Bishop Noel Jones - Enough

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Episode Transcript

(00:02):
My life as to what to approachin terms of teaching, preaching, in
terms of handling a situation, becauseobviously, as you can see and tell,
we have so many different things goingon at the same time that it

(00:23):
is it is mind boggling how dowe come up with the answers. There's
so many different things, particularly whenpeople are seeking answers from the very depth
of this spirit and souls. Ihave never been so close to crying,
and just you know, every minute, I feel like I want to just

(00:46):
cry because of the plight that weare in in this country, and nobody
wants to say it. And I'mgonna say this to every genuine voice.
I'm gonna we cannot lose our genuinevoices because of idiosyncratic personal imperfections. I

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hope you understand what I'm saying.I'm saying that we need white, Black,
Hispanic Asian voices that are genuine,willing to tell the truth, willing
to speak to the situation without givingany thought to their personal imperfections, because

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you and I know what's gonna happenif you've got any personal imperfections dealing with
what we're dealing with now. Froma governmental standpoint, somebody's gonna investigate.
So if you speak true to power, and it ain't and it's not speaking
up to power, as far asI'm concerned, it's speaking down to power.
Because the oracles of God don't speakup, they speak down to admit

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it's Remember it was Nathan who pointedthe finger in David's face. It was
the prophet Isaiah who dealt with Hezekiah. So when we deal with the issues
of speaking truth to power, theoracles of God speak done. I don't
know how in the world we havesubjected a theocracy to a democracy when a

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democracy ought to be subjected to atheocracy. So at the end of the
day, the oracles of God,I don't know any oracle of God that
does not have an issue privately,So do we still the genuine voices who

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can address our situations because each oneof these voices has a personal imperfection.
My answer is categorical no. Sowhen we look at all that we're facing
today, it is incredible. Whatis the answer to all of this?

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And I tell you it is notan allegiance to a pastor and apostle to
a president. It's only an allegianceto the word of God. The word
of God becomes the document that keepsus from the disarray and the total devastation

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of division that is in our wordtoday. Last week I did a peace
on the oneness of God in termsof the whole issue of keeping us from
division. And look what happens duringthe week. George Floyd's situation has caused
us great grief, and truthfully so, we are to be extremely angry at

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the arm of the president administration meetingout devastation on our people. Harry goes
again over and over and over andover. But I want to say to
the people that will listen and notdepartmentalize what I'm saying or ostracize what I'm

(04:25):
saying. I want them to understandthis that from a biblical perspective, two
wrongs don't make it right from abiblical perspective. But I want you to
just listen to what my want.The person who does my aquarium, here's

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what he said to me. Andthe only reason i'm i'm i'm I'm pointing
to him about what he said tome was because I don't plagiarize. And
he said, he told his ifyou have an argument with your neighbor and
you have an argument outside of yourhouse. What good is it for you

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after you have an argument, adisagreement they wronged you horribly, What good
is it for you to come intothe house and burn down your own couch.
Are you all listening to me?Here's what I'm saying to you.
We have been wronged horribly by thedeath of George Floyd. We have been

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wronged terribly. But what good isit for us to come back into our
neighborhoods and burn down our stuff orthe stuff that deals with us in the
neighborhood. What good is that atthe end of the day, we need
to find solutions that make sense.Here is what I'm going to give everybody

(06:05):
in the world. We no longerneed to respond to incidents, We need
to set precedents. No longer we'rebeing reactive when we ought to be proactive.
And the only way to be proactiveis for black folk to understand that

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the only way to come to atable in a white controlled environment and have
your place at the table is tocome there with strength and not weakness.
Everybody is saying all over the media, we're burning things down to get attention.
Whose attention. Are we trying toget the white people's attention? White?

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We did not come to America asequals to anybody. We came as
slaves. And if you ever thinkthat the dominant culture is going to give
you an equal place at their tablewhen they brought you in as slaves,
I keep telling you. We camefrom agriculture to industrialization, industrialization. We

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moved from industrialization to now we're atmicro technology because we move from industrialization to
automation. Now micro technology and allof that movement needs more education. They
built this country on the back ofall of us black folk as slaves.

