The Priesthood and Arabs

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

5 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I said that the Curse of Cain explanation came from American Protestants. Slavery has been around for millenia though strictly racial slavery is relatively rare historically and came to the forefront in the United States who defended it.

But it did not, first the Dutch, then Spain and England used such notions to justify the slave trade. The first slave trades began around 1609, and their belief that the descendants of Ham, being a “servant to others”, as mentioned in the OT, was used to defuse the outrage that many who had consciences, of right and wrong, and objected to the practice. The use of “segregation” and “Jim Crowe Laws” were largely introduced by slave owners in the South, and other slave holding states, was a justification, using the scripture, from the OT, to “come ye out, and be ye separate”. This scripture was meant for the Twelve Tribes of Israel, to separate themselves from those who did not believe in a “monotheistic God”, or in the one true God “Elohim”. But yes those slaveholding Stares, all who were mostly Evangelicals, just took what the European States began with, 170+ years before the founding of the United States became a Nation, and made it even worse. Since the slave trade had ending, once the “Declaration of the United States”, established a new Nation, these “Evangelicals”, who were never Christians, began teaching this heresy in their Churches. But, believe what you will, but this horrible belief began almost 200 years before we were even a Nation. Heck, John Newton, to writer of “Amazing Grace”, was a slave trader from England. But over time, he could feel the weight of his sins crushing his very soul. So, he sold all he had, build a Church, and dedicated his life to Jesus Christ, and advocating for the abolishment of the slave trade. One only needs to read of his life, and know that he had let himself be deceived, concerning the treatment and enslavement of the descendants of Ham, and the cruse thereof. I grew up in the segregated South, and sadly I know far to much of this evil practice, and it’s Genesis. 

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

9 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Well, yes, but also no. The Dutch were just one of those peoples who trafficked in slaves. Way before the Dutch were the North African Arabic people, who raided everywhere for slaves, including white Europe and black sub-Saharan Africa. Slavery itself was (and still is) a human scourge -- it's not tied to any one race, nation or age.

And blaming the USA for it, as if the USA invented it, is the most ridiculous perversion of all. The USA was one of the first countries to explicitly outlaw slavery, and fought a huge war with itself to do so. 

Very true, sadly it began among it’s own people upon the African Continent. Not to mention, many came to America in chains, the Irish, Scottish, and Africans. However, the Irish and Scottish could work off their debts in just seven years. Countless millions who were black, were born and died as slaves. Some slaves could earn money, and buy their freedom. Sadly, some once free, would buy their own slaves. Slave owning blacks, were allowed to fight for the South, because they had much to lose. There were Indian tribes here in the East, who owned Slaves. There is a large plantation about 50 miles North of where I live, and the mansion is called, “The Chief Van House”, Chief Van owned over 70 slaves, he was 1/4th Scottish, but when Georgia and Tennessee voted to send the Cherokee to Oklahoma. Chief Van was also forced of his land, and made the trek called the “Trail of Tears”. Sadly, our Nation has many sins to atone for, MANY SINS! 

[longview]

8 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I said that the Curse of Cain explanation came from American Protestants. Slavery has been around for millenia though strictly racial slavery is relatively rare historically and came to the forefront in the United States who defended it.

Nonsense.  The new Egyptians (who knew not Joseph) were racially motivated to subjugate Hebrews.  That was 3 or 4 thousand years ago.

[Stargazer]

2 hours ago, Bill “Papa” Lee said:

Very true, sadly it began among it’s own people upon the African Continent. Not to mention, many came to America in chains, the Irish, Scottish, and Africans. However, the Irish and Scottish could work off their debts in just seven years. Countless millions who were black, were born and died as slaves. Some slaves could earn money, and buy their freedom. Sadly, some once free, would buy their own slaves. Slave owning blacks, were allowed to fight for the South, because they had much to lose. There were Indian tribes here in the East, who owned Slaves. There is a large plantation about 50 miles North of where I live, and the mansion is called, “The Chief Van House”, Chief Van owned over 70 slaves, he was 1/4th Scottish, but when Georgia and Tennessee voted to send the Cherokee to Oklahoma. Chief Van was also forced of his land, and made the trek called the “Trail of Tears”. Sadly, our Nation has many sins to atone for, MANY SINS! 

The initial Africans brought to the Jamestown colony (early 1640s) were treated as indentured servants and given their freedom after seven years. By the end of the 1600s they were being treated as chattel slaves.

