Does Cain’s punishment support evolution?

[dagelos]

No it doesn't. It's called gene pool. Some people took their genetics to other places while other went another way and the genes were not able to remix until more modern times, especially here in the States.

The monk gave a great point. This is one that no one can argue about. God gave man a soul, and a spirit. Did the "ape-man" have a spirit? If He created a man that can't be saved then why create him?

So,Neanderthal man CAN be resurrected?

 

[dagelos]

Are you serious? What about the great commission? He told his apostles to go into ALL the world. Not just for Jews, but for the Gentile now as well.


The Bible....it says that all m,an came from Adam and Eve.

I think you are misunderstanding gentile as meaning ''non Jew''

http://www.israelect.com/reference/...st Misapplied Verses in the New Testament.pdf - The Two Most Misapplied Verses in the New Testament

Where does the Bible say all men came from Adam and Eve?

 

[Fireinfolding]

The whole world? Passages?

Post 65 It was on the post you yourself quoted

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

See, this is why interpreting Genesis is so difficult: the Bible does indicate there were other people on Earth aside from Adam and Eve, so they clearly weren't the first humans. So much of the literal interpretation.

Buy if there were other people, who were they? I've often seem polygenism used to try and justify racism - Adam and Eve were God's chosen people, no-one else. Judaism and Christianity aren't exclusive clubs, anyone can join.

By the way ... Dagelos, have you ever met a user called Adamite?

 

[1an]

http://www.israelect.com/reference/ArnoldKennedy/%27Born%20Again%27%20or%20%27Begotten%20From%20Above%27~.pdf - “Born AGAIN” OR “BEGOTTEN FROM ABOVE”?

There is another subject I am interested in and whenever I see reams and reams of text I always see the hand of a fabricator at work.

Jesus used few words and I heed scripture rather than the words of man.

.

 

[dagelos]

See, this is why interpreting Genesis is so difficult: the Bible does indicate there were other people on Earth aside from Adam and Eve, so they clearly weren't the first humans. So much of the literal interpretation.

Buy if there were other people, who were they? I've often seem polygenism used to try and justify racism - Adam and Eve were God's chosen people, no-one else. Judaism and Christianity aren't exclusive clubs, anyone can join.

By the way ... Dagelos, have you ever met a user called Adamite?

No I have not met a user called Adamite.

So,everyone NOT descending or having their origins from Adam and Eve is racist?

 

[1an]

See, this is why interpreting Genesis is so difficult: the Bible does indicate there were other people on Earth aside from Adam and Eve, so they clearly weren't the first humans. So much of the literal interpretation.

Buy if there were other people, who were they? I've often seem polygenism used to try and justify racism - Adam and Eve were God's chosen people, no-one else. Judaism and Christianity aren't exclusive clubs, anyone can join.

By the way ... Dagelos, have you ever met a user called Adamite?

If I may.

Granted there are no dates in scripture but that is often the case and depending on the subject matter we may not need dates. A history of America for example would include mention of guns, the steam train, the Pilgrim Fathers etc. and before long we would soon discern the historical period. It is the same with Adam and Eve when we read about Cain and Able farming the land and Cain building a permanent settlement instead of being hunter gatherers. When we read they were making harps and flutes and working in bronze and iron, it does not take long to realize these people were living in the Bronze Age long after the first man.

.

 

[dagelos]

Post 65 It was on the post you yourself quoted

Luke 1:77:To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins,

Luke 1:68:Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people,

Luke 1:69:And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;

John 12:13:Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.

Matthew 1:21:And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

Galatians 4:4-5:4But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.


Only Israel was under the law.




Gentiles is a misunderstood word,here is a text that explains what gentiles means....



WHO ARE THE GENTILES?





It is unfortunate that most people have so many mistaken ideas about their religion, due largely to the many mistranslations of words in the commonly-used King James Version of the Bible. One of these mistaken ideas is that most of the people of the United States and Western Europe--in fact, nearly all the Christians -in the world--are "Gentiles." You hear many of them--even clergymen, who should know better -- say, "I'm just a Gentile, saved by grace." I think it is high time that we learned something about one of the most mis-used words, "Gentile.

