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.