by Hugh Ross
How and when did the races of humanity originate is a question often raised at outreaches and in calls to our hotline. The query represents an intriguing, unsolved mystery both for Bible believers and for nonbelievers. Genesis 6-9 says that all modern humans descended from just one family of eight people who, according to many Bible scholars, lived only about ten to twenty thousand years ago (the dates are discussed in our videos on the Flood). Such a few thousand years is far too short a time for natural processes alone to produce racial differentiation. Furthermore, the geographical isolation that would have been necessary to preserve developing distinctive features simply did not occur, according to the biblical (and archeological) record.
One way around the problem is to invoke more time. Some (but by no means all) fossil evidence has been interpreted as indicating that populations anatomically similar to modern humans may have existed as far back as about a hundred thousand years. However, according to evolutionary biologists, a hundred thousand years is still too short a time for natural selection and mutations to produce racial distinctives. Furthermore, even anthropologists who reject or ignore the Bible do not suggest that these (presumably) mobile, intelligent populations remained apart long enough for racial differentiation to occur.
More importantly, environmental stresses are too weak to generate any significant natural selection. Browns and blacks appear to survive as well in the arctic as whites. The Eskimos prove this point. And, although indigenous whites are not found in the tropics, whites have demonstrated their ability to protect themselves from solar exposure and other tropical climatic conditions. As yet no widely accepted scientific theory exists to explain the races.
A Biblical Hypothesis
While the Bible does not explicitly describe the origin of the races, it does provide information that can be helpful in constructing a hypothesis. First, Scripture makes clear that God considers the unity of unregenerate people more hazardous to human survival and well-being than a certain degree of disunity. According to Daniel 7, Zechariah 1, Revelation 13, and other Bible passages, when people who are unsubmitted to God's authority join forces, wickedness and evil escalate. What occurred in the generations leading up to Noah exemplify this point.
The wickedness of Noah's generation was more horrible than we can imagine, and it seems to have been exacerbated by two conditions: first, the several-hundred-year human lifespans; second, humanity's "oneness," in defiance of God's command to fill the earth (Gen. 1:28). When God decreed the necessity of radical intervention to preserve humanity-namely, the Flood-He also decreed the shortening of the human lifespan (Gen. 6:3). He addressed the second condition by issuing a strongly worded command to Noah to fill the earth (Gen. 9:7). However, in Genesis 11:1-4 we see that by the time of Nimrod's generation, about five to eight generations after Noah, the entire human race was still a united society concentrated in one locale, the Mesopotamian plain.
With evil again threatening to run out of control, God again intervened. He broke up the people's unity by imposing a multiplicity of languages and then scattered humanity over the face of the earth (Gen. 11:7-9). Though the Bible doesn't say so in precise words, it seems reasonable to me that as God miraculously differentiated people's languages, He might at the same moment also have differentiated some of their physical features as well, all as a means to drive people apart and establish the spiritual "protection" that diversity provides.
True Peace and Oneness
This hypothesis is neither new nor without its awful abuses. It has been twisted, for example, to justify various forms of apartheid. But God never in His Word exalts one race above another. Though some might say He exalted Israel by choosing her as the nation from which His Word would go forth to all the world and through whom His Son would be born to humanity, He stated again and again that His choice was based not on any special merit or superiority, but rather on Israel's lack of anything that could be interpreted as such (see Deut. 9:6).
Nor does God oppose the unity and harmony of different races, nations, and language groups per se. What He does oppose is the coming together of all the races, nations, and language groups in a one-world union under any banner other than Jesus Christ. Why does He oppose such a union? Let me reply with another question: Will goodness rule apart from God's rule?
In Daniel 10:13-11:1, we read that God sent an angel first to fight the prince of Persia and then later to fight the prince of Greece-and each time His purpose was the same: to prevent the Persian Empire and Alexander's empire from ruling the whole world. Indeed, not once since the time of Babel has any government ruled all of humanity. However, both Daniel and Revelation predict that God will permit a one-world union to arise. This world coalition will form in the days just preceding the return of Christ to earth. At that time humankind will once again have the chance to see the devastating physical and spiritual effects of total power in the hands of humanity, in this case, blasphemers. We will see again that human ills cannot be healed by political peace and unity but only by the peace and unity that come at the foot of the cross.