​

First, you might be surprised to know that there is no such word in the Bible, in its original languages. Oh yes, I know that you are now riffling the pages of your King James Version, looking for some of the many places you will find "Gentile" in it. But I said that there is no such word in the Bible IN ITS ORIGINAL LANGUAGES. The word was put into it by translators, who changed the wording of the Bible centuries after the last book in the Bible was written. If you are a good Christian, you will surely agree with me that what the prophets originally wrote in the books which make up our Bible was inspired by God. It was correct as the prophets wrote it. But not one of them wrote in English, remember, because no such language as English existed until many centuries after the prophets lived. It was written in Hebrew, as to the Old Testament; and the New Testament was originally written in the language which Jesus Christ spoke, Aramaic, a Semitic dialect somewhat similar to, but not the same as, Hebrew. But Aramaic was not generally understood outside of Western Asia; so when Christianity began to spread into southern and southeastern Europe, the New Testament had to be translated into a language which was widely used in Europe. Greek served this purpose nicely, for it was understood by well-educated men over nearly all of Europe. Therefore, the New Testament was first translated into Greek. Protestant English-language translations of the Bible, today, are nearly all translated from H Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament and Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. So, let us start at the beginning, with the Old Testament.

​

The word "Gentile" is not even once used in any Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament, for the good reason that there is no such word in Hebrew, nor any word which corresponds to it. Everywhere you find the word "Gentile" used in the Old Testament, it is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word "GOY," which means "NATION." The plural form of it is "GOYIM." Since it means "nation," why didn't they translate it correctly? Sometimes they did; but for the most part, they translated it to fit the official doctrines of the church of their day, no matter what violence that did to the true meaning of the word. The church hierarchy had long since determined what its doctrines should be: and if the Bible didn't agree with them, so much the worse for the Bible. Men were still being burned at the stake for heresy, in those days, and "heresy" meant any religious idea which differed from the official doctrines proclaimed by the bishops. So the translators did the best the Church would allow them to do. Let us take some examples.

​

In Genesis 12: 2, God said to Abram, "I will make of thee a great nation." In Hebrew, God said "I will make of thee a great GOY. " It would have been too silly to translate that "I will make a Gentile of you," so they correctly translated it "nation." Again Genesis 25:23, Rebekah was pregnant with the twins, Esau and Jacob; and while still in her womb, the unborn children were struggling against each other; so she wondered at this, and asked of God what was the meaning of this? God said to her, "Two GOYIM are in thy womb." Certainly God was not telling her, "You are an adulteress, pregnant with two Gentile children, when your husband is not a Gentile." God said "Two NATIONS are in thy womb," and that is the way it was translated; but it is that same word, "GOYIM," which elsewhere they generally translate as "Gentiles."

​

Now let us take some examples from the New Testament.

​

Here the word mistranslated "Gentile" is nearly always the Greek word, "ETHNOS" which means just exactly "NATION," the same as the Hebrew word "Goy." Luke 7 begins with the incident of a Roman Centurion who appealed to Jesus Christ to heal his servant who was sick unto death. The Elders of the Jews praised him to Jesus, saying "He loveth our ETHNOS, and hath built us a synagogue." These Jews would never praise anyone for loving the Gentiles; and the Centurion would not have built a synagogue for Gentiles. So, to avoid complete absurdity, the translators were forced to translate "ETHNOS" correctly, as "NATION." Again, in John 11: 50, we find that the Jewish High Priest, Caiaphas, was plotting with the chief priests and Pharisees, to murder Jesus Christ; and Caiaphas told them, "it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole ETHNOS perish not." Nothing could have pleased this evil Jew more than for all the Gentiles to perish--using the word "Gentile" as we do today. Therefore, the translators had to translate "ETHNOS" correctly, as "nation." Yet in many other places they mistranslate it "Gentile."

