Interracial Marriage, a Biblical Perspective
In this essay on interracial marriage, we need to differentiate between man`s law and God`s Law. As the reader analyzes the subject, it will probably become evident that man`s law changes, depending on the individuals who currently rule and make the laws. God`s Law never changes. It is the proven standard, the rulebook by which nations, a people, withstand the elements of time.
Interracial Marriage - Man`s Law
In the founding of America, the Bible was the primary document by which civil laws originated. Clearly, reading the old documents and manuscripts of the Founders, their intent was that America was to be a Christian nation under the direction of God Yahweh (God's name, pronounced Yah-Way), the Father, and Jesus Christ the Son. Their rulebook, the Holy Bible, was to be the guide. As a result, up until the 1950`s, most of the States had laws on the books against interracial marriage. It had been decades since those laws were enforced, never the less they served as a reminder that the United States was formed upon Christian principles and laws.
During the 1950`s and 60`s, from my personal observation, it was socially acceptable for a white to be part Indian, as long as the Indian part was not so evident. But at that point in time, at least in rural West Texas where I grew up, it was not socially acceptable for a white to be part Mexican, African, or Asian. In public school, I do not remember any of these four involved in interracial dating. The mores of days past still prevailed.
But as we have entered into the 21st century, in aggregate, man`s views have changed. The god of political correctness prevails in the minds of every man, woman, and child in America. This has been accomplished by the never-ending propaganda/programming of the media, governmental institution laws, public education, mega-corporations policy, and Christian churches desiring to maintain their tax deductibility status. Only the degree of "PC" acceptance varies. In the 21st century, almost every Texan one speaks to has a grandmother that is "part-Indian". Almost every genealogist is searching tirelessly for that prized American Indian link. It now appears to be a genetic defect to be "only" all white. As we walk and drive the streets of America, we see every possible racial combination - in reality and those in-the-making. It is now illegal, under man`s law, to make a derogatory comment against a person`s mixed racial genealogy. Punishments for this crime are fines and imprisonment. Many "Christian" churches now see it as a virtue to marry another race.
Interracial Marriage, God`s Law
The purpose of this essay is to determine the answer to the question: Biblically speaking, is interracial marriage right or wrong? The following is not to be all-inclusive, but simply a summary of the subject as stated in the Holy Bible.
Because of their sinful ways, God Yahweh set the Assyrian nation against the people of the Bible, the nation of Israel, starting in 745BC. In 721BC, the northern ten tribes in the nation of Israel, and most of the two tribes of the nation of Judah, were conquered and relocated south of the Black Sea. Over time, most of this estimated fifteen million "Lost" Israel migrated north and northwest.
After 10-12,000 hours of conventional genealogical research and over 10 years of "unconventional" research, it is my belief that the descendants of these people, The Lost Tribes of Israel, eventually migrated to America from 1607 through the mid-1800s. God having made a promise to them of a New Jerusalem, He gave to Christians, of Adam & Abraham's descent, America, which in the old Gothic language means the Heavenly (amer) Kingdom (rica). Go to https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_BE62mYDaeilZTbrZU0opTNbZMmr93Bb and see The Greatest Bible Discovery of Our Age, by Pastor Peter Peters, deceased, Scriptures for America, an online audio, a summary on this subject. A 90 minute listen could change forever the way you understand the Bible. The puzzle pieces all fit together.
Serious genealogists require a paper trail to document their genealogical facts. In this, the Christian-Israel truth stated above, there is not one - at least not in the conventional sense. There are no wills, courthouse records, census', nor family Bibles. But there is considerable evidence, none-the-less, to prove this assertion - one can spend years in the research, as I have done. The Christian-Israel belief is very helpful in understanding the Bible, but it is not absolutely necessary to a serious and honest Christian who understands that the Bible is a guidebook, one authored by God Yahweh, on which to build a lasting and workable society.
Through His Holy Spirit-inspired writers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob gave us a code by which to live. We have been given a written account of God`s direction, His Laws. If we follow its teachings, our nation and family will prosper morally, spiritually, and financially, as did the early Americans. If we choose to go the way of man`s laws (which change with the current political wind), our nation and family will decline and finally cease to exist.
