THE BIBLE UNDERSTOOD THROUGH THE AFRICAN EXPERIENCE.
The Smart African
20 September 2024

Prelude:
There is something amazing about how the Creator speaks to mankind. When I was young I thought God spoke to those having a Bible, but many decades later I have come to see that He speaks to those who (with clean hands) seek Him, whether or not they have the Bible. Examples include Joseph of the Book of Genesis. During his day the Bible had not yet even been written but he would have meditated on what he had heard the elders say, and having the right heart condition, God honoured him by communicating with him. Other very notable examples are the enslaved Africans of the Americas and the Caribbean who being punished if they somehow managed to read, were only allowed the White man’s version of religion and the infamous Slave Bible. Yet, amazingly they knew God was with them and not with the White community that created and enforced the diabolical chattel slavery, jim crow, and segregation (put down for Black people, undeserved privileges for White people). There are also the indigenous peoples of North, Central and South America, as well as those of Asia, Australia and the South Pacific – among them were individuals who over the centuries had been able to communicate with God.
------

Today, the Black World is confronted more than ever before with two pathways: will it be the White man’s interpretation of the Bible, or will it be the Black man’s interpretation of the Bible? This question has been there since at least the 19th Century AD but was not heard as loudly as now because the global information systems were controlled by White culture. Now though, social media is allowing other ideas and other views to become known. I am not an expert on understanding the Bible through the African experience because I too had only known Eurocentric interpretations of the Bible, so seeing Scripture through the Black experience is new, and ongoing for me. Nevertheless, I have gained some basic insights, a skeleton if you like, that I hope will help the generations after mine to use and to put flesh on and deepen knowledge about who we Africans are to God and who God is to us. Although I speak to the Black World, indigenous peoples everywhere who have felt the lash of being colonised would also I think, benefit from the information here.

To start and set fundamental principles, the Reader who wants to gain from what I write here MUST accept the following basic things about the Bible:

1-The Bible is the Handbook to help mankind live well in this world, and navigate through dangers. Therefore EVERY SINGLE BIT OF INFORMATION in the Bible is IMPORTANT.

2-The real Names of God and of the Saviour are important.

3-The Identity of the Saviour is important. That is why He is described in the Bible! His identity is linked to His work on behalf of mankind.

4-There is a chosen people that God decided He would reveal Himself to (the ancient Israelites) and through them and His work in their midst, all other communities of the world have an equal access to God and to His salvation.

5-The Bible describes the founder of some Nations and gives the characteristics of some of these Nations. That means that not only can we identify these different Nations, but we MUST do so.

6-There are genealogies in the Bible eg in the Book of Numbers and elsewhere so Lineage is important to God and must also therefore be for us too. Even though we do not know our full lineage, God does.

7-The Bible makes it clear that in Heaven there will be EVERY single type of person from every single tribe and community in the world. So, no matter your ethnic identity or Nation, if you want to follow the Saviour as He is described in the Bible, and with His true Identity, then you would be accepted. Here is what the Saviour says, “All that My Father gives Me will come to Me; and the one who comes to Me I will most certainly not cast out [I will never, never reject anyone who follows Me]. (John 6:37, Amplified Bible)

Let us now get into understanding the Bible through the African experience. I will use the correct Hebrew Name of the Saviour, it is Yeshua HaMasiach (= the Messiah).

Before time began, God was in Heaven with His attendants the Angels. Then, one day sin came about in an Archangel called Lucifer: he rebelled against God’s Sovereignty and wanted to rule and be worshipped. He and about one third of the Angels who took his side were cast down to earth. Lucifer was able to deceive the first humans, Adam and Eve and became satan the devil, and sin now also entered mankind. God had a plan before He created Angels and Man, and there is no way that sin or anyone can spoil or prevent that original plan. So, God started a sort of detour pathway to clean up the sin out of the Universe, then bring His entire creation back to His original pre-sin plan. All fallen human existence is in this detour pathway, where a Saviour, the Messiah will do the work of ridding the earth and the Angel World of sin. When this cleansing work is done, then creation will be back in God’s original plan. This detour pathway was planned out by God even before the foundation of the earth, and He is in full control of it.

God has Sovereignty over all, so He CHOOSES individuals and groups for certain works. He therefore chose one man Abraham and said that from him He would choose a son who would be the father of a chosen Nation who would become the Israelites. The Israelites are the people through whom God would do extraordinary things and remove sin from His Creation. Therefore here is what would happen through the Israelites:

God’s power over man and over Creation both animate and inanimate would be seen through the Israelites.