​

The Greek word "ETHNOS" means simply "nation," nothing more or less. It has no pagan, or non-Israel, or even non-Greek connotation. The Greeks distinguished between Greeks and all non-Greek peoples, whom they called "Barbarians." All educated men of that day knew this, and the Apostle Paul was a very well-educated man, who was quite familiar with the Greek language and its idioms. He recognized this distinction in Romans 1: 14, where he said, "I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians." Paul, therefore, never wrote the word "Gentile" in any of his Epistles.

​

What does this word "Gentile" mean, and from what is it derived? It is derived from the Latin word "GENTILES," which means "ONE WHO IS NOT A ROMAN CITIZEN." If you use the word correctly, then you would have to say that Jesus Christ and His twelve disciples were all Gentiles, because none of them was a Roman Citizen. Only Paul could say that he was not a "Gentile," because in the 22nd chapter of Acts, Paul says that he was a Roman citizen by birth.

​

How, then, is it used at present when the speaker means to say that someone is non-Jewish? About the fourth century A.D., its use was loosely extended to cover more than its original meaning. It was applied especially to those who were heathen, pagan; it became a term for those who were neither Christian. nor Jewish, for Christians and Jews were generally called just that, (Christian; or Jew). But this was centuries after the last book in the New Testament had been written.

​

The word "Gentile" was never used by the writer of any book of the Old Testament, because none of them had ever heard it, as they had never come in contact with Rome. It was not used by the writer of any book of the New Testament, for there is no such word in the Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek languages. They did not borrow the word from the Latin, for if you will look up every place it is used in your King James Version, you will see that it is never used in the correct sense, to say that someone is not a Roman citizen; and that is the only meaning it had, the only way anybody used it, in those days. It was put in by the translators in an effort to make the Bible say what the translators thought it should have said. Therefore, it has no authority at all.

​

In short, wherever you see the word "Gentile" in the Bible, remember that the correct word is "nation," "race," or "people." Sometimes it is used when speaking of ISRAEL nations or the ISRAELITE race, as we have seen in the examples I have given you. In other instances, the context will show that it is being used of a nation which is non-Israelite. Only the context in which it is used will show you which meaning to give it. When used of non-Israelite peoples, perhaps "Gentile" is as good a word as any, for we seem to have no other in general use. But never be deceived by reading the word "Gentile" in your Bible, for its only correct meaning is "nation" or "race."

 

[dagelos]

There is another subject I am interested in and whenever I see reams and reams of text I always see the hand of a fabricator at work.

Jesus used few words and I heed scripture rather than the words of man.

.

fabricator is defined in the free dictionary...

1. To make; create.
2. To construct by combining or assembling diverse, typically standardized parts: fabricate small boats.
3. To concoct in order to deceive:

How is a text like that created? or concocted in order to deceive?

 

[1an]

fabricator is defined in the free dictionary...

1. To make; create.
2. To construct by combining or assembling diverse, typically standardized parts: fabricate small boats.
3. To concoct in order to deceive:

How is a text like that created? or concocted in order to deceive?

Newspapers, politicians, all do it, a criminal will fabricate an alibi for example. A crooked copper will fabricate evidence.

It is a departure from the truth designed to suit your own particular point of view. A Christians foundation is the Bible.

.

 

[1an]

Luke 1:77:To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins,

Luke 1:68:Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people,

Luke 1:69:And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;

John 12:13:Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.

Matthew 1:21:And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

Galatians 4:4-5:4But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

Only Israel was under the law.

Gentiles is a misunderstood word,here is a text that explains what gentiles means....

WHO ARE THE GENTILES?

It is unfortunate that most people have so many mistaken ideas <snip>

Here is how is should be done courtesy of Wiki.

