Teachings
THERE’S NOTHING EUROPEAN ABOUT CHRISTIANITY
To reduce Christianity to a political act is to misunderstand it, grossly. To reduce the Lord Jesus Christ to a political figure is unmitigated ignorance.
Last week I posted an article titled EUROPE DIDN’T INTRODUCE AFRICA TO THE GOSPEL, JERUSALEM DID.
Please look it up on this page, it’ll bless you greatly. The article dispels the notion that before Europeans came to Africa, no one on the continent knew anything about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today I want to take the next step and dispel another myth, which in itself is related to the one already dealt with.
Often when we engage with our African nationalist countrymen and women, they accuse us, Christians, of following the white man’s religion. But is Christianity really European?
Firstly, when you say you’re a Christian, you mean you’re a Disciple or Follower of the Christ. It means you follow the Doctrine or Teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Just as a Buddhist follows the Doctrine of Buddha or a Mohammedan follows the Doctrine of Mohammed, a Christian follows the Doctrine of Christ.
This Christ is not European. And by that I don’t mean He’s an African. The Lord Jesus Christ is a Jew, according to His Ancestry in the flesh. He’s the greatest Descendant of Judah, the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob, who was the grandson of Abraham.
The name ‘Jew’ is from the name ‘Judah’. That’s why the Lord Jesus Christ is called the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. The Lord Jesus Christ is therefore a Semite. Let me explain.
Noah had 3 sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. Shem is the ancestor from which the Hebrew people are descended. Genesis 11:10,14,26 says, ‘These are the generations of Shem…And Salah lived thirty years, and begat EBER…and Terah lived seventy years, and begat ABRAM, Nahor, and Haran.’
Shem is the great ancestor of the patriarch Abraham. In fact in Luke 4:36, Shem is translated Sem. This is why we say that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Semite. He’s a Semite because of Abraham and of course Shem or Sem.
That’s why when one discriminates against the Jewish people one is called an anti-semite or their actions are anti-semitic. All Jews are Semites because of Judah who was descended from Abraham and Shem or Sem.
You’ll see that I’ve also referenced Eber in Genesis 11:14. In Luke 3:35, Eber is translated ‘Heber’ and this where we get the word ‘Hebrew from. Genesis 14:13a says, ‘A man who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew.’ Abraham was called a Hebrew because of his ancestor Heber, who himself was a descendant of Shem or Sem. Abraham was therefore a Semite.
Ishmael, the son Abraham had with Hagar, was also a descendant of Sem because of his father. The present day Arab nations are all mainly descended from Abraham through Isaac and the other sons Abraham had with his concubines.
Arabs are therefore Semites as well because of Abraham and Sem. Their language, Arabic, is a semitic language. Just as Arabs are not European because they’re Semites, the Lord Jesus Christ is also not European.
The Lord Jesus Christ, for all intents and purposes, looks Arabic. He doesn’t look like the present day Jews because they are mixed due to their dispersals.
The Lord Jesus Christ and His Disciples therefore looked like today’s Iranians, Iraqis, Saudis or Arabs from one of the Emirates. They were simply not white people.
They looked like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden or Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai; but not like Benjamin Netanyahu or even Bennie Ganz who are Jews, however, they’re mixed because of the Jewish dispersals. That’s why the look white and not Middle Eastern.
Acts 1:8b says, ‘…and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.’ The Gospel, which is about a Jewish man, was preached by Jews, amongst Jews first, and only then was it preached to other nations.
When the Gospel reached Europe, it was transmitted by a Jewish man, the Apostle Paul. This Paul was of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. He was therefore also a Semite because Benjamin was Jacob’s last born son.
When Paul arrived in Europe, he didn’t find Europeans in cathedrals singing hymns led by an organ player. No! Paul found pagans, idolators and heathens. Acts 17:16 says, ‘Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.’
Paul then preached the Gospel in Europe for them to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, the so-called ‘white man’ that everyone is so obsessed with is essentially British.
The Britons of today are not the Britons of the first century. They received the Gospel from the Romans after Christianity became a state religion of the Roman empire because of Constantine.
When the Romans arrived in the British Isles, they found pagans who wore face paint, worshipped in forests and had a priesthood called the druids. The British tribes were then conquered by the Romans, who then gave them their culture of invention, science, engineering and law and of course their religion, Roman Catholicism.
(Not only were the British colonised by the Romans, they were also colonised by Germanic tribes and thereafter the French. That’s why there’s so much Latin, German and French in the English language. They are a conquered and colonised people. Their language, culture and religion are all from their colonisers.
The religion, culture and language they spread through colonisation were not their own but their colonisers’) It’s only after the Reformation that the Church of England emerged and became independent from the Roman Catholic Church as a Protestant Church.
There’s therefore nothing European about Christianity. The British only became Christians because they were colonised by the Romans, who themselves were Christianised because of what was started in Jerusalem by a handful of Jews.
