Dorsey Ross Show
Hello, my name is Dorsey Ross, and I am the host of the Dorsey Ross Show. I am a minister and itinerant speaker. I started the Dorsey Ross Show to interview people of faith who have stories of faith and overcoming trials and difficulties. In this podcast, you will hear stories of all kinds. Some will make you laugh, cry, and even say I can connect with that story or that person. I would love to encourage you to check out these stories of faith, encouragement, and inspiration my guests share on the show. I hope these stories give you hope, to get you through your week and your life. Please share them with your family, friends, co-workers, and anyone who needs a little touch of encouragement today.
Dorsey Ross Show
Faith, Race, and America's True History: A Conversation with Nathaniel Arnold
Nathaniel Arnold's powerful testimony takes us on a journey through America's troubled racial history through the eyes of a young boy growing up in segregated Mobile, Alabama. Born into the tumultuous civil rights era of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Arnold's formative years were shaped by witnessing Governor Wallace's infamous "segregation forever" stance, the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, and the daily indignities of systematic racism.
The profound dissonance between the loving God portrayed in the Bible and the harsh realities of racial hatred led seven-year-old Arnold to ask a question that would take a lifetime to answer: "Why did you make me a Negro?" His search for understanding propelled him toward deep study of both American history and biblical prophecy, ultimately leading to a surprising perspective that frames racial conflict within a cosmic battle between good and evil.
Arnold challenges listeners to reconsider widely accepted myths about America's founding, revealing that many founding fathers were deists rather than Christians, and that the promise of democracy was initially denied to Black Americans, Native Americans, and women. Most provocatively, he interprets America as the "land beast" described in Revelation 13, suggesting that both America's founding and its eventual fate are prophesied in scripture.
Rather than offering false hope for societal-level racial reconciliation, Arnold advocates for individual transformation through deeper spiritual connection. "There are only two sides in this conflict," he explains, "Christ and Satan." This perspective reframes racial justice as part of a larger spiritual awakening. His books "My Story, His Glory" and "Decoding Daniel Revelation and America's Destiny" present his research and biblical interpretations in accessible ways for those seeking truth in confusing times.
Connect with Nathaniel's work through his website www.hisglory.publishing.com or find his books on Amazon to continue exploring these powerful themes of faith, race, and prophecy.
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Hello everyone, thank you again for joining me on another episode of the Dorsure Show. Today on the show we have a special guest with us. His name is Nathaniel Arnold. He is a visionary leader, mentor and author whose life story is a testament to resilience, wisdom and transformation. He was raised in a racially segregated South. He overcame systemic barriers and personal hardships to emerge as a powerful voice for change and empowerment. As a powerful voice for change and empowerment With Ted Geiger's experience in leadership and community mentorship. Nathaniel's insights into the past and present offer a compelling perspective on America's evolving social and political landscape. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me on Justice, leadership and Progress. Nathaniel, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'd like to open up our discussion today with an icebreaker question. Today's icebreaker question is where did you grow up and did that?
Speaker 2:affect who you became? That's a good question. I grew up in my early years. My very early years were in Mobile, alabama, and in the late 50s and 60s that era was one especially in Alabama was one. If you were an African-American growing up in that era, civil rights was really prominent and I grew up in a time when we were really the civil rights movement was basically in its heyday. I would say Alabama had gone through the boycott years before, and then, of course, segregation in the South. We had things like the 16th street bombing where four black girls were killed, all of those things. We had Governor Wallace and Bull Connor. We had, of course, monser Luther King and John F Kennedy. And so for me, growing up and not really understanding what the complexities of our society were and seeing what I felt was really injustice, especially toward Black people, especially toward Black people, I was conflicted and that helped me to it actually formulated a lot of my life's calling to try to understand and resolve the dissonance that I felt and that I saw in the larger society.
Speaker 1:Can you tell us a little bit more about your life growing up and about how you became a Christian and believer in God and what all that looked like to you?
Speaker 2:Okay, well, I guess I can go back to my story His Glory, my first and second book. The second book is just out recently, but my first book I chronicle my life's upbringing. I was brought up in the church in the Southern Baptist tradition. My mom was a very religious person as far as the Baptist tradition. Her father, my grandfather Hammy, was a Baptist minister, and so we grew up, I grew up really looking at life, I can say, through the lens of the Bible.
Speaker 2:Whenever I would see, meet new people, I would kind of compare them with people that I knew in the Bible, but kind of compare them with people that I knew in the Bible. I remember learning at a very early age Psalm 23. I could recite it, I memorized it. I don't remember a time in my life when I was not able to read, and so things that influenced me were television, and back in those days they had a lot of biblical stories, stories about David and Samson and David and Bathsheba, samson and Delilah, and so those personages were real to me and so I grew up understanding that God was real and that he was a certain way and I expected that of the world and so going up in that environment to understand, to see the conflict, I would say, between what I believe the Bible said, what the Bible taught and how I believe God was, and how I saw the world and the world reacting to God's children. That caused just a lot of dissonance, as I mentioned before, and so that's how I pretty much was trying to understand that.
Speaker 1:What was that like when you saw that growing up and you saw the segregation and everything? But you're reading the Bible and you're seeing. You know, hey, god's supposed to love everybody, god's supposed to accept everybody, especially the Caucasian people and the white people, not accepting the African-American people. How did you resonate that?
