strengthens us.
In the Old Testament, Black
Power empowered by God’s command changed the course of the nation of Judah. In
2 Chronicles chapter 13, Abijah, the next king, trusted God and the Lord gave
him victory over his enemies.
Ironically, in those days the greatest threat to the southern Jewish
kingdom of Judah was the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel.
Let me rephrase that. Nationally, the greatest threat of violence against
the Jewish people was Jew-on-Jew attacks.
Sometimes it’s people who look just like you who are your greatest
threat.
White people kill each other at
much higher rates than Black people kill White people. An Asian-America is more likely to be killed
by another Asian-American than by a member of another ethnic group.
Most of the time, any given culture
is its own worst enemy.
The problem of Black people killing and sabotaging
one another is NOT as we have been programmed to believe, something unique to
people whose ancestors came out of Africa in the last 400 years. Our problem is an age-old human problem.
The leaders of
the nations kept the Jewish people divided so they couldn’t retake their
power. National leaders promoted
internal division and self-hatred so successfully that by the time we move from
Chronicles to the gospels, the Jews in Judaea can’t stand the Jews in Galilee,
and the Jews in Galilee and Judaea won’t even talk to the Samaritans who are
descended from Jews, but the other Jews don’t think they’re “real Jews,”
and the upperclass Pharisees call the lower class multitudes ignorant
and accursed, and traditionalist Jewish men don’t respect Jewish women enough
to speak to them in public, and the upperclass Jews are kissing up to the
Romans while telling the lower classes that they hate the Romans, which is fine
with the Romans because they run the whole country and they can kill a bunch of
Jews anytime they feel like it.
Does any of
this sound familiar? Go back through the previous paragraph and replace “Jew”
with “African and Black.” No,
seriously. Go back through the
paragraph.
The Word of
God explains our problems and offers solutions.
Scripture is a mirror that shows us ourselves, and when we look into that
mirror it show us that we are more than Black and White. We are made from one blood; and every nation, every culture experiences the same
cycles of problems and prosperity as they seek the Lord, in the hope that they
might grope for Him and find Him, though we keep forgetting that He is not far
from each one of us.
In 2
Chronicles, the intervention of Black Power set God’s people back on the right
course with God, but they were still fighting each other, and that weakened
them and set them up for trouble.
2 Chronicles
chapter 14.
Asa, son of Abijah,
great-granson of Solomon becomes king of Judah.
For years, Asa was a godly man, like his father.
2 Chronicles 14: 2 Asa did
what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God,
Asa was a good spiritual leader
3 for he removed the altars of the foreign gods and the high
places, and broke down the sacred pillars and cut down the wooden images. 4 He
commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers, and to observe the law
and the commandment.
Asa was also a good military
and economic leader.
6 And he built fortified cities in Judah, for the land had
rest; he had no war in those years, because the Lord had given him rest.
7 Therefore he said to Judah, “Let us build these cities and
make walls around them, and towers, gates, and bars, while the land is yet
before us, because we have sought the Lord our God; we have sought Him, and He
has given us rest on every side.” So they built and prospered.
But Asa didn’t prosper just
because he was from a certain place or because he looked a certain way. In fact, God made a point of warning Asa
against becoming arrogant about his culture.
2 Chronicles 15: 1 the Spirit of God came upon
Azariah the son of Oded. 2 And he went out to meet Asa, and
said to him: “Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin.
2 Chronicles 15: 2 The
Lord is with you while you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be
found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.
In conservative Christian
media, I hear a lot of people talk about how God’s going to judge America for
its sins. When New Orleans flooded they said it was God’s judgment on all those
sinful Black folks. I didn’t hear an
explanation for flooding in Texas, South Carolina, or New Jersey.
The South, in particular
Alabama, has the highest and fast growing rates of HIV/ AIDS, drug addiction,
poverty, unemployment, unwed pregnancy, violence, incarceration, infant
mortality, and death from preventable illnesses.
In Scripture, those are called
“plagues.” God sent plagues as judgment.
If you look into the statistics
and then you look into the Bible, you realize that God is already judging the
people of this nation who have most terribly departed from His will. And apparently that’s not the liberals up
there in the North.
