The Making of A Great America Uprooting the Spirit of Racism

The Police: A Black and White Experience

…Bishop Jakes offered these thoughts on why some people, specifically white people, don’t believe that the offenses by the police against black people are systemic:

“The reason that the people you talk to don’t believe it is systemic is because they are not victimized by it. I don’t blame them for not believing it because the police in their neighborhood don’t do that...The police that pull up to them are a help for them, and encouragement for them, and they (the people) are assumed to be good people. They are assumed to be good people until proven otherwise, even if they’ve had a few drinks. They just had too much to drink. I’ll make it plain. If you live in one part of Chicago and you’ve got a drug problem, you go to jail, and if you live in another part of Chicago, it’s a sickness, and you go to rehab. What is a crime in our community is a sickness in your community, treatable with sympathy and empathy and kindness, and it’s talked about openly. If I had the same problem and live in the wrong zip code, I’m a criminal and a dog and an outlaw. These kinds of inconsistencies…” (A Discussion on Racism | Carl Lentz & Bishop T.D. Jakes | Hillsong East Coast, 2020)

At Point-Blank Range

At the time of this writing, one of the top national stories is the shooting of Jacob Blake by a white police officer. Jacob Blake was unarmed and was shot seven times in the back at point-blank range in front of his children. Though all the details are still being investigated, cell phone videos clearly show that he was unarmed and not presenting a danger to police officers. (Jaclyn Peiser, 2020) Again, the details are not yet known, but from the footage, his crime appears to be walking away from police officers who did not attempt to tackle him, grab him or physically subdue him. In the video, the officer pulls on his T-shirt with one hand and puts the barrel of his pistol in Blake’s lower back, and shoots him not once, not twice but seven times. At one point in the cell phone video, the one recording it screams out, “why did you shoot him so many F$#@!&% times?”! (Jaclyn Peiser, 2020). I want to be stunned. I want to be overwhelmed. But I have seen so many videos like this. Fortunately, Jacob Blake will live despite having bullets hit his spinal cord, vertebrae, stomach, intestines, kidney, and liver.

I have been writing about America’s system of policing against black people all day for the past two days, and I can’t write fast enough. I can’t write fast enough to keep up with the new names.

Preface

There is a narrative going around that systemic racism doesn’t exist anymore, or worse, that it is an outright myth. Even the President of the United States, commenting about George Floyd, has said that it’s the work of a “bad apple” in the police department, and there are “not too many” bad apples. It’s just not true because racism is a spiritual matter. Because a spirit is driving the racism in America, it's not just going to go away. The spirit of racism, even the devil himself, is never going to just go away. So, if we think that politicians, police officers, protests, etc., are going to get rid of the spirit of racism, that’s very naïve. It’s worse than naïve; it's spiritually ignorant.

In this book, I will show what 2 Cor 4:4 (NIV) says is true. It says that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers…” The spirit of racism is a blinding spirit that blinds the people that are under its influence to its existence and its very operation. The spirit of racism thrives in an environment where its very existence is denied. The denial of the existence of the spirit of racism, hatred based on race, is in some way acceptable when you think about “the world.” But it's totally unacceptable when it comes to the Church. *Throughout this book, I will use Church with a capital “C” to refer to the body of Christ in America versus an individual church.

 For Christians to believe that the devil has stopped operating in some significant area is untenable. We, members of the body of Christ, should not be subject to the same blindness as the world in the area of racism. The only way racism can be uprooted is that it first must be acknowledged/identified, prayed against, and by faith acted against.

The Bible says in Matt 24:24 that in the last days, even the “very elect” will be deceived. I know that in its most specific application, it applies to the antichrist and his coming. But as Pastor Sean A. Moore of Faith Christian Center, Phoenix, recently pointed out, in verse 7 of the same chapter, it says that one of the signs of the last days will be that “nation shall rise against nation.” Pastor Moore went onto share that the word “nation” is the Greek word “ethnos.” One of the definitions of that word in the Vines Expository Dictionary of Bible words is “people group.” One of the definitions in the Strong Exhaustive Concordance for the same word is “race.”

Putting it all together then, one of the signs of the last days is that races and people groups will rise up against each other. I believe that if the Church ignores the light of Scripture in this area and willingly chooses to be blind, along with the world, to the operation of the spirit of racism, the consequence will be widespread deception. The very elect will be blinded to the fulfillment of the Scriptures that prophesy that in the last days, race will rise up against race. Members of the body of Christ will be deceived by false teachers in the world and the pulpit who proclaim that the operation of the spirit of racism has ceased.