Latest / truthunedited / Did God Really Curse Africans_ _ The Origin of Black People According to the Bible

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Did God Really Curse Africans_ _ The Origin of Black People According to the Bible · truthunedited

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  Speaker 1: Did God really curse Africans? Did the Bible say that
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  Speaker 1: black people are cursed because of something that happened in Genesis?
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  Speaker 1: This is one of the most repeated claims in the
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  Speaker 1: history of Christianity. It has been preached from pulpits, written
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  Speaker 1: into law, and used to justify 300 years of slavery.
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  Speaker 1: And every person who made that claim pointed to the
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  Speaker 1: same passage, one verse, in Genesis chapter 9. Today we
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  Speaker 1: are going to do something that almost nobody who makes
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  Speaker 1: this claim has ever done. We are going to open
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  Speaker 1: the text and read the verse. Because the name that
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  Speaker 1: is actually in it is not the name you have
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  Speaker 1: been told. By the end of this video, you will
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  Speaker 1: know exactly what that verse says, who it was about,
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  Speaker 1: where the lie came from, and what the Bible actually
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  Speaker 1: says about the people of Africa. And you will be
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  Speaker 1: able to answer it yourself. Not because a preacher told you.
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  Speaker 1: And not because this channel told you. Because you will
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  Speaker 1: have seen the name in the verse. Before we read
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  Speaker 1: the curse, we need to understand the story it comes from.
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  Speaker 1: Because most people skip the context and jump to the verse,
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  Speaker 1: and the context changes everything. Noah, the man who built
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  Speaker 1: the ark, who saved his family while the world drowned,
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  Speaker 1: steps off the boat into an empty earth. Genesis 9
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  Speaker 1: verse 20. Noah began to be a man of the soil,
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  Speaker 1: and he planted a vineyard. The hero of the flood
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  Speaker 1: becomes a farmer. He grows grapes. He makes wine. And
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  Speaker 1: then the text says what the text says without softening it.
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  Speaker 1: He drank, he got drunk, and he lay uncovered inside
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  Speaker 1: his tent. The man who saved humanity is naked and
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  Speaker 1: unconscious on the floor. And before we go a line further,
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  Speaker 1: Understand who these three brothers actually are in the logic
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  Speaker 1: of Genesis. The flood has just ended. Eight people stepped
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  Speaker 1: off that boat, and three of them were sons, Shem, Ham,
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  Speaker 1: and Japheth. Genesis 9 verse 19 says it plainly. From
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  Speaker 1: these three the whole earth was populated. That means every
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  Speaker 1: human being alive, by the reckoning of this text, descends
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  Speaker 1: from one of those three men. Every nation. every language,
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  Speaker 1: every skin. Whatever happens in the next six verses is
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  Speaker 1: not happening to a foreign people or a distant tribe.
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  Speaker 1: It is happening inside one family, the only family there is. Ham,
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  Speaker 1: one of Noah's three sons, went in and saw his
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  Speaker 1: father's nakedness, and then he went out and told his
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  Speaker 1: two brothers. Now, before we move one verse further, we
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  Speaker 1: have to be honest about something. because this channel does
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  Speaker 1: not build arguments on things that are not settled. What
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  Speaker 1: does saw his father's nakedness actually mean? Three readings exist,
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  Speaker 1: and scholars have debated them seriously for centuries. The first,
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  Speaker 1: he literally saw Noah naked, and instead of covering him,
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  Speaker 1: went outside and told his brothers, treating his father's shame
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  Speaker 1: as something to talk about rather than something to protect.
