No Partiality in the Church of God

When we are educated, especially in the Western world, we are educated from a Darwinian point of view.

The theory of evolution was taught to us and rejected by most of us as children, if not later in life when we, you know, were called by God and our minds were open. But I was educated while growing up in the church, and I completely rejected Darwinism, so I thought.

But, you know, I heard things in the church and listened to things in the church and didn't realize that some of those things that were taught were actually Darwinian, non-biblical.

Our education in the Western world has largely been influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution.

In the first sermon, we went through and started in James chapter 2 and talked about how we are not supposed to make a difference.

Between people, we're not supposed to see a rich man and a poor man and treat the rich man better and the poor man badly. We're not supposed to love some and disregard others. There's no partiality in the house of God. In the second part, we went through and showed how there's no partiality with God even on a national level. Even though God called Israel to be a special people, they weren't a super race. They were simple Indian example people. He took a family, and he made that family grow up to become a large family called a nation.

And he used that nation as an example. Both what happens when you follow God and what happens when you don't follow God. You're blessed when you follow Him, you're punished when you don't. And that example we saw in last week's sermon was for the entire world. It was for all the children of Adam and Eve. That example was not just for Israel. Israel was an example nation, an object lesson that God was teaching his children. This week we're going to bring it back to race and racism. Racism has been a huge problem in the world. Going way back in the BC era of mankind's history. And we have evidence of that because there are laws in the Bible against racism. And that was, what, 1400 BC in Moses' time? Which means if there's a law, there's a need for that law. Which means if there's an anti-racism law, there was racism all the way back then. But we have the Bible and we have the Old and the New Testament. And we have the laws that are still very much in application today. And yet we were educated, most of us, in public school. And our education has been influenced by extra-biblical sources. Evolution did not create racism, let's be clear. But racism is a type of partiality. But evolution, the theory of evolution, did fuel racism. And let me tell you something. Those who believe in evolution right now are very woke and very accepting and very tolerant. But evolution itself, the thing that is the underpinning of what they believe in, is very intolerant and very racist. As I will show you today, and actually there's going to be another part to this sermon, and we will see in a very appalling way next week. How much did our education influence the way you and I think? And most importantly, and what I want to address or start addressing in the sermon today is, how did that affect the way we interpret the Bible? Are we reading the Bible through the lens of Charles Darwin? In the 1920s, one of the main biology books in America was called a civic biology presented in problem by George William Hunter. In this book, Dr. Hunter wrote this quote, The Races of Man. This is a prominent textbook in the 1920s. Quote, The Races of Man. At present time, there exists upon the earth five races of man, the highest type of all. Let me state that again. The highest type of all, Caucasians, represented by the white inhabitants of Europe and America. End quote. Yikes. Anybody offended yet? Not God's words. Darwinian education. You want to believe in evolution? This is where it comes from.

You want to believe that we evolved from slime and a pond? This is the conclusion you draw. Darwin's influence on American public education system. They don't like to admit that this is part of our educational history now because it's so politically incorrect. That's so toxic. They would never say that today. But that's what Darwinian evolution teaches. And now the pendulum is swinging. But it is no less racist today than it was back then. For any group. And the point today, I'm not addressing the world.

I am addressing the house of God. This is for us. It is our time to judge not that we be not judged. It is our time to learn, to put away any other kind of thinking other than God's opinion. God is brilliant. God doesn't need to be edited. He doesn't need to be educated by human scientists.

We need to be educated by him. Let our minds be educated by the opinion of God, not influenced by the opinion of man. This politically incorrect categorization of humankind is what Darwinian evolution teaches. I am going to read an appalling quote from Darwin. Probably not today, but in the next sermon. And you will see what I really mean. Where all of this comes from. And I want to make a suggestion today to us. And here's the thrust of the sermon. That we stop using the term race for mankind. And we start using the term families.

Race is a human construct. Family is a God construct. He invented families. He is the father of the family. At the time of our founding fathers, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, when they mentioned the word race, didn't mean the same thing as it means today. They meant the English race, or the Irish race, or the French race. They meant a specific group of people, a family. That's what race used to mean.

