Generally we don’t discuss racial issues in the CGI because race has no real significant effect in the Word of God.

Many people do use the Bible to support racial prejudices. Some would quote that Cain was marked and state that is when blacks began but a simple look at the passage makes this statement look stupid. If we break into the story of Cain in Genesis 4:10-15 where God talks with Cain after he has killed his brother Able. "And He said, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground. "So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. "When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth." This punishment was such that Cain feared that anyone who found him would kill him. And Cain said to the LORD, "My punishment is greater than I can bear! "Surely You have driven me out this day from the face of the ground; I shall be hidden from Your face; I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, and it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me." So God marked Cain to insure his safety - nothing to do with his children after him but his life. And the LORD said to him, "Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold." And the LORD set a mark on Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him." Now to say the mark was a way to show that all of Cain’s family was inferior forever would be a truly fanatical perspective to take. That is what racists do - they try to read their viewpoint into everything instead of looking for the message that is there.

Now it isn’t just whites that try to rip verses out of context to support racism it is done by various colours in various ways but all completely out of context.

So what about the various requests for marrying your kind instead of mixed marriages with the other people? Lets look at several examples to see what that meant.

Genesis 24:3 I will make you swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell; "but you shall go to my country and to my family, and take a wife for my son Isaac." The same thing was stated with respect to his sons Esau and Jacob. Now why did Abraham make that requirement for His son? Was it because the Canaanites were black or something else?

In Leviticus 18:24-25 'Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. 'For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants." The people of the land were described as being so morally corrupt that the Lord destroyed them. Those people were the Canaanites.

Furthermore God says, (Deuteronomy 7:1-4) "When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, "and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. "Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. "For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the LORD will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly."

The problem with those people was the gods they were worshipping and their corruption - never does it talk about colour with respect to race in any passage of the Word of God.

Now lets look at where we likely have interracial marriages take place that are acceptable before God.

Genesis 30:1-5 "When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, "Give me children, or I'll die!" Jacob became angry with her and said, "Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?" Then she said, "Here is Bilhah, my maidservant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and that through her I too can build a family." So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife. Jacob slept with her, and she became pregnant and bore him a son." Not only did some of the tribes come from a maidservant but from two different maidservants who were not likely from the same family or racial background. God made these children heads of the tribes of Israel.

Moses married Zipporah who was a Midianite. David married Bathsheba who was a Hittite the same people that were detestable to Isaac and Rachel. Why? Because they had accepted the customs of the people of Israel - which included the laws of God.

In fact, many of the various other peoples were in the lineage of Jesus. Rahab the harlot, the Hittite, Ruth the Moabite and Bathsheba.the Hittite are all part of the lineage of Christ. Why? Exodus 12:48"And when a stranger dwells with you and wants to keep the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as a native of the land." When an Isrealite did not worship the God of Israel or keep His commandments he was to be cut off from Isreal but when a foreigner wanted to become part of Israel and their God he was to be considered as one of their own.

Ruth said: "Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. (Ruth 1:16) So Ruth was considered an Israelite. Rahab and Bathsheba also considered themselves as following the God of Israel and God blessed them for it.

When the people separated themselves from their mixed marriages it was when the sons of God, God’s elect, married the daughters of those peoples who worshipped other gods.

In the New Testament, God’s elect is the church and not the nation of Israel, the Israel of God none the less which is not the physical race of Israel but those who are in the Lord. "A wife is bound by law as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord." (1Cor 7:39)

The church is described as neither Greek or Jew but all one in Christ. And again in Ephesians 2:11-20 "Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh; who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands; that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ…And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.

Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone," So those who join the Lord are all of the same race to God because they are all His children, His family.

The race that was important to God was, and is forever, those who are apart of His family. 1 Corinthians 15:44-49 "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man." God calls us mankind because we bear the image of man, the man we all came from, Adam. Yet ultimately in creation God demonstrated that He wanted us all to come through another man, the second Adam, the Christ, Jesus. Currently we are all mankind but God predestined mankind to be a part of His family. Will we put on His image or will we continue to try to make God after our racial images? The choice is yours - what are you going to do.

As for the Church of God International we talk about the family of God, not man’s race, but the ultimate destiny of God being at home with us and us with Him. Marry within that family and you will be blessed, marry outside of that and you will be fighting daily against the gods of your spouse. May God be able to Bless your decisions.