Review: Do All Races Share in Salvation?  For Whom Did Jesus Die? by Dan Gayman, 1995: Church of Israel, Schell City, MO, 216 pages.

 

W

hat is the origin of the races?  The Bible gives few clues.  Was Adam the first human being?  Most professing Christians believe that Adam was the first man, created by God in the Garden of Eden.  However, there is a variant view, with substantial theological implications.

 


Dan Gayman and his group in Missouri came into the Sabbath in 1987.  A dynamic speaker, Gayman received glowing reviews for his presentation at the Friends of the Sabbath seminar in Sydney, Australia, in July, 1996.  In his book, Sabbath Under Crossfire, pages 276-277, Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi uses Gayman’s record of his church’s conversion to the Sabbath as a sterling example.  There are indeed positive aspects of Gayman’s ministry.  But, on the subject of race, Gayman’s views are diametrically oppos­ed to our understanding of the Bible.

 

Gayman’s Wrong Ideas on Race

 

In summary, Gayman believes that non-white races originated before Adam.  God created them along with other living creatures.  They can know God, worship God, but can never compre­hend deep spiritual truths.  Gayman be­lieves that Adam was white and ALL his descendents are Caucasians.  Only Adamites, Gayman holds, can have a covenant relationship with God, and can receive eternal life in His Kingdom.  Nonwhite races do not sin, and are not under the penalty of breaking God’s Law, and hence, do not need salvation.  According to Gayman, Jesus Christ died only for white Caucasians, and there is no Bible support for foreign missions to the third world.  The Christianity of Gayman’s Church of Israel is only for white people.

Because these racial views are so twisted and pernicious, I will take the time to answer Dan Gayman’s false teachings on race.

 

Origin of Races: After His Kind

 

The core of Gayman’s theo­logy of race centers on the issue of the origin of the races.  He says, “The belief that all races descended from Adam is rank evolu­tion  .  .  . No Christ­ian can buy this outrage­ous and unscriptural teaching,” p. 145 of Do All Races Share in Salvation?  He points out what to him, are vast differences between the races.  “To believe that all of these evolved from one common beginning is ludicrous, alien to all common sense,” ibid.

In studying the Biblical account of Creation, one is struck with the frequent use of the phrase, “after his [or their] kind,” Genesis 1:21, 24-25.  And then, in verse 26, mankind was created in the image of God, after the God kind.  In Genesis 6:19, 20-22, Noah was instructed to bring into the ark birds and animals “after their kind.”  The Hebrew word for “kind” is Strong’s #4327, meen, meaning “to sort, or portion out, or divide.”  The animal “kinds” cannot mix, there is a genetic divide created by God.  Even if different kinds are forced to mate (e.g., donkey and horse), the result is usually sterile (e.g., a mule).

Dogs come in many shapes, sizes, and colors (black, white, brown, yellow).  Noah did not have to take the many distinct varieties of dogs onto the ark.  They are all the dog kind.  Human beings are of the same kind.  In fact, there appear to be more differ­ences between dog varieties than human varieties.  Do kinds produce a great multitude of varieties?  Certainly, they do!  This kind of “evolution” does occur.  But a dog never becomes an ape, and a monkey never becomes a human.

So, how did God create the different races?  Gayman does not know, and admits that “the Bible is silent on the development [and origin] of the other [nonwhite] races,” p. 152.  “If the Bible includes the record of how the non-Adamic races were created, it is found in Genesis 1:25, where the chay neffesh creation, or living creatures, are named.  The living creatures here could have been biped as well as quadruped,” p. 150.  Since the Bible is silent with regard to the origin of races, why should we join Gayman in supposing (without proof) that every race was created separately and distinctly?  There is no proof races were created at all.  With no proof, Gayman holds as a postulate and presupposition (his own admission), that “The Bible was not written for all the races of the earth,” p. 147.

The word man (Strong’s #120, adam) in Genesis 1:26 and 2:7 comes from the same Hebrew root word, Strong’s #119, adam, meaning, “to show blood in the face, flush or turn rosy, be dyed red, red (ruddy).”  Since many nonwhites do not blush to the extreme that whites do, therefore, according to Gayman, they are not descended from Adam because Adam was Caucasian, white-skinned and able to turn rosy and ruddy.

