The Mormon Faith & Black Folks
Question #33

Q. Why should black folks become Mormons when the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Muslims, and the Baha'is, Theosophists, Seventh-day Adventists, and Humanists, among others, have always accepted blacks with no restrictions and never said they were cursed�Eby God?

A. That'is not true. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., otherwise known as Jehovah'is Witnesses, believe that Jehovah speaks to them through its publications. These publications have been very critical of the LDS Church in the past; calling us false prophets�Eand racists�E Active Jehovah's Witnesses (called Publishers) are usually very critical of the LDS Church's beliefs about black folks, and are more than anxious to express their disapproval whenever they come across Latter-day Saints.

The Watchtower Bible andTract Society is also very critical of the Roman Catholic Church, and wrote in 1977:

Even up to a hundred years ago the Catholic Church held the view that blacks were cursed by God...[this view] apparently survived until 1873 when Pope Pius IX attached an indulgence to a prayer for the Wretched Ethiopians in Central Africa that almighty God may at length "remove the curse of Ham from their hearts." (Awake!, Oct. 8, 1977, p.29)

*Jehovah's Witnesses and Racism

Yet, here are a few things that Jehovah�Ehas said via the Watchtower:

1898:

"Nor am I claiming that God is a respecter of persons. It is quite another thing that God may have been, nay, evidently has been, a respecter of races, and has specially blessed and favored certain branches of the Aryan race in Europe and America.�E(The Bible versus the Evolutionary Theory, published by The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., p.30)

1898:

"The Negro race is supposed to be descended from Ham, whose special degradation is mentioned in Gen. 9:22, 25."(Zion's Watch Tower, August 1, 1898, p.229)

1902:

"The word 'curse' used by Noah after the same manner that God is said to have cursed the earth, and cursed mankind; from which curse man was redeemed by our Lord. The word 'curse' here is used in the sense of penalty, retribution,....Noah declared, prophetically, that Ham's characteristics which had led him to unseemly conduct disrespectful of his father, would be found cropping out later, inherited by his son,-and prophetically he foretold that this degeneracy would mark the posterity of Canaan, degrading him, making him servile. We are not able to determine to a certainty that the sons of Ham and Canaan are the negroes, but we consider that general view as probable as any other.

"While it is true that the white race exhibits some qualities of superiority over any other, we are to remember that there are wide differences in the same Caucasian (Semitic and Aryan) family;....The secret of the greater intelligence and aptitude of the Caucasian undoubtedly in great measure is to be attributed to the commingling of blood amongst its various branches; and this was evidently forced in large measure by circumstances under divine control."(Zion's Watch Tower, July 15, 1902, pp.215,216)

1914:

We have been compelled to assign the colored friends to the gallery, which, however, is just as good for seeing and hearing as any other part of The Temple. Some were offended at this arrangement. We have received numerous letters from the colored friends, some claiming that it is not right to make a difference, others indignantly and bitterly denouncing us as enemies of the colored people.�E(The Watch Tower, May 1, 1914, p.105)

1919:

“While it is true that ‘of one blood God hath made all nations of men�E nevertheless under present imperfect conditions a wise segregation is probably an advantage to all concerned.�E(The Golden Age, p.8)

1926:

The May 5^th, 1926 edition of The Golden Age (which was later changed to Awake!) Declared that the British Empire was ruled by whites because of their �Elt;b>superior mental, moral, or physical force.�E (The Golden Age, May 5, 1926, p.483)

1929:

“It is generally believed that the curse which Noah pronounced upon Canaan was the origin of the black race. Certain it is that when Noah said, ‘Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren,�Ehe pictured the future of the Colored race. They have been and are a race of servants, but now in the dawn of the twentieth century, we are all coming to see this matter of service in its true light and to find that the only real joy in life is in serving others; not bossing them. There is no servant in the world as good as a good Colored servant, and the joy that he gets from rendering faithful service is one of the purist joys there is in the world.�E(The Golden Age, p.702)

1967 (in an official Watchtower book under the subchapter ‘Degeneration�E:

“As man, with his high brain capacity, spread out over the earth, he developed separate cultures, some more advanced than others. This was due, not to evolution, but to geography and changed languages (Genesis 11:8,9). The fact that some of the cultures degenerated into a ‘stone age�E as we can see today in New Guinea, Africa, or among the Australian aborigines, simply demonstrates that man’s progress was not automatic, but could be reversed.�E(Did Man Get Here By Evolution or By Creation, p.112)

The Watchtower (and presumably ‘Jehovah�Ewho allegedly inspired their writings) considered, as recently as 1967, black Africans (along with other black-skinned peoples) to be “degenerate�Ehumans; far below the perfect white humans (Adam and Eve) which the Watchtower presents as being Jesus�Eequals.