God’s extraordinary love would be seen in His blessings for the Israelites.

God’s seriousness and complete focus on stamping out sin from the Universe would be seen in His punishing Israelites for gross disobedience against His Sovereignty. Amos 3:1,2 make this clear, and God does not joke around: Sin must be done away with.
“Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, you only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” (Amos 3:1,2)
When God uses the word “know” He means more than knowledge, He means ASSOCIATE with. We know this because in Matthew 7, Master Yeshua describes how Judgment Day will be. On that Day, the sheep will be separated from the goats and in verse 23 Master Yeshua says concerning the goats,
“And then I will declare to them, ‘I never KNEW you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” Here Master Yeshua uses “knew” to say that He never associated Himself with them.

Going back to the Israelites, God makes it clear that of all the peoples on earth, it is ONLY the Israelites whom He has chosen to associate with. The question then is, since in the Book of Revelation, there will be people from EVERY Nation and tribe, how does that then happen? The answer is that the Israelites will be scattered into EVERY part of the inhabited world. There they will marry with the natives and over time look like the natives and take on their cultures. So, among the Japanese there are Israelites. Same for the Chinese, the Native Americans, Indians, Europeans, Africans etc.

Furthermore, the punishment that Israelites will undergo for disobeying God will be so awful, so cruel, so impossible to bear because by what they will suffer, God will show them and the whole Universe just how very evil and wrong and terrible sin is. In that way, no Angel in Heaven would ever again think to follow Lucifer’s example of disobedience, neither would any human who makes it to Heaven. Everyone who inherits Heaven will be so aware of the evils of sin that sin will never ever again be found. As for the Israelites who would suffer this punishment, God would be right there with them in their agonising sufferings.

WHO then are the Israelites? They are identifiable by several Scriptures but Deuteronomy 28 makes it very obvious who they are. Moses is talking to them when they came out of Egypt, a Black African country. Verses 1 -14 list the blessings but verses 15 - 68 list the awful punishment. The punishment is terrible slavery and terrible colonisation. For disobedience to God, the Israelites will be taken back to slavery (signified by Egypt where they had just escaped from) but this time in ships and be sold, their enemy would be exceedingly cruel to them, and the whole world will despise them. They will be at the bottom everywhere. They will be colonised and the enemy will control, and benefit from the rich natural resources of their ancestral lands. The Israelite would be scattered throughout the world which happened via slavery and migration. Without doubt, Deuteronomy 28 happened to we Black Africans. The ancient Israelite has been mixed in with the children of Ham and are found among Black Africans. There are numerous publications, podcasts, articles and videos on this subject, so the Reader can do the research that makes it clear that the original Israelite and African look alike and the Israelite is also an African. (With the scattering and in-mixing, Israelites are today looking like peoples of every human community.)

Here are just a few images of how the ancient Israelite looked like:
(NOTE: Fair Use Disclaimer applied to the images used here.)

Our more recent history has been one of cruel exploitation of us and of our riches by Arabs and by Europeans. Arabs began slave trafficking of Africans in 652 AD. Europeans started slave trafficking of our people in 1441 AD. After chattel slavery, the enslavement of Africans in the form of colonisation began and today it remains as neocolonisation.

Thus, to conclude, understanding the Bible through the African experience is important because the covenant promises with God are still in force today. Black people suffer anti-Blackness by every community, YET we have done them NO HARM. In Deuteronomy 30, Restoration is promised, and God Himself will do it, BUT IT IS CONDITIONAL. If we Africans become serious and sincere, and seek the Black Messiah of Scripture Master Yeshua who came to set man free from sin as well as from the oppressor (enslaver and coloniser), and OBEY His voice, then He has promised to Restore us.

NOTE WELL: Dear Africans, it is about SIN and about God. If we begin to think that it is about us, then we enter the ditch prepared for us by satan! It is about ridding the Universe of SIN. So, it is working and living under the Sovereignty of God, therefore being in obedience to God, which gets His plan to manifest.