Race, because of Darwinian education, now means different categories of people. And race began to mean the same thing that there's a biblical word for in the Old Testament. It's a Hebrew word, and it's translated into the English word kind. You know, things will be reproduced after their kind. In Genesis 1, God made animals reproduce after their kind. In Genesis 6, God brought each kind of animal on the ark. The word translated kind in English is the Hebrew word mean. According to Strongs, it means to portion or sort out. So according to the Darwinian point of view, God sorted out. Now, if you look at it from a biblical point of view and you mix the two, God sorted out mankind after the flood.

And mankind was sorted into different kinds. And remember, we reproduce after our kind. And those two concepts merged in Christianity in America. Did they merge in our mind? In other words, it's a different sort of animal or person. If the word race is equated with the biblical word kind, then we have an interpretation problem when we read the Bible. Charles Darwin's book, The Descent of Man, his last famous book, his first book on the origin of species, is the one everybody knows.

Twelve years later, he wrote another book on the descent of man. It was a racist, horrible manuscript. And it stated that the Australian Aborigine people were the lowest form of man, as though they were a different kind of man. Evolutionists and scientists believe that the Aboriginal people were the missing link of mankind. As a matter of fact, in the 1920s, in a major New York newspaper, there was an article listing the missing link, and it had the Aboriginal people all over the front cover of the New York.

I forget the name of it. It doesn't exist today, the newspaper. It's important to teach in this topic on the so-called races. I listened to a lecture that I highly recommend everybody listen to, from Ken Ham, the owner of the Creation Museum and the Arc Experience up in Kentucky. He is also the founder of Answers in Genesis. And he gave a lecture called One Race, One Blood. It's about an hour long it's worth listening to. And he says this, quote, I'm not saying Darwin himself was a racist. I'm not saying evolution causes racism. Sin causes racism. But certainly Darwinianism fueled and still does a particular kind of racism. And that racism has influenced the Church.

Not most of us, but some of us, as we will see. It's Darwinian evolution, not the Bible, that teaches there are lower races and higher races. And it is a lie. The evil human nature and Satan's influence is the cause of racism, as we will see on the Day of Atonement.

The problem that we face in America today is that we're influenced by Darwinian thought, in other words, an evolutionary way of thinking. And that way of thinking has, over time, crept into the Church in different ways. Without us realizing it. And some of us have missed out on God's wonderful truth about mankind. Others have not, by the way. What I'm teaching isn't new. Excuse me, I was taught this all my life.

I grew up with this understanding. But I would go to Church, and we would believe the same things until it came to race. And some people believed one way, and other people believed another way. And it's interesting what non-religious secular people in the world believe about racists. They do not believe that we all go back to one man and one woman, Adam and Eve, which is the source of all the truth that we're going to talk about today in the sermon.

There are even those in religious circles that do not believe that mankind descended from Adam and Eve. Now, I don't think there are people in the Church, although there might be. I mean, ask yourself this question. Who did Cain and Seth marry? Who did they marry? Most of you know the answer to that. Some may not. Some people believe that there were pre-Oedemic people whom they married. After all, after Cain killed Abel, he fled, and he knew his wife. Where does his wife come from?

Was there another family that he found a wife from and he had to flee away?

Did those pre-Oedemic people then continue their genetic lines throughout the history of mankind as well? And therefore, we are not all one race. We're not all one kind.

The Bible doesn't name the other sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, except for Seth in Genesis 5. Seth replaced Abel as a righteous leader. So how do we know that all of mankind came from one family? Let's start there. When we're going to discuss this incredibly uncomfortable topic, let's start at the beginning. And I realize this is uncomfortable. That it is so important that we in the house of God think like God.

That we put partiality away from us and we actually love all of mankind. Not in lip service and not the way the world is doing it. Swing the pendulum back and forth in a ridiculous way, but actually just in love.

So who did Cain and Seth marry? How did they have children and so on and fill the earth?

Well, obviously they had to marry their sisters who were daughters of Adam and Eve.

It's very important to get this right. Let's note this in Genesis chapter 5 verses 1 through 4. Genesis chapter 5 verses 1 through 4. I'm going to read this from the newer bystander version. Newer bystander version gets this very clear. This is 5 and verse 1.

