So you want to believe that we are living in the last days. Isaiah 2:2-3 says, "In the last days The mountain of the Lord's house will be established as the highest of the mountains and raised above the hills. All nations will stream into it! Then many people will come and say, 'Come and let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of our God. He will teach us HIS WAYS and we will walk in HIS PATHS for the law shall go forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem." What a great promise. Do you think we are there yet? One of the most important aspects of Isaiah's prophecy is that "HE will teach of HIS ways." Later in Isaiah 55:8-9 God speaks to humanity and says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.
Too often, churches across North America think they are teaching God's ways; when in fact they are steeped in a colonial "white" gospel. Without realizing or paying close attention to understanding what the "roots" of our Westernized gospel has been - we are under the influence of a Euro-centric culture that dehumanized and stripped both First Nations and African American people of their cultural heritage. In fact, we have presumed that the underlying foundations of the Christian faith were based in an integris commitment to present the Christian faith to the Native people with the planting of the first English flag on the shores of Cape Henry. There is increasing evidence to prove otherwise with the recent examination of the papal edicts that gave ascendency to what is called, "The Doctrine Of Discovery." The doctrine of discovery was an edict that told European leaders to "go conquer and dispossess pagan, heathen and unchristian lands; disposses them and to bring the inhabitants of the land into perpetual slavery." So Portugal went to Africa and enslaved the African people. The Dutch did the same followed by the Spanish and English nations. Rev. Robert Hunt planted his cross along with seven other crosses around the Chesapeake Bay to let the Portugees, Spanish, French, and Dutch know that England was taking this territory in the name of their God and King. Why did they bring Rev. Robert Hunt? To Christianize the Native American's and use them for the crown's purpose. Gospel according to the English ment to cut Pocahanna's hair, give her a bath, and put proper English clothing on her and to adopt "White Anglo-saxon" ways. That was their gospel. Instead of allowing her to hear the gospel and allowing the incarnation of the Holy Spirit to work in her tribal ways the English imposed their culture on the Native cultures. History accuratley demonstrates this from North to South, East to West. When the Powhatten tribe and other Chesapeake Bay tribes fought back against the plantation of Virginia Governor Berkley got so frustrated that he ordered the introduction of African slaves to be imported since the First Nations were not suited for meeting the needs of free labor for southern plantations in Virginia. This is a simple survey of the story but it's true. 
Later, in Carlisle, Pa., a First Nations School was established to decontruct Native American identity. The purpose of this Christian school was to make "Native Americans" white. The same happened to the African slaves in the south during the reconstruction period. The intention was to deconstruct and assimulate First Nations tribal ways into a euro-centric cultural way. Children were taken from their familiesand tribes and sent to these "White Euro-centric" schools and forced to stop speaking their native languages and to lose their Native cultural ways and become "American." Today, we have 4 to 5 generations of First Nations people who cannot think like a Native Born person because they only have white man's thinking after this deprogramming initiative of the American government. Likewise, African American children have been indoctrinated to think like "White" America who view themselves as superior to the descendants of the slaves. Why is all this history important? Because, the exiles in Babylon had the same problems as the First Nations and African-American people exiled in North America. Babylon wanted to assimulate the Jewish people and destroy their national identity. That's when Isaiah writes, "Come let us go to the mountain of the Lord... and he will teach us of his ways!" Not Euro-centric cultural ways... God will teach us his way- how to treat people properly.
“Well, Mackenzie, don’t just stand there gawkin’
with your mouth open like your pants are full,”
said the big black woman as she turned
and headed across the deck, talking the whole time.
“Come and talk to me while I get supper on.”
– The Old Black Woman as God in The Shack
By William Paul Young
I think God is calling the greatest weekly segregationist groups in American (The Church) to decolonize itself and look for a new incarnational understanding of its "Gospel." God is wanting to reveal the nature of his incarnational ways in and through non-euro-centric culture. But the question remains: Does what ran in our white segregationist, racist fathers/mothers still run in us? Can we see God as an Old Black woman? or does that sicken our own little racist hearts? The truth is revealed in our relationship to "those people." - whether white, hispanic, african american, muslim, Korean or Jew. Repentance and racial reconciliation is the call of the Holy Spirit. In the mind of some this will be seen and dismissed as a politically liberal article. However, Isaiah wants us to know that our ways of thinking are not as God thinks. In Fact, Romans 8:7 says "our minds are at enmity against God." This is why God is calling us to ascend to the mountain of the Lord to learn His ways - IN THE LAST DAYS! After all - ALL humanity was created in the image of God. So to respect and honor the Imago Dei in another culture other than mine is to acknowledge another expression of who God is. Perhaps the Holy Spirit is calling us to re-learn his ways (free of Euro-centric American Thinking) which would then call us to work with Him to reorder our worlds.
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