Required Action
ASKING QUESTIONS. ASKING QUESTIONS. ASKING QUESTIONS. We Africans live in a different era from our more immediate forefathers – we are now in the information age. Therefore, we must “quit ourselves like men (1 Samuel 4:9) and not be babyish or emotional, but be tough-minded and adult. Our forefathers trusted the missionaries because they did not know the evil that had happened to enslaved Africans in the Americas, the Caribbean and in Arab countries. They also did not know how missionaries had played a key part in the colonization and genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas, Australia, and elsewhere. We today, have knowledge that must be applied. Identity matters! Our religious identity is linked to Deuteronomy 28 and indeed to all of the Bible. I, like a growing number of many others, believe that the Bible should be interpreted through the African experience.

There are various bits of information online and in books such as the 1883 letter from King Leopold 2nd of Belgium to colonial missionaries showing that the role of White churches in Africa was to deceive. There is the Doctrine of Discovery from the Church of Rome that made cruelty to Africans acceptable to Europeans. There is the deliberate changing of the identity of Messiah from Black Yeshua to a White Jesus by Pope Alexander 6th using his mistress’ son Cesare Borgia as model for this deception.

The issue here is not about Race but about TRUTH and a very ugly history happened. It is about identifying WHO are the Israelites that Moses was used by God to lead out of Egypt. The answer to that will determine how each person who claims to believe in the Bible, will interpret it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
1)
Every single community on earth is free to say that they are the true Israelites, so, dear Africans, we should not be bothered by that and should let them all carry on. Our own task is that since history shows our people to be the Israelites of Deuteronomy 28, we should not be distracted by anybody or anything. Our focus should be on returning to God in spirit and in truth and in honouring Master Yeshua, the Black Messiah of the Bible so that the Restoration promised in Deuteronomy 30 will happen.

2)
Dear Africans and the Black World,
To help us be the people we should be as described in Deuteronomy 30, returning to God in truth means removing the lies and Tools that the coloniser left behind in our lands. Do therefore consider joining Decolonize Black World - Mind & Religion, a group on Telegram. Link HERE:

https:///+p4eCo51QJhJhNzlk

(You must first download Telegram app)



https://thesmartafrican.substack.com/p/the-bible-understood-through-the

This article has 4 nice posters so it is good if you read it from the link I posted at the end. Anyway here are those posters:

Enslavers Interpretation

Of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou must not eat, for in the day that thou eat thou shalt surely die.

Free people's interpretation

For God doth know that in the day that thou eat thereof thou shall become like gods.

budaatum:
Enslavers Interpretation

Of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou must not eat, for in the day that thou eat thou shalt surely die.

Free people's interpretation

For God doth know that in the day that thou eat thereof thou shall become like gods.

Any man who looses his faith in God is a dead man
God of Abraham,Isaac and Jacob is a God of the living not the dead
The free people are the worst self
That is why it is taking humanity millennials to fulfill their common destiny because they want to be free and be like God so they keep moving in circles like the Israelites in the wilderness..something that will take us less that 15 years to fulfill.. free people that can fly to space but don’t know how to live together what type of freedom is that? The advancement in tech and all is good very good but imagine if there was advancement in our faith and obedience to God added to it..imagine the potential..
Free people keh
What does a child know about parenting
The freedom will come at Gods appointed time but we have to follow him first and we will have everything
That freedom talk is what the deceiver used to enslave us
That’s why the world is like this today you are exposed to the freedom as a child and those that God has chosen to show his mercy he gives them sense back on time because they know that there is something wrong…woo if I explain eh e go full book 📕

Zaheertyler:


The free people are the worst self

Jesus came to set people free.

And I would rather be a free person than a chained slave, even to the gods

budaatum:



Jesus came to set people free.

And I would rather be a free person than a chained slave, even to the gods

Freedom through obedience to the word?
How can you be free if you don’t obey Gods word
Prayer is very good it’s Like fuel
But obidience to Gods word is like the engine oil
If you keep adding fuel and no engine oil
Car go break down

Me and you and the world need to start looking for ways in which the teachings of Jesus Christ can be effectively put to practice.. unless na clanging cymbal Dey talk

Zaheertyler:

Freedom through obedience to the word?
How can you be free if you don’t obey Gods word

Freedom through understanding what is claimed to be God's word, since God did not write anything.

God, who created both male and female in his own image to eat every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it and rule and subdue and multiple, will not then create other humans from mud who must not eat fruits of knowledge unless he needs slaves to serve his image, or some need slaves to serve them.

Those who don't eat fruits of of knowledge will never learn to say "let there be" and there is.