What God Says About Race!

By Bishop Donald O. Clay Jr.

Bishop Clay tackles the highly volatile topic of race through the lens of Gods Word. His revelation about Gods intent, along with his scriptural and scientific references, break through the man-made barriers that have prevented us from seeing the truth all along. This work shatters the misconceptions that many of us have adopted as common belief. Its revelatory truth is unequivocally what the world is in need of.

Bishop Clay takes us on a journey that opens the door to healing and sustained reconciliation from the trauma of living under the taskmaster of our distorted perceptions. Get the breakthrough that you need to walk in the light and know for yourself What God Says About Race.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514406403

Bishop Donald O. Clay Jr.

John 13:34–35 quotes Jesus saying, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” This is the command that governs the life and ministry of Bishop Donald O. Clay Jr. He has said that he wants his epitaph to be that he had a passionate love for God and God’s people. His love has grown consistently since he began preaching at the age of fifteen in Cincinnati, Ohio, and has manifested itself in many ways over the twenty years since he birthed Petra International Ministries in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Bishop Clay has a passionate and unfailing heart toward the people of God. He firmly believes that the body of Christ is purposed to be an energizing and righteous force in the world bringing about love, unity, prosperity, justice, and reconciliation. This belief has guided Bishop in shaping a ministry committed to outreach, empowerment of the disenfranchised, and the demonstration of the power of kingdom principles to change lives, families, and communities. A faithful and consummate worshiper, Bishop Clay has a strong apostolic anointing that empowers him to challenge the status quo in order to establish and advance God’s kingdom in the earth. Through his life of worship and revelatory teaching, thousands have come to the Lord, resulting in restored families, empowered believers, and most of all, unity through love. With Bishop Clay and his wife, Lisa, strong family is a critical foundation stone in successful ministry. They are blessed with a wonderful son and daughter, their spouses and two grandchildren, who all love God. Likewise, in Petra International Ministries, they have established a family filled with love and acceptance, where spiritual sons and daughters are discovering their true identity and achieving their God-given purpose and destiny through Christ Jesus.

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Copyright © 2015 by Bishop Donald O. Clay, Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 10/02/2015

First Edition - Book Design

Expanding Minds, LLC.

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Chapter 1 The Misdiagnosis

Chapter 2 Grow Your Garden

Chapter 3 What Does God Look Like?

Chapter 4 The Seed Of Separation

Chapter 5 The Same Momma

Chapter 6 Jew Or Gentile?

Chapter 7 The Anointing Is In The House.

Chapter 8 Don’t Say Amen

Chapter 9 Judah’s Coming!

Chapter 10 What Color Is God?

About The Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I must start with the One who 43 years ago captured my heart. You still make my heart beat fast. I still can’t wait each day to hear Your voice. I still feel weak-kneed in Your presence. I still can’t get enough of You. I still can’t understand why You love me like You do. It would take eternity for me to ever catch up on the debt that I owe You… I’m glad we have eternity… I love You… Abba Father… Thank You!

To Donald and Ada Clay, my wonderful parents. You planted the love of God in my heart and in Donna’s heart at a tender age. You nurtured a child, raised a son, built a man and prepared a father. Through your love, your sacrifice and your patience, I have been able to see what love looks like… I love you… Thank you!

To Lisa, my wife. As I child I used to imagine what it would be like to actually be in the physical presence of Jesus. What would His voice sound like, what would His touch feel like, what would I see when I looked into His eyes? I know the answer. His voice sounds like peace personified and His touch feels like heaven. To look into the eyes of Jesus is to see love so amazing that all a person can do is tremble. How do I know these things? I wake up every day… to you… I love you… Thank you!

To Carli and Cameron, my daughter and son. I look at you and wonder how two people so amazing could have come from someone like me. You have given the greatest gift that a child can give to a father… unconditional love. You have enriched my life with Justin and Winter, Ashanti, Carsyn and the not yet arrived, Judah. No father could be more proud of his children… I love you… Thank you!

To Petra, my family. You have to be the closest thing to heaven on the earth. Never before has God created a people more building and more loving than you. I started making a list of all the individuals I wanted to especially thank from Petra and it quickly became clear that this section would have more pages than the book! I do, however, want to give a special thank you to a few people who have faithfully labored with me on this project.

Thank you, Sydni Grant, for your excellent manuscript work, which laid such a meaningful foundation for this work. Thank you, Elder Connie Balthrop, for your tireless efforts in editing and proofreading this book. Minister Philip Greene, your faithful, creative contributions to the design, layout, and marketing of this book have been an invaluable gift for which I am eternally grateful. Deacon Kizetta Vaughn, I thank you for your work in researching and identifying for us the necessary publishing vehicles to launch this book. Last, but certainly not least, Elder Jim Balthrop, I thank you for providing the impetus and passionate drive to bring this book from a vision to a reality. This has been a labor of love and I know that I could not have accomplished it without the gifts, talents, and love given by each of you. To all of you and my entire Petra family… I love you… Thank you!