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  Speaker 1: The second, in Leviticus chapter 18, the phrase, to uncover
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  Speaker 1: the nakedness of, is used consistently as a euphemism for
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  Speaker 1: sexual violation. The language is identical. Some scholars read Ham's
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  Speaker 1: act as something far worse than looking, a sexual act
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  Speaker 1: against his own father. The third, certain rabbinic traditions suggest castration,
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  Speaker 1: that Ham acted to prevent Noah from fathering more sons
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  Speaker 1: than who would divide the inheritance. We are not going
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  Speaker 1: to pretend we know which reading is correct. What the
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  Speaker 1: text makes clear is this. Whatever Ham did, it was
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  Speaker 1: a grievous violation of his father. And what his brothers
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  Speaker 1: did next proves how serious it was. Shem and Japheth
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  Speaker 1: took a garment, laid it across both their shoulders, walked
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  Speaker 1: into the tent backward, and covered their father without looking
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  Speaker 1: at him. They honored what Ham had dishonored. They refused
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  Speaker 1: to see what Ham had made into a spectacle. Then
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  Speaker 1: Noah woke up. Genesis 9, verse 24. When Noah awoke
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  Speaker 1: from his wine and knew what his youngest son had
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  Speaker 1: done to him, he spoke. And this is the verse.
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  Speaker 1: This is the passage that has been used for centuries
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  Speaker 1: to justify the enslavement and subjugation of African peoples. We
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  Speaker 1: are going to read it exactly as it is written
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  Speaker 1: in the Hebrew text. Word for word. No paraphrase. Genesis
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  Speaker 1: 9 verse 25. Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants
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  Speaker 1: shall he be to his brothers. Look at the name.
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  Speaker 1: The name in the curse is not Ham. It is
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  Speaker 1: not Cush. It is not Mizraim. It is not Put.
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  Speaker 1: It is not Africa. The name in the curse is Canaan,
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  Speaker 1: Noah's grandson, Ham's son. one specific descendant. And that is strange,
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  Speaker 1: and honest readers have always found it strange. Ham committed
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  Speaker 1: the act. Canaan is named in the curse. Why? Scholars
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  Speaker 1: have offered several answers. Some point out that Genesis 9,
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  Speaker 1: verse 18 goes out of its way to introduce Ham
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  Speaker 1: as the father of Canaan, before the incident, as though
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  Speaker 1: the writer is preparing you for what is coming. Some
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  Speaker 1: note that Genesis is a book written for Israel, about
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  Speaker 1: to enter a land occupied by Canaanites. And the passage
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  Speaker 1: is explaining the origin of a conflict its first readers
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  Speaker 1: were living inside. Others read it as measure for measure justice.
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  Speaker 1: Ham dishonored a father, so the consequence falls on Ham
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  Speaker 1: through his own son. We are not going to choose
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  Speaker 1: between those for you. But notice what none of them do.
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  Speaker 1: Not one of those explanations extends the curse past the
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  Speaker 1: name written in the verse. Whatever the reason Canaan is named,
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  Speaker 1: Canaan is the one who is named. Verse 26. Blessed
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  Speaker 1: be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let Canaan
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  Speaker 1: be his servant. Verse 27. May God enlarge Japheth, and
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  Speaker 1: let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let
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  Speaker 1: Canaan be his servant. Three verses. The name Canaan appears
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  Speaker 1: three times, the word servant appears three times, and the
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  Speaker 1: word black appears zero times. The word skin appears zero times.
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  Speaker 1: The word Africa appears zero times. The curse is servitude,
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  Speaker 1: servant of servants. That is all. Where is the word black?
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  Speaker 1: Where is the word skin? Where is the word Africa?
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  Speaker 1: It is not in the text. Now the question the
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  Speaker 1: viewer must ask, if the curse is on Canaan, who
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  Speaker 1: is Canaan? And where did his descendants go because if
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  Speaker 1: Canaan settled in Africa, the claim might still hold. If
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  Speaker 1: he did not, it collapses entirely. Ham had four sons.