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society

“Unlike some who pay lip service to the doctrine of racial brotherhood, the Witnesses welcome all to their society-even to places of outstanding leadership-without reference to color or feature.�E(The Watchtower, Jan. 15, 1973, p.37)

Yet, sociologist Jerry Bergman writes:

“Their history reveals they are not free of racism as they now claim, but have manifested extreme racist views in their official, mandatory teachings. Even though 52% of the Witness�Emembership are non-white, not a single minority person held a [top] leadership position in 1994.�E(Jehovah’s Witnesses, Blacks, and Discrimination, p.1)

Such attitudes expressed in the old Watchtower publications, that blacks are the cursed sons of Ham, can also be found, in great abundance, in the 19^th century and early 20^th century writings and publications of the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed, Methodist, Congregational, Baptist, Church of Christ, Nazarene, and Pentecostal churches. Charles Fox Parham, for example, the man who founded modern Pentecostalism, was an avid supporter of the Ku Klux Klan. From his preaching and his Bethel School in Kansas eventually came the Assemblies of God, and, ironically enough, several major black Pentecostal churches.

On June 25, 1966, the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society released Life Everlasting, which predicted:

“Six thousand years from man’s creation will end in 1975, and the seventh period of a thousand years of human history will begin in the fall of 1975 C.E.It would not be by mere chance or accident for the reign of Jesus Christ to run parallel with the seventh millennium of man’s existence.�E(Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God, pp.29,30)

Leaders of this organization had predicted the return of Jesus Christ in 1874, 1884, 1914, 1925, and again in 1975 and, lastly, 1984. Each time failed. Jehovah’s Witnesses were taught, as doctrine, that Christ returned in the spirit (unseen) in 1914, and the generation of Jehovah’s Witnesses living then would not die until He returned physically. Now, they are backing away from that; because that generation that lived then is almost gone.

Mormon missionaries often come into contact with publishers (missionaries) of the Watchtower; who often laugh, shake their heads in unbelief, and tell Mormons that the ‘Mormon religion�Eis ‘false�Eand ‘anti-black�Eand they can’t understand how anyone could believe it.

*Seventh-day Adventists and Racism

Another group which claims today an exemplary non-racist history is the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA Church). The SDA Church was created out of the ‘Great Disappointment�Eof 1844; when a Baptist preacher named William Miller claimed that Jesus was returning in the clouds of the sky in 1844. When that didn’t happen, most of his followers left. However, some remained and expected Christ to return in the sky over their homes. Amongst this group was Ellen Gould (later Ellen G. White). She claimed to have visions, and some of the Adventists accepted these as from God. Eventually, they also accepted Saturday as the true Sabbath day, and became known as “Seventh-day Adventists�E Like Mormons, they do not smoke or drink, and most of them don’t eat meat. Not long after they began the SDA Church, Ellen G. White instructed them to begin work among Negroes in the South of the United States. She also told SDA leaders to build hospitals and schools for them. Most Seventh-day Adventists today believe that Ellen G. White was anti-racist, but comments from her reveal that she held the average white American view of blacks for her time. She once condemned the lynching of Negroes in the South:

“The colored people have had before them the example of commonness and adultery. These evils are all through out world, but when the poor, wretched, ignorant race, who know scarcely anything of purity and righteousness, do commit sin-sin that when committed by white people is scarcely condemned-colored people are tortured to death whether proved guilty or not.�E(E.G. White and Church Race Relations, p.112 emphases added)

“The white people will stir up the blacks by telling them all kinds of stories; and the blacks, who can lie even when it is for their interest to speak the truth, will stir up the whites with falsehoods. As far as possible, evething that will stir up the race prejudice of the white people should be avoided.�E(Race Relations, p.58 emphases added)

“I think I have already written that the colored people should not urge that they be placed on an equality with white people.�E(Race Relations, p.58)

Like most Protestant churches in America in her day, once the SDA Church gathered enough black converts, they were segregated into their own congregations; which joined into the “North American Negro Department�Eof the SDA Church in 1909. Later, special Negro regional conferences were formed; with black men overseeing these conferences. Black SDA writer Carlos Medley writes:

“White Adventist leaders were influenced by Ellen White’s writings to provide separate churches for Blacks so the church’s message could advance (Testimonies, vol. 9, p.206). Many sincere people felt that integration would make it hard to baptize White members. Washington Missionary College (renamed Columbia Union College) refused to admit Black students, and visiting Black ministers and laymen could not be served in the main Review and Herald diving room. Blacks were not admitted to Adventist hospitals. In some camp meetings, Blacks were sequestered in special sections, and Black ministers had few leadership opportunities.

