Transcription
Where do the people who are labeled as Black come from? In my lifetime, I've heard a plethora of explanations on where these people come from. Some people say from the star Sirius. Some people say from other planets and other galaxies and other solar systems, right? Even people claim that these people came from the dust of the ground, right? And all types of explanations all the way up until our current scientific explanation of, uh, people evolving out of Africa and then from there spreading out and migrating throughout the rest of the world.
So, what's interesting about this is that these are not the only explanations that I've heard. There's also another explanation, and we're going to go into the Mormon explanation on where did the people labeled black originate from. Now, to understand their explanation, it's written in the Book of Mormon, which is their scriptures. And the Mormons are a sect of Christians who use the Bible in addition. And in addition to the Bible, they use what is called The Book of Mormon. So they have their explanation on where people who are labeled as Black come from, right? And so, let's go into this video right here so we can get an account of what the Mormons believe and hopefully in doing so, we can get some understanding.
The Book of Mormon says, and there's a quote here, that there was a blackness that came upon all the children of Canaan, that they were despised among all people. What does that mean? We believe that the blacks are the descendants of Cain, that, uh, the the darkness was a curse that God placed on them for the murder of Abel. But, uh, to say that black people are cursed, that sounds racist. Perhaps it does. What can I say? I, I can't say things according to how one might interpret my response. I, I can't change the doctrines that Joseph Smith taught because those are unpopular today. So, what they believe is that those that are labeled as black have their origins as the descendants of Cain. Now, we know that Cain in the Bible is the first murderer, and just like he said, Cain killed his brother Abel.
Now, the important part that I want us to understand is that they have these beliefs, and these are firm beliefs. Understand, firm beliefs that they have with high conviction, meaning that there's no way to convince them otherwise. This is what I want people to pay attention to. And although, uh, this belief here is purely imaginary, what I will say is that I do respect that the person is honest. At least he's telling the truth about what it is that he actually believes, and he's not covering it up and, and trying to make it, uh, sweeten it up and say something that is really not saying.
Now, the understanding that we need to glean out of this is not the content that he's saying, right? That we don't care about. Those are his beliefs. Those are his beliefs. Those are not our primary concern, right? What we want to concern ourselves is the conviction of belief. Why? Because when you understand how the conviction and, uh, beliefs, firm beliefs, work in one group, you can use that to shed light on other groups because what you understand is the faculty of belief, and the way that belief works, it works the same in all religious groups. So, for example, we see the gentleman here, he's presenting his beliefs, and in his mind, and what he imagines, these beliefs are absolutely 100% truth, right? And anyone that opposes those beliefs, I would assume that he would think and believe that they are absolutely 100% incorrect. And so, as it is with him and all the other Mormons that subscribe to this particular belief, so it is with all the other thousands of Christians and Islamic-based groups. They also have in their minds many ideas that are purely imaginative. They also believe themselves to be 100% true, and everyone else to be 100% false.
We can see this. I use these examples of the Mormons because most people who are going to be watching aren't going to be necessarily invested emotionally into the Mormon account, and so it's easy to say what they're saying is false, and you can easily do that, right? So, it's not to pick on the Mormons, right? But it's to show that the same way people perceive the Mormons, and the way that the Mormons perceive themselves as being true, so it is with all the other groups. It's the same thing. And the reality is is that the most of the people who are in these particular types of groups, who believe themselves to be 100% correct and everyone else to be 100% false, what they do is they never ask themselves the hard questions. They never ask themselves the questions like, "I wonder if it's possible that maybe it is that we have the wrong information?" or "I wonder if it's possible that maybe other religions have some truth, and maybe we have some truth? Maybe they have some things that are false, and maybe we have some things that are false." These are the type of questions that terrify people in many religious groups. Why? Because they're absolutely afraid to find out what might be on the other side of that question.