There’s nothing British about Christianity. If the British had brought their religion to Africa we’d then be worshiping in forests led by a pagan druid priesthood.
Christianity is the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ, who in the flesh, is descended from Sem, Heber, Abraham, and Judah. Christianity is therefore a Middle Eastern religion whose central figure is Middle Eastern and was preached and spread originally by Middle Eastern men and women.
By the time Europeans evangelised Africa, Africans in the north had already heard the Gospel from Jerusalem through the lips of a Jew. Ethiopia, which is the only African country never to be colonised, received the Gospel directly from Jerusalem when Philip preached to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8.
To them, as it is for many Africans today, Christianity is not of the white man but of God. Like them, we have believed not because we were forced to but because of God’s Love for us. Like Africans who don’t believe, we’re free to reject the Lord Jesus Christ but choose not to.
The pale blue-eyed Jesus that many reference is irrelevant to what we believe. It’s not His ‘white skin’ that saves us but His Red Blood that washes everyone’s sins as white as snow. The acts of colonisers and slave traders are regrettable but we don’t see them as the Acts of the Christ but as those of demonised opportunists. What they meant for evil God has turned around for our good.
Christianity is for all peoples, including Europeans and Africans. Some people might have been forced to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ by force, but our generation is different. We believe in Him because of His Mercy, Grace and Love. We don’t believe in Him because we’re brainwashed but because only His Blood can wash away the sins of man, black or white.
To reduce Christianity to a political act is to misunderstand it, grossly. To reduce the Lord Jesus Christ to a political figure is unmitigated ignorance.
Teachings
GOD IS FAITHFUL TO HIS WORD
What God has promised you in His Word He is able to perform. His Word is His covenant. When God speaks, He covenants.
God will never break His covenant or change what He has already declared concerning you.
God is not a man. He’s not fickle and unpredictable. Through His Word you can know exactly what He’ll do.
However, you have a role to play. You must exercise faith in His Word.
There are times when God requires that you obey a commandment for your faith to work.
Hebrews 11:8 says, ‘By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.’
Abraham would not have received what God promised him if he didn’t act on God’s Word. Faith without works is dead.
At other times, God wants you to say something.
2 Corinthians 4:13 says, ‘We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak.’
God gave us His Word for us to say it. God says something to us so that we may say the same thing as Him. When we say what God says, we get whatsoever we say.
So step out in faith today, and believe God’s Word. He has not changed. Whatever He said about you before, He’s still saying today.
He will never break His covenant nor alter the words of His lips.
Glory to God!
Teachings
THE LORD IS NEAR. TIME TO REJOICE.
For the people of the world, the return of the Lord Jesus Christ will be a dreadful day of the Lord. But for us, it will a glorious day of the Lord.
Luke 21:28 says, ‘And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.’ When we see all the signs around us, we’re not distressed. We rejoice because we know it’s time to look up for our redemption is near. The Lord Jesus Christ is coming back very soon. And when He arrives, He’ll set up His kingdom on the earth and we’ll rule and reign with Him forever.
Therefore, continue to live for Him, because behold He comes quickly and His reward is with Him. And He will reward us according to what our works deserve.
What you’re doing for the Lord is not in vain. No matter what you do, don’t be faint in well-doing because in due time you will reap eternal life.
Glory to God!
Teachings
GREATER.
Ye are of God. He’s talking about your identity. You are not of man, you are not of the devil, you are of God.
You’re born of God. And anyone born of God overcomes the world.
Ye are of God and have overcome them because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.
Who is in you? The Lord Jesus Christ is in you.
In the Lord Jesus Christ resides the fulness of the Godhead in bodily form.
The Godhead is the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit. That’s the totality of God.
The Lord Jesus Christ is greater than Satan and He lives in you.
Christ is your life. He has brought eternal life to you. He has brought His life to you.
That’s why you’re of God. You’re no longer born of blood, human effort or a husband’s will. You’re born again, but this time, you’re born of God with the very life of God in you.
Through the life of Christ, you’re born again. You’re a child of God. You’re a son of God.
By virtue of your heritage, your origin, and your identity, the devil can’t overcome you. He’s inferior to you.
The life inside you is superior to the life in him. That’s why he can’t defeat you.
Because the One who dwells in you is greater than the one in the world, the one in the world cannot overcome you.
By virtue of the Lord Jesus Christ having overcome and destroyed Satan on the cross, you have also overcome him.
The victory of the Lord Jesus Christ has been given to you.
Thanks be unto God who always leads us in triumph in Christ. Glory to God!
That’s why what’s coming will not destroy you.
No matter what the kingdom of darkness coughs up, you have already overcome them.
No matter the amount of evil they dish out, you have already overcome them.
No matter how extreme their schemes, you have already overcome them.
Why? Because you are of God, therefore, greater is He that is in your than he that is in the world.
Glory to God!