To Bishop Joseph and Pastor Barbara Garlington, my spiritual parents. This book is a direct reflection of the love you have modeled before me, for all people. Bishop, every son wants to make his father proud and I am no different, but not every son can say this… I am proud that you’re my Dad… I love you… Thank you!

FOREWORD

In 1998, I wrote a book called, Right or Reconciled?: God’s Heart for Reconciliation. Since then, multiple books, articles, and essays have been written concerning this issue of racism. Bishop Donald Clay’s desire is to raise the discussion to a new level of awareness and insight coupled with a deft handling of scripture, and with the experience that comes from walking it out, he takes on some of the major shibboleths of our time. The Angel of the Lord informed Gideon he would not be able to accomplish his mission unless he did several things. First, take his father’s bull and pull down his father’s idolatrous altars. Second, build a second altar to the Lord, and thirdly, offer as a sacrifice his father’s bull on the new altar. (Judges 6:25-26 NASB) Bishop Clay masterfully uses the scriptures to tear down our father’s bulls of racism, and then leads us very clearly into a significant understanding of the two worlds we have been called to live in.

What today we call racism, the scriptures refer to as respect of persons and very clearly state that it is not a part of who God is to His creation. It’s even ironic that the one apostle to whom Jesus entrusted the keys to the kingdom and used them to open the doors to the Jews on the Day of Pentecost, to the Samaritans as recorded in Acts chapter 8, and then to the Gentiles in Acts chapter 10, still seemed to struggle with the issue that required a confrontation from the Apostle Paul as recorded in Galatians 2:11-13. Peter ably defended the matter of Gentiles being fully accepted at the Jerusalem Council, but some time later, he dissimulated in the face of peer pressure. It has been evident to me over a number of years that peer pressure is real, but is also demonic. No other institution on earth has been entrusted with the delivery and the modeling of this message, and Bishop Clay builds upon this powerful foundation, layer after layer, to the building of his message that compels us to face the reality of the message and ministry Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 (NASB) that we are ambassadors of reconciliation with a message of reconciliation.

In 1996, Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones starred in the movie, A Family Thing. It describes the trauma of a grown man living in the South who discovers that his birth mother was black, and also that he has a black brother living in the North who he has never seen. It is a classic picture of the church, which is dealing with the trauma of internecine struggle that continues to this very day. Years ago, we were told that you can only build churches based on homogeneous grouping, meaning those who attend should be alike. The sad part of that thesis is that it was essentially based upon your shades of brown. What’s even more pathetic is that the world we are seeking to reach has already come to its conclusions on diversity, but their goals, while noble, are falling far short of the solution. On a wall in our chapel hangs a picture of a multicultural, multigenerational, multiethnic group of people all looking with anticipation toward the future. The statement underneath the picture is clear: In A Divided Society Only The Church Can Model Unity. The Apostle Paul told the Ephesian church that, His [God’s] intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. Bishop Clay’s appeal to us is that there is no other plan, there are no other people, and there is no other mission, and it’s the Church’s responsibility to carry it out. We cannot fail.

Bishop Joseph L. Garlington, Sr.

Presiding Bishop

Reconciliation! An International

Network of Churches and Ministries

All scriptural references are from the

King James Version

of the Bible unless otherwise noted.

Chapter 1

The Misdiagnosis

While Camouflaging itself in the garment of superiority, racism is actually the highest form of self-hatred.

We get to choose many things in life, but skin color isn’t one of them. Many in modern science believe that all human beings are actually brown due to the color of melanin, the biggest contributor to our skin color. Science asserts that the major determinant of skin color is controlled by genes that are present in all races. Melanin, being the largest factor, has two main forms: eumelanin and pheomelanin. Eumelanin is the brown to black color hue in everyone’s skin. The other form of melanin is pheomelanin the red to yellow color hue, which more often affects hair color. These combine to give us the particular shade of skin that we have. Factors other than pigment in the skin may influence the shade perceived by the observer in subtle ways, such as the thickness of the overlying skin layers, the density and positioning of the blood capillary networks, etc. No one really has red, or yellow, or black skin. Human skin is normally never truly white, though some people have less melanin in their skin than others. We all have the same basic color, just different shades of it. Melanin is from the Greek word melas meaning black or dark. Ken Ham in his book One Race One Blood says that we must change the way we speak about race. Ham asserts, "Lots of brown is called black, and a little brown color is called white. In actuality, no human really is black and no human is white. There are not different colors but different shades of one basic color, brown". Depending upon things like your parents or even your geographical location, you may be very light brown or very dark brown, but still brown. In truth, no one is black or white. Trust me, if you were to run into anybody who was black or white, it would scare you to death! People cover the spectrum in shades of brown.

Although it was never the intent of God, color in this world defines a lot of things. When you think from the perspective that we are all a shade of brown, it seems pretty silly that