A Biblical Response to Black Hebrew Israelites

Key Points

Who were the leaders?

Gabriel Prosser, Virginia slave in the 1800s.

F.S. Cherry, founder of the Church of the Living God, the Pillar Ground of Truth of All Nations, 1880s

William Saunders Crowdy, Kansas, escaped slave, founder of The Church of God and Saints of Christ, 1896

non-extremist, mixed Christianity with slave narratives.

Arthur Matthew and the Commandments Keepers Church [of the Living God Pillar & Ground of Truth and the Faith of Jesus Christ, 1919, Harlem New York.

Ben Carter or Ben Ammi Ben Israel, Chicago, 1960s

What do they believe?

Not a theological system

A community’s attempt to establish a race’s value while tearing down the value of another race by referencing Scripture without actually interpreting it in an manner that fits within recent scholarship or orthodoxy.

Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are descendents of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.; the biblical Israelite.

Judaism Christianity and Islam are false religions

“White religions” have stolen the identity of the black Hebrew Israelites and they are here to reclaim their identity.

Reference to whites as the Edomites, whereas they are the true descendants, children of Jacob.

Black Israelites have been punished by God for their disobedience through slavery, racism, incarceration and other social attacks (see Deuteronomy 28:15-68).

Jesus was a black man (Revelation 1:14-15).

Celebration of the Passover

No celebration of Christian holidays.

Key Scriptures

Jesus was black: Revelation 1:14-15

Slavery Predicted: Deuteronomy 28:68

What is the biblical response?

Revelation 1:14-15 does not refer to the color or ethnicity of Jesus.

These verses refer to the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7, 10 and Ezekiel 1, 43. The point is to demonstrate that Jesus is God, more specifically the God of Israel- Jehovah.

Deuteronomy 28:68 is not a reference to modern slavery.

This is a covenant agreement between Old Covenant Israel, which was fulfilled many times over as predicted by Moses.

See Hosea 8:13, 9:3- This is a reference to Egypt as a place of foreign land, particularly a place of eating in a strange land.

Galatians 3:26-29- We are all Abraham‘s children