"The most important of such Hebrew words was goyim (singular, goy), a term with the broad meaning of "peoples" or "nations" which was sometimes used to refer to Israelites, but most commonly as a generic label for peoples. Strong's Concordance defines goy as "nation, people, usually of non-Hebrew people, or of descendants of Abraham, or of Israel, or of a swarm of locusts or other animals (fig.) Goyim = 'nations'." Strongs #1471[1]

In the King James Version, Gentile is only one of several words used to translate goy or goyim. It is translated as "nation" 374 times, "heathen" 143 times, "Gentiles" 30 times, and "people" 11 times. Some of these verses, such as Genesis 12:2 ("I will make of thee a great nation") and Genesis 25:23 ("Two nations are in thy womb") refer to Israelites or descendants of Abraham. Other verses, such as Isaiah 2:4 and Deuteronomy 11:23 are generic references to any nation. Typically the KJV restricts the translation to "Gentile" when the text is specifically referring to non-Hebrew people. For example, the only use of the word in Genesis is in chapter 10, verse 5, referring to the peopling of the world by descendants of Japheth, "By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations."[2]

In the New Testament, the Greek word "ethnos" is used for peoples or nations in general, and is typically translated by the word "people", as in John 11:50 ("Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not."). The translation "gentiles" is used in some instances, as in Matthew 10:5&#8211;6 to indicate non-Israelite peoples:

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.[3]

In that instance, Gentiles becomes a reference to pagan cultures of the period."

The most frequently used word was the word 'nation' and in the context of the debate about Adam it indicates there were other nations.

They were not alone as though they were living on a desert island, there were lots of other people and even Nations!

.

 

[Fireinfolding]

Luke 1:77:To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins,

Luke 1:68:Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people,

Luke 1:69:And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;

John 12:13:Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.

Matthew 1:21:And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

Galatians 4:4-5:4But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.


Only Israel was under the law.




Gentiles is a misunderstood word,here is a text that explains what gentiles means....



WHO ARE THE GENTILES?





It is unfortunate that most people have so many mistaken ideas about their religion, due largely to the many mistranslations of words in the commonly-used King James Version of the Bible. One of these mistaken ideas is that most of the people of the United States and Western Europe--in fact, nearly all the Christians -in the world--are "Gentiles." You hear many of them--even clergymen, who should know better -- say, "I'm just a Gentile, saved by grace." I think it is high time that we learned something about one of the most mis-used words, "Gentile.


First, you might be surprised to know that there is no such word in the Bible, in its original languages. Oh yes, I know that you are now riffling the pages of your King James Version, looking for some of the many places you will find "Gentile" in it. But I said that there is no such word in the Bible IN ITS ORIGINAL LANGUAGES. The word was put into it by translators, who changed the wording of the Bible centuries after the last book in the Bible was written. If you are a good Christian, you will surely agree with me that what the prophets originally wrote in the books which make up our Bible was inspired by God. It was correct as the prophets wrote it. But not one of them wrote in English, remember, because no such language as English existed until many centuries after the prophets lived. It was written in Hebrew, as to the Old Testament; and the New Testament was originally written in the language which Jesus Christ spoke, Aramaic, a Semitic dialect somewhat similar to, but not the same as, Hebrew. But Aramaic was not generally understood outside of Western Asia; so when Christianity began to spread into southern and southeastern Europe, the New Testament had to be translated into a language which was widely used in Europe. Greek served this purpose nicely, for it was understood by well-educated men over nearly all of Europe. Therefore, the New Testament was first translated into Greek. Protestant English-language translations of the Bible, today, are nearly all translated from H Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament and Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. So, let us start at the beginning, with the Old Testament.

The word "Gentile" is not even once used in any Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament, for the good reason that there is no such word in Hebrew, nor any word which corresponds to it. Everywhere you find the word "Gentile" used in the Old Testament, it is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word "GOY," which means "NATION." The plural form of it is "GOYIM." Since it means "nation," why didn't they translate it correctly? Sometimes they did; but for the most part, they translated it to fit the official doctrines of the church of their day, no matter what violence that did to the true meaning of the word. The church hierarchy had long since determined what its doctrines should be: and if the Bible didn't agree with them, so much the worse for the Bible. Men were still being burned at the stake for heresy, in those days, and "heresy" meant any religious idea which differed from the official doctrines proclaimed by the bishops. So the translators did the best the Church would allow them to do. Let us take some examples.