Nations cannot atone for sins. They may pay for them, though.

Some of my ancestors, of a Northern California tribe, had their own trail of tears. 

[The Nehor]

10 hours ago, Stargazer said:

With respect, like too many others, you have a propensity to blame the US as if it were a somehow one of the principal players worldwide. It wasn't. Not even the racial element present in US slavery was unique. I'd ask for a CFR for the ridiculous claim that "the US did bring back a widespread market for it", but it'd be dragging the thread fully off topic to address it fully. I'll just say that it's poppycock that "the US did bring back a widespread market for it" and leave it at that. You talk as if the US was out there bringing back slavery after it had either levelled off or was in decline. Utter rot. Importation of slaves into the US was illegal starting in 1809, although of course there was smuggling still going on. In other words, the US stopped participating in the slave trade, it didn't re-ignite it. The British were still participating in the Atlantic slave trade until 1807, even though slavery was technically illegal in Britain by then.  It's also poppycock that the rest of the world was gradually ending it, and that's why we had to fight a war over it. Even before importation of slaves was illegal in the US, American ships weren't at all major players in the Atlantic slave trade; they were drops in the bucket. The major players were, in order of volume, the Portuguese, the British, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, and the Danish -- and in every single one of these countries slavery had been illegal even before Columbus, yet they were still pleased as punch to make money off it. And of course, Belgium later went off conquering Africans in Africa and enslaved them where they stood, on into the 20th century.

Getting rich from slavery wasn't just a European thing, either.  By and large, Europeans were not the ones who were capturing Africans to sell into slavery. Other Africans were complicit, and fully believed that what they were doing was right. In 1840 the King of Dahomey proclaimed "The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth ... the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery." When Britain decided to stop participating in the slave trade, the King of Bonny (now in Nigeria) said "We think this trade must go on. That is the verdict of our oracle and the priests. They say that your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself." And well before Europeans were buying slaves in Africa, Africans had been enslaving other Africans for centuries.

American shores were the recipients of only 9.7% of the Africans arriving into slavery. If you want to go off at someone, try the Portuguese; they were the slavers par excellance.  And most of their "take" went to Brazil. 38% of all slaves in the Atlantic slave trade were taken to Brazil, and let's not even get started about how many Indians in Brazil were enslaved. Brazil didn't abolish slavery until 1888.

So please, stop acting like the USA was somehow the Big Bad Country because of slavery. And please stop trying to take the blame, or impugning blame to others, for what was halted 156 years ago in this country. 

The phrase "one of the first" does not mean "the first". 

You're a smart man, but your knowledge of this phase of history is woefully stuck in political talking points.  You need to educate yourself.

Suggestions from Wikipedia:

• Slavery
• Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom
• Atlantic slave trade
• Slavery in the 21st Century

The US did maintain the worldwide market for slavery when it was dying in a lot of the world. They explicitly kept alive the racial component. It was declining and the US held on while it was falling. I won't go over the ebb and rise of slave trafficking in the colonies but a good history of South Carolina in particular shows an almost addictive obsession with the exploitation of human capital. During the Revolution all states agreed to cease the importation of slaves for the duration. After the revolution and a steady diet of passionate rhetoric about freedom and liberty there was a general distaste of going back into the slave trade. Meanwhile less scrupulous entrepreneurs got to work kickstarting it.

When the Constitutional Convention met 10 of the 13 states had already banned importing slaves. Supporters of slavery in the South held the convention hostage, refusing to join unless the trade was allowed to resume. A compromise led to the agreement of a clause that Congress would not interfere with the slave trade until the year 1808 (another proposal wanted to end it in 1800). In essence they agreed to allow the slave trade to continue for two decades at least. Ironically due to economic circumstances the three primary states allowing the importation of slaves (South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia) all imposed their own voluntary bans of importation. By 1800 importation of slaves was basically legal nowhere in the Americas and the whole practice might have died off but new economic opportunities killed that hope.