In 1943 a tragic incident took place that changed the course of the church’s history. Lucy Byard, a light-skinned Black from Brooklyn, New York, was admitted to Washington Sanitarium Hospital (now Washington Adventist Hospital). However, when her racial identity was discovered, hospital attendants wheeled Byard to the front hallway of the hospital, where she waited for several hours to be transferred. Later she died of pneumonia at the Freedman’s Hospital.�E(Adventist Review, March 5, 1987, p.5)

Between the 1920s and the 1950s the SDA Church published a number of the works of George McCready Price; a SDA ‘self-taught�E geologist, and founder the the ‘Creation Science�Emovement. Price was also a white-racist whose belief in Negro inferiority is found in almost all of his published works. He believed that Negroes and Mongolians (Asians) were ‘degenerate�Eraces, and that apes were further degenerations from Negroes and Mongolians. Price once wrote a little power about black Africans that went:

“The poor little fellow who went to the south

Got lost in the forests dank;

His skin grew black, as the fierce sun beat

And scorched his hair with its tropic heat

And his mind became a blank.

(The Creationists, p.85)

Because of the SDA Church’s emphases on missionary work and the building of hospitals it has attracted perhaps more than a million people of black African descent; mostly black Africans. In the early 1980s it ended it’s practice of separate regional conferences for blacks, and is now fully integrated.

In the official Seventh-day Adventist Fact Book (1967 Edition) it says:

“Since its origin the Church has held to the belief that ‘no distinction on account of nationality, race, or caste is recognized by God.�EThrough the years it has put this belief into practice.�E(Seventh-day Adventist Fact Book, 1967 Edition, p.65)

*Judaism and Racism

We have already seen that in ancient Jewish religious texts Negroes are presented as the descendants of Cain and Ham. This in itself is not racist. However, anti-black racism has not been unknown in Judaism.

In the Jewish Aggadah it says that the Law of God through Noah decreed that no living creature should copulate (have sex) while in the Ark:

“This law of conduct had been violated by none in the ark except Ham, by the dog, and by the raven. They all received a punishment. Ham’s was that his descendants were men of dark-hued skin.�E(The Legends of the Jews 1:166)

There is also a story about Ham seeing his drunken father (Noah) naked, and going and telling his brothers Japheth and Shem; who walk backwards to cover Noah’s naked body with a blanket. It says that Ham and his descendants were punished because of this:

“The descendants of Ham through Canaan therefore have red eyes, because Ham looked upon the nakedness of his father; they have misshapen lips, because Ham spoke with his lips about the unseemly condition of his father; they have twisted curly hair, because Ham turned and twisted his head around to see the nakedness of his father.�E(Legends 1:169)

The Babylonian Talmud has Noah telling Ham “your seed will be ugly and dark-skinned.�E(Sanhedrin 2:245)

The famous Jewish rabbi, Maimonides, who lived in Morocco, wrote of Negroes thusly:

“The Kushites who live in the South, and those in our country who are like these. I consider these as irrational beings; they are below mankind, but above monkeys; since they have the form and shape of man, a mental faculty above that of the monkey.�E(The Guide for the Perplexed 3:5:384)

According to historian Larry E. Tise, “Isaac M. Wise and Isaac Leeser, heads respectively of the two major branches of American Judaism [in the 1830s and 1840s] were proslavery rabbis.�E(Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840, p.163)

*Islam and Racism

It was also the belief of Muslims for over 1200 years that black folks were the descendants of Ham. This is what justified Arabs to place blacks into slavery; a trade only ending among Arab Muslims in the mid 20^th century, and still going on to a small extant among black Muslims in Sudan (who enslave black Christians) and Berber (white-skinned) Muslims in Mauritania (in North Africa). They justified this under the belief that blacks were under the ‘Curse of Canaan�Eoriginated by Noah.