In Genesis 12: 2, God said to Abram, "I will make of thee a great nation." In Hebrew, God said "I will make of thee a great GOY. " It would have been too silly to translate that "I will make a Gentile of you," so they correctly translated it "nation." Again Genesis 25:23, Rebekah was pregnant with the twins, Esau and Jacob; and while still in her womb, the unborn children were struggling against each other; so she wondered at this, and asked of God what was the meaning of this? God said to her, "Two GOYIM are in thy womb." Certainly God was not telling her, "You are an adulteress, pregnant with two Gentile children, when your husband is not a Gentile." God said "Two NATIONS are in thy womb," and that is the way it was translated; but it is that same word, "GOYIM," which elsewhere they generally translate as "Gentiles."

Now let us take some examples from the New Testament.

Here the word mistranslated "Gentile" is nearly always the Greek word, "ETHNOS" which means just exactly "NATION," the same as the Hebrew word "Goy." Luke 7 begins with the incident of a Roman Centurion who appealed to Jesus Christ to heal his servant who was sick unto death. The Elders of the Jews praised him to Jesus, saying "He loveth our ETHNOS, and hath built us a synagogue." These Jews would never praise anyone for loving the Gentiles; and the Centurion would not have built a synagogue for Gentiles. So, to avoid complete absurdity, the translators were forced to translate "ETHNOS" correctly, as "NATION." Again, in John 11: 50, we find that the Jewish High Priest, Caiaphas, was plotting with the chief priests and Pharisees, to murder Jesus Christ; and Caiaphas told them, "it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole ETHNOS perish not." Nothing could have pleased this evil Jew more than for all the Gentiles to perish--using the word "Gentile" as we do today. Therefore, the translators had to translate "ETHNOS" correctly, as "nation." Yet in many other places they mistranslate it "Gentile."

The Greek word "ETHNOS" means simply "nation," nothing more or less. It has no pagan, or non-Israel, or even non-Greek connotation. The Greeks distinguished between Greeks and all non-Greek peoples, whom they called "Barbarians." All educated men of that day knew this, and the Apostle Paul was a very well-educated man, who was quite familiar with the Greek language and its idioms. He recognized this distinction in Romans 1: 14, where he said, "I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians." Paul, therefore, never wrote the word "Gentile" in any of his Epistles.

What does this word "Gentile" mean, and from what is it derived? It is derived from the Latin word "GENTILES," which means "ONE WHO IS NOT A ROMAN CITIZEN." If you use the word correctly, then you would have to say that Jesus Christ and His twelve disciples were all Gentiles, because none of them was a Roman Citizen. Only Paul could say that he was not a "Gentile," because in the 22nd chapter of Acts, Paul says that he was a Roman citizen by birth.

How, then, is it used at present when the speaker means to say that someone is non-Jewish? About the fourth century A.D., its use was loosely extended to cover more than its original meaning. It was applied especially to those who were heathen, pagan; it became a term for those who were neither Christian. nor Jewish, for Christians and Jews were generally called just that, (Christian; or Jew). But this was centuries after the last book in the New Testament had been written.

The word "Gentile" was never used by the writer of any book of the Old Testament, because none of them had ever heard it, as they had never come in contact with Rome. It was not used by the writer of any book of the New Testament, for there is no such word in the Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek languages. They did not borrow the word from the Latin, for if you will look up every place it is used in your King James Version, you will see that it is never used in the correct sense, to say that someone is not a Roman citizen; and that is the only meaning it had, the only way anybody used it, in those days. It was put in by the translators in an effort to make the Bible say what the translators thought it should have said. Therefore, it has no authority at all.

In short, wherever you see the word "Gentile" in the Bible, remember that the correct word is "nation," "race," or "people." Sometimes it is used when speaking of ISRAEL nations or the ISRAELITE race, as we have seen in the examples I have given you. In other instances, the context will show that it is being used of a nation which is non-Israelite. Only the context in which it is used will show you which meaning to give it. When used of non-Israelite peoples, perhaps "Gentile" is as good a word as any, for we seem to have no other in general use. But never be deceived by reading the word "Gentile" in your Bible, for its only correct meaning is "nation" or "race."