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  Speaker 1: Genesis 10 verse 6 names all four, Cush, Mizraim, Put,
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  Speaker 1: and Canaan, Cush, Ethiopia, and Nubia, the lands south of Egypt,
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  Speaker 1: stretching into modern Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, African. Mizraim, Egypt itself,
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  Speaker 1: the civilization of the pyramids, the Pharaohs, the Nile. One
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  Speaker 1: of the greatest cultures in human history, African, Put, Libya,
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  Speaker 1: the North African coast, west of Egypt, African, three sons,
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  Speaker 1: three African nations, three descendants of Ham. And not one
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  Speaker 1: of them, not Cush, not Mizraim, not Put, is cursed
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  Speaker 1: in Genesis 9, not in this verse, not in any
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  Speaker 1: other verse, not once in any book, in either testament,
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  Speaker 1: Search the entire Bible. They are not there. And then
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  Speaker 1: the fourth son, Canaan, the one who is in the verse.
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  Speaker 1: Genesis 10 verses 15 through 19. The text maps Canaan's
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  Speaker 1: descendants and their territory with a precision that leaves nothing
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  Speaker 1: to interpret. Canaan fathered Sidon, the great Phoenician port city
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  Speaker 1: in what is now Lebanon. He fathered Heth, ancestor of
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  Speaker 1: the Hittites and in modern Turkey and Syria. Then the Jebusites,
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  Speaker 1: the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites. And the text draws
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  Speaker 1: the borders explicitly, from Sidon in the direction of Gerar,
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  Speaker 1: as far as Gaza, and in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Adma,
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  Speaker 1: and Zeboim, as far as Lasha. That is modern Lebanon, Israel, Palestine,
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  Speaker 1: and parts of Jordan and Syria. That is the Levant.
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  Speaker 1: That is the Middle East. Canaan did not settle in Africa.
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  Speaker 1: Canaan's descendants are the Canaanites, the people who occupied the
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  Speaker 1: land that God promised to Abraham, the people Israel displaced
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  Speaker 1: under Joshua, the people who lived in the promised land.
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  Speaker 1: They are Levantine, not African. The geography is explicit. The
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  Speaker 1: text draws the borders. And there is something else in
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  Speaker 1: Genesis 10 that the people who built this doctrine never mentioned,
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  Speaker 1: because it destroys the entire framework. Genesis 10 is called
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  Speaker 1: the Table of Nations. It lists 70 peoples descended from
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  Speaker 1: Noah's three sons, mapped across the known world. Shem's line
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  Speaker 1: into Mesopotamia and Arabia, Japheth's into Anatolia and the Aegean,
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  Speaker 1: Ham's into Africa and the Levant. It is one of
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  Speaker 1: the oldest attempts in any literature to describe how all
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  Speaker 1: human beings are related. And that is the point. It
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  Speaker 1: is a family tree not a hierarchy. There is no
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  Speaker 1: ranking in it. There is no statement anywhere in the
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  Speaker 1: chapter that one line is superior, or that one line
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  Speaker 1: is meant to serve another by nature. The chapter closes
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  Speaker 1: by saying that from these, the nations spread over the
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  Speaker 1: earth after the flood. And it stops. No verdict. No cast.
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  Speaker 1: The men who preached a curse on Africa had to
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  Speaker 1: read a genealogy as a ladder. The text does not
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  Speaker 1: give them one, the curse on Africa, the condemnation of
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  Speaker 1: dark skin, the divine origin of racial hierarchy. It is
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  Speaker 1: not in the text. None of it is in the text.
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  Speaker 1: If it is not in the text, then where did
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  Speaker 1: it come from? Someone put this idea into the world.
