Is Integration a Moral Law?
Thomas Allen
Martin Luther King argued that integration is a moral law and a law of God, and conversely, segregation is not. The following statement of King from his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963, shows King’s belief that integration is a moral law and a law of God. In his argument for integration and against segregation, he states:
A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. . . . All segregation statutes are unjust. . . . [Segregation] is morally wrong and sinful.If compatibility with the God-given principles and rules in the Bible decides the moral law and the law of God, then segregation is moral, and integration is immoral. Segregation, not integration, harmonizes with the Bible and the law of God, and, therefore, with the moral law. Integration conflicts with the Bible and the law of God and, therefore, with moral law. Thus, segregation is moral and just. Integration is immoral and unjust.
The God of the Bible is a god of segregation; He is not a god of integration. If King really believed that integration is a moral law and a law of god, then his god is not the God of the Bible.
Because of integration, God sent the great flood of Noah’s day. The daughters of man (the Adamites) integrated with and married the sons of god (Gen. 6:2).
God confused the language of the people building the tower of Babel to force them to segregate. “And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; . . . let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city” (Gen. 11:6-8). Thus, God used language to segregate people. If He were a God of integration, he would not have confounded their language to force them to segregate.
The book of Exodus is a story of segregation. It is a story of the Israelites segregating themselves from the Egyptians. In Exodus 33:16, Moses says, “. . . so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.” God commanded this segregation.
In Leviticus 20:26, God told the Israelites to segregate from other people: “And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.” Thus, God is a segregationist.
In His code of moral conduct for the priests of Israel, God ordered any priest who married to take “a virgin of his own people to wife” (Leviticus 21:14). Thus, He forbade priests to marry outside their race. As Christians have supplanted this ancient priesthood (Revelation 1:6, 5:10), they are to marry within their own race.
Chapters 23 and 24 of Numbers describe how Balak, King of Moab, attempted to subdue the invading Israelites by having his people integrate with them. Balak knew he could not defeat the Israelites in combat. Following Balaam's advice, he sought to subdue them by having his people integrate with the Israelites, have sexual relations with them, and intermarry with them. Naturally, God was not pleased with what He saw. Moses ordered the execution of those guilty of the sins of integration and miscegenation (Numbers 25:1-5).
This sin is referenced in Revelation 2:14: “But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.” Of course, the Israelites or the church in Pergamos could not have committed these sins without first integrating.
Chapters 9 and 10 of Ezra are among the clearest condemnations of integration and the inevitable miscegenation if one refrains from reading into these chapters what is not there. After Ezra had arrived in Jerusalem, he learned that the Israelites were guilty of a great abomination. They had not segregated themselves. Instead, they had integrated with the inhabitants of that area and had intermarried with them. The religious leaders were among the worst offenders (Ezra 9:1-2). This news devastated Ezra, and he cried unto God his shame (Ezra 9:3-15). He identified integration and the resulting miscegenation as a rebellion against God’s law (Ezra 9:14) and as a sin (Ezra 9:15, 10:2, 10). Ezra’s solution was for the men of Israel to separate themselves from their alien wives and to send them and the children born from these immoral mixed marriages away (Ezra 10:3-5, 11-19). Ezra read the law to the people of Israel (Nehemiah 8:1-8). The Israelites responded by segregating themselves from the rest of the people in the land and vowing not to intermarry with them (Nehemiah 10:28-31).
Integrationists read religious differences into these passages. They claim that the divide was made based on religion: Believers separated themselves from unbelievers. Which by the way is an act of segregation. A careful, or even cursory, reading of these chapters clearly reveals that the divide was not made on religious grounds. The separation was not believers from unbelievers. No exception was made for believing wives or their children. Whether they were believers or unbelievers, all wives were divorced and sent away. Furthermore, no Israelite was sent away because he was an unbeliever. Whether they were believers or unbelievers, all Israelite men remained. The issue was clearly race, not religion.
God commanded the Israelites to segregate themselves from other people. Whenever they defied God’s law of segregation and integrated, they encountered a loss of freedom and hardship. Eventually, integration led to their loss of national identity. (Today we are witnessing the destructiveness of this iron law of integration.)
A favorite verse of integrationists is the first part of Acts 17:26. They ignore the second part, which states: “. . . and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.” According to this verse, God made all nations of man and determined the bounds of their habitation. Thus, God intended the various races of man to segregate. (A nation consists of one race. A race comprises several nations.)
In Revelation 5:9. 7:9, 11:9, 13:7, 14:6, 17:15, and 21:24, John describes mankind in the plural: peoples, nations, kindreds (tribes), and tongues (languages). Integration leads to the amalgamation of the races, which destroys all distinction among the various races, peoples, and nations involved. If God had intended for humans to integrate and thus amalgamate, John would have described heaven as containing only one people, nation, kindred, and tongue.
God abhors integration so much that He bans the racially mixed, the result of integration, from His congregation: “No half-breed may be admitted to the assembly of Yahweh; not even his descendants to the tenth generation may be admitted to the assembly of Yahweh” (Deuteronomy 23:2, The New Jerusalem Bible).
As the above passages show, the God of the Bible is a god of segregation. He is not a god of integration. Being a God of segregation, His moral law is segregation. If integration is the moral law of King’s god, then, his god is not the God of the Bible.
Copyright © 2014 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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