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What we need to do now istake their education and have a piece of
this country that is exclusively and powerfullyours. Burning down what we built doesn't
make sense. Please, we haveto come from responding to incidents to setting

(08:07):
presidents. Now. Last night Iwas on the phone till three o'clock in
the morning too, I don't rememberwhat time last night I was on the
phone, and the issue was regardingour influence and our strength in the country.
What resources do we have? AndI was talking to one of the

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members of our church, brother EverettDread, And Everett said to me and
I never thought of it in allof my life. And you'll excuse me
because of my This is a soliloquyactually, but you know my preamble before
I get into spiritual things. Mypreamble. I talked to every last night,

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and Everett said, black folk arelooking for resources. And they say,
yeah, we're looking for resources sowe can be powerful. He says,
we give birth to our resources.Almost lost my mind to Brother Westbrook,

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who is out there. You gavebirth, your wife gave birth to
your resources. Quarry a black womangave birth or a black man at least
sold the seed, but gave birthto the resource. Go down the line,

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Lebron James, go down the line, Go into the NFL, go
into anyone of our sports. Wegive birth to the resources, and then
we turned them over to our Jewishbrothers and sisters to be the agents to
make the money. We give birthto the resources. But unless we get

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to magic, we don't own theteam. We give birth to the resources.
And there is Puffy, and thereis Sean Colmes, there is Stevie.
Wonder you name it. Just godown the line and name it.
We give birth to our resources andturn our resources over to people who will

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shoot our kids in the street.I need you to hear me today.
We don't need to tear American burnit down. Angie Stone was on yesterday.
We had a conversation. We don'tneed to burn it down. Well,
we burn it down? What wepill? It'll be crazy for me

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to have a conversation with you outin the street and get mad with you,
and then I come and burn myhouse down. What kind of mentality
is that? And here again andget angry with me if you choose.
But whatever power we have to motivateso many people across the country to tear

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up America, whatever power we haveto motivate that, I want to ask
you. Do we have that samepower to motivate these people to vote?
That's what I'd like to ask.So y'all excuse me. I'm venting this

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morning. I'm at home and I'vegot security outside, so I can vent
as much as I like. Canwe get these same people to vote?
And I'm not talking about voting ona presidential level alone, which is essential
because one leader can change the atmosphereof a whole country within four years.

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But who do we vote in asour da and I'm not talking about color
now because black don't mean nothing.If their attitude is not right towards all
of us. Why should we haveto demand justice in America? Why it's

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our constitutional right. And we didnot make allegiances to individuals. The individuals
who govern us made allegiance to aconstitution. And if we follow the constitution
and get money out of the way, because money buys the main man,
money buys the Senate, and theSenate then turns around and they choose a

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Supreme Court, and the Supreme Courtonly responds to what the money has asked
them to do. So at theend of the day, we're sitting in
a situation where we can't get justice. Why do poor black people have to
ask and demand and march and tearup a country for justice when justice is

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our right based on the constitution.But what's happening to America is America is
becoming another feudal system, the samething that our white brothers ran from in
Europe to come to America to puta constitution together. Now that they're in
power, we waste the Indians,we waste the slaves now that they're in

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power. But here's what I'm saying, the word of God and the power
of the Holy Spirit are to bringunity in a Christian country. That's where
we are now, and we oughtto bring unity to a Christian country.
But at the same time, wegot to understand the reality of the economics

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is money. Money, money,money. That is the greatest and the
most significant trouble that all of ushave money. Money. It's not the
devil, it's the love of money. And until we wake up and realize
that, we have to be ableto come to this table with our own

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strength because we are the only culturethat does not have independence in finances.
So at the end of the day, we need for one week not spend
money that ain't sinful, it ain'ton godly, it ain't on biblical.

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We need for one week. I'mnot saying one day because I know my
brothers and sisters. When Katrina came, I sent one hundred thousand dollars to
Xavier, I send three hundred thousanddollars to individual jewels. And what they
did was they buy Shanel purses andLouis Baton's shoes. And you can't sleep

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in the Louis Baton shoe or ina Chanel purse. So at the end
of the day, what we needto do is come together and understand that
the reality is we have to havefinancial power if we don't buy spend the
dime anywhere for a week. Andas I was beginning, I'm seventy years

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old, so I got to goback to something I remember when if we
understand seriously that we need to beable to stand on our own two feet.
They told my Jewish brothers that theydon't want them on the beach,
and my Jewish brothers bought the beach. And please, if you will go

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down to Miami Beach and see whoowns the beach. We need to put
ourselves in a place where we havethe strength to sit at the table and
say stop killing our boys. NowI want to say this, and I'm

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being open. Today's Sunday morning.I'm at home. There's no church,
so I don't have to really regardthe sanctuary. I'm at home so I
can speak. If a white menaccuse me of a crime, and I
wanted to defend myself when I wentto court, I would have a white