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  Speaker 1: Someone took a verse about Canaan and applied it to
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  Speaker 1: an entire continent of people who are never named in
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  Speaker 1: the passage. When did that happen and why? The biblical
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  Speaker 1: text does not connect Ham with dark skin. That connection
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  Speaker 1: appears in certain post-biblical sources, in particular a passage in
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  Speaker 1: the Babylonian Talmud and later Midrashic traditions, where commentators added
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  Speaker 1: the idea that Ham was physically changed aboard the ark
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  Speaker 1: as punishment. But these are interpretive additions centuries after the
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  Speaker 1: text was written. They are not in Genesis. They are
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  Speaker 1: not in any biblical book. And they do not represent
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  Speaker 1: the consensus of Jewish scholarship. They are isolated traditions within
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  Speaker 1: a vast body of commentary. And many Jewish scholars rejected
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  Speaker 1: them entirely. But they existed. And centuries later, men with
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  Speaker 1: very different motives found them useful. There is another claim
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  Speaker 1: that circulates widely, that Ham's name itself means black or dark,
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  Speaker 1: proving a racial connection. But that claim does not hold.
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  Speaker 1: The etymology of the name Ham is disputed among scholars,
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  Speaker 1: and no serious Hebrew lexicon supports a color meaning. Beginning
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  Speaker 1: in the 15th century, European nations began the systematic enslavement
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  Speaker 1: of Africans on a scale the world had never seen.
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  Speaker 1: And they had a problem. These were Christian nations. Their
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  Speaker 1: people went to church. Their kings claimed divine authority. And
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  Speaker 1: they needed permission, not from a parliament, not from a court,
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  Speaker 1: but from God himself. They needed a verse that said
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  Speaker 1: what they wanted to do was ordained. And this is
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  Speaker 1: worth understanding precisely because the swap was not subtle. It
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  Speaker 1: was not a translation problem or a difficult Hebrew construction.
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  Speaker 1: There is no ambiguity in the verse. The Hebrew word
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  Speaker 1: for Canaan is there, written plainly, three times, in three
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  Speaker 1: consecutive verses. Anyone who could read the passage could see it.
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  Speaker 1: which means the men who preached the curse of Ham
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  Speaker 1: were not misled by a hard text. They were standing
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  Speaker 1: in front of a clear one and saying a different
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  Speaker 1: name than the one in front of them. They found
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  Speaker 1: Genesis 9, and they changed it. They read, Cursed be Canaan,
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  Speaker 1: and said, Cursed be Ham. They read, Servant of servants,
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  Speaker 1: and said, Slave by birth and nature. They read a
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  Speaker 1: verse about one grandson in the Levant. and applied it
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  Speaker 1: to an entire continent of people who are never named
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  Speaker 1: in the passage. And for 300 years, this reading was
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  Speaker 1: preached from pulpits, published in pamphlets, taught in seminaries, and
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  Speaker 1: written into the legal codes of nations that called themselves Christian.
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  Speaker 1: And notice how it traveled, because a doctrine does not
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  Speaker 1: spread by accident. It spread in print. As European powers
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  Speaker 1: expanded into the Atlantic slave trade, The reading spread through sermons, pamphlets, catechisms,
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  Speaker 1: and colonial legal argument, the everyday paperwork of empire. It
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  Speaker 1: appeared in defenses of the trade written for parliaments and planters.
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  Speaker 1: It was taught to enslaved people themselves in mission chapels
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  Speaker 1: as an explanation for the condition they were living in.