This is the list of the descendants of Adam. When God created humankind, He made them in the likeness of God. Notice that mankind is singular. It is always singular. The word in Hebrew for mankind is, believe it or not, Adam. It's not Adam's plural, just one. Adam. And it includes all of us, made in the image of God, all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, all one family.

God's family. This is our foundation. Verse 2. Male and female He created them, and He blessed them and named them humankind.

Adam. When they were created. So from the beginning, there was no distinction made between male and female concerning being called Adam.

Males and females were not a different kind. They were just humankind. According to verse 2, it doesn't matter if you're male or female. You are equally part of humankind. There's no distinction between the genders. So there can't be a distinction between the genders made after Genesis chapter 5 and verse 2. You can't do it. Verse 3. When Adam had lived 130 years, he became a father of a son in his likeness, according to the image, according to his image, and he named him Seth.

Now Seth replaces Abel, who died at the hands of Cain. Verse 4. And the days after Adam, he became a father of Seth for 800 years. Now that is a long time to live. How many kids did Adam and Eve have? It doesn't say. Read the next statement. And he had other sons and daughters. So who did Cain and Seth marry? Adam and Eve's other sons, or daughters. Excuse me. And their other sons married other daughters. But doesn't the Bible say it's unlawful to marry a close relative like a sister or a cousin? Yes, it does.

But not until later, as a matter of fact, not until thousands of years later, during the exodus journey of ancient Israel in Moses' day. Certainly not in Abraham's day, who married Sarah, his half-sister. But not in Jacob's day, who married his first cousins Rachel and Leah. That rule of marrying a close relative was not put into place for mankind until later.

And while we do not let science interpret the Bible, we actually interpret science through the lens of the Bible, at least we're supposed to. My hunch is that, looking at it from a scientific point of view, genetics plays a big role as to why God put the close relative prohibition on the ancient Israelites. Before we consider that, let's notice some key facts about mankind as one family.

And we'll start with God's word in Genesis. We are all the descendants of Adam and Eve. And if that is true, then we are all one race. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 45. Paul says, And it is written, The first man Adam, first man. There were no pre-ademic people. The first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit, speaking of Jesus Christ. So, there were no men before Adam.

He was the first. There were no other women. For his sons to marry, Adam was first. Back to Genesis. We're going to pick up Eve now and see how it's all through Adam and Eve. Genesis 3, verse 20. Genesis 3, verse 20. And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

She was the mother of every other human being on planet Earth. So, Adam was the first, and Eve is the mother of all. There are no other people besides Adam and Eve. Okay? Very well-established fact. That means that all of mankind came from two people. But how can that be? Have you seen the variety and the beauty of mankind around the Earth from two people? You're going to find some of these things fascinating.

I know I did. Jesus Christ stepped in to save mankind. Who's he saving? Adam's race. And only Adam's race. You have to be a son or daughter of Adam to be saved. It's a very important point. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 22. For as in Adam died, all died, even so in Christ, all shall be made alive. It's not that one man sinned for all, by the way. Let's go down a little rabbit hole and explain this for just a second.

Rather, Adam actually introduced sin. In other words, sin entered in by Adam. Romans 5, verse 12 says, Therefore, justice through one man sin entered the world, and death threw sin, and thus death spread to all men. Because... Now listen to the why. Because all sinned. You and I sin for ourselves. That's why we have to repent for ourselves and be baptized on our own. Adam didn't sin for you. Adam simply introduced the sin. Jesus Christ introduces the solution. It's on you to actually respond. We all committed our own sins. Romans 3, 23, it was mentioned in the sermon that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

So, we are all children of Adam and Eve. Does that make us one race? Or did God split us into other races after the flood so that we are different kinds of people now? Are we different kinds? Or are we different families? Here's the key verse that we are all one race. The Apostle Paul stated in his address to the Areopagus in Acts 17 and verse 26. Acts 17 and verse 26. By the way, I know some of you always understood this. And for some of you, this is really new and controversial, but for most it's not.

It just needs to be clear. As we navigate through this next decade, you need to have this very clearly in mind. There is no partiality tolerated in your heart. You will not do it. Acts 17 verse 26. And he made from one blood every nation of men.