The Prophet Muhammad was once asked what he thought of Habshees (Negroes). He is purported to have said:

“When he is hungry he steals, when his belly is full he fornicates.�E(Race and Slavery in the Middle East, p.34)

Yet, when a Habshee asked Muhammad if he could become a Muslim and enter Paradise, Muhammad replied:

“Yes, and in Paradise the whiteness of the Ethiopian will be seen over a stretch of a thousand years.�E(Race and Slavery, p.34)

It is also Mormon doctrine that Paradise will not last forever, but for a thousand years. At the end of Paradise and Hell comes the Resurrection of the Dead and the Day of Judgment. At that point everyone is brought before the Judgment Seat of Christ (sometimes called the Great White Throne), and they are judged according to their works:

�E2 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged according to their works.�E(Revelations 20:12)

We are ‘saved�Eby grace, but we are ‘judged�Eby works. In other words, we cannot ‘save�Eourselves. We cannot resurrect ourselves from the dead. We cannot save ourselves from God’s corrective punishment in Hell. We cannot exalt ourselves. But what glory, or reward, we shall receive in Heaven (where their are many mansions, or varying degrees of reward) is determined by our works in this life.

People will not be rewarded, nor denied rewards, based upon how many times they said Hail Mary’s, nor if they joined an Evangelical church, nor if they visited Mecca, nor if they worshiped on Saturday instead of Sunday, nor if they did a minimum of 8 hours of missionary work per week, nor even how many times one worshiped in an LDS temple. They will be judged solely on how they treated their wives, their husbands, their children, their parents, their co-workers, their neighbors, their fellow human beings and their fellow creatures of God. That is what they shall be judged on! Once judged by Jesus Christ, people will not be thrown back into Paradise or Hell, but will go to Heaven, the Celestial Kingdom; which has three degrees of glory therein.

Muhammad freed one of his slaves, named Bilal, and made him a Muazzin (Caller to Prayer); even though Bilal had a speech-impediment. Muhammad freed all of his black slaves just before his death. He is also purported to have said that Negroes could become Leaders of Prayer; called Imams.

Although Negroes were enslaved by Arab and Persian Muslims for well over 1300 years, they were in no way discriminated against as far as worship in Islam went. They could worship in Mosques with white Muslims, go on a pilgrimage to Mecca with white Muslims, become Callers of Prayer and Leaders of Prayer in black, white, or mixed Mosques; if of course they were male.

There is no Priesthood in Islam. In Mormon theology, a good Muslim will enter Paradise, after he has paid for his sins in Hell. The more true a person is a Muslim, the less sin he has, and the less time he must spend in Hell. Once a soul is purified in Hell, through suffering, he is let into Paradise.

However, Paradise will come to and end (for the individual) when they are resurrected. At that point, they will become Ministering Angels; like monks or nuns for all eternity.

Christians who die in a state of grace, or worthiness, will not go to Hell; because Jesus has paid for their sins. Hell is a place of purification of the soul for those who have not accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. But God does not sent souls to Hell forever; because Jesus has also ransomed all of us from the eternity of Hell. In Adam all die, but in Christ all shall be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22).

All means all men and women, and not just Christians.

A true Christian is saved from Hell, but all men and women are saved from an eternity in Hell; by the blood of Jesus Christ. But those who do not wash their garments with the blood of Jesus in this life, or in the next if they have not had the opportunity in this life, must pay for their own sins by suffering in Hell; until they pay the uttermost farthing (last penny).

Unlike slavery in the Americas, the Mulatto children of black slave women (concubines) and white Arab masters became free men and women. The kings and princes and princesses of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are the descendants of such unions.

In 947 A.D. the great Muslim geographer Al-Masudi Baghdadi wrote:

“When the descendants of Noah spread across the earth, the sons of Cush, the son of Canaan, traveled toward the west and crossed the Nile.�E(The Lost Cities of Africa, p.54)

But because black Muslims were always allowed the same privileges that white Muslims had, this didn’t mean that racism did not exist in Islam. Here are a few quotes from Muslim writers:

Maqdisi (died 956A.D.):

“As for the Zanj [East African Negro], they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair, and little understanding or intelligence.�E(Race and Slavery, p.52)

Ibn Qutayba (9^th century):

“They [Negroes] are ugly and misshapen because they live in a hot country. The heat overcooks them in the womb, and curls their hair.�E( p.46)