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  Speaker 1: That last detail is the one to sit with. The
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  Speaker 1: doctrine was not only used to justify slavery to the
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  Speaker 1: people carrying it out, it was preached to the people
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  Speaker 1: it was done to, so that they would understand their
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  Speaker 1: own captivity as the will of God. The Southern Baptist Convention,
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  Speaker 1: today the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, was
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  Speaker 1: founded in 1845, not over a point of theology, not
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  Speaker 1: over a disagreement about baptism or communion, over slavery. Northern
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  Speaker 1: Baptists refused to appoint slaveholders as foreign missionaries. Southern Baptists
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  Speaker 1: split from the Convention and formed their own specifically to
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  Speaker 1: protect the right of slaveholders to serve. The Curse of
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  Speaker 1: Ham was a foundational theological argument in that defense, a
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  Speaker 1: history the Convention itself formally acknowledged and publicly repudiated in 1995,
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  Speaker 1: apologizing for its past defense of racism. In South Africa,
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  Speaker 1: the Dutch Reformed Church used the same doctrine, the same verse,
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  Speaker 1: the same misreading, to provide theological justification for apartheid, the
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  Speaker 1: legal separation of races, the subjugation of an entire population,
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  Speaker 1: defended from the pulpit with Genesis 9, verse 25, a
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  Speaker 1: verse that says, Canaan, sit with this for a moment,
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  Speaker 1: not as history, as weight. Every African who was told
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  Speaker 1: by a Christian minister, that God had cursed their skin
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  Speaker 1: was hearing a lie built on a verse that does
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  Speaker 1: not contain the words black, skin, Africa, or ham. Every
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  Speaker 1: person who walked away from the faith because they believed
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  Speaker 1: God had condemned their race was driven away by a
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  Speaker 1: doctrine that is not in the passage they were told
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  Speaker 1: it was in. The damage was not only physical, the chains,
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  Speaker 1: the ships, the plantations. The damage was spiritual. people lost
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  Speaker 1: their relationship with God over a verse they were never shown.
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  Speaker 1: They said it was in the Bible. It was not
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  Speaker 1: in the Bible. It was in the interests of men
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  Speaker 1: who needed God to agree with what they had already
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  Speaker 1: decided to do. Now, with the lie stripped back to
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  Speaker 1: the text, with the verse laid open and the name
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  Speaker 1: read aloud, the question becomes, what does Scripture actually say
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  Speaker 1: about the people of Africa? Because the truth is not silence,
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  Speaker 1: The truth is not the Bible saying nothing about Africans.
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  Speaker 1: The truth is the opposite of what they were told.
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  Speaker 1: Numbers 12, verse 1. Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses
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  Speaker 1: because of the Cushite woman he had married, for he
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  Speaker 1: had married a Cushite woman. Stop here. Moses, the lawgiver,
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  Speaker 1: the man who spoke with God face to face, the
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  Speaker 1: man who parted the Red Sea and received the commandments
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  Speaker 1: on Sinai, married an African woman, a Cushite, a descendant
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  Speaker 1: of Ham. And when Miriam and Aaron objected to the marriage,
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  Speaker 1: here is what God did. He did not rebuke Moses.
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  Speaker 1: He did not condemn the marriage. He did not mention
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  Speaker 1: any curse. God summoned all three of them to the
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  Speaker 1: tent of meeting, and he struck Miriam with leprosy, her
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  Speaker 1: skin turned white as snow. Aaron begged Moses to intercede.
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  Speaker 1: Moses cried out to God, and God healed her after
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  Speaker 1: seven days outside the camp, but read what happened. The
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  Speaker 1: person who had a problem with the African marriage was punished,
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  Speaker 1: not the African, not the husband, the objector, and the
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  Speaker 1: punishment turned her own skin white. Whether the text intends
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  Speaker 1: that irony or not, it is there on the page.
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  Speaker 1: Jeremiah 38 The prophet Jeremiah has been accused of treason
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  Speaker 1: and and thrown into a cistern, not a well with water,
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  Speaker 1: but a pit with mud at the bottom. He is sinking.
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  Speaker 1: He has been left to die. The officials of Judah
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  Speaker 1: put him there. The people of Jerusalem let it happen.
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  Speaker 1: And the man who rescues him is Ebed-Melech, a Cushite,
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  Speaker 1: an African. A court official who goes directly to the king,
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  Speaker 1: argues for the prophet's life, takes 30 men, and personally
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  Speaker 1: pulls Jeremiah out. And the text adds a detail that
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  Speaker 1: tells you who this man was. He brought old rags
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  Speaker 1: and worn-out clothes and told Jeremiah to put them under
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  Speaker 1: his arms so the ropes would not cut his skin.
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  Speaker 1: He saved a prophet's life and cared about rope burn.