The US acquired the Mississippi territory as the territorial dispute with Spain was finally resolved and huge new areas ripe for growing cotton became available and the cotton gin was finally perfected moved cotton from a marginally profitable crop into a cash cow. Then in 1803 Napoleon negotiated the Lousiana purchase to fund his wars of survival in Europe and even more new land was opened but there wasn't enough labor. Suddenly in the early 1800s there was a livid feeding frenzy to outfit slave ships and get slaves into the Americas yesterday. The worst stories of mass death on slave ships hit their peak in this period where the demand was so high that losing part of the cargo was deemed okay if enough of the others in the cramped ships survived. The voyage was never pleasant but the death rate skyrocketed. In 1807 a law was passed banning the importation of slaves effective in 1808. This was largely bipartisan. The last cargos of slaves arrived and the owners held back their stock deep into 1808 hoping scarcity would start to drive up prices.

The banning of the slave trade was not treated as a horrific thing by the South. The landed aristocracy were okay with it ending but this was not out of any moral consideration. It now meant that those who owned slaves now controlled the supply as well and that was them. 

The US was the 'moral' leader in preserving slavery. While other nations practiced it they practiced it in their colonies or it was entrepreneurship selling to others. No one seriously thought Brazil was a bastion of liberty and (classical) liberal progress. The US was the only nation that credibly claimed to be based on liberty and freedom and Enlightenment philosophy but they would not let go of their desire to build it on the backs of brutal inhumanity in their own borders.

Other Africans were involved in acquiring slaves but I never understood this as an argument. It seems to be used to mitigate what the US did as if it was what Africans were doing anyways. While to a limited extent they were in the business of enslaving other tribes the demand drove the supply and western firearms being brought in increased the catch. Now there was more money to be made in war and conflict and more ability to win so naturally there was more war and conflict. If ships were not showing up to buy captives there would have been less. Also, why slip in that they genuinely thought it was right? What? I don't believe humans are capable of honestly believing something this vile is right. They hide behind justifications of necessity, prudence, and even racial superiority but the damage this does to the soul is still there. There is a reason the South was a backwards feudal aristocracy compared to the more progressive and more culturally advanced North.

 

As to slavery ending in 1865, yes, sort of. Then the defacto slavery of the southern prisons kicked in and reenslaved many. Then there were deliberate institutional and grassroots efforts to maintain the whole ethnic group in poverty for exploitation. Attempts by the group to build wealthier communities or to improve their circumstances were deliberately sabotaged by both the law and the mobs. Wholesale 'legal' theft of their property was commonplace. In some areas it still is. Until we are serious about expunging racial inequality we haven't gotten over it. We didn't deConfederize the South after the Civil War and the roots of that injustice are still there and have spread and lived veiled in a thin veneer of plausible deniability. Lately that veil has been growing thinner and the hatred more explicit. Until we kill this demon the blame is still there no matter how much many wish it wasn't. Acting like we won is just letting the wound fester.

[The Nehor]

9 hours ago, carbon dioxide said:

I am not ashamed of my race because there are some dumb whites out there.  Should blacks be ashamed of their race because of the barbaric things blacks sometimes do to each other in Africa? 

I really hope that bad whites being characterized as dumb and bad blacks being characterized as barbaric was accidental.

[The Nehor]

5 hours ago, longview said:

Nonsense.  The new Egyptians (who knew not Joseph) were racially motivated to subjugate Hebrews.  That was 3 or 4 thousand years ago.

I said "relatively rare". While most tribes did not enslave their own there was rarely a wholesale decision that entire tribes or nations deserved slavery for their racial grouping. There was plenty of deciding that because the scum stole our stuff or attacked us or whatever but the wholesale judgement of so many people as deserving slavery is rare. There is something superficially similar in the Hindu caste system but it is probably wrong to characterize the untouchables as slaves.

The Romans enslaved Greeks but they did not judge all Greeks as deserving of slavery. Same with most slaveholding nations and city-states. Slavery was common as an aftereffect of winning a war. Even they distrusted the institution. The Romans wrote about the good old days with no slaves when Romans worked their own lands as a kind of ideal golden age while now they had to run everything with slave labor because they kept winning wars and expanding. The thought was we have to use all this slave labor but we really miss the good old days. They said this while their policy slowly but surely over centuries eradicated the smaller farming holdings and absorbed them into patrician estates. Without the loyal to the land farmers to stock the legions they had to turn to others to fill their armies and the fallout of that turned the Republic into an Empire.

The Hebrews in Egypt story is a weird one and I have my doubts that it is even what we would call chattel slavery at all. Reading the story in Exodus the "slaves" have flocks and herds and even their own lands. The Egyptians might have resented and looked down on them but what kind of slavery is this? There does appear to have been a large increase in some kind of press gang work compelled on the Israelites to build government projects. It sounds a lot like what Solomon would later do to his own people to build the Temple (sort of okay) and then his personal vanity projects (the fallout of being impressed to build that junk led to the kingdom splitting).