When we consider our present and future family members, we must consider what Gods Law commands us. Does God have laws on pluralistic, multi-cultural, multi-racial societies? Does the Bible tell us such nations are morally sound? Do these nations withstand the test of time? What does Gods Law teach us about these types of societies?
Bible Verses Relating to Interracial Marriage
1. Numbers 25:6-11 "One of the children of Israel came and brought unto his brethren a Midianitish woman.... And Phinehas took a javelin in his hand; and he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly. So, the plague was stayed from the children of Israel." Note, it was a plague of different-people marriage.
2. Deuteronomy 7:3 After taking the land God has given thee: "Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shall not give unto his son, nor his daughter shall thou take unto thy son."
3. Ezra 9:2,12 "For they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons; so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands." "Now therefore give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters unto your sons....".
4. Ezra 10:2-3 "We have taken strange wives of the people of the land, yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them,...".
5. Genesis 24:3-4 "And I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell: But thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac."
6. Genesis 26:34-35 "And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri, the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite: Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah."
7. Genesis 27:46 "And Rebekah said to Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth: if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these which are of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me?"
8. Genesis 28:1,8,9 "And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan." "And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father; Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abrahams son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife."
9. Deuteronomy 23:2 "A bast*rd shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord, even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord." In Hebrew, from Strong`s Concordance, bast*rd means mamzer, which means mongrel. In this text it means Israelite father, non-Israelite mother (do not mistake the word Israelite with the word Jew - genetically, in 2002, they are not the same people). In Websters 1828 dictionary, mongrel is defined: Of a mixed breed, of different kinds.
10. Proverbs 23:27-33 "For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit..." "At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women and thine heart shall utter perverse things."
11. Exodus 33:16 "...so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth."
12. Deuteronomy 17:15 "Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee; thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother."
13. Nehemiah 13:3 "So it came about, that when they heard the Law, they excluded all foreigners from Israel."
What is the punishment for the transgression against the commandants above?
A few of the many examples are listed below. One can easily see the lessons, once again un-learned, in modern America.
1. Joshua 23:12-13 "Else if ye do in any wise go back, and cleave unto these that remain among you, and shall make marriages with them, and go in unto them, and they to you: Know for a certainty that the Lord your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the Lord your God hath given you."
2. Psalms 106:34-42 "They did not destroy the nations concerning whom the Lord commanded them: But were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works ... and went a whoring with their own inventions, ... And he gave them into the hand of the heathen; and they that hated them ruled over them. Their enemies also oppressed them, and they were brought into subjection under their hand."
3. Ezekiel 28:7 "...I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations: and they shall draw swords against the beauty of thy wisdom, and they shall defile thy brightness."
4. Joel 1:4 "That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left the caterpillar eaten." These insects are all symbolic of alien people.
Does all this mean that we should make war on those not like us? No, it means we should protect our individuality. There are many other Bible passages that tell us to love even our enemies. When the stranger is among us temporarily, we should treat him with courtesy and respect. But the Creation requires "kind after kind, like after like" (Gen. 1:24).
Blessings & Curses - On Obeying God's Laws and Commandments
What about God`s other Laws for the making and preservation of a nation? What happens when we follow His Laws? What is the effect when we disobey? Blessings and curses are listed in Deuteronomy, Chapter 28, and Leviticus, Chapter 26. A few are listed below - again, look and compare to modern America.
Blessings
1. "And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land."
2. "And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword."
3. "Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shalt be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep."
4. "And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail....".
Curses
1. "I will also send wild beasts (meaning barbaric people) among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number, and your highways shall be desolate."
2. "Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body."
3. "Thou shall betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her."
4. "Thy sons and daughters shall be given unto another people and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long....".
5. "Thou shall carry much seed out into the field, and shalt gather but little in for the locust (alien people) shall consume it."
6. "All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust (meaning alien people) consume."
7. "The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shall come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail."
8. "He shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee."