 

Dangerous Lack of Historical Knowledge

 

With no proof whatsoever, Gayman believes only Caucasians are descended from Adam, and the Bible is a book only of the generations of Adam (which he believes is the white race), Genesis 5:1-3.  Gayman says, “There are no genealogical tables giving the history of the Egyptians, Chinese, Hindus, Japanese, Negroid, and others because the Bible is the history of the Adamic race in general, and Israel in particular,” p. 149.  Is Gayman’s Bible lacking Genesis 10, which gives the Table of Nations descended from Noah’s sons, Japheth, Ham, and Shem?  Three times the Bible refers to Egypt as the “land of Ham,” Psalm 105:23, 27, 106:22.  The word, “Ham” in the Hebrew is cham, Strong’s #2526, meaning “hot” (from their tropical habitat).

If Gayman is correct that white people alone are Adamites, and nonwhites are not descended from Adam, then he must prove where the non-Adamites are living today.  The Genesis 10 nations are all descended from Noah, who was descended from Adam, and repopulated the whole earth after the flood.  “These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood,” Genesis 10:32.  If the whole earth was filled with Adamites after the Flood, where did the non-Adamites go?  Like others of his ilk, Gayman probably believes non-Adamites were on the Ark of Noah as servants (beasts). Of course, there is not a hint of such a fantasy in the entire Bible.  We must not base our whole theology on unproven presuppositions as Gayman does.

Like a house of cards, Gayman’s whole theory of race and the Bible is built on the theory, unproven and presupposed, that God created the races each for a different purpose, whites to salvation, and nonwhites to secondary status and physical life only.  Since the Bible is silent on the origin of the races, the question is one of interpreting history.

History is not Dan Gayman’s strong suit.  Here are some of the pathetically erroneous historical “proofs” he gives:  “The question of a multi-racial Church never entered the minds of the Churchmen who occupied the pulpits and altars of the Living Church from the days of the Apostles to the time of the Protestant Reformation.”  What does Gayman do with Acts 8 where the Ethiopian eunuch was converted, and Acts 13:1, where Simeon called Niger (black) was a prophet and teacher?  Gayman: “A quick survey of Church history confirms the fact [sic] that until the dawning of the 17th century, Christianity was confined to the Caucasian population of Western Asia, Europe, Scandin­avia and the British Isles.”  Perhaps Gayman has not read about the black Ethiopian Sabbath-keepers, the St. Thomas Sabbath-keeping Christians of western India, Chinese and Japanese and Filipino Sabba­tarians, all of whom existed 900 to 1000 years before the 17th Century.  See the book, Truth Triumph­ant, by Benjamin Wilkinson, $12.95 from Giving & Sharing.  A poor understand­ing of the history of true Christianity has damaging effects!  Gayman is ignorant of critical historical facts, which destroy his unfounded racial theories.

Gayman: “Every race was created to know their Creator in a different way and by a different means,” p. 28.  In other words, he believes religion is genetic.  Negroes, Gayman believes, have always worshipped the Creator in various forms of voodooism, ancestral spirits, and physical objects.  Any attempt to alter and change their method of knowing and worshipping God has not remained permanent.  Left alone, “they always revert to the gods of their ancestors.”  He says whites fight God when they try to convert nonwhites.  Gayman has the audacity to believe that God created Arabs to believe in the Moslem faith, Orientals to believe in Buddha, and black Zulus to worship the gods of Voodoo.  “Christianity is the religion of the Caucasian race,” p. 29.  Nonwhite temporary Christian “converts,” he says, quickly mold their newfound Christianity into the image of their cultural gods.

The “god” of Pastor Gayman has pro­gram­med nonwhites to naturally follow false religions, yet these false religions are deemed acceptable to the Creator and the God-ordained means for nonwhites to know the true God as Creator and worship Him.  This is a purely Satanic belief!  See II Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2.