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lawyer defending me. If a whitewoman accused me of a crime, I
would want a white woman defending meand hopefully she came out of the same
community. Hopefully this to me isjust ingenious. Smile. Now, I'm

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asking a question to my evangelical brothersand sisters whose voices I'm not hearing,
whose churches. Well, I heardone day other night when I was on
with the Unification Church and God BlessBrother Goodnum, one of my brothers,
where he expressed very very succinctly,explicitly and without any equivocation. Here's what

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he expressed, and I agree withhim totally that he wants to wrap his
hands with our hands and declare thatwhat's going on is wrong. I'm calling
out my evangelical brothers because in thesituation that we are in right now,
we don't need another black pastor toholler and all of our boys, no

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matter how high they are. Wedon't need another black activist to holler with
all of our boys and no nomatter how great they are. At the
end of the day, Martin LutherKing had a coalition of people from all
walks of life walking with him.I understand that Pentecostalism and the competition between

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churches have separated us, and we'vegot so many subjective theological expositors. So
we end up in the world witha whole lot of schisms and isms.
But if we differ on how toget to heaven, we all ought to

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understand how we need to live onearth. So at the end of the
day, what we need when ourboys are being killed is for the voices
of the evangelicals, my white brothers, who have half their congregations of black
folk sitting in there. We needtheir voices to declare, stop killing our

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voice, stop kneeling for eight nineminutes in the neck of a man who
you already have handcoffort, with yourhand in your pocket, in a city
where you're saying to yourself, Minnesotahas done Minneapolis has done this over and

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over and over again. So lookat the rambunctious, audacious behavior of somebody
who knows they're being filmed, andbeing filmed does not stop them from doing
what they're doing. Speaks of acomfort in the situation I'm being filmed,

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Well, it ain't nothing gonna happen. So here you go, and you
got a da that's gonna throw.Oh. You know, are we have
in church today or is this apolitical what is this today? Are we
have in church. I'm asking mytext because they're my only amen. Group.
Are we having church or what arewe doing? Look at me?

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Please look at me? How comfortablecan you be in being inhumane and kneeling
in the neck of a different colorimage of God? Kneeling in the neck

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of another color image of God untilhis life is snuffed out knowing you're being
filmed. That does not speak tothe radical hatred of the individual. It
speaks to a bigger picture of agroup where he understands that he is comfort

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temple in this space where he cansnuff out of life being filmed and ain't
concerned about folfilling it, and staywith his knee in the man's neck until
the man is dead, and keephis knee in his neck to make sure
he's dead. And I dare say, if you check the history of that

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cop with that fellow, he neededthey had some relationship before and that makes
it premeditated? Do you think allof us don't understand law? If you
say third degree murder and manslaughter,a manslaughter conviction can walk out with probation,

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ain't no prison time. We arenot demanding anything other than justice.
But hear me, why with theconstitution we have in America that everybody swore
allegiance to who is in office onany level, why do we have to
demand something that should be given automatically. So now to the money brokers,

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here's what you've done wrong. Youwouldn't take care of testing, tracing,
isolation, and treaty, which isto substradom by which your economy could come
back. What destroyed the economy wasunhealthy people. So what you need to

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do is get people healthy to restorethe economy. You wouldn't do that.
Now, in the middle of that, you have a man who completely decimates
anything that's humane and people will gonuts. So now you've added another burden

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to the restoration of the economy becausethe stores you need them to go into
to stimulate the economy now are beingburned out. And to my brothers and
sisters who are burning down stores tryingto get back at folk, a lot
of these stores were having trouble anywaybecause of the pandemic. So when you

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burn them down, all you didwas send them to their insurance company for
them to come back later with anotherstore. So what have you accomplished,
they asked me. They said,Bishop do you want to march in la
I said one of two things.One, the LAPD with all that they

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have done, didn't do this.So I'm not marching. And the only
place I'm marching to is the polls. Hear me, hear me, hear
me. Only place I'm marching tothe is the pulse. And second,

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while all of this is going on, we are still killing each other.
Murder has increased with depends. Ithought everybody would have seen the judgment of
a pandemic and everybody would be tryingto get to the Lord. We're still
killing each other. That's the nextthing. We have to tackle the accountability

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that we have for our cousins,our brothers, our nephews, our uncles.
We need to be accountable for them. So I conclude my preamble before
I go, and I hope wecan shift from the socio political to some
sort of spiritual environment. We haveto stand on what God has given us

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as a people. And please understandthis that we no longer operate from an
ethereal mystical ontological platform. But weneed to bring our Christianity into a reality
that save the souls of people,and our warfare is not carnal. We

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don't have carnal weapons, so ourweapons have to be creative, ingenious,
spiritually motivated, and we've got tounderstand what makes people change. And black
folk understand this. You aren't botheringanybody who's rich until you mess with their

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money. Stop being such great consumers. Let us operate rate in another vein
where we understand contentment with Goddenness isgreat gain. And let's not try to
be greeting God bless you. That'sthe first half. This is Pentecost Sunday.

