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Voddie Baucham - How Many Races Are There? · Voddie Baucham Sermons

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  Speaker 1: These are the clans of the sons of Noah, according
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  Speaker 1: to their genealogies, in their nations, and from these nations
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  Speaker 1: spread abroad on all the earth after the flood. Now
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  Speaker 1: here's the question. Do we believe that? That's the question.
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  Speaker 1: Do we believe that? When we look at the table
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  Speaker 1: of nations, what the table of nations suggests is this.
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  Speaker 1: All the different people groups on earth Are derived from
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  Speaker 1: the sons of Noah.
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  Speaker 2: Shem. Ham. And Japheth.
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  Speaker 1: Do we believe that? Now don't answer that too quickly.
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  Speaker 1: Because you may be surprised by the answer. Because for
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  Speaker 1: the most part we don't believe that. We don't believe
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  Speaker 1: that we all are of common descent and of common origin.
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  Speaker 1: Most of us when we think and ask ourselves the question.
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  Speaker 2: About.
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  Speaker 1: The different people groups and from where they're derived and
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  Speaker 1: how they're derived, we ask ourselves that question from a
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  Speaker 1: perspective that is given to us by our culture.
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  Speaker 2: So as we think about this.
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  Speaker 1: Issue of nations and the origin of nations, we've been
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  Speaker 1: conditioned to think this way. There are multiple races of men.
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  Speaker 1: And these multiple races of men come from multiple origins.
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  Speaker 1: We believe this because that's what we've been taught. And
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  Speaker 1: there are several reasons that we've been taught to believe this.
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  Speaker 1: But all of a sudden, we get back to Genesis
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  Speaker 1: 10 and the table of nations, and we have to
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  Speaker 1: ask ourselves a question. How do we get multiple races
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  Speaker 1: of people if everybody goes back to Shem, Ham, and Japheth?
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  Speaker 1: How was Noah able to have children who were multiple races?
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  Speaker 2: How'd that happen?
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  Speaker 1: And if Noah didn't have children who were multiple races,
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  Speaker 1: where'd the multiple races of people come from? Interestingly enough,
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  Speaker 1: there is a premise in the question that is false.
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  Speaker 1: And here's the false premise. The false premise is that
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  Speaker 1: there are multiple races of people. There is only one race.
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  Speaker 1: There has always been one race. There will always be
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  Speaker 1: one race. All descended from Noah, who was descended from Adam.
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  Speaker 1: There is but one race. Did you hear me? There
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  Speaker 1: is but one race. Now, as I say that, I
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  Speaker 1: say it over and over again so that it will
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  Speaker 1: wash over us. Because if you'll remember, we always talk
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  Speaker 1: about Aristotle's famous question, does a fish know he's wet?
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  Speaker 2: The answer, of course, is no. Fish doesn't know he's wet,
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  Speaker 2: not until you get him out of the water.
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  Speaker 1: And the fact of the matter is, we have been
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  Speaker 1: conditioned by our culture for a number of reasons to
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  Speaker 1: believe that there are multiple races of people. I have
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  Speaker 1: people ask me all the time, is your church interracial?
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  Speaker 1: To which I always respond, oh, absolutely not. We only
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  Speaker 1: accept humans as members.
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  Speaker 2: No, no, no. Wouldn't dare.
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  Speaker 1: Wouldn't dare have anyone who was not human as a
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  Speaker 1: member of our church. We got a little dog who
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  Speaker 1: hangs around out there in the parking lot, you know.
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  Speaker 2: He's wanting membership. He's trying to get membership. But no, no, no.
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  Speaker 2: This is a humans only congregation.
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  Speaker 1: I've had people ask me about how I feel about
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  Speaker 1: interracial marriage or interracial adoption. To which, again, I respond, no,
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  Speaker 1: I do not believe in interracial marriage. Absolutely not. I
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  Speaker 1: am against interracial marriage. My children may only marry humans.
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  Speaker 2: Amen. That's all.
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  Speaker 1: Don't you bring a non-human into my house trying to
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  Speaker 1: get my blessing to go and get married.
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  Speaker 2: All right?
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  Speaker 1: There is but one race, and one race only. Listen
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  Speaker 1: to this from Webster's 1828 Dictionary. I'm sorry some of
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  Speaker 1: this won't be up for you, because some of it
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  Speaker 1: is quite visual. Webster defines race as this. The lineage
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  Speaker 1: of a family or continued series of descendants from a
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  Speaker 1: parent who is called the stock. A race is the
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  Speaker 1: series of descendants indefinitely. Thus, all mankind are called the
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  Speaker 1: race of Adam. By definition, all mankind are called the
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  Speaker 1: race of Adam. Many races or one. Listen to Paul
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  Speaker 1: in Acts 17.26. And he made from one man every
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  Speaker 1: nation of mankind to live on all the face of
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  Speaker 1: the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of
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  Speaker 1: their dwelling places. He's hearkening back to Genesis chapter 10.