I admit I don't buy the Exodus story in total. They decide to kill all the male children. For how long? Then it talks about two midwives being unwilling to carry out this secret program of death and because they didn't get there in time before the mothers delivered the infants were allowed to live. Two midwives to cover all the Israelites? The government program was thwarted by the midwives not getting there in time? What? Then there is the oddity with Moses having his initial demands not to be to let the people go but to let them go out and worship their God for a time. I believe there is a core of truth to the story and I believe there was a Moses and an exodus from Egypt but I really wish the Book of Moses had been much longer and we had a cleaner prophetic source.

Sorry, went off on a tangent there.

[Calm]

5 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

entire tribes or nations deserved slavery for their racial grouping.

Probably using ethnic grouping might be more appropriate in this context. 

[pogi]

Never mind

Edited February 14, 2021 by pogi

[pogi]

On 2/11/2021 at 12:09 PM, Tacenda said:

All I can say is I'm ashamed of my white race, especially after watching the impeachment trial, with so many white nationalists that stormed the capitol. 

This strikes me as racism.   I can’t change the way I look, and I’m not ashamed of it.  White nationalism hardly define our race.  We should be focused on lifting any underprivileged up, not self-shaming because we happen to be born white.  Don’t buy into that toxic baloney.

Edited February 14, 2021 by pogi

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

21 hours ago, Stargazer said:

The initial Africans brought to the Jamestown colony (early 1640s) were treated as indentured servants and given their freedom after seven years. By the end of the 1600s they were being treated as chattel slaves.

Nations cannot atone for sins. They may pay for them, though.

Some of my ancestors, of a Northern California tribe, had their own trail of tears. 

Does not the very word of “atonement”, mean paying a price. Not in dollars and cents, but to take responsibility, and to fully repent. Jesus Christ “Atoned” for our individual sins, but he cannot, or did not atone for ours, or an Nation’s sin as a whole. Thankfully my wife’s great-grandmother, was able to hide, and remain in Georgia, in part due to her marriage to my wife’s great-grandfather. She was also part African-American, and free. However she could not reveal this, because they would not be allowed to marry, back in the day.  

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Bill “Papa” Lee said:

ut he cannot, or did not atone for ours, or an Nation’s sin as a whole.

Why not?

[Islander]

On 2/11/2021 at 1:11 PM, rchorse said:

I wasn't pointing the finger at our church alone. There are all sorts of churches past and present that use(d) religious justification for racism and xenophobia. What I was getting at is that since, "Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.", those who continue to cling to said theories are just looking for a way to rationalize their racism.

A better response would be to accept that those theories were wrong and change any remaining racist views, which I believe the church as an institution has done and continues to do. Some individual members, however, have yet to get with the program.

Well, what happens is that those "theories" were justified and preached from the pulpit and printed in Church's manuals for 150 years which gives them legitimacy and, in the mind of some, the character of "revelation."

That is the challenge of modern LDS, to be able to discern what is true revelation, dogma or opinion. The leadership of the Church has no biblical training and there is little in terms of biblical scholarship that permeates to the general membership to shed light into these issues. So you hear, still, some older members holding on to these "theories" which they heard from decades as doctrine, even when the Church today disavow such. They never got the memo.

[MrShorty]

On the Church's disavowal, I have seen some  claim that "disavowal" is not the same thing as "contradiction". That disavowal means something like "We no longer teach that (but it might still be true, we're not making a statement one way or the other on the possible truthfulness of those teachings)." In this line of thinking, it's the difference between "We don't teach that those racial justifications are true." and "We teach that those racial justifications are false."

Edited February 15, 2021 by MrShorty

[Islander]

On 2/13/2021 at 3:12 PM, longview said:

Nonsense.  The new Egyptians (who knew not Joseph) were racially motivated to subjugate Hebrews.  That was 3 or 4 thousand years ago.

Until the African slave trade in the 1500's, slavery was a common practice in the ancient world. When people got conquered they became slaves. In fact, the word "slave"  as we know it, comes from Byzantine Greek sklabos "Slav," appearing in texts first around 580. It had absolutely no racial connotation. Anybody and everybody could become a slave in the ancient world.