I know what Gentile means I have a strongs concordance too

Your point?

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

No I have not met a user called Adamite.

So,everyone NOT descending or having their origins from Adam and Eve is racist?

No, it's just that many people who support polygenism and / or British Israelism are. They argue that Christianity is a "white religion" and therefore non-white people cannot join.

 

[Fireinfolding]

Now I understand its of that doctrine thats starting all over the interent, been there done that twice,

Unsubscribes

 

[dagelos]

I know what Gentile means I have a strongs concordance too

Your point?

Israel was dispersed among the nations.

Isaiah 11:12:And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

John 7:35:Then said the Jews among themselves, Whither will he go, that we shall not find him? will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles?

So,how can ''everyone come in and be Israel''
I am a little confused at how everyone is Israel or the whole world can be Israel?

 

[dagelos]

No, it's just that many people who support polygenism and / or British Israelism are. They argue that Christianity is a "white religion" and therefore non-white people cannot join.

Oh,really.
So where does it state everyone came from Adam?
It's racist to say Christianity is a white religion when it is?
...Christianity is a Religion of the Europeans,they believe it predominately.
So how is it wrong to say Christianity is not a white Religion?

Christianity - Religion of the West

You, who are now reading these lines, and I are strangers. I have no means of knowing whether you are a Christian or an atheist. That, however, will not matter, so long as we talk about facts and not wishes.

The observed and verifiable facts of the world about us are not affected by religious faith or the lack of faith. Christians and atheists must find themselves in perfect agreement when they affirm that lead is more malleable than steel, that the earth is an oblate spheroid rotating on its axis, that whales are mammals, that Germany was defeated and devastated by the many nations allied against her in 1945, and that the Chinese are Mongolians.

About such matters there can be no dispute among Western men, who instinctively accept the reality of the world about us and cannot believe, as do many Orientals, that it is merely an illusion in the mind of a dreamer.

If we would salvage and restore our civilization - the Occidental culture that is peculiarly our own and that now seems to be disintegrating and rotting before our very eyes - we must do so as Western men, by observing reality objectively and by reasoning from it dispassionately. And when we try to compute what resources remain to us, we need first of all to determine the actual strength of the Christian tradition at the present time.

The West and Christianity Synonymous

It is a fact, which Christians will regard with satisfaction and some atheists may deplore, that Western civilization in the sense that the great majority of the people belonging to it (though never, at any time, all of them) believed implicitly in the truth of the Christian revelation. That religious unanimity was for a long time so nearly complete that, after the fall of the Roman Empire and the evanescence of hopes for its restoration, we of the West regarded our religion as the bond that united us and distinguished us from the rest of the human species.

During the Middle Ages, our ancestors occupied the greater part of Europe, and, until they discovered the American continents, they lived only in Europe, but despite that geographical unity, they did not generally refer to themselves as the Europeans. For all practical purposes, furthermore, our ancestors belonged to the same division of the White race: they, like the true Greeks and the true Romans before them, were all members of the great race that we now call Indo-European or Aryan, but they had in their languages no word to designate their blood relationship and biological unity. Thus, when they referred to the unity of which they were always conscious as something transcending the constantly shifting territorial and political divisions of Europe, they called themselves Christendom. And for many centuries that word was adequate and misled no-one.

For many centuries the West was Christendom and its civilization was indubitably Christian: that, whether you like it or not, is a historical fact. There is a complementary historical fact that was less obvious at the time and that even thoughtful men overlooked or tried to ignore until the events of the past two decades made it indubitable: Christianity is a religion of the West, and, for all practical purposes, only of the West. It is not, as its polemical adversaries so often charge, a Semitic cult, for it has never commanded the adhesion of any considerable number of Semites, and it is not, as Christians once generally believed, a universal religion, for experience has now proved that it cannot be successfully exported to populations that are not Indo-European.