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  Speaker 1: God made from one man every nation of men. There
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  Speaker 1: are not multiple races of men. There is but one
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  Speaker 1: race of man. What we have in Genesis chapter 10
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  Speaker 1: is not the table of races. But the table of nations,
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  Speaker 1: that's what we have in Genesis 10. Single parentage, single lineages,
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  Speaker 1: not racist. By the way, listen to this. A geneticist
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  Speaker 1: and a computer scientist and a geologist all at Yale
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  Speaker 1: sort of got together to do some number crunching and
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  Speaker 1: some figuring based on what we know of genealogy.
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  Speaker 2: And here's what they discovered.
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  Speaker 1: You'd have to go back in time only 2,000 to 5,000
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  Speaker 1: years and probably on the low side of that range
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  Speaker 1: to find somebody who could count every person alive today
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  Speaker 1: as a descendant.
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  Speaker 2: These are not Christians, by the way. These are evolutionary biologists.
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  Speaker 2: These are.
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  Speaker 1: Evolutionary scientists who by their computations have said you only
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  Speaker 1: have to go back between 2,000 and 4,000 years. To
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  Speaker 1: find a person from whom all of us are commonly descended. 2,000
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  Speaker 1: to 5,000 years. Well, the flood happened about 4,000 years ago.
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  Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, fits right in there. But wait, there's more. Furthermore,
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  Speaker 1: if you go back a little further, about 5,000 to 7,000
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  Speaker 1: years ago.
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  Speaker 2: By the way, I believe the earth is only about 6,000
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  Speaker 2: years old. I know that makes me a freak. Amen?
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  Speaker 2: But I believe Genesis.
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  Speaker 1: I do. I also believe science, and I believe the
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  Speaker 1: scientific evidence points to the earth being only around 6,000
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  Speaker 1: years old, not billions and billions of years old. But
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  Speaker 1: these evolutionary scientists say, furthermore, if you go back a
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  Speaker 1: little further, about 5,000 to 7,000 years ago, everybody living
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  Speaker 1: today has exactly the same set of ancestors.
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  Speaker 2: I wonder who that might be. That would be Adam
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  Speaker 2: and Eve. One race? Or multiple races? Which is it?
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  Speaker 1: Our culture says that there are multiple races. The Bible
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  Speaker 1: says that there is but one. Which do we say?
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  Speaker 1: For most of my life, I've believed that there were
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  Speaker 1: multiple races. For most of my life, I believe that.
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  Speaker 1: Even as a new believer, I believe that. I became
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  Speaker 1: a believer that it didn't automatically change every aspect of
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  Speaker 1: my thinking overnight. No, I was still swimming in the
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  Speaker 1: stream of this culture and believed with every fiber of
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  Speaker 1: my being that there were multiple races of people and
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  Speaker 1: that you could determine those multiple races of people by
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  Speaker 1: external characteristics like skin tone, like hair type, like shape
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  Speaker 1: of face and eyes and things of that nature, but
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  Speaker 1: that there were multiple races of people. Why do we
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  Speaker 1: doubt the one race hypothesis? Two reasons mainly. One reason
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  Speaker 1: is evolution. We doubt the one race hypothesis because we
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  Speaker 1: are bathed in this theory of evolution. We believe this
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  Speaker 1: theory of evolution. Everywhere we go, it's assumed that man evolved.
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  Speaker 1: And evolutionary thinking has thought for a long time that
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  Speaker 1: there are multiple races of people. The second reason that
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  Speaker 1: we believe or that we fail to believe this one
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  Speaker 1: race hypothesis is because of racism. It's because of racism.
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  Speaker 1: Because of racial prejudice. And that category of race and
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  Speaker 1: that category of thinking about people as races of people
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  Speaker 1: is actually racist in itself. That category that goes back
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  Speaker 1: to Genesis chapter 10. and somehow believes that there was
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  Speaker 1: a mutation that took place, and that there were certain
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  Speaker 1: mutant races that came as a result of that, that's racism.
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  Speaker 1: Or that idea that goes back even further to Adam,
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  Speaker 1: and says that there was somehow a sub-Adamic race. That
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  Speaker 1: there is Adam and the people who descended from Adam,
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  Speaker 1: but then there are other people who did not descend
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  Speaker 1: from Adam, but they descended from some sub-Adamic race. Some
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  Speaker 1: race not identified with Adam. That is racism. As we
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  Speaker 1: look at Genesis 10, I want you to understand that
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  Speaker 1: this gets to the core of who we are as people.
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  Speaker 1: This gets to the core of how we relate to
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  Speaker 1: one another. This gets to the core of how we
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  Speaker 1: treat one another. And this gets to the core of
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  Speaker 1: assumptions and prejudices.
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  Speaker 2: With which all of us struggle.
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  Speaker 1: All of us. Here's what I want to do in
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  Speaker 1: the rest of the time that we have together. I
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  Speaker 1: want to show you how this struggle has come about.
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  Speaker 1: I want to show you the scars that this struggle
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  Speaker 1: has left. And then we will look back at a
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  Speaker 1: better way to think about issues regarding so-called race.