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  Speaker 1: An African man is the hero of this chapter, and
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  Speaker 1: God remembered it. Jeremiah 39, verses 15 through 18. While
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  Speaker 1: Jerusalem was falling... God sent Jeremiah to Abed-Melech with a
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  Speaker 1: personal promise. I will rescue you on that day, and
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  Speaker 1: you will not be handed over to the men you fear.
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  Speaker 1: I will surely save you, and you will not fall
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  Speaker 1: by the sword because you trusted in me, declares the Lord.
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  Speaker 1: a personal divine guarantee of protection given to an African.
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  Speaker 1: While the rest of Jerusalem burned, Acts chapter 8. A
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  Speaker 1: high official of the Candace, the queen of Ethiopia, is
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  Speaker 1: traveling home from Jerusalem in his chariot, reading the scroll
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  Speaker 1: of Isaiah. The Spirit of God sends Philip to him.
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  Speaker 1: Philip hears him reading Isaiah 53 and asks if he
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  Speaker 1: understands what he is reading. The Ethiopian says, How can
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  Speaker 1: I unless someone guides me? Philip explains the gospel. The
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  Speaker 1: man believes. He sees water on the road. And he
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  Speaker 1: asks a question that should end every argument about Africa
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  Speaker 1: and the Bible forever. What prevents me from being baptized?
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  Speaker 1: What prevents me? That is the question. And the answer,
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  Speaker 1: from Philip, from the Spirit, from the text, is nothing.
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  Speaker 1: No mention of Ham. No discussion of any curse. No barrier.
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  Speaker 1: No condition. No hesitation. An African official reading Scripture, believing
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  Speaker 1: the Gospel, baptized on the spot. One of the first
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  Speaker 1: recorded conversions in the entire book of Acts. And there
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  Speaker 1: is one more figure the Bible treats with unmistakable respect.
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  Speaker 1: and Jesus himself brings her up. 1 Kings chapter 10
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  Speaker 1: The Queen of Sheba hears of Solomon's wisdom and travels
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  Speaker 1: to Jerusalem with a caravan of spices, gold, and precious stones,
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  Speaker 1: one of the wealthiest visitors in the entire Old Testament,
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  Speaker 1: arriving not as a supplicant, but as a monarch. She
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  Speaker 1: tests Solomon with hard questions. He answers them, and she
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  Speaker 1: blesses the God of Israel by name. The Bible does
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  Speaker 1: not sneer at her. It does not qualify her. It
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  Speaker 1: records a foreign queen from the south as a woman
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  Speaker 1: of wealth, intelligence, and discernment. And a thousand years later,
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  Speaker 1: in Matthew chapter 12, Jesus names her. He calls her
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  Speaker 1: the queen of the south. And he says she will
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  Speaker 1: rise at the judgment and condemn the generation standing in
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  Speaker 1: front of him because she traveled from the ends of
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  Speaker 1: the earth to hear wisdom. and they would not listen
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  Speaker 1: to wisdom standing in the room with them. Jesus of
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  Speaker 1: Nazareth held up a southern queen as a rebuke to
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  Speaker 1: his own listeners. Psalm 68 verse 31 Cush will stretch
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: out her hands to God. Not a curse, a prophecy.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: A vision of African worship that has not yet fully arrived,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: but is spoken with the certainty of a promise. Zephaniah
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: 3 verse 10 From beyond the rivers of Cush, my
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: worshipers will bring me offerings, God naming Africa in his
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: vision of future worship, included, welcomed, called by name. And
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: step back from the individual verses for a moment and
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: look at the volume. Cush appears in the Hebrew Bible
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: dozens of times. Egypt appears hundreds. These are not obscure
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: references buried in genealogies. Africa is one of the most
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: frequently named regions in the entire Old Testament. Abraham went
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: down into Egypt during a famine. Joseph ruled it. Moses
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: was raised in Pharaoh's household and named by an Egyptian princess.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Jeremiah ended his life in Egypt. And when Herod wanted
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: the infant Jesus dead, the family that carried him to
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: safety carried him into Africa. And the Gospel of Matthew
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: quotes Hosea over it. Out of Egypt I called my son.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: The Son of God was a refugee on African soil.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: That is in the text too. Mark 15 verse 21.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Jesus is carrying the cross toward Golgotha. He stumbles under
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: the weight. The Roman soldiers look into the crowd and
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: grab a man, and they force him to carry the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: cross beam the rest of the way. His name is Simon.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: He is from Cyrene, a city in modern Libya, North Africa.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: An African man carried the cross of Jesus Christ. The