Ascertained Facts Undeniable

Experience has also proved that it does not do the slightest good to deny ascertained facts. The men of Classical antiquity knew, of course, that the earth is spherical, and Eratosthenes in the third century B.C. calculated its circumference as 24,663 miles.

But the early Fathers of the Church, living in the age of growing ignorance that shrouded the last century of the Roman Empire, decided, on the basis of some statements in the Old Testament, that the earth ought to be flat or, at least, no more curved than a shield. Lactantius was the most eloquent and probably, therefore, the most influential of the many who assiduously demanded that the earth be flat and so imposed on their contemporaries the conviction that it was. In the Middle Ages, to be sure, there were some learned men, such as Buridan, who knew that the globe is a globe, but they, like learned men today, who all know very well that talk about the equality of races is utter nonsense, usually refrained from publicly denouncing fashionable delusions. It was not until the Fifteenth Century that the truth became again inescapable, but when it did, the Christians, being men of the West, who do not deny the lessons of experience, surrendered the comfortable error in which they had once generally believed; and since that time, no rational Christian has doubted that the earth is spherical.

Western Civilization Unexportable

Today, as in the Fifteenth Century, Western men have had to discard a congenial assumption to bring their conception of the world into conformity with observed reality. So long as we of the West held unquestioned dominion over the whole earth, we permitted ourselves to assume that our civilization in general, and our religion in particular, could be exported and made universal. We did not sufficiently observe that talent for mimicry is common to all human beings and indeed to all anthropoids; that all human beings stand in awe of those who have power over them; and that a genius for dissimulation and hypocrisy is hereditary in the most intelligent Orientals.

Even with these oversights, the evidence against our assumption was fairly clear, but in the pride of our power we felt that we could indulge an assumption that was so congenial to the romantic generosity that is a peculiarity of our race. But the events of half a century, and especially of the past two decades, have shown us, beyond peradventure of doubt, the shape of the world in which we live. We now know what our prolonged missionary effort, cultural as well as religious, accomplished - and how its visible effects were produced.

Conversion by Cannon

When Cortes and his small but valiant band of iron men conquered the teeming empire of the Aztecs, he was immediately followed by a train of earnest missionaries, chiefly Franciscans, who began to preach the Gospel to the natives and soon sent home, with naive enthusiasm, glowing accounts of the conversions they had effected. Their pious sincerity and innocent joy still lives in the pages of Father Shagun, Father Torquemada, and many others. For their sake I am glad that the poor Franciscans never suspected how small a part they played in the religious conversions that gave them such happiness. Far, far more persuasive than their sermons and their book had been the Spanish cannon that breached and shattered the Aztec defenses, and the ruthless Spanish soldiers who slew the Aztec priests at their own altars and toppled the Aztec idols from the sacrificial pyramids.

The Aztecs, Tepanecs, and other natives accepted Christianity, not because their hearts were touched by alien and incomprehensible doctrines of love and mercy, but because it was the religion of the White men whose bronze cannon and mail-clad warriors were invincible.

Military Force - Not Love

That was early in the Sixteenth Century and even then there were not wanting indications that should have given pause to a critical mind, but we of the West went on repeating that found mistake for four centuries, as the missionaries whom we sent to all parts of the world wrote home glowing reports of the number of "hearts" they had "won for Christ." It was only after our enemies' campaign of "anti-colonialism" really got under way that most of us realized that what had won all those hearts was primarily the discipline of British regiments and the manifest power of the White man.

We now know what happened. On many a shore of Africa, for example, missionaries eager to "win souls for Christ" ventured to land alone, and the aborigines, after mutilating and torturing them for a good communal laugh, ate them, cooked or raw according to the custom of the local cuisine. Usually, a few weeks or a few months later, a British cruiser hove to offshore and lobbed half a dozen 4.5 shells into the native village, and, if not pressed for time, landed half a company of marines to beat the bushes and drag out a dozen or so savages to hang on convenient trees.

