So, You're Glad You're White?

"I teach a class called Blacks in the Bible. I open up all these passages people have never thought about."

"What passages do you mean?"

"Well, for starters, Ephraim and Manasseh are two of the twelve tribes of Israel, right? According to Genesis 41, they were the sons of Joseph and an Ethiopian woman. They were 50 percent black. The fathers of two tribes of Israel were black. Ever seen that in the Bible story pictures?

"Jethro was a Midianite from Southern Arabia, which was occupied by Ethiopians. He was the father of Zipporah, wife of Moses, who was a Cushite, an Ethiopian--says so in Numbers 12. Jethro's family were believers, proselytes to the Jewish faith. Moses married this black woman, and when Miriam grumbled about this interracial marriage, God gave her leprosy to teach her a lesson.

"Or how about David...[who] easily had enough black blood that if he lived in America today he'd be called black.

"Solomon was David's son by a Hamitic woman Bathsheba, whose name means 'daughter of Sheba', an African. Zephaniah the prophet was a descendant of 'Cush', a black man.

"And look at the messianic line of Jesus. In his legal genealogy, through Joseph, four women are mentioned--Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. ... All of them were black! Jesus' mother Mary was also a descendant of Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth. There may have been other Hamitic blood in Jesus too, but as far as we know, there was no Japhetic blood, no white blood. Those who teach that having black African blood in you puts you under a curse must believe Jesus was under a curse--that the whole messianic line was cursed! By American standards, Jesus had enough African blood to be called black."

Dominion, by Randy Alcorn, p388

And that doesn't include the black governmental official who is a prime example of conversion in Acts 8:26ff, or the black church prophet/leader/teacher, Simon the Black (Niger), or his co-worker Lucius, also from a black part of the world, in Acts 13:1, or the black Libyan, Simon the Cyrenian, who was forced to carry Jesus' cross, in Luke 23:26, or the black woman who is celebrated as loved in the Song of Solomon.

It wasn't long ago that white America scorned blacks as being sub-human and otherwise not of true human value, cursed by God. We've thought that being white made us better, and we would never approve of a "mixed marriage". I bet Miriam had a change of mind when she was turned "white as snow" with leprosy.

How blind we humans can be.