Let me read it again. And he, God, this great unknown God that Paul is speaking to these Greeks, they have this statue, this idol to the unknown God just to worship, just in case they missed one. So Paul says, okay, let me tell you about him. He's the creator God. And he created from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth. And determined their preappointed times and their boundaries of their dwellings. One blood or one man, the NIV version says one man. We all came from, you know, all men come from one man or one race. The word man or blood is actually not in the original text. It's implied. But what Paul actually said was, and he made from one every nation of men. So the word man or blood or race or whatever it is, is implied. And the Greek language does that. And he was speaking in the Areopagus, so he was speaking perfect Greek. Ah! But the last part of that verse says, God gave them boundaries.

He took the families made from this one blood or this one man, and he gave them boundaries, didn't he? Doesn't that mean he separated the races? That's where we start mingling Darwinism into the Bible. Take the Darwinian thought out of the Bible that there are different kinds of people. In Acts 17-26, it doesn't say that at all. But does giving land and boundaries constitute genetic markers that make men different? Boundaries of different kind? In other words, don't intermingling or intermarrying with other races be forbidden by those boundaries? No. God did not create separate races by giving mankind land boundaries. He did not. God didn't separate us into different kinds. Never says that ever anywhere. He forced us to have different lands. But guess who God also gave boundaries to? Ancient Israel. Each tribe had his own boundary. But they were all Hebrews, weren't they? And they were allowed to intermarry, weren't they? But they had boundaries. They had land boundaries. It didn't mean they had to stay away from other people because their genetics were so vastly different from yours that if you mixed with them, your lineage would be unpure. That is utter nonsense. I've actually heard that taught in the church.

I remember one time, this is hideous. It's a hideous story. I'm still appalled by it.

There was a couple in the church that, this is before our kids were born, my wife and I got along with great. And he was a white guy, as we use in our terminology today, a white guy. There's nothing white about him.

But, you know, he was kind of a bubba, and he played the guitar. And his wife was black, African American. She was a neat lady. They were a perfect couple. And they had two sons. And these two sons, one of them was light, and one of them was really dark.

And the light one identified mostly with the African community. I mean, he was just, it's just who he was. It was his personality. It's what he liked. He liked the music, he liked the clothes, everything culturally about the African community.

That was him! But his skin was lighter. And the darker one? Oh, he was just like his dad. Bubba. He liked hard rock music, he liked to play the bass guitar. He didn't like anything African.

He was completely and solidly, from a cultural point of view, white.

And a minister comes along. A new minister comes in. To the congregation, the old minister leaves.

The old minister was understood. There was no such thing as race. He understood that there was no such thing as different kinds of people. And there was no problem. All was well. A new minister came in.

And the new minister believed in separating people by races, boundaries.

And he lined those two boys up in the back of church for all to see.

Even though he wasn't trying to do it publicly, it was public. And he pointed to the lighter-skinned young man and made the declaration that he was allowed to marry white.

And the other boy was allowed to marry black, which was exactly the opposite of who they were.

And he just based it on appearance.

And no biblical stance whatsoever. That must not exist in the house of God.

I witnessed that firsthand.

Some people see race and genetics into Acts 17, verse 26, where it does not belong.

I like the Newer-Vyse Standard Version, the way it interprets the Greek words into English. Let's go to Acts 17, verse 26 again, but this time not in the King James, but the Newer-Vyse Standard Version.

It says, from one ancestor... Remember, that word is not there in the original Greek, it's just from one. And the word is implied, so you have to fill in the blank in English. English requires the word, because we don't do that. From one comes...we just don't talk that way, so you've got to fill it in with something. One man, one blood, one ancestor.

From one ancestor, he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth. And he allotted the times of their existence and boundaries of the places where they should live. You know, I looked up what happened to the ancient Egyptians. Have you ever looked that up?

The ancient Egyptians...where are they?

The people who are in Egypt today are largely Middle Eastern Arabs. The Arabs took over Egypt. Where did the Egyptians go? Anthropologists have discovered that they are actually still in Egypt. They were simply conquered by the Arabs, but the ancient Egyptians are still there. It's pretty neat when you look it up.