How do I know this? Because I was in there before too, terrified, shaken by the knees, ruffled up, ruled by fear, scared to ask the question because I'm terrified what I might find out on the other side. So instead, I suppressed the questions, right? Until I mustered up enough courage to say, "You know what? I'm asking a question. I'm going to go find out the answer." And that's when you find out all the doors open up, and all the answers are already there, hidden in plain sight, right? So we use these accounts here to shed light on it so other people who are seeking will have some information to help guide them through their quest.
Now, what's interesting enough is that back to our subject on the origin of those who are were labeled as black people is that the Mormons, they have an actual cartoon edition, right? Or one has at least been made about the Mormons and their belief on the origins of where black folks came. And so, what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at this so you can see just how imaginary, when you look at it in a different light, how imaginary many of these beliefs are, how purely imaginary, I should say, that these many of these beliefs are, right? So let's go ahead and let's watch this account of where the Mormons, in their imagination, have been taken in their belief of the origin of where those who are labeled as black people originate.
[Music]
Mormonism teaches that trillions of planets scattered throughout the cosmos are ruled by countless gods who once were human like us. They say that long ago on one of these planets, to an unidentified god and one of his goddess wives, a spirit child named Elohim was conceived. This spirit child was later born to human parents who gave him a physical body. Through obedience to Mormon teaching and death and resurrection, he proved himself worthy and was elevated to godhood as his father before him. Mormons believe that Elohim is their heavenly father, and that he lives with his many goddess wives on a planet near a mysterious star called Kolob. Here, the god of Mormonism and his wives, through endless celestial sex, produced billions of spirit children to decide their destiny. The head of the Mormon gods called a great Heavenly Council meeting. Both of Elohim's eldest sons were there: Lucifer and his brother Jesus. A plan was presented to build planet Earth, where the spirit children would be sent to take on mortal bodies and learn good from evil. Lucifer stood and made his bid for becoming savior of this new world, wanting the glory for himself. He planned to force everyone to become gods. Opposing the idea, the Mormon Jesus suggested giving man his freedom of choice, as on other planets. The vote that followed approved the proposal of the Mormon Jesus, who had become savior of the planet Earth. Enraged, Lucifer cunningly convinced one-third of the spirits destined for Earth to fight with him in [Music] revolt. Thus, Lucifer became the devil, and his followers the demons, sent to this world. They would forever be denied bodies of flesh and bone. Those who remain neutral in the battle were cursed to be born with black skin. This is the Mormon explanation for the negro race. The spirits that fought most valiantly against Lucifer would be born into Mormon families on planet Earth. These would be the lighter-skinned people, or white and delightsome, as the Book of Mormon describes them.
Right, so, so we can see here that this is the lens that many of the Mormons see the world through, right? They see this as the explanation of where people who are labeled as Black come from, and also, in addition to that, they're also seeing where the people who are labeled as has white come from, right? Obviously, when they're writing the story, they're not going to write it to where they're the ones who are the bad guys. You can't blame people for that. People always do this. If you're someone who's labeled as black, you're going to create the characters to make the other people who are labeled as white bad. This is just what humans do, right? We don't care about any of this stuff. We're not looking at it from that lens. We understand this is human activity here, right? And it should be expected out of anyone who's trying to give themselves the upper hand. This is why it's important to not get emotionally involved with many of these things. Many of this stuff is purely imaginative, right?
Someone may ask, why do I not get mad at this stuff? Why? Because one, for one, I'm not a black person, right? I'm not a black person or a negro, right? That's clear. Why would I call myself a black person? This is black, right? There's a clear difference between that and this. So I don't see myself as that. In my imagination, and in my beliefs, I don't see myself as that, right? In my imagination and my belief is matching what I see here as this as a brown skin color, right? So I'm not involved in that, and I have detached myself from that particular identification, right? So I can examine it. I want to examine it from a top, uh, a top view, right? Not someone who's immersed in there. So this is not going to upset me at all, right? I'm looking at the art behind it, right? And this is what I'm suggesting people to start doing. Stop detaching yourself from many of these ideas and start looking at it from what it, what it is. And in coming to that understanding, you understand that people write things that are based off of the cultural context and the cultural setting that they find themselves in, and it's a truth to them, maybe at that particular moment.