We, the people of the Bible
Belt, the people with the most churches and the most self-identified Christians
in the country are living in complete contradiction to the Word of God. Our leaders talk about Jesus.
Wait. No they don’t.
Listen to them carefully. They talk about “God” and they talk about
“Christianity” and they talk about “Values” and “tradition,” but they very,
very seldom say the name JESUS.
Our leaders talk about
Christianity, but their actions, their policies, and their personal lives are
exactly the opposite of what the Bible says.
The political and cultural leaders in the South, Black and White, are
like like King Asa in 2 Chronicles. They
start off good and godly, but then they start cutting deals and forgetting
about God.
2 Chronicles 15: 12 Then they entered into a covenant to seek the
Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul;
In other words, they signed a
pledge to honor God.
But in the next chapter, 2
Chronicles 16: 2 Then Asa brought silver and gold from the
treasuries of the house of the Lord and of the king’s house, and sent to
Ben-Hadad king of Syria, …saying, 3 “Let there be a treaty
between you and me, as there was between my father and your father. See, I have
sent you silver and gold; come, break your treaty with Baasha king of Israel,
so that he will withdraw from me.”
4 So Ben-Hadad heeded King Asa, and sent the
captains of his armies against the cities of Israel.
See what happened? King Asa cut a deal with the heathens so the
heathens would help him conquer the other Jewish nation. He cut a deal with then enemies of his people
and his faith so he could dominate people who were his political rivals, but
his cultural, ethnic, and religious brothers.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Black Power had put the nation
back on track with God, but then leaders adopted the convenient politics of division and back room
deals in violation of God’s will.
Maybe Asa thought that because his skin was a little lighter than the
Ethiopians that God would let him get away with it. Maybe he thought that all he had to do was
stand in front of the flag and talk about making Judah great again, and God
wouldn’t notice.
Well God made Ethiopia and God
made Israel, and God sent another prophet to remind Judah that God holds all of
his children to the same standard.
2 Chronicles 16: 7 …Hanani the
seer came to Asa king of Judah, and said to him: “Because you have relied on
the king of Syria, and have not relied on the Lord your God, therefore the army
of the king of Syria has escaped from your hand.
Asa wasn’t supposed to cut a
deal. He was supposed to oppose the
enemies of his people and of their faith. By cutting a deal with God’s enemies,
he had taken his nation outside of God’s favor.
We don’t have to accept every
crappy candidate they send us--- whomever THEY are. We don’t have to enable the oppression of our
brothers over there so we can cut a deal with their oppressors over here. That’s the game that the enemy runs because
they get INTO THE BIBLE, and they know that if we cut a deal with them we will
not overcome. And that’s true whether
you’re Black, White, Yellow, or Red.
The prophet reminded the king 8 Were
the Ethiopians and the Lubim not a huge army with very many chariots and
horsemen? Yet, because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your
hand.
When we’re right with God, we
win. When we’re lined up outside God’s
will we lose. Why, because God doesn’t
bless in Black and White.
9 For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro
throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose
heart is loyal to Him.
The prophet rebuked Asa. He told him that cutting a deal with the
Syrians was foolish and therefore from now on you shall have wars.”
The leaders had not given
justice, so God would not give them peace.
James 4: 1 Where do wars
and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure
that war in your members? 2a You lust and do not have. You
murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. . .
James 4: 2b . . .Yet you
do not have because you do not ask.
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask
amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Race doesn’t determine your
favor with God, obedience determines your favor with God.
But some folks can’t accept
that.
In 2 Chronicles 16, when
Hananai the prophet told Asa that God was going to treat him just like God
treated the other kings of the ancient world, Asa went OFF! King Asa did what angry, arrogant leaders
continue to do when God won’t conform to their personal will.
First, they try to silence the voices of protest and
truth.
2 Chronicles 16: 10 Then Asa was angry with the seer, and put him
in prison, for he was enraged at him because of this.
Then, they attack anyone who
might possible complain.
2 Chronicles 16: 10b . .
. And Asa oppressed some of the people the same time.