You can see hieroglyphs on the Egyptian walls, and then you can see a young Egyptian man, and he is identical to the hieroglyph, the facial features and everything. So they're actually still there.

But their time has passed.

They don't lead anymore. The Arab culture now leads Egypt. It is time for the Arab culture there, and that's what it says in Acts 17 and verse 26. And he allotted times for their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live.

God didn't separate the races. Instead, he gave families land on the earth. You go here, and you go here, and you go here, and you go here, and you get this mountain, and you get this field, and it's pretty neat. He told them to be fruitful and multiply. To ensure that they did, he separated them at the Tower of Babel. Notice God's original orders to mankind at creation at our inception, Genesis 1, verse 27. These are God's original orders to mankind. These are our first orders. Genesis 1, 27. So God created humankind. In the image of God, he created them male and female. He created them.

And God blessed them and said to them, here's the first command, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.

Have dominion over the fish and the sea and over the birds of the air, and have everything that moves upon the earth.

There's our first orders. Go fill this beautiful planet that I made for you. It's yours.

Go take it.

So mankind was to have children, and those children were to have children, and so on, until the whole earth was filled with the children of Adam and Eve, the children of God.

And that meant that originally, brother had to marry sister.

And if you think about it, if you really think about it honestly, we still marry a relative.

If you marry a human, you are marrying a child of Adam and Eve. You're part of the same family. But now, you can't marry a close relative.

Here's the law forbidding such a relationship. Notice Leviticus 18 and verse 6. Leviticus 18 and verse 6.

No one is to approach any close relative and have sexual relations. I am the Lord.

Here's a quote from an article on this point, entitled, Who Were Adam and Eve's Children? by Connor Salter, who's written and posted on BibleStudyTools.com April 19th, 2021.

Regardless of the sheer math, it would indicate that at least one of Adam's three sons married a sister.

I'm going to step out of the quote there. All of them married sisters. Back into the quote.

This idea is disturbing and goes against the laws forbidding incest in Leviticus 18.

However, prior to this law being given in Leviticus, there are various instances of men marrying their sisters and other relatives.

Abraham's wife Sarah was his half-sister by a different mother. Genesis 20, verse 11 through 13. Jacob married his two female cousins. Genesis 29 and 30.

Moses married his... Moses' father married his aunt. Exodus 6, verse 20. For whatever reason, the law against incest doesn't seem to have been in effect.

At least not as strictly before God made it the covenant with the Israelites at Mount Sinai. So instead of questioning God's great and perfect mind, let's humbly learn why he did what he did and stand in awe of him.

It says in Genesis that Adam and Eve were created very good. That means their genes were perfect.

Here's a plausible reason for why God introduced the no-close relative rule during Moses' time.

After thousands of years of sin and defects added to the human genome, with all of the mutations that go along with sin, the human gene pool was very likely getting very thin. Just my guess. This is a lot of other people's guess as well.

For example, every time we commit a physical sin against the body, like we eat a food we shouldn't eat, or we do something to the body that shouldn't be done, or we acquire a disease as a result of sin that we were never intended to get, our genes are actually affected. Or corrupted, if you will. From a big-picture point of view, sin corrupts DNA. Mutations and other defects are passed into the next generation.

If you marry a close relative, it is most likely that you will have the same mistake in your genes as each other.

The net result of marrying your sister or first cousin would be that your offspring would likely have serious problems, and we see that in the world today.

That would not have been the case in Adam's day. The gene pool in Adam's immediate descendants would have been nearly perfect, even though they had all sinned.

The gene pool didn't need to be protected back then. So you could marry any relative, not a distant one.

When in fact there were no distinct relatives back then originally. But there was a perfect gene pool.

Their DNA was intact and complete, untarnished by sin.

Today, after generations of sin and corruption, the DNA, if you marry someone who is further distanced away from you, it's likely, not guaranteed, but likely, that your gene mistakes they don't have. They have their own, but they don't have yours.

And it's likely that their good genes will mask your defective genes and protect your children from serious defects.

In Adam and Eve's time, there were not gene defects. God created them without defect, as he says in Genesis, so they could marry close relatives with no defective consequences that would jeopardize the children with mutations and the like.