So, for example, Joseph Smith, the guy who wrote the, uh, Mormon Bible, he's writing this in the 1830s, right? Or it's public in the 1830s. So it, it makes sense for him to have these type of accounts and this type of explanation during that time period, right? That's what he knew to be true according to the, the knowledge that he had and to the society that he lived in. And so it is the same as the people who wrote the biblical narrative, right? They wrote that over 1500 years ago, and they have accounts in there where they think that the creation of humans come from someone being brought up from the, the dust of the ground and a god breathing in the breath of life into him. This is 1500 years ago. It's created from the cultural context that the people understood at that time, right? They didn't have the tools that we have today. So they only could base their understanding of the world based off of the limited tools and information that they had at that time, right? And they gave the best account that they could give. Although it, you know, it's inaccurate, they still tried, right?
And today, we have a different understanding on where people who are labeled as black people, which really have brown skin. We understand how rich skin occurred, right? Occurring to the scientific reasoning, right? We know that people in different areas around the, uh, around the world develop different skin tones for different reasons, right? If you're in the climate of Africa, which is where humans began, you know that the, the climate there, it warrants a specific type of skin, uh, color and a specific type of skin tone, a rich skin tone. As Africans migrate out of that continent and go off and inhabit the rest of the areas of the planet, in certain areas where the UV is not as intense, you don't need the rich skin tone, right? They, the melanin can start to drop, and it starts to adapt, right? You, what's more beneficial is to have a lighter skin tone. That's where you get the European skin tone at, right? It's an adapt to the environment, right? And also with the lighter skin, and also with the lower levels of, uh, of UV radiation, the lighter skin allows the, um, the human to absorb sunlight and synthesize vitamin D much easier than someone coming into that environment with richer skin, right? And so it's the opposite when you're in, uh, the, uh, areas such as Africa, right? Especially in those areas where the, um, UV is high and intense, right? You're going to need a, a richer skin tone to be able to have longer exposure out in the sun in order to synthesize the amount of vitamin D that you need, and also to prevent skin cancer, right? We have different explanations for these things today. So all the other stuff, we can just leave it for what it is. It's just imaginary stuff, right? And what people understood at that time, right?
And to be fair, 1500 years from now, maybe there's a different understanding that we come, maybe we get closer to a more accurate understanding, right? As the tools develop, as the tools develop, we can get better understanding. And that's why it's important for the hero to always adapt and evolve, right? And not to stay stuck in any particular way of thinking, especially if it's keeping you behind, right? As we have already explained, some of these other narratives are just not fitting where we're at today in our current understanding, right?
So I use this narrative of the Mormons because, like I said, it sheds a lot of light on other ideas and it helps people look at it as a reflection, like, "Okay, look at this account as the Mormons believing these type of, um, of, of beliefs, and say, maybe consider, maybe is it, do I have some of these similar type of beliefs?" Ask the questions and don't be afraid to find the answer because what you'll find out is once you cross the chasm, you'll be getting closer into the land of freedom, right? What we call, uh, er, poisa, and you'll find out that there's a whole bunch more people out there that have already crossed that chasm, have already crossed over the bridge, right? But if you're stuck in a world that's this big, and that's it, you won't see the world that's all around it. You won't see it, right? Even though it may be right in front of your very eyes.
All right, so hopefully this has been able to give you some insight, and we'll be going over a lot more. We're going to deal with this Book of Mormon a lot more in the Mormon doctrine for the reasons that I've already given, right? We're going to hit on a lot more of this, and then we'll also touch on a whole bunch of other different things as well, as far as the religions, so we can start to put these puzzles together, and then you can have a different understanding, right? And a lot of the questions that you may ask, you'll find out that a lot of them you'll be able to answer on your own, and you'll be able to do the research and find, once you start to open yourself up to other answers, right? And so, what I want to do is thank you for watching the video until the end. My name is Brooklyn St. Michael, and I'll see you on the next one.