Have not white Caucasians butchered the faith of Jesus Christ in more ways than non-whites ever thought of doing?  Certainly they have!  The blasphemy of Roman Catholicism stands as a stark testimony refuting Gayman’s utter lack of historical knowledge.  Today, whites in the Western world are turning from Christian principles to rank occultism and paganism, while many nonwhites are flocking to Christ and the Bible.  Gayman is woefully ignorant of the worldwide explosion of interest in God and the Bible by non-whites, a movement which began in spite of, not because of, white missionaries.

Gayman falsely says that after 200 years of white missionary activity, Africa is stuck in its variant forms of Voodooism.  However, the book, Sabbath Roots: The African Connection, by Charles E. Bradford (avail­able from Giving & Sharing for $15), shows that multitudes of black Sabbath-keeping Christians existed for many hundreds of years before white missionaries ever set foot on the sub-Saharan continent.  Today, about 340 million Africans profess Christianity. Accord­ing to reliable estimates, Africa has the world’s largest concentration of Sabbath-keepers, some twenty million people, of which only about three million are Seventh Day Adventists. The Sabbath is natural to black Africans; they have a natural proclivity to accepting God’s Holy Sabbath. God is doing a work in Africa!  Gayman says black Africans cannot maintain their Christian religion.  But, the Ashantis of Ghana, for example, have maintained Sabbath-keeping for many hundreds, probably thousands, of years.  Truly converted nonwhites today are the strongest proof that Gayman’s racial theories are dead wrong.

Once again, it is dangerous to be so ignorant of historical facts!

 

Yahweh Will Have All Men Saved

 

Gayman’s circular reasonings and glaring contradictions have deceived him into think­ing he has an answer to most of the Scriptural objections one can raise against his false theory, that salvation is limited to white people.

Galatians 3:29 says, “And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”  Gayman would translate this verse to mean, “Only if you are Abraham’s seed can ye be Christ’s,” but that is NOT what it says, or means.  This verse proves that salvation is not limited to the physical seed of Abraham.  Those who are called of God must give up their pagan, heathen ways, and become spiritually the seed of Abraham.  God, the Holy One of Israel, is “The God of the whole earth . . .” Isaiah 54:5, not only white Caucasians.  In the World Tomorrow, the whole earth will keep the Feast of Tabernacles, including Egypt, the land of Ham, Zechariah 14.  Blacks from Egypt will still be black, and worship along with Israel and Assyria, Isaiah 19:23-25.

Acts 17:26 says that God “hath made of one blood [one creation of mankind] all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.”  We all go back to Adam, not Adam and other biped living creatures.

Romans 11:17 speaks of Israel, the “natural olive tree,” and the Gentiles, “a wild olive tree,” who, contrary to their nature, became grafted into the natural olive tree (Israel), verse 24.  Gayman says the Bible uses the word, “Gentiles” to refer to Israel in dispersion, the Lost 10 Tribes of Israel.  But, this is a contradiction.  He told us that Israel has a natural inclination toward God, that Christianity is the religion of the Caucasian race.  If so, how could the Gentiles be the lost tribes of Israel who need to be grafted into the natural olive tree?  The Gentile Ephesian converts to Christianity were formerly “strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world,” Ephesians 2:12. With no proof, Gayman claims the Gentile Cornelius who was converted in Acts 10, was a genetic Israelite.

The first Bible use of the word, “Gentile” is in Genesis 10:5, referring to Japheth’s sons.  Japheth was not an Israelite.  Micah 5:8 says “the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people . . . .”  Matthew 10:5-6 gives Christ’s instructions to the Apostles, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles. . . . But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel [Israel in dispersion].”  Luke 21:24 says, “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”  When has this happened?  Jerusalem is not run by Israel in dispersion.  The Lost 10 Tribes are not Gentiles, as Gayman claims.