Once again, if you think about it, we all marry a relative.

If you marry a human being, then you've married a son or daughter about him. And Eve, and therefore, you've married a relative.

We now require to marry someone beyond first cousin, most likely to preserve the gene pool.

But don't play the judgment game with God for having Adam and Eve's children marry each other.

God put so much more thought into this before he created us than we could even put into this subject, thinking about it our entire life.

God knows what he's doing. Here's another quote from Ken Ham's talk on race.

So how do we explain all the differences in people?

Where did the Australian Aborigines, the American Indians, the Fijians come from?

So if we start with the Bible, the Bible says we all came from Adam and Eve, two people.

How do you get all these distinctive people groups if you only start with two people?

To do that, we have to understand some basic genetics.

And he goes through, Ken Ham goes through and explains that the word kind in Genesis 1 is actually a scientific term.

It's not man's scientific term, but rather it's God's scientific term.

Man arbitrarily categorizes living things into classification systems.

And when you and I were in biology, we learned these classifications, and we quickly forgot them, because most of us couldn't have cared less.

Unless you were a doctor, then you still remember the classification systems, or a biologist.

But most of us have forgotten the class systems that man has arbitrarily put in place, the categories. Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.

You've all heard that before if you went to school.

God uses the term kind after his kind, after their kind.

Genesis 1 uses the term kind ten times.

The Hebrew word kind, as I explained before, is mean, which according to Strong's means to portion out or sort.

A different sort of animal.

And you know there's only one sort mentioned for mankind. One.

So according to this, kind is the way God sorts out living things.

The way they would reproduce, keeping them separate from other kinds.

That's so critically important.

Are we supposed to keep separate from other people?

The question we're addressing today is, is there different classifications for human beings? Are there different kinds?

Ken Ham's group looked in the classification system, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.

And he compared it with the word kind in Genesis and discovered that there is actually a match in man's classification and God's class.

And that is at the family level. Family classification in most instances is the system that closely matches the biblical term kind.

For example, Ken Ham explains that there is one dog, family, or one dog, kind. And dogs reproduce after dogs.

You never see a dog become a horse. You never see a fish crawl up on the bank and become a bird. And that bird morph into a dog.

They stay there kind. Now a bird may grow a longer beak or a shorter beak, as we've seen on the Galapagos Islands with Darwin's finches.

Right? And they adapt to their environment. Some stay close to the ground, some up in the trees, but they never become an iguana, a lizard. They stay a bird, always. And never has it been observed that an animal or any living being has changed his kind.

There's a dog family, a dog kind. There's also a cat family. So a cat cannot become a dog and a dog cannot become a cat, according to Genesis. But a dog breed can become another dog breed and one cat breed can become another cat breed. And the thing that cannot change in nature is the family. So, when God said he set two pairs of each kind of animal on the ark, he didn't bring every species of dog and every species of cat on the ark. He didn't need to. And this is answering the question, how do we get so many different people on the earth? Let's look at dogs and cats.

God brought one of each kind on the ark, which means two pairs of cats and two pairs of dogs. A breeding pair of dogs with another breeding pair of dogs on the ark. All other cats and dogs came from these two breeding pairs. And with that variety of cats and dogs we have on the planet today, all of them, every dog can trace his genome back to the one common ancestral dog. So, I'm not going to get into the genes. I was going to do a PowerPoint at this point and I know we would all fall asleep. So, I love this stuff and I could do it, but I'm not going to do it to you. We're going to just crack on here for another 10 minutes or so. The offspring of an animal or a human being are a combination or a mixture of the mothers and the fathers genes, which means that a human being or a dog is unique. There is no such thing as an identical twin on planet Earth, genetically speaking, because you are always a combination of your mom and your dad, which means your genes are 100% unique. But is it possible that somebody else would be identical to you on planet Earth, or are you really unique? What about identical twins that you look at and you literally can't tell them apart? I met two of them at camp this summer. A couple of boys could not tell them apart. You know who could? Their mom.

She was there. She could tell them apart like that because they were different. There's no such thing as an identical twin. So the offspring have unique DNA sequence from their parents. They're neither a carbon copy of mom nor a carbon copy of dad. They have their own unique genetic makeup. Each offspring is unique. Consider Esau and Jacob.

