Celestial Beings: Latter Rain's Christian Identity
- 5 months ago
In St. Augustine of Hippo's series of twenty-two books entitled "The City of God," two full chapters are dedicated to condemning an early heresy of the early fifth century: The notion of a race that existed before Adam and the Garden of Eden, which is considered the Genesis of all mankind by Christians. The pagans did not accept the Genesis narrative and claimed that the world had existed for at least a hundred thousand years. St. Augustine titled chapter 40 of book 18, "About the Most Mendacious Vanity of the Egyptians, in Which They Ascribe to Their Science an Antiquity of a Hundred Thousand Years." Since Christians believed the Biblical Genesis of mankind to have happened less than a few thousand years prior, the Egyptians claimed to have existed before Adam as a pre-Adamic Race. Augustine argued that the world was less than six thousand years old.
The debate on the Genesis narrative was not new to the fifth century; debates on the age of the world pre-date St. Augustine by at least 240 years. Apollonius of Egypt was a respected authority among non-Christians of the second century on the age of the world, who insisted that the world was over 150,000 years old. While Christians maintained the views of Augustine due to the Biblical genealogies and their associated calculations of the lifespans of biblical figures, non-Christians argued in favor of the views of Apollonius and others that a pre-Adamite race existed.
The proverbial lines in the sand were blurred with the rise of British Israelism in the late 19th century. As the racial version of the British Israel doctrine began to develop, and leaders of the movement found it unattractive to consider common history with non-whites, the pagan views of a pre-Adamite race gained favor. British Israel converts argued that Cain's wife could not have descended from Adam, and accepted evidence that cultures existed before the Biblical Garden of Eden.
After the Christian Identity doctrine entered the Latter Rain movement through William Branham and the Two-Seed doctrine and "Hybreeding" doctrines were popularized, every extra-biblical notion those doctrines were built upon was also introduced into the revivals. Like Swift, Branham taught Latter Rain converts that Cain was the result of a sexual union between Eve and the Serpent and strongly condemned interracial marriage as "hybreeding." Branham taught that the Gospel was not intended to be for the Jewish race and that only a few "renegade" Jews would be saved. These doctrines required the pre-Adamite race as a foundation when followed to their logical conclusions, and Branham's doctrinal teaching followed that logical pattern. White supremacists believed that the Adamic race was the result of "spiritual celestial beings" that were the direct offspring of God, while the non-white races of the Earth were hybrid produced from pre-Adamites and the Serpent. Like Swift and many other white supremacists of the era, Branham included the pagan old-earth beli
The debate on the Genesis narrative was not new to the fifth century; debates on the age of the world pre-date St. Augustine by at least 240 years. Apollonius of Egypt was a respected authority among non-Christians of the second century on the age of the world, who insisted that the world was over 150,000 years old. While Christians maintained the views of Augustine due to the Biblical genealogies and their associated calculations of the lifespans of biblical figures, non-Christians argued in favor of the views of Apollonius and others that a pre-Adamite race existed.
The proverbial lines in the sand were blurred with the rise of British Israelism in the late 19th century. As the racial version of the British Israel doctrine began to develop, and leaders of the movement found it unattractive to consider common history with non-whites, the pagan views of a pre-Adamite race gained favor. British Israel converts argued that Cain's wife could not have descended from Adam, and accepted evidence that cultures existed before the Biblical Garden of Eden.
After the Christian Identity doctrine entered the Latter Rain movement through William Branham and the Two-Seed doctrine and "Hybreeding" doctrines were popularized, every extra-biblical notion those doctrines were built upon was also introduced into the revivals. Like Swift, Branham taught Latter Rain converts that Cain was the result of a sexual union between Eve and the Serpent and strongly condemned interracial marriage as "hybreeding." Branham taught that the Gospel was not intended to be for the Jewish race and that only a few "renegade" Jews would be saved. These doctrines required the pre-Adamite race as a foundation when followed to their logical conclusions, and Branham's doctrinal teaching followed that logical pattern. White supremacists believed that the Adamic race was the result of "spiritual celestial beings" that were the direct offspring of God, while the non-white races of the Earth were hybrid produced from pre-Adamites and the Serpent. Like Swift and many other white supremacists of the era, Branham included the pagan old-earth beli