When you have a wrong Bible teaching, there is a temptation to attempt to force all Scripture to conform to your theory.  Exodus 12:48 shows that a stranger [Strong’s #1616, ger, “alien, foreigner”] that sojourns with Israel, and wants to keep the Passover, may do so if he and all his males are circumcised.  Gayman says the “stranger” is an Israelite born outside the Promised Land.  However, Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the Temple asks God to answer the prayers of “a stranger, that is not of Thy people Israel,” I Kings 8:41-43.  One of the cursings that will fall upon Israel for disobedience to the Eternal’s laws is that “The stranger [ger] that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low,” Deuteronomy 28:43.

I Timothy 2:4 says the God of Scripture “Who will have all men [not only white people] to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”  The “Great Commission” to the Church is, “Go ye therefore, and teach ALL nations [ethnos, Strong’s #1484, “foreign, non-Jewish, pagan, Gentile, heathen, nation], baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy [Spirit],” Matthew 28:19.  Again, Mark 16:15 reads, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” (See also Colossians 1:23).  Gayman says the “nations” to whom we are to preach the Gospel, are limited to the two houses of Israel.  Revelation 2:26, 5:9, 7:9, and many, many other Scriptures say just the opposite.

In Revelation 14:6-7, we see that the first angel has “the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”  In Gayman’s view, this angel is wasting his time because nonwhites cannot comprehend the Gospel.  The Third Angel’s message of verses 9-12 indicates, “If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark . . . The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God.”  Nonwhites can worship the beast.  Their punishment will be the same as whites who receive the mark of the beast.  Same punishment, same reward.

The 144,000 special converts of Revela­tion 7:1-8 are followed by “a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, [which] stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands. . . . These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” verses 9-17.  Out of all nations, kindreds, and tongues, converts will turn to the Almighty, not to their native voodoo religion with which Gayman says they are stuck.

 

Racial Boundaries

 

According to Gayman, nonwhites should not be ruling any nation on earth.  In the beautiful “Song of Moses” of Deuteronomy 32, the old patriarch says, “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.  For the Lord’s portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance,” verses 8-9.  The earth is divided into lands for Israel, and lands for non-Israelite nations, and all are sons of Adam.  However, blacks rule mid and southern Africa.  If they are non-Adamites as Gayman says, then something is wrong with these verses.  There should be Caucasians ruling all Africa. And the Chinese have been squatting on the land of China for thousands of years, since the land should belong to one or more of the so-called Caucasian sons of Adam.  What a tragic perversion of Scripture!    Dan Gayman’s interpretation of Deuteron­omy 32:8-9 produces a powerless God who has not set the bounds of peoples and nations.

On page 171, Gayman says that the Moabites during the time of Balaam “had mongrelized themselves with a variety of heathen peoples.”  On page 179, he says, “Blood pollution is forever; it’s irreversible!”  Yet, on page 189, he says hundreds of years later, Ruth the Moabitess, wife of Boaz, in the lineage of David and Jesus, was racially pure.   Here again, he blatantly contradicts himself.

Jeremiah 31:27 says, “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast.”  Gayman says this is a prophecy of racial mixing just before the return of Christ.  However, the context precludes this interpretation.  This is a prophecy of the time after the return of the Messiah, when unified Israel and Judah, who have returned after national captivity, verses 7-11, will repopulate the earth.  God will plant Israel and Judah to be the model nation, and numbers of men and beasts will be multiplied after much devastation.  In no way does this predict racial mixing before the return of Christ.  Nonwhites are not “beasts” as Gayman claims.

Gayman does not define the bounds of what he believes to be the Adamic (Caucas­ian) race.  Bounds should be largely defined by Shem, Ham and Japheth and the sixteen grandsons of Noah.  Let us examine Scrip­tures, which indicate, however, that racial mixing is not God’s intent.

In Genesis 6:2, we see “that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.”  Adam was called the Son of God, Luke 3:38.  Angels do not marry, nor are they given in marriage, Luke 20:35-36.  Genesis 6:2 refers to marriages that are not authorized by God.  Many of the followers of God (sons of God) intermarried with those (daughters of men) who were not following the Almighty.  The Eternal was not pleased with this perversion, verse 3.  The result was offspring that became giants, mighty men of renown who were worshipped as gods, verse 4.  This great increase in wickedness began with marriages that God did not favor, but nevertheless, He allowed these illicit unions to take place.  “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” verse 5.  God then decreed a flood of destruction.  Only “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. . . . Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations [pedigree], and Noah walked with God,” verses 8-9.  Noah had not mixed with those who were full of wickedness.  He was morally and racially pure.