Sa’id al-Alndalusi (10^th century):

“The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and their proximity to the animal stage.�E (Race and Color in Islam, p.38)

Nasir al-Din (13^th century):

“Many have observed that the ape is more teachable and more intelligent than the Zanji.�E( Race and Slavery in the Middle East, p.53)

Ibn Khaldun (14^th century):

“Therefore, the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because they have little that is human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals.�Ep.53)

Al-Jahiz (15^th century):

“We know that the Zanj are the least intelligent and the least discerning of mankind, and the least capable of understanding the uniqueness of actions.�E(Race and Color, p.59)

In 1886 Ludwig Struss, an Austrian, visited East Africa and witnessed the Arab slave trade there. He wrote:

“The whole Negro villages were burned, all the men killed, and their women and children are taken on months-long terrible marches; finally to be offered as merchandise in markets in distant lands.�E( p.83)

African-American researcher Charles B. Copher writes:

“Although no curse of Ham or Canaan by which the one of the other was turned black appears in the Koran, Muslim interpreters borrowed heavily from the Jews, and added some of their own a common explanation of the slave status of the black man among Muslims is that the ancestor of the dark-skinned people was Ham the son of Noah who (according to Muslim legend) was damned black for his sin. The curse of blackness, and with it that of slavery, passed to all black peoples, who are his descendants.�E(Black Biblical Studies, pp.107-8)

African-American historian Bernard Lewis writes:

“There were black slaves in the Hellenistic [Greek-speaking] and Roman worlds-but they seem to have been few and relatively unimportant. The massive development of the slave trade in black Africa and the large scale importation of black Africans for use in the Mediterranean and the Middle Eastern countries seem to date from the Arab period.�E(Race and Color in Islam, p.28)

Black slavery did not end in the Middle East until the 1930s. In 1936 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia passed a law ending the East African slave trade, and making all black slaves in Saudi Arabia indentured servants (Race and Slavery, pp.167ff.)

Some say that black slavery still exists today in Sudan and Mauritania.

*The Baha’is and Racism

One of the most progressive, racist-free, and racially united religions on earth today is the Baha’i Faith; with 7 million Baha’is in almost every country on the globe. It was founded by Baha’u’llah (pronounced Bah-HAH-oo-LAH); a 19^th century Persian (Iranian) prince who claimed to be the Spirit of Truth (the incarnation of the Holy Ghost), and even Christ returned in the glory of the Father. In Arabic “Baha’u’llah�Emeans literally “The Glory of God�E

One of the basic tenets of the Baha’i Faith is “The Elimination of Prejudice of All Kinds�E The Baha’is spend much of their time discussing race unity, and the end of racism. They often wear T-shirts that say: “Racism-Just Don’t Do It!�E

Yet, both The Bab, the forerunner of Baha’u’llah whom Baha’is believe to be a Prophet, and Baha’u’llah, owned black slaves; although Baha’u’llah outlawed the practice in 1874. ‘Abdu’l-Baha, the son of Baha’u’llah, and the official Interpreter of the Baha’i Faith, said many great and wonderful things about race unity and the end of racism and prejudice. But he also said this:

“If man is left in his natural state, he will become lower than the animal and continue to grow more ignorant and imperfect. The savage African tribes of central Africa are evidences of this.�E(Promulgation of Universal Peace, p.308)

“If we study human beings such as the aboriginal tribes of central Africa, who have been reared in complete subjection to nature’s rule, we will find them deficient indeed. They are without religious education; neither do they give evidences of any advance toward civilization. They have simply grown and developed in the natural plane of barbarism. We find them bloodthirsty, immoral, and animalistic in type to such an extent that they even kill and devour each other.�E(Promulgation, p.399)

“The inhabitants of a country like Africa are all as wandering savages and wild animals; they lack intelligence and knowledge; all are uncivilized and a wise man is not to be found among them.�E(The Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, p.576)

Although the institutions of the Baha’i Faith do not condemn Mormons, nor anyone else, on the subject of race; some Baha’is will point the finger of accusation at Mormons and cry “Racist!�E

*Theosophy and Racism

The Negroes form one of the very few exceptions amongst us today of baby races, imperfect in mental and physical development

And we of the Fifth Root Race [Aryan] look back upon our ancestors of Atlantean days as monsters of iniquity, black with sin-and so they were.�E(Studies in Occult Philosophy, pp.44,669)

*Humanists and Racism

Those that believe that secular Humanism has always been pro-Black need to think again. Much of the anti-Black policies in the Southern United States and elsewhere in the world were not based upon biblical interpretations, but upon Social-Darwinism; a philosophy of men popular in the late 19^th and early to mid-20th century. This ‘wisdom of man�Etaught that there was no God, but life came about by chance. It taught that only Nature was divine, and in Nature all species compete with each other for survival. Thus, there is no ‘right�Eor ‘wrong�E There is just survival of the fittest. This was the philosophy of the Nazis of Germany, and why they justified killing millions of human beings.

