Suppose you found a friend carving a small statue out of a piece of wood. “What are you going to do with that?†you ask. “I’m going to worship it,†he says. “I’ve got a nice spot in my bedroom where I can kneel down and ask it for things.†Or imagine people on a suburban street pooling their wedding rings and other jewelry to make a statue they can put in the park. They plan to kill animals and leave the meat out in front of the statue. To moderns, idolatry is as weird as cannibalism; we’re not tempted to try it. But since a great part of the Old Testament is concerned with idolatry, we need to get some idea of what people saw in it—and why God condemned it. “They have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods.â€Â Jeremiah 19:4 Mixing Religions In Jeremiah’s… read more
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Genuine and Bogus Blacks in The Bible: If you hear anyone saying that Christianity is a European religion, just lovingly, but firmly remind them of its place of origin in the Middle East (Jerusalem) and it is critical for Black Muslims and people in general to know that Islam was not the original faith of Africans. Christianity was introduced to Africa in all likelihood in the 1st century AD through the ‘Ethiopian Eunuch’ mentioned in Acts 8.27, an official in the Royal Court of what is now modern Sudan. Additionally, Christianity was accepted by The Royal Court of Ethiopia and became that country’s official religion from the 4th century AD, some 300 years before Islam even began in Arabia in the 7th century AD. It is incontestable that we have a genuine Black person in the early Church leader in Antioch referred to as ‘Simeon called Niger’ (Acts 13.1). In Simeon’s… read more