[Hamba Tuhan]

On 2/14/2021 at 12:55 AM, The Nehor said:

Slavery has been around for millenia though strictly racial slavery is relatively rare historically and came to the forefront in the United States who defended it.

And in fact the modern conception of biological race is a social construct that can't really be dated back further than the early 18th century. (Which has implications for all kinds of things, including attempts to read current conceptions of 'race' back into the Book of Mormon text.)

[Tacenda]

10 hours ago, pogi said:

This strikes me as racism.   I can’t change the way I look, and I’m not ashamed of it.  White nationalism hardly define our race.  We should be focused on lifting any underprivileged up, not self-shaming because we happen to be born white.  Don’t buy into that toxic baloney.

I didn't say all whites, just those that are out right racist, I'm allowed.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

Why not?

What I meant to say, is that he can and does “Atone”, for any willing individual, but the last time he did it for an entire Nation, was the one they day of Atonement for the  Nation of Israel. I know they still have the day observed, but with no Temple in which to sacrifice, I just don’t know anymore. 

[Derl Sanderson]

On 2/11/2021 at 12:09 PM, Tacenda said:

All I can say is I'm ashamed of my white race, especially after watching the impeachment trial, with so many white nationalists that stormed the capitol. 

At least one black man isn't too happy with this attitude.

[pogi]

12 hours ago, Tacenda said:

I didn't say all whites, just those that are out right racist, I'm allowed.

Here is what you said:

“All I can say is I'm ashamed of my white race...”

Your “white race“ includes you and all other whites.

Many try to address “white privilege” with white self-shame. I don’t think that is the right answer.

Edited February 15, 2021 by pogi

[Tacenda]

2 hours ago, pogi said:

Here is what you said:

“All I can say is I'm ashamed of my white race...”

Your “white race“ includes you and all other whites.

Many try to address “white privilege” with white self-shame. I don’t think that is the right answer.

I did put them in a lump sum, sorry, thanks for pointing that out. My bad for trying to pave over that. But I'm still not backing down that there is a problem. 

[Tacenda]

11 hours ago, Derl Sanderson said:

At least one black man isn't too happy with this attitude.

Can you provide more than just this? Not getting it I guess.

[JimJImJImmyJim]

Do not confuse Egypt the nation with a race. At differing times, the ruling class in Egypt were black africans, Semites, arabs, or greeks. And except for the very beginning, Egypt was always mix of races. 

Jethro was an Arab, and he was the one who ordained Moses. So the Jewish priesthood of that dispensation was all from a line of righteous arabs. 

[Stargazer]

On 2/14/2021 at 3:16 AM, The Nehor said:

The US did maintain the worldwide market for slavery when it was dying in a lot of the world. They explicitly kept alive the racial component. It was declining and the US held on while it was falling. I won't go over the ebb and rise of slave trafficking in the colonies but a good history of South Carolina in particular shows an almost addictive obsession with the exploitation of human capital. During the Revolution all states agreed to cease the importation of slaves for the duration. After the revolution and a steady diet of passionate rhetoric about freedom and liberty there was a general distaste of going back into the slave trade. Meanwhile less scrupulous entrepreneurs got to work kickstarting it.

When the Constitutional Convention met 10 of the 13 states had already banned importing slaves. Supporters of slavery in the South held the convention hostage, refusing to join unless the trade was allowed to resume. A compromise led to the agreement of a clause that Congress would not interfere with the slave trade until the year 1808 (another proposal wanted to end it in 1800). In essence they agreed to allow the slave trade to continue for two decades at least. Ironically due to economic circumstances the three primary states allowing the importation of slaves (South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia) all imposed their own voluntary bans of importation. By 1800 importation of slaves was basically legal nowhere in the Americas and the whole practice might have died off but new economic opportunities killed that hope.

The US acquired the Mississippi territory as the territorial dispute with Spain was finally resolved and huge new areas ripe for growing cotton became available and the cotton gin was finally perfected moved cotton from a marginally profitable crop into a cash cow. Then in 1803 Napoleon negotiated the Lousiana purchase to fund his wars of survival in Europe and even more new land was opened but there wasn't enough labor. Suddenly in the early 1800s there was a livid feeding frenzy to outfit slave ships and get slaves into the Americas yesterday. The worst stories of mass death on slave ships hit their peak in this period where the demand was so high that losing part of the cargo was deemed okay if enough of the others in the cramped ships survived. The voyage was never pleasant but the death rate skyrocketed. In 1807 a law was passed banning the importation of slaves effective in 1808. This was largely bipartisan. The last cargos of slaves arrived and the owners held back their stock deep into 1808 hoping scarcity would start to drive up prices.