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This is a Sunday of power,because Pentecost Sunday doesn't mean anything without
power. And the power we needis the power to be able to determine
our own future within a country thatwe don't really own. We were broad
hair slaves, but we built iton the backs of our ancestors. I

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want my children and my grandchildren tocontinue to build it on the education that
we have received in a world thatwe should use and go forward with strength.

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A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand, and that goes for all of
us. So America is no greaterthan its weakest link. And that's why
America is nowhere in prophecy. Theevangelicals can say what they want, and
want what they say, but it'snowhere in prophecy. King of the North,

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King of the East. Because Americais dismantling itself and we're destroying ourselves
separated from the world. Now we'regonna dismantle ourself. Who will come to
our aid? The ones who willcome to our aid are the Christians.
I still have something else to sayabout this, and here's what I'm saying

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from a Christian point of view.When God says love your enemies, is
not only speaking from a spiritual,heavenly point of view, but he's speaking
from understanding how to live in anearth that we have shrunk in a country

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that we can move from borders toborders. Here's what we understand. When
one of my brothers kill his brother, it's not homicide, it's suicide.
When an American, whether he's policeor no police, when he kills one

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of our people, or a Hispanicor even another white person, it's not
homicide. It's suicide. Look,can you imagine me sitting here having kneeled
on somebody's neck until they died,and now become responsible for what's happening over

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the whole country because of my singleaction. My single action didn't only kill
a black man, It killed businesses. It brought the whole America down.
It made the morality of America looklike nothing. When we declare we are
the world leader in presenting Christianity,what does it make TBN day Star and

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all the other Christian stations look likewhen the people of the world are looking
at us, of the world lookingat us and see, how can America
call itself a Christian country when thatbehavior is happening. How does an individual
go into his police force and lookat his chief and everybody else, the

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mayor, the governor, when he'scommitted such an act, unless all of
them are part of what he's doing, How can he do it? Let
me tell you what Christianity says.I was on with the leaders of the
Unification Church because I'm the advisor andI'm one of the spiritual advisers, and
it's just the honor, and Iwas on with the leaders, and here's

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what we devised in our minds.You have to understand that when one of
my brothers kill another brother, whena husband in a house kills his wife,
when anybody kills somebody else, it'snot only the perpetrator. It's not
only rather the victim that's got aproblem. It's the perpetrator too. Because

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when one young man at eighteen killsanother young man at eighteen, one man
is gone, his family is ingrief and his family's got a problem.
But the one who killed him isgoing to prison and his life is gone.
So we got victims aren't the onlyones who suffer. The perpetrator suffers,

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and the rest of us looking on, having not done any of this
crime, we suffer. So itbrings a whole nation to its needs suffering
because we don't live up the scripturaltruth which should influence constitutional truth. And

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now I'm saying, to everybody whowill listen to me, and all of
my being upset, I'm saying,we need to take the blindfold off that
woman who represents justice, and weneed to stop taking the balance and put
it where it really is. Ifyou're poor and insignificant, and white,

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poor people don't understand that rich whitepeople don't think any more of them than
they think a black fool. Soall you' all running are voting for whoever
you want to, and you gotto write, but at the end of
the day, you have more incommon with poor black folk than you do
it rich white folk. Sealer.We need to take the blindfold off that

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woman, that lady, however youwant to call her, and we need
to take the balance and put itwhere it is. Because when we have
allegiances to people and not to thedocument, the Bible, the Magnicada,

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the Constitution, Hamurabi, cold Code, the law. When we have allegiances
to people, we vacillate with theidiosyncratic visa sisitudinous changes that they operate in
for their own personal aggrandizement and narcissisticmaniaical behavior. So I'm saying to my

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brothers and sisters in America, wehave to come together with those people on
the other side of the table whounderstands what's best for everybody, so that
all of us can live peaceably together, love one another, and understand that

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that is the will of God onearth as it is in heaven. He
created all colors, all peoples withone blood.