The sins leading up to the Flood primarily involved wrong marriages.  Verses 11-12 confirm this, “The earth was also corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence [Hebrew: chamas, Strong’s #2555, “wrong, violence, injustice”]. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted His way upon the earth.”  Malachi 2:16 and Genesis 16:5 use the same word chamas, which demonstrates that the violence preceding the Flood involved wrong marriages, wrong sexual practices.  The Saviour said that prior to His return, “as the days of Noe [Noah] were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.  For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be,” Matthew 24:37-39.

Certainly these sinful marriages involved mixing of heathen religions with God’s Truth.  It also appears that these sins were racial and religious in nature.  Yet, there are unanswered questions that I have, about the details that are not given in Scripture.  If Noah was spared because he was morally and religiously pure, why were two of his sons, Ham and Japheth, saved with him, if they had married black and yellow wives respectively?  We must be silent where the Bible is silent, and speak where the Bible speaks.  I have a few questions to ask Noah someday when I will, God willing, be blessed to visit with him in the World Tomorrow!

Genesis does not give the precise racial boundaries that man is not to cross.  The three sons of Noah repopulated the earth after the Flood.  It appears that the three basic races descended from Shem (Caucasian), Ham (Negroid), and Japheth (Mongoloid).  Genesis 9:25-27 prophesies that the descendents of Shem would continue the knowledge of the Eternal (“Blessed be the Lord God of Shem.”); Japheth would be enlarged (have vast numbers of people); and Canaan (fourth son of Ham) would be servant to both Shem and Japheth.  Racial groups are, of course, much more complicated than merely defining three distinct groups of white, black, and yellow.  That is why a knowledge of physical anthropology and human biology are so useful and interesting. The subject is complex — reflecting the depth and detail of God’s creative capacity — dare we try and destroy His creation through amalgamation?

Genesis 10 gives the famous Table of Nations descended from Noah.  Descendents of Noah’s three sons settled the whole earth, not part of it.  “These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood,” verse 32.  The earth was divided (verse 25) along racial lines.  The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), was an ill-fated attempt by Nimrod, grandson of Ham (Genesis 10:6-9), to unite all men in one government and one race.  God foiled the rebellion and scattered men across the earth by confounding their languages.  He intends the different races and peoples to be separate.

In Acts 17:26, during Paul’s Mars Hill sermon in Athens, he said, “[God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed [for their rise and fall], and the bounds of their habitation [where they should live].”  We should study the history of mankind, “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations . . . . When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel,” Deuter­onomy 32:7-8.  Israel was to be blessed with the best land, so they could fulfill their role of the leading nation.

Today, mankind is again building a racial Tower of Babel.  Turks have moved to Ger­many, black refugees to Sweden, Paki­stan­is and Indians to England, and a multitude of races and peoples have flocked to the United States.  In Australia, the British-descend­ed peoples have fallen to 60% of the population and 90% of immigrants are non-White.

Israel is a “holy nation,” separate from other nations, to be an example for other nations, a “holy seed.”  How can they be holy if they mix and destroy their racial features and mental characteristics and attributes?

The movement towards a “Universal Brown Man,” one race and a one-world gov­ern­ment, is in full swing.  God is not in favor of this amalgamation of races and peoples!

But, what are the exact bounds of habitations, according to God, and what are the specific racial boundaries we are not to cross?  While the Bible gives great detail on which unclean meats we are to avoid, it gives few details on the important question of racial intermarriage.  Common sense application of Bible principles should be our guide.

Scriptures forbidding Israel to intermarry with the heathen nations appear to be based on both racial and religious reasons.  There were seven heathen nations in the Promised Land: Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Cana­an­ites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, Deuter­­onomy 7:1.  These peoples were descended from Ham, Genesis 10:15-20.  God told Israel to utterly destroy them, “Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.  For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly,” Deuteronomy 7:3-4.  See also Joshua 23:11-13 and Exodus 34:14-17.  As a punishment for disobedience to God, one of the curses to come on modern Israel is that “The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low,” Deuteronomy 28:43.

