Drew;
I will leave it to God to judge my ancestors. I will stand by my statement though that IF they are judged to be Sinners, it will be on some account other than that they owned slaves. I can find & cite references of all sorts of things which are declared to be Sin. Here are a few examples:
1Co 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
1Co 6:10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
1Co 6:11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
Funny thing is I do not see owning a slave in that list. In fact Nowhere in the Bible will you see it declared a Sin to own a slave. You can read through Exodus & Deuteronomy & find God's rules in regard to their slaves, as to how they were to be treated, etc but they were not told they needed to get rid of them.
As to Abraham, yes he made some grievous mistakes & some of them he paid for dearly. He was though called the Father of the Faithful, not just because he believed God Existed, but because he OBEYED God's commands.
Same with Noah, it was declared in Hebrews 11 that By Faith, Noah Built an Ark.
Modern-day doctrines of men would say Noah believed in God, he believed it was going to rain & he would be saved from the flood in a big old boat, so he sat there on the river bank fishing & waited for God to send the boat.
In the 1800s slaves were valuable commodities, their owners did not as a whole mistreat them. They wanted them well & able to do a day's work.
The picture we are all so familiar with of a slave with his back beaten to a p[ulp was far & away & exception rather than the norm.
When Lincoln issued his "Infamous" Emancipation Proclamation" it was not for the slave's benefit. It, in fact, freed not a single slave which he had any jurisdiction over, read it for yourself. It was purely a political & military action. Politically it was a success as it got him re-electted as president which he was in great jeopardy of losing. Militarily it was a Flop. He Expected a mass exodus of the slaves & that confederate soldiers would desert to go back & tend to their farms. Wrong, for the most part, the slaves stayed LOYAL to their owners & stayed on tending the crops.
We all I suppose fully realize that is the way anyone would act who had been Bruttaly Mistreated & Abused.
I recommend you quit listening to so much "Politically Correct" Hogwash & dig deep
for some truths.
As for the Church, I do not belong to any Man's Denomination, nor did I Purchase a church. Although I was raised in the Church I was 17 when I decided I truly needed to be a Christian. I thus went forward & was Baptised for the Remission of my sins & was added to the New Testament Church which the Lord Jesus purchased with His blood upon the Cross & which was fully established on the First Pentecost following His Resurrection.