Let me put that in contemporary
language for you: When the nation
sinned, and God sent Word that the nation would have to deal with terrorism
just like the “other” nations, and the nation would have to deal with attacks
in their streets and marketplaces, just like the other nations, and when they
thought they were done with fighting an enemy, another enemy would come out of
nowhere for them to have to fight--- just like in them “other” countries; then
King Asa got mad and turned against the prophetic voice of condemnation and
declared, “I don’t care what God says, ‘We’re gonna make America great again!’
“
Asa was buried in extravagant
honor, but he died in excruciating pain without ever repenting of his sin.
The leader suffered, died, and
went to Hell. But he had a very nice
funeral.
Why?
Because he would not accept
that God would judge his nation just like God would judge any other nation. Asa couldn’t see beyond Black and White.
Our community, our state, our
region, and eventually our nation are on the way to Hell in a golden casket
because we think that Black Power, White Power, or whatever culture’s power
determines God’s favor.
We can save our community, our
state, our region, and our nation when we realize that God’s will is the only
thing that gives our culture power.
God is not color-blind. He sees our racial and cultural differences.
He didn’t make us the same, but He loves us the same; and He will judge us the
same. But if we confess our sins and
turn back to Him, He will also forgive us the same and restore to us the Black
Power that has redeemed this nation before.
He is not far from each one of
us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own
poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.
The Bible demonstrate the Black
presence in God’s plan, reassures us that God gave us our Black Power,
and reminds us that long before the trans-atlantic slave trade, our ancestors knew the Lord and maintained a
tradition of Black piety.
Acts 8: 26 Now an angel of the Lord spoke to
Philip, saying, “Arise
and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”
This is desert. 27 So he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a
eunuch of great authority under Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, who had
charge of all her treasury, and had come to Jerusalem to worship,
This African leader in the 1st
century was a believer and a student of the Scriptures. The Ethiopian people practiced a form of
Judaism they trace back to Solomon’s
meeting with the Queen of Sheba.
28 was returning. And sitting in his chariot, he was
reading Isaiah the prophet.
This was centuries before the printing
press, when books of the Bible were hand copied at great expense and under
exacting conditions. Even in Israel,
most cities may had only one copy of the first 5 books of the Bible housed in
the synagogue. This means that southern
and central Africa had copies of the OT in such abundance that this guy could
drive around with a personal copy of the scrolls of Isaiah. Meanwhile, Rome was
planning how to invade northern and western Europe to bring civilization to the
barbarians who were still worshipping trees and guys with hammers.
Africa had the Bible long
before Europeans “discovered” Africa.
29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and overtake this
chariot.”
30 So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, “Do you understand
what you are reading?”
31 And he said, “How can I, unless someone
guides me?” And he asked
Philip to come up and sit with him. 32 The place in the
Scripture which he read was this:
“He was led as a sheep to the slaughter;
And as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
33 In His
humiliation His justice was taken away,
And who will declare His generation?
For His life is taken from the earth.”
34 So the eunuch answered Philip and said, “I ask you, of whom does the prophet say this, of
himself or of some other man?” 35 Then Philip opened his mouth,
and beginning at this Scripture, preached Jesus to him.
36 Now as they went down the
road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, “See, here is water. What hinders me from being
baptized?”
37 Then
Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.”
And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
38 So he commanded the chariot to stand still.
And both Philip and the
eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him.
39 Now when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of
the Lord caught Philip away, so that the eunuch saw him no more; and he
went on his way rejoicing.
White people didn’t take the
gospel to Africa on slave ships. An
Messianic Jewish African took the gospel into Africa in a chariot.
God cared so much for the
future of the faith in Africa that he sent Philip into the desert to chase down
the one Ethiopian in the country who was in the best position to receive and
spread the message of Jesus the Messiah crucified and raised from the dead.
The Bible confirms the original
reality of Black piety, the Holy Spirit empowerment of Black Power, and the
constancy of the Black Presence in Biblical history and the Divine Plan.
To my Black brothers and
sisters:
Own the faith that your
forefathers received directly from the prophets and the apostles . Own the
faith that God Himself delivered to the descendants of Cush in and well beyond
the boundaries of ancient Egypt. Look to
the Scriptures. Reject the lies.
To my other brothers and sisters:
Reject the same lies. Receive
the same faith. We are “made from one blood.” Don’t just “see no color.” See all colors and rejoice.
God does.
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO); and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
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