Leviticus 19:19 is a statute which tells us “Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.”  The principle of this statute can well apply to mixing races and peoples.

When the Jews returned from Babylonian Captivity, they had not learned the lesson that they were to be a separate, distinct, people.  The people, including the priests and Levites, had not separated themselves from the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amor­ites, but instead were intermarrying with these peoples, Ezra 9:1-2.  Ezra confessed this sin to God, reminding His people that they had previously suffered punishment for departing from God, and were now repeating these same sins by “join[ing] in affinity with the people of these abominations,” verses 3-15.  Taking these “strange wives” was a great sin, and Ezra called for a fast, and assembled the people, exhorting them to repent, and to “separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives,” Ezra 10:11.  Verses 15-44 lists the names of those who had taken strange wives and agreed to put them away, and offer a ram for a trespass offering.

A few years later, Nehemiah labored against the same sin, when he discovered that some Jews had married wives of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.  He got really upset, and contended with them, cursed them, smote some of them, and plucked off their hair, forcing them to vow that they would not give their daughters unto the sons of heathens, nor take strange daughters unto their sons or themselves, Nehemiah 13:23-27.  Nehemiah cried, “Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? . . . even him did outlandish [foreign] women cause to sin.  Shall we then hearken unto you to do all this great evil, to transgress against our God in marrying strange wives?”  Priests who had done this had “defiled the priesthood,” and Nehemiah sought to cleanse them from all strangers.

Not only was Israel not to mix with the Canaanite nations, as well as Moab and Ammon, but also they were to keep the inheritances of the individual tribes intact, Numbers 36:1-13.

Today, like it was in ancient Rome, the Anglo-Saxon peoples of the United States, Great Britain, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, are under attack.  Other races are inundating them, and the Anglo-Saxons are in danger of losing their unique racial identity.

Newsweek magazine of January 1, 2000, stated, “Between 1960 and 1992, the number of interracially married couples [in the United States] multiplied more than seven times over.  Black-white unions are still not the norm, accounting for only 20 percent of interracial marriages, but the marriage color line has all but dissolved between Asians and whites,” pp. 29-30.  The article goes on to say that Hispanics are projected to become the largest racial-ethnic group (after whites) by 2010.  By 2030, non-Hispanic whites will be less than half the U.S. population; a few decades later, whites will be the minority.  Latinos themselves are a very mixed conglomeration of black, Indian, Asian, and Pacific Islander stock.

Famous golfer Tiger Woods is an example of the growing segment of “Universal Brown Man,” coming from Caucasian, black, Indian, and Asian ancestry.  As racial walls are being eradicated in today’s society, race has lost much of its meaning.  History is repeating itself, as America (like ancient Rome) loses its racial distinctions.  (See “The Race Change in Ancient Italy,” by Ernest L. Martin, available from Giving & Sharing, for $4.00.)

Where does this leave us?  God wants His chosen people, Israel, to be racially and religiously intact.  Any improper marriage, any departing from God’s Truth, is fighting against Israel, and fighting against God.  The Bible principle is against interracial marriage.  Applying the Bible principle in this age is difficult.  It is a personal responsibility of each believer to apply God’s laws with the aid of His Holy Spirit.  May God guide our young people today!

Is it a sin, for example, for a black person to marry an Asian?  The Biblical principle that God has created variety and that Israel was supposed to be a microcosm of how all nations were to behave, is proof that He does not wish them to racially mix. The principle of Deuteronomy 32:8 and Acts 17:26 does, in our belief, cover this issue.

Will there be different races and peoples in the Kingdom of God?  Absolutely yes!  Egypt will join other nations to come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Taber­nacles, Zechariah 14:16-19.  This means that neither Egypt nor Israel will be reduced to a “Universal Brown Man,” but continue to be distinct people in the Millennium.

