A few years back, when I was still subscribed to AOL, I went to a forum that was discussing black leaders.

One poster enthusiastically stated that Malcolm X had lived in Africa, had adopted "the religion" and knew "the language." Since Malcolm X was a black Muslim who had learned Arabic while in Africa, this poster was obviously positing that Arabic, a language spoken mostly by whites, was "the language" and Islam "the religion" of Africa, where hundreds of languages are spoken and where Christianity came centuries earlier than Islam.

Around that time, AOL also had another forum called "My African Religion," whose stated purpose was to introduce readers to various African religions. No doubt the assumption was that AOL members from Africa would use the forum to describe their various African religions, such as animism and the like.

I couldn't imagine that many adherents to strictly African religions would even own computers, let alone be able to articulate their religious views in English.

When I went into the forum, my suspicions were confirmed. There were no messages at all, despite the fact that the link to this forum had gone up several days earlier.

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So I decided it was time to post something about my African religion there, and this is what I wrote:

Of the five major religions of the world, my religion, Christianity, was the second to come to Black Africa.

Archaeological, anthropological and biblical evidence suggests that Judaism was the first of the world's major religions to arrive there (in Ethiopia). Indeed, the Amharic language spoken in Ethiopia is a Semitic language, indicating a cultural affinity. Beta Israel has existed in Ethiopia for centuries and its roots may go back at least as far as Moses, who married an Ethiopian woman around 1500 B.C. (Numbers 12). Given the Israelites' resistance to marrying outside the faith, it's highly unlikely he'd have done so had she not been a practicing Jew.

As for Christianity, in Acts 8:26, we read that the apostle Philip ministered to an Ethiopian eunuch, a high-ranking member of Queen Candace's court. The eunuch had been reading Isaiah 53:7 – "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth" – and asked Philip to whom the prophet was referring here, whereupon Philip explained that Isaiah was foretelling the story of Jesus. Thus, Philip used this passage to establish a prophetic link to Christianity, persuading the eunuch to convert to Christianity and be baptized then and there.

But why would a ranking Ethiopian official in the first century A.D. be reading from the Old Testament in the first place?

The most reasonable explanation is that the Old Testament was not only welcomed by scholars in Ethiopia, but – even more likely – was widely read, and most likely followed, no doubt as part of accepted religious practice at the court. This supports the theory that, by that time, the Ethiopian elite had been practicing Judaism for some time, perhaps centuries.

Though details are unclear, this unnamed eunuch may have later become the founder, in Ethiopia, of Christianity, not as a ready-made new religion but as an outgrowth Judaism – the same way it was first presented. That this happened in the middle of the first century A.D. supports an early start for Christianity in black Africa.

At any rate, Christianity had already been firmly established in Ethiopia for centuries when Muhammad went there, where his teachings were rejected.

Thus, while black Muslims today insist that Islam is the religion of black Africa, it was almost 600 years later that that religion came to black Africa, and it became the religion of the first slave traders, who sold their brothers into captivity. An African Christian, Olaudah Equiano, was the only African-born abolitionist who helped end slavery in England. The abolitionist movement in Britain and America was in fact almost exclusively a Christian one. No Muslims joined in this cause.

Is it important for black Americans to know these facts?

It must be, because the left doesn't want them to be known: My post ran only a few hours before the AOL moderator removed it on the grounds that I was "proselytizing," despite the fact that mine was the only post ever appearing in that forum, which was eventually shut down for lack of interest.

The left has invested much energy in keeping black Americans blind to their history. It has established and supported "Christian" Black Liberation churches that openly support black Muslim leaders like Louis Farrakhan. It has also fiercely blocked attempts to expose and condemn Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger's call for black genocide through targeted abortion, and the fact that today, 35 percent of abortions are committed against black women, even though blacks account for only 12 percent of the population.

It is to their credit that a minority of Christian black leaders have recently exposed and condemned these attempts to harm the black community.

Black leaders who are taking their cue from the Good Book, instead of the Democrats' Marxist playbook, may yet save America – black and white – from the cruelest form of bondage known to man: ignorance.

Related special offer:

"God's War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy and the Bible"

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Donald Hank is a technical translator and editor-in-chief of Laigle's Forum.