Consequently the tribe, if not very obtuse, took the hint and respected the next bevy of missionaries as somehow representing the god of thunder and lightning. And if the men of God distributed enough free rice and medical care with their sermons, they were able to make "converts," as the natives learned to utter the words that Christians like to hear.

White Missionaries Murdered

That is, in essence, the whole history of "winning souls" among the savages. There were, of course, many local variations. If the first missionaries were preceded by troops or White settlers, the Blacks had already been convinced of the virtues of Christian rifles and had learned that White men should not be regarded as esculent comestibles. It often happened, however, that the natives, even after many years of preaching and conversion, rejected the White man's odd rites very emphatically, and a fresh supply of missionaries was needed. In 1905, for example, the Maji-Maji conspiracy in Tanganyika murdered all the missionaries and almost all the White men and women in the entire territory, and it required a German regiment and several companies of marines to restore the teaching of the Gospel. That was done by giving some forty or fifty thousand demonstrations that a Mauser bullet could penetrate even a Black hide that had been most carefully anointed with the grease of a boiled baby.

The Christian missionaries did teach a ritual and often inculcated a superstition that had some superficial substance of Christianity, but they might as well have followed the example of St. Francis and preached sermons to the birds. That is why the many, many thousands of devoted Christians who expended their whole lives to "save souls" built only an edifice of cardboard and tinsel that is now gone in the wind.

Christianity Incomprehensible to Natives

What the vanishing of that flimsy facade has made obvious was predictable from the first. The religion of the West has never been comprehensible to the rudimentary minds of Congoids, Capoids and Australoids; races so primitive that they were congenitally incapable of inventing a wheel and even of using one without supervision - races that could not develop for themselves even the first and simplest preliminaries of a civilization.

When the missionaries invented systems of writing the crude languages of the primitives, they had also to invent words to express such concepts as ‘God,’ ‘soul,’ ‘justice,’ ‘morality,’ and ‘religion’ - invent them by either creating new words or by perverting to such meanings sounds that in the native jargons conveyed impressions that were faintly and remotely analogous. That fact alone should have made us think.

It was clear, furthermore, that the "converts," even those who had been most thoroughly imbued with an awe of the god of repeating rifles and locomotives, would conform to the White man's morality only under coercion, and that whenever they escaped from the White man's supervision they spontaneously reverted not only to their own mores but also to whatever form of voodoo they had practiced before.

Even if earlier experience had not been conclusive, what happened in Haiti at the very beginning of the Nineteenth Century should have removed the last lingering doubt. But the missionaries did not learn, and the ‘Ladies' Missionary Society’ went on contributing their mites, plying their needles, and glowing with tender emotion for the sweet little savages depicted by their romantic imaginations.

Although it is true that in some places in the former colonial possessions missionaries are still tolerated, if they are obsequious to the natives and pay very well, we have at least learned that the Gospel follows the British regiments in the White man's ignominious and insane retreat from the world that was his.

 

[Keachian]

I see,anyone who does not follow the ''religion of the world'' and say everyone is Israel,they are not Christian.

It's not about that, its that Christianity is Israel, that is spiritual Israel

You are using Gentiles like non-Jew,do you know what it means?

Gentiles means non-Jew

What do you say happened to the scattered abroad?

assimilated into other cultures, doesn't really matter.

 

[Keachian]

How does becoming like Christ have anything to do with descending from Adam?

It doesn't, it's about us being in the image of God.

 

[dagelos]

It doesn't, it's about us being in the image of God.

Explain more on this...

Are you saying no one is human but has to become human?

What of descending from Adam?

 

[dagelos]

It's not about that, its that Christianity is Israel, that is spiritual Israel


Gentiles means non-Jew


assimilated into other cultures, doesn't really matter.

What IS Spiritual Israel?

Gentile does not mean non-Jew.

Gentile in Websters 1828 is defined as.....

In civil affairs, the denomination was given to all nations who were not Romans.

Jesus and the Apostles were gentiles as they were not Romans.Unless you say otherwise?

What do you mean it doesn't matter?

Do you ''assume'' they assimilated in to other cultures?