It limits the power of God to say, as Gayman does, that illicit race mixing is irreversible.  If the Almighty can create a river of pure water to clean up the pollution of the world’s water supply, Ezekiel 47:8-12; Zechariah 14:8.  He can certainly clean up the pollution of mixed races, if He so wills.  Because He allows mankind to go the wrong way, does not mean that the Almighty sanctions such wrong practices.

A marriage being contemplated today should only be considered lawful if it satisfactorily answers two vital questions:  (1) Does this marriage further the cause of God’s Truth?  Believers are not to marry unbeliev­ers, I Corinthians 7:39, “[you must marry] only in the Lord [fellow believers].”  (2) Does this marriage further the quality of the race or ethnic group of the parties involved?  Race mixers today are attempting to build a modern Tower of Babel, to annihilate the various races and peoples.  This is racism at its worst! 

 

Hate Group?

 

One of the most abused phrases in the modern world is the term, “hate group.”  Liberals will label almost anybody they don’t like as a “hate group.”  According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Hate Crime Data Collection Guidelines,” October, 1999, page, 3, this is the American government definition: “Hate Group — An organization whose primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against persons belonging to a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin which differs from that of the members of the organization, e.g., the Ku Klux Klan, American Nazi Party.” This is a good definition of “hate group.”

Using this definition, Dan Gayman’s Church of Israel can in no way be classified as a hate group.  In fact, Gayman teaches that all races should be appreciated and respected, since they are creations of the Almighty.  The Church of Israel’s statement of beliefs says, “We hold no malice or hatred for other races.  However, we choose to worship with our own ethnic people….”  Although I vehemently disagree with Gayman on the subject of race, it would be false to accuse him of hate.

If a planeload of blacks crashed on their property, I am sure that Gayman and his followers would be quick to help relieve suffering, and prevent further loss of life

 

Purpose of Israel: Servant People

 

Israel is special to the Eternal.  They are special because they have a special job to do.  If Israelites are racially destroyed, they cannot perform the responsibility God called them to do.  Deuteronomy 7:6-8 explains, “For thou art [are to become] an holy people unto the Lord thy God:  the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special [Hebrew: segullah, Strong’s #5459, ‘to shut up (because it is precious), wealth, treasure, jewel’] people unto Himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.  The Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye
were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: But because the Lord loved you, and because He would keep the oath which He had sworn unto your fathers. . . .”  They were to become a “king­dom of priests, and an holy nation,” Exodus 19:5-6.  In other words, Israel is God’s instru­ment to share His Truth and way of life with all other peoples.

Isaiah 43:10 adds, “Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord, and My servant whom I have chosen.”

God gave His statutes and judgments to Israel for a purpose: “Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.  For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them. . .” Deuteronomy 4:6-7.

Do the marriages of the Anglo-Saxon peoples of North America, Western Europe, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand further the advancement of the purpose of Israel?  May God guide His people to make wise marital unions.  As Gayman properly concludes, it would be wrong for us to judge another person as “racially unfit” for member­ship in the Church of God.  Let God be the judge, as we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, Philippians 2:12.     W


 

 

Review: In the Image of God, by Destiny Publishers, Merrimac, Massachusetts, 01860.  Original edition, 1967, revised 1984, 104 pp.

 

H

oward Rand (1889-1991) was the founder of Destiny Publishers, and presumably the author of the infamous book, In the Image of God.  There are many arguments in this book similar to Dan Gayman’s book, Do All Races Share in Salvation?  I will cover here some items unique to Rand’s book. 

 


Rand believes that the Adamic race originated separately from the Negro race.  He does not provide any proof for this assertion, nor does he explain the origin of the Oriental race.  He believes that blacks are not human, but of the animal order of apes.  Again, he offers no proof.