The banning of the slave trade was not treated as a horrific thing by the South. The landed aristocracy were okay with it ending but this was not out of any moral consideration. It now meant that those who owned slaves now controlled the supply as well and that was them. 

The US was the 'moral' leader in preserving slavery. While other nations practiced it they practiced it in their colonies or it was entrepreneurship selling to others. No one seriously thought Brazil was a bastion of liberty and (classical) liberal progress. The US was the only nation that credibly claimed to be based on liberty and freedom and Enlightenment philosophy but they would not let go of their desire to build it on the backs of brutal inhumanity in their own borders.

Other Africans were involved in acquiring slaves but I never understood this as an argument. It seems to be used to mitigate what the US did as if it was what Africans were doing anyways. While to a limited extent they were in the business of enslaving other tribes the demand drove the supply and western firearms being brought in increased the catch. Now there was more money to be made in war and conflict and more ability to win so naturally there was more war and conflict. If ships were not showing up to buy captives there would have been less. Also, why slip in that they genuinely thought it was right? What? I don't believe humans are capable of honestly believing something this vile is right. They hide behind justifications of necessity, prudence, and even racial superiority but the damage this does to the soul is still there. There is a reason the South was a backwards feudal aristocracy compared to the more progressive and more culturally advanced North.

 

As to slavery ending in 1865, yes, sort of. Then the defacto slavery of the southern prisons kicked in and reenslaved many. Then there were deliberate institutional and grassroots efforts to maintain the whole ethnic group in poverty for exploitation. Attempts by the group to build wealthier communities or to improve their circumstances were deliberately sabotaged by both the law and the mobs. Wholesale 'legal' theft of their property was commonplace. In some areas it still is. Until we are serious about expunging racial inequality we haven't gotten over it. We didn't deConfederize the South after the Civil War and the roots of that injustice are still there and have spread and lived veiled in a thin veneer of plausible deniability. Lately that veil has been growing thinner and the hatred more explicit. Until we kill this demon the blame is still there no matter how much many wish it wasn't. Acting like we won is just letting the wound fester.

I am pretty sure that trying to debunk your false facts and insistence upon US being the biggest baddest wolf in all this is going to be a waste of time and bandwidth. The links I provided show clearly that most of what you're saying here is little more than pathetic chest-beating "mea culpa! mea culpa!" Did you read any of what I linked to? It was advance CFR for all that I wrote.

And if you insist upon tarring the US with the race-centricness of slavery, as if we invented it, I will simply direct your attention to the Japanese and Chinese, who still now regard outsiders as racially inferior. 

And by the way, I've visited and lived in the Southern states both during the mid-stages of the Civil Rights era and in more modern times, and believe me, things are far better now than they ever were. Of course they could be better, don't doubt that, but they will get better if people don't constantly continue to stir things up like they've been doing recently.

[Stargazer]

On 2/14/2021 at 8:02 PM, Bill “Papa” Lee said:

Does not the very word of “atonement”, mean paying a price.

Yes, and no.  But paying a price is not necessarily an atonement. Consider a man who murders another man and who is put to death himself. He has paid a price, but he has not atoned in the eternal sense.  This is because God will not consider his earthly punishment as sufficient. If he cannot repent, he will suffer in an eternal sense - and that suffering will be far, far beyond what he suffered in mortality.

I say that Nations cannot atone, because a Nation is not a person. Only persons can atone, and only for their individual acts. Thus, Germany cannot atone for having started WW2, simply because Germany didn't start it. It was started by evil men (and one man in particular), and evil acts were committed in connection with it, and those acts were committed by individuals, not by any country. But though they did not start the war, the German people did suffer for it.  My late wife's family lived in what was then Lithuania when Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933, so they could not vote for him. Neither my father-in-law nor my mother-in-law were involved in any acts of evil committed during that war -- my father-in-law was a non-combatant who worked as a machinist in a German factory. But both of them suffered as a result of the war; and my father-in-law died in Soviet captivity at war's end. They had nothing to atone for in connection with the war Germany started, but they suffered nonetheless.