Charles Darwin wrote in 1859 The Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The subtitle reveals Darwin as a eugenicist; who believed that some races, including human races, were superior to others, and thus had a natural right to survive and dominate. In an letter to a friend Darwin’s eugenicism is clearly revealed:

“I could show fight on national selection have done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit...the more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.�E(Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, p.343)

Thomas H. Huxley, one of the founders of modern Humanism, once wrote about the Negro. He wrote:

“No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is equal, still less the superior, or the white man....It is simply incredible [to think] that...he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not bites.�Elt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> (Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, p.20)

The German Darwinist and Humanist philosopher Ernst Heackel wrote:

“I consider the Negro as a lower species of man, and cannot make up my mind to look upon him as a man and a brother, for the gorilla would then also have to be admitted into the family.�E(The Negro A Beast, p.91)

The Humanists taught that Negroes were ‘less evolved�E than white man, and closer to the ape than other races.

The belief that Negroes were equal to white men was a belief of the Garrisonites; a group of Evangelical Christian Abolitionists in the United States in the 19^th century named after Evangelical Christian William Lloyd Garrison. It was the Puritans (Evangelical Christians) of England that ended the slave-trade in the British Empire, and caused it to fight the trade up until the 20^th century. It was the Evangelicals (born-again Christians) in the U.S. who spearheaded the American Abolitionist movement. Garrison wrote:

“My Bible assures me there is power enough in the religion of Jesus Christ to melt down the most stubborn prejudices, to overthrow the highest walls of partition, to break the strongest caste, to improve and elevate the most degraded, to unite in fellowship the most hostile, and to equalize and bless all its recipients.�E(The Black Image in the White Mind, pp.28-9)

The Prophet Joseph Smith could be classified as a Garrisonite; although he was a Prophet of God and a Latter-day Saint and not an Evangelical.

But today, in universities and colleges throughout the United States and other western countries, the Humanists are credited with the authoring the notion of racial equality, and Evangelicals and other traditional religionists are blamed for all anti-Black discrimination and racist theories. He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.

Organizations like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and others are constantly pointing their fingers at the LDS Church and chided us for our ‘racism�E We believe they shouldn’t cast the first stone, or be throwing stones while they themselves live in glass houses.

We believe that it would be good if The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which taught in in their official publications, that the Caucasian was “superior�Eand “more intelligent�Ethan other races, and that black folks were “cursed�E(no mention of them also being “blessed�E, read these words of the Savior the next time they are thinking of condemning the Catholic Church or the LDS Church on the point of race:

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye.

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.�E(Matthew 7:3-5)

The Watchtower predicted the return of Christ and the establishment of His Millennial Reign in 1874, 1914, and again in 1925, and again in 1975, and again in 1984! Each prophecy failed, and failed again. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., is simply an organization of sincere men and women trying to understand God’s revelation in the Bible, and striving to follow what they think it says to the best of their ability. They claim to be “Jehovah’s one true theocratic organization�E without any true Revelations from Him, nor any visions, nor any visitation of angels in which to confer that divine authority.

However, the LDS Church was founded by Prophets whose prophecies have come true, and it is founded by Jesus Himself appearing to them and angels appearing to them and conferring to them divine keys of authority.

Although the Jehovah’s Witnesses did much to integrate their congregations, and to include black men as elders, what is the eternal benefit of this? Surely, those who love the LORD will be rewarded, but without the true Priesthood of God, any reward they receive will fall short of the ultimate reward: Exaltation (Eternal Life). The same is true for all other Christian denominations, and all other religions as well. The Priesthood of God exists in only one place: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Again, the LDS Church has taught that God cursed and blessed His own people Israel, and indeed He alternatively curses and blesses all nations, kindreds, tongues, and peoples; according to how they adhere to His Laws and obey His Prophets.

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