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: instrument of the world's salvation rested on African shoulders. Hold
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: that image, because the men who would later preach that
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: God had cursed Africa were preaching from beneath the shadow
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: of a cross that an African carried. Galatians 3, verse 28.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: nor free. There is neither male nor female. for you
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: are all one in Christ Jesus. And one chapter earlier,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: law by becoming a curse for us. Every curse, every one,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: ends at the cross. But this video has already shown
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: you the deeper truth. The curse they placed on Africa
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: was never there to begin with. Christ did not need
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: to lift a curse from a continent that was never cursed.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: What needed to be removed was not a biblical curse,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: but the lie men had placed on a continent in
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: God's name. And here is the truth that should silence
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: this argument permanently, and it is a truth that most
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: people have never been told. Christianity was in Africa as
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: early as anywhere in Europe, and earlier than most of it.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: The church in Alexandria, in Egypt, the land of Mizraim,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the son of Ham, became one of the five great
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: patriarchates of the early church, not a mission field that
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: received the gospel late, one of the intellectual centers that
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: sent the gospel out. The towering minds of early Christian
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: theology were North African, born in Roman Africa, the Latin
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: and Greek-speaking Mediterranean world of Carthage, Hippo, and Alexandria. Tertullian,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: born in Carthage, modern Tunisia. He coined the Latin word Trinitas, Trinity,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: the single word that describes the nature of the God
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: that Christians worship. A North African mind gave it to
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: the church. Augustine, born in Thagast, modern Algeria, the most
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: influential theologian in the history of Western Christianity. The man
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: whose writings shaped Catholic, Protestant, and Reformed theology for 1,500 years.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: North African. Athanasius, born in Alexandria, Egypt, the man who
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: stood against the entire world to defend the deity of
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ at the Council of Nicaea. When historians say,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Athanasius contra mundum, Athanasius against the world, they are talking
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: about a North African bishop who refused to let the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: church deny that Jesus is God, even when every power
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: in the Roman Empire pressured him to back down. He
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: was exiled five times. He never changed his position. And
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: the creed that defines Christian orthodoxy to this day carries
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: his theology. And there is a church still standing that
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: settles the argument on its own. Ethiopia adopted Christianity as
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the religion of its kingdom in the 4th century, around
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: the same period as the Roman Empire itself, and centuries
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: before most of northern and western Europe. The Ethiopian Orthodox
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Church has an unbroken history from that period to this one.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: It has its own liturgical language, its own biblical canon,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: its own monastic tradition, and churches carved out of solid
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: rock that are still in use today. Which means that
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: at the very moment, European ships were arriving on the
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: African coast to buy human beings. There was an African
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Christian kingdom that that had been worshipping Christ for more
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: than a thousand years, longer than the nations sending the ships.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: The faith that Europeans later used to enslave Africans was
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: being defined, defended, and spread from the soil of Africa
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: centuries before those European nations had ever heard the gospel.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: The people they called cursed were the ones who gave
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: them the theology. One final thing, if the curse was
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: on Canaan, and the text says it was, then what
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: happened to it? It was fulfilled. In the book of Joshua,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: when Israel crossed the Jordan River and entered the land
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: of Canaan, the land of Canaan's descendants, the curse found
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: its target. Joshua chapter 9. The Gibeonites, Canaanites who had
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: tricked Israel into a peace treaty through deception, were discovered.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Joshua did not destroy them. He made them servants. Hewers
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: for the altar of the Lord, servants of servants, the
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: exact words of the curse, fulfilled in the promised land,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: against Canaanites, in the Levant, exactly where Genesis 10 said
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: they would be, exactly where the text always pointed. And
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: then the curse does something the men who weaponized it
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: never accounted for. It runs out. Rahab was a Canaanite
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: woman in Jericho, a city under the ban, a woman