They were twins. Esau came out hairy and red. Jacob came out smooth. Each offspring is unique. Today, we use terms for dogs like purebred dog. This is a purebred. There's nothing pure about a purebred dog. We simply have bred the dog down until there's no variability in the offspring. That's what that means. There's such a loss of genetic information in the so-called purebred dog. They often have many health problems. They die much younger than, say, a stray dog that we would call a mutt.

The mutt usually has more genetic information from its ancestors in its body, which actually makes it a healthier animal. Tammy and I used to own boxers for many years. Love boxers. Playful, athletic. They look absolutely terrifying, so they're good guard dogs. But they're clowns. They're terribly unhealthy animals. Terribly unhealthy.

All of them died from either cancer or stroke. There's nothing pure about a purebreed. They're genetically deficient animals. Some breeds have eye problems. Others are prone to hip dysplasia. Some get arthritis. Some are prone to cancer. Some have digestive trouble. And it goes on and on and on. If you own a purebreed, your vet bill is through the roof.

Here's the point. God didn't make the purebreed. God made the original dog, of which all the other dogs are descendants. God didn't make a defective, sin-cursed, mutated animal. He made something very good. He says in Genesis, Dogs bred over time, and they have a lot of variety, don't they? Oh, there's so many different kinds of dogs. You've got the Great Dane and the Mastiff, and you've got the Chihuahua, you know, the Pug, my little Boston Terriers I have today.

They very likely came from only four dogs that Noah or God put on the Ark that survived the Flood.

That's what it says in Genesis, two pairs of each kind.

After those dogs got off the Ark, then they bred down the great variety of dogs that we see today on the Earth. Some of the variations are actually due to environment, like wolves are different from coyotes, which are different from the African wild dog, aren't they? They all came off the Ark. But the environment required certain traits in the offspring.

And some dogs were different because a man saw a dog with a shorter snout and bred it with another dog with a shorter snout. He made a shorter snout and breed it. Either way, if they adapted to the environment or they were intentionally bred different, they all came from four dogs on the Ark. And as dogs spread over the Earth and different gene combinations survived in different regions and climates, so different traits in those dogs started to become prevalent in those areas.

The American Kennel Club recognizes 195 different dog breeds. The British Kennel Club and the European Continental Kennel Club recognize different numbers of breeds, but the FCI, an international organization for dog breeds, recognizes 360 pedigree dog breeds around the world. How do we get such a variety from four dogs on the Ark?

How do we get such a variety of human beings from two people, Adam and Eve? And are we now different kinds? God put incredible variety in the human genome. According to Ken Ham, there are more possible unique combinations or variations of genes in the human being than there are atoms in the universe.

That means that every human being on planet Earth is genetically unique in some way. Every one of us. Some of you have heard it said that you have an identical twin out there, somewhere on the Earth. But you really don't. When you look at the genes of a person, their DNA, there's no such thing as an identical twin. You are all unique. And that is how much variety. Here's the point. That is how much variety God put into his family of children. But that variety we capitalize on, our human nature capitalizes on the variety. And yet it doesn't actually change the kind we are. Humans are made in the image of God. We are all mankind, singular, the children of God. Galatians 3 and verse 28. We read this last time. There is neither Jew nor Greek. Read it again. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female. You are all one in Christ Jesus. We are all the children of Adam and Eve. So next time, we're going to discuss the human genome and the great misconceptions that some of you have had in the church concerning race and the Bible. We're going to look at the three divisions of mankind from Shem, Ham, and Japheth that spread over the earth at the Tower of Babel. We're going to look at Israel's laws concerning marriage and marriage of other people more closely than some have done in the past. There are laws in Israel about who you can and cannot marry. We're going to zero in on what those laws are and what they really mean and how that translates into the New Testament and how there is an exact match between the New and the Old Testament. One hundred percent match. We're going to look at Abraham and Isaac's objection to their sons marrying women in the local area.

And we will see that we have misinterpreted the Bible to more closely match the Darwinian explanation of mankind. At least some have. God does not show partiality. Our thinking, brethren, needs to change so that we don't either.