Contemporary Theological Errors Concerning Interracial Marriage
1. All races come from Adam, so interracial marriage is ok.
Clearly, the Bible informs us that there were other people on the earth before Adam. Click on www.crutchercpa.com/adamsdescendants.htm , then read Adam's Descendants , Chapter 1 & 2. In this primer, both Biblical and secular records are combined to analyze Adam and his descendants - who they were and who they are today.
2. Jesus came for everyone, all races, so interracial marriage is a non-issue.
Matthew 15:24 - "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Matthew 10:5-6 - "These twelve Jesus sent out after instructing them, saying "Do not go in the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter any city of the Samaritans; but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
3. But Jesus also came for the Gentiles - all non-Jews of the world.
From the preceding quotation in Matthew, it appears the response to this statement would be no, He did not come for the Gentiles. But we need to understand the meaning of Gentile. Even Dr. Strong in his Strong`s Concordance, did not fully understand the difference between Jew, Israelite and Gentile. There were two nations of Israelites in the Bible, the nation of Israel to the north and the nation of Judea to the south; the latter eventually came to be called the nation of the Jews. This split of the original 13 tribes occurred after the reign of Solomon and his many foreign wives and children, about 930BC. The great dispersion began with the nation of Israel 745-721BC - after the nation of Assyria conquered them. These people later in history became known as the "Lost Tribes" and composed all of the northern 10 tribes and most of the two southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin. From Strongs, the word Gentile means non-Jew (someone not living in Judea). But look closer, it is also defined as "nations" - a person or group of people not living within the nation of Israel or the nation of Judea. A Gentile can mean an Israelite or a non-Israelite living abroad. One must look at the context of the verse to determine the exact meaning. In essence, Jesus did come for the Gentiles (Israelites living abroad); He was sent only to the house of Israel. He commanded his disciples to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but they also went to the Gentiles (Israelites living abroad). Surely, they understood His meaning. The Gentiles Jesus desired that His disciples (including Paul) to reach were the Israelites in Judea and the dispersed Israelites, the Gentiles, the lost house of Israel, those who had lost their identity after 750 years of exile into the wilderness of the north and west.
4. Galatians 3:28-29 - "There is neither Jew (meaning Judean) nor Greek, there is neither slave nor freeman, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abrahams offspring, heirs according to promise". And the sister passage is Colossians 3:11 - "there is no distinction between Greek and Jew (meaning Judean), circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all."
This Bible passage is probably the most utilized to justify interracial marriage. If one disregards the remainder of scripture, it makes a convincing argument. However, the Bible must be taken as a whole and it must not contradict itself. Remember, Jesus came only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, Matthew 15:24. The house of Israel were the racial descendants of Abraham, and God made promises to him. Abraham's descendants were to become a multitude of nations (gentiles), as sands of the sea, and were to exist as long as the stars remain in the sky. What these passages mean is that Christ's "lost" sheep are the house of Israel, regardless of their geographic location. And if they were of the house of Israel, then they were of Abrahams seed, heirs of the promise.
5. Acts 17:26 - "And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation."
This one verse, in the Kings James Version, is what some people use to justify interracial marriage. The word blood is a relative term used in the KJV, but not in the NIV, nor the NASV. The New American Standard footnotes this fact and its translation is "and He made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation." The NAS also has a cross reference in Deut. 32:8, and it states, "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, When He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the sons of Israel". I think the term "man" means Adamic man, or those who descend from Adam. The Bible is written about and for the sons of Adam (Adamic man), specifically the sons of Israel, a specific lineage from Adam. The one in "He made from one" is referring to Adam, and the "nations" mean the subdivisions of Adam-man, or perhaps the subdivisions of Israel-man, regardless of their geographic location. Charles Wiseman has more thoughts and research on this subject in his booklet Not of One Blood, 60 pages, PO Box 240844, Apple Valley, MN 55124. Mr. Wiseman is one of the best researchers of our time.