Howard Rand holds that when the Bible uses the term, “beasts,” or “beasts of the field,” that this usually refers to black people.  When Jonah was sent by God to warn the Assyrian people of Nineveh to repent, the King of Nineveh made a proclamation, “Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water.  But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.” Jonah 3:7-8.  Because he believes that Negroes are “beasts of the field,” Rand uses these verses to indicate that “man” refers to white people, and “beasts” means black people.  Dumb animals cannot cry unto God, turn from their evil ways, and animals do not have hands.  Therefore, Rand concludes, these beasts are intelligent beasts, black people.  The Hebrew word here for “beast” is #929, behemah, which Strong’s defines as “any large quad­ruped or animal.”  It is related to #930, behemowth, or hippopotamus, and is often trans­lated “cattle.”  In the Leviticus 11 instruction to avoid unclean meats, the word is used five times to refer to beasts that we are not to eat, while the Deuteronomy 14 parallel account uses beasts three times.  The phrase “man and beast” is used frequently to distinguish between humans and animals, NEVER between white and black people, e.g., Numbers 3:13; Jeremiah 21:6, etc.

Mr. Rand erroneously believes that Noah took Negro servants (beasts) with him into the Ark.  The statute, “Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion,” Leviticus 18:23, is wrongly interpreted to mean prohibition of miscegenation.  I cannot find a single Scripture which uses the word “beast” to refer to a black person.

Rand uses Ezekiel 34:25, where it says God “will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land,” to support his contention that blacks are beasts.  He says ordinary animals cannot be evil, because they are governed by instinct, therefore, these beasts must be intelligent beasts, Negroes.  The Hebrew word for “evil” is #7451, rah, a general word that can mean “sorrow, trouble, misery, wretchedness, etc.”  Psalm 91:10 uses this word to promise the righteous that “There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.”  The “evil beasts” of Ezekiel are those which cause misery and suffering and sorrow, such as man-eating lions and tigers, or rabid animals, NOT Negroes.

Acts 17:26, where God “hath made of one blood all nations of men,” is questioned by Rand, who claims that the word “blood” does not appear in ancient manuscripts.  However, “blood,” the Greek word #129, haima, does appear in the Received Text, which Rand does not “receive,” because this word destroys his unfounded racial theories.

Howard Rand believes that the “serpent,” Hebrew nachash, of the Garden of Eden was a Negro, a beast of the field, who walked erect until God cursed him to walk on all fours.  Hence, this leads to the “Serpent Seed” doctrine which teaches that Eve had sexual relations with Nachash.  A plain reading of Genesis 3 shows that the serpent did NOT walk erect prior to his being cursed, and when cursed, he went on his belly, not on all fours. There is no hint of Eve having sexual relations with the serpent.  It is just as harmful to read too much into Scripture, as it is to get too little from it.

Rand believes that “No Negro civilization has ever appeared.  No Mongolian one has ever greatly developed,” p. 61.  This is woeful ignorance of world history.

Although Howard Rand uses more scripture than Dan Gayman, his arguments are just as weak.  To Rand’s credit, however, he does believe that nonwhite races can be saved:  “there will be those of other peoples and tongues, including Negroes, who will obtain citizenship in His Kingdom if they practice righteousness.”  As I Peter 3:12-13 says, “For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.  And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?”  Rand concludes, “the living creatures [black and white] who are capable of making a choice will have the opportunity to reject Him and be damned or to accept Him and partake of the way of salvation which is open to all who believe,” p. 95. W


 

  Howard B. Rand (whose writings are published by Destiny Publishers) is said to have first coined the term “Identity.”  In other writings, Rand teaches that Jesus was not a Jew of the tribe of Judah, but an Aryan of the ten lost tribes of Israel.  This is a key component of racist theories.  Scripture is clear that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew descended from King David, Matthew 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38.  Anti-Semitism is anti-God.

In his 1994 work, “The Two Seeds of Genesis 3:15,” Dan Gayman argues that Eve’s sin was copulating with Satan (thereby producing Cain), and Adam’s sin was in copulating with Eve after she had been defiled.   Gayman says Jews came from Cain, and are thus literally the children of Satan, the Serpent Seed.  An excellent refutation of the “Serpent Seed” teaching is “The Serpent Seed Heresy,” by Steven Collins and Robert Hoops, available for $1.00 from: Giving & Sharing, PO Box 100, Neck City, MO 64849.