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: from the exact line named in Genesis 9. She hid
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: the Israelite spies, she chose the God of Israel over
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: her own city, and she was spared. And the New
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Testament does not leave her at the wall. Matthew chapter
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: 1 names her in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. A
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Canaanite woman stands in the ancestry of the Messiah. The Gibeonites,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: made servants under Joshua, are still there generations later, carrying
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: water for the altar of God. inside the worship of Israel,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: protected by God himself when Saul later tried to destroy them.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: And Jesus in Matthew 15 meets a woman the text
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: calls a Canaanite. She asks him to heal her daughter.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: He tells her that her faith is great, one of
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: only two people in the Gospels he says that to.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: The other is a Roman centurion. A curse pronounced in
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Genesis 9 did not stop a Canaanite woman entering the
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: bloodline of the Messiah, and it did not stop another
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Canaanite woman receiving one of the highest commendations Jesus ever gave.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: The curse was never about Africa. It was about the
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: land of Canaan. For 300 years, men stood in pulpits
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: and read a verse that says, Cursed be Canaan, and
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: told their congregations it said, Cursed be Africa. Millions of
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: people believed it. Millions of people suffered for it. And
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: almost none of them, not the ones preaching it, not
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the ones hearing it, not the ones living under it,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: did the one thing that would have ended it immediately.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: They did not open the text and read the name.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: The name is Canaan. It was always Canaan. It was
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: never changed. It was never hidden. It was sitting right there,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: in one sentence, in the ninth chapter of the first
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: book of the Bible, waiting for someone to read it.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: And if you were ever told this by a pastor,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: by a teacher, by a relative, by anyone who should
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: have known better, I want you to hear something clearly.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: It was never true, not partly true, not true once
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: and misunderstood later. It was never in the text at all.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: And whatever that lie took from you, years, confidence, the
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: sense that you were welcome in your own faith. It
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: did not come from God. It came from men who
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: needed him to agree with them. And he never did.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: You were not cursed. You were never cursed. You were
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: made in the image of God, like every other human
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: being who has ever drawn breath. And you were named
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: in his plans long before anyone invented a reason to
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: exclude you. Cush will stretch out her hands to God,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: He said that 3,000 years ago, and he was talking
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: about you. That is the real lesson of this story,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: not just for this verse, but for every verse anyone
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: has ever told you means something without showing you the text.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: If someone tells you the Bible says something, read it.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Read the verse. Read the chapter. Read who is speaking
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: and who is being spoken to, and what comes before
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: and what comes after. Because the distance between what the
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Bible says and what people say the Bible says, that
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: distance has cost more lives than most wars. A North
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: African man carried the cross. A North African man coined
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: the word Trinity. A North African man defended the deity
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: of Christ at the council that defined it for all time.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: And an African official reading Isaiah on a desert road
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: was among the first people in history to hear the
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: gospel and believe it. That is what the Bible says
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: about Africa. Not because someone told you. Because it is
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: in the text. Go and read it. The Bible does
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: not curse Africa. People did. And they said God told
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: them to. He did not. It is not in the text.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: It was never in the text. If this video opened
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: your eyes, tell me in the comments. I want to
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: hear from you. Share this with someone who needs to
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: hear the truth. Like this video and subscribe so you
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: never miss a deep dive like this. And if you
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: want to understand who the one called the Lion of
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Judah truly was, not just his tribe, but his identity
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: before the foundation of the world, we have a video
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: that traces the evidence from Genesis to Revelation. The link
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: is right here. God bless you, and we will see
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: you in the next one.