6. Israel and the Jews are the same. Gods Laws only apply to the Jews.
This is not true. Most modern day Jews are the descendants of 7th century AD converts to Judaism/Talmudism. They, as a group, are a racially mixed people and partially descend from Noahs son Japheth. Japheth beget Gomer who beget Ashkenaz. The Ashkenazi Jews represent over 90% of modern Jewry. The remaining 10% of Jews are the Sephardim, who are also mixed, but do contain a portion of their genealogy from the old land of Palestine. Their ancestors are Abraham, the Canaanites, and also Esau/Edom. Jesus did not come for the modern day Jews; He came for the pure blood descendants of the house of Israel. There is quite a bit of historical data on this subject, including Arthur Koeslers The Thirteenth Tribe. His book proving that the Jews were not descendants of the Israelites of the Bible was on the NY Times Best Seller List for weeks in the 1970`s. Shortly thereafter, Koesler, a Jew, was murdered.
7. When Jesus came, He negated the Laws of the Old Testament, the Laws against interracial marriage being one.
Twenty-seven scriptures appear to negate the Law, and thirty-nine appear to support it.
Jesus negated the temporal laws that Moses enacted. These were the tutorial laws such as the feast days, Levitical priesthood, and animal sacrifice. When Jesus came, He took the place of these laws meant to tutor. Jesus states in Matthew 5:17-18 - "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets, I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished."
8. The Old Testament marriage Laws were religious, but not racial.
The story of Jacob and Rachael proves that statement to be false. Rachael and Leahs people were idol worshipers, but they were of the same racial stock as Jacob. See Genesis, Chapters 29-32, specifically Genesis 31:19 - "then Rachael stole the household idols that were her father's."
9. Solomon married many foreign wives, including a black one, so it must be ok (Solomon was a wise man) .
He did indeed marry many foreign wives, but re-read the Song of Solomon, different versions. She was swarthy from the sun, and may or may not have been white (I do not know). After Solomon died the many descendants could not get along, fought, and the nation of Israel split into the nation of Israel to the north and the nation of Judea to the south. In the Proverbs, it was Solomon who warned against marrying strange wives (he had lived it).
10. Moses married a black woman.
In Numbers 12:1 it states that Moses married an Ethiopian woman (KJV). If one looks at that country today, they would probably conclude that she was black. However, that was 3400 years ago and racial demographics change, just like they do today. One hundred years ago when one was referred to as a Texan, the conclusion was that he was white. Today a Texan is someone living in Texas and can be any race. In 1960, Spanish surnames were less than 1% of the population in America. Today, 45 years later, they are 20% of the population and a majority in some southwestern states. In some border-area towns they are the only population. In the NAS Bible version, the translation is "for he had married a Cushite woman". Cush was a son of Ham, who was a son of Noah, another Adamite; but she was not an Israelite. Aaron and his wife, Miriam, thought this was part of God`s law, to only marry an Israelite; but they were wrong. Especially after the dispersion of 721 BC and the subsequent relocation(s), the Israelites connected with and intermarried their racial cousins, fellow Adamites, long ago separated from Adam; but still carrying the special seed planted in Adam.
Concluding Thoughts
The first Bible story that comes to mind concerning the subject of interracial marriage is the story of Adam and Eve. This story informs us of the original sin that removed Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Eve was convinced by a snake, a two-legged kind no doubt, that it was within her to know good from evil, right from wrong. She was convinced that she was above God's Law. It was Eve who committed the original sin, but it was Adam who allowed it to happen. He was the head, Eve was the helpmeet. The analogy of interracial marriage is no different - many people have tasted the apple and now think their thoughts on what is right and wrong are equal to or superior to God's. Men, you are still the head and it is your responsibility to see that your family obeys God's Law. Because when you obey Him, you set the stage to re-enter the Garden of Eden - The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, as it is in Heaven.
There are so many Bible passages that fit modern America; more or less at random, the following were chosen:
Jeremiah 5:21-22 - Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, Who have eyes, but see not, Who have ears, but hear not. Do you not fear Me?, declares the Lord. Do you not tremble in My presence?
Jeremiah 5:23 - But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; They have turned aside and departed. They do not say in their heart, Let us now fear the Lord our God.
Jeremiah 6:10 - To whom shall I speak and give warning, That they may hear? Behold, their ears are closed, And they cannot listen. Behold the word of the Lord has become a reproach to them; They have no delight in it.
Kent Crutcher, ~ 1989