Speaker 2:with what you were reading in the Bible. Well, it was impossible really, because the two like East and West, and so because that was a problem, I remember and I put this in my first book, which is called my Story, his Glory, a lens on racism and religion in America and God's final judgment. This is the book I talked about one particular August day in 1963. I was not quite seven years old. I remember being in front of the television I love television, especially things like the news and stuff like that and I remember this one particular day in August it was a summer and watching television and they had a newsflash and that newsflash had Governor Wallace standing in front of the Alabama State College at that time Alabama State and he was surrounded by people and newsmen and National Guard and there were two black students who wanted to matriculate. One's name was James Hood and Vivian Malone, and he stood in the door and said that they would not enter here and he had said he had been inaugurated, I think earlier that year, in January, and he said segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.
Speaker 2:And I remember wondering about that and after they flashed away from him, they brought in a commercial. The commercial showed this white woman with long blonde hair, just you know, swirling it like a Prell commercial or VO five commercial, I'm not sure which one. And so to me I caught both of those scenes. One was of hatred toward black people and the other was one of white, the position of American white beauty. And I thought to myself as a child, the juxtaposition of those two things just again conflicted me. And I remember asking God, doris. I remember asking God why did you make me a Negro? Because I I didn't understand this hatred, I didn't understand this vitriol that people, that our society, this society, the American society had for black people. And I knew that if God were a loving God, which is what the Bible said, that this was not right, it was not right. And so I asked God to show me, and it took literally most of my life for God to answer that question for me.
Speaker 1:And how did God answer that question for you?
Speaker 2:And he's in many, many ways still answering the question.
Speaker 2:God has shown me that and again I talk about it in my story His Glory, that he indeed is love, he indeed is love, and that we are in a conflict, dorsey. And that we are in a conflict, dorsey, that conflict is not of God's design, of his making, of his desire. We fight an enemy who wants to see us pretty much dead, and the enemy is, of course, satan, the devil, the dragon, and the conflict was started by him and is because of him, and he is the one that has planted all of these seeds of hatred. I think it's in Matthew 14, where Christ is telling the parable of the wheat and the tares, and he says an enemy has done this, and that enemy is again Satan. So we see the conflict in the world as a result of this great conflict, of this great controversy between Christ and the being that he created, which we now call Satan. So I understand that this warfare and these things that we are seeing transpiring in our lives are because of the enemy Right.
Speaker 1:Have you seen the racial barriers or the racial segregation? I mean, obviously we don't have segregation now, but have you seen the treatment of African-American people get better over time, or has it changed little by little? How do you see that from then till now?
Speaker 2:I think things have pretty much remained the same in this country and, for that matter, around the world. We see an uptick in racial injustice now, especially under the new administration. A lot of the things that are coming out seem to be directed almost directly at African Americans, and that is worrisome, that's bothersome, and I think that the Bible speaks to these kinds of things, and there's a 2 Timothy 3, verses 1 through 5, talks about troublous times in the end times. I think we are beginning to see some of those things manifest now, and this is also a sign of where we are in Earth's history.
Speaker 1:Can you go back to your time in your youth and share some key lessons that you learned when you were in the South and during that time.
Speaker 2:I learned some things that I learned. Well, we stayed in the South until about I was nine years old. I learned to distrust, I guess, american society, if I'm candid, because of the hypocrisy that I saw. I learned to distrust Christians because of the hypocrisy that I witnessed. I learned to, I guess, distrust American government as well because of the hypocrisy that I saw. And as I grew older it became, and I was able to research things for myself, to learn things that were not in the history books, learned things that were not in the history books.
Speaker 2:I began to realize that the myths that I had been told about America and my place as a black person in America were not true. A lot of it was just plain lies. And so I learned also to disrupt America. But also, I would have to say realistically, that I felt uncomfortable in my skin as an African American, because the larger society teaches us that we are less than, and that had to have an effect upon my psyche and my thinking and my interaction with society at large.
Speaker 2:So all of those things played an important role. It limited my flight, so to speak. It limited my things that I desired to be or to do, and this society does that in a very systemic and purposeful way, and so I learned those things. I learned also that you have to be careful if you speak out against this culture. I look at Martin Luther King Jr. What happened with him? I looked at Malcolm X. I look at Robert F Kennedy, and these were people that I admired and looked up to, growing up, and, you know, a bullet ended the lives of each one of those men John F Kennedy as well.
Speaker 1:I've done some research on you and I know that you like some of the Bible characters or Bible people in the Bible, one of them being David and the other one being Samson and how do they, you know, reflect on you and how do they, you know, and some of it you know connect with what you have done in your own life? How does that play a role in your life?
Speaker 2:Oh well, growing up, I remember, as I mentioned, I looked at the world through the lens of the Bible, and so I remember movies like Samson, and a lot of Samson was played by Victor Mature, I think, at that time, and David was played by Gregory I think it was Gregory Peck and so I remember them bringing those people to life for me, and I liked them because they were strong, they were exceptional.
Speaker 2:Them because they were strong, they were exceptional. David was brave, defeated a lion with his bare hands, as did Samson, and they were favored by God, and I felt that if you were on God's side, you could not lose. And so for me, it was always important to be on God's side, and that's not always been the case in my life, but I've always felt close to God, doris, that you know. Even from the time I was a child, I grew up believing what the Bible said, and so Psalm 23 for me was real. It was God, was my shepherd, and even though I may go through the valley of the shadow of death, god will see me through. And so that was very important to me, you know, growing up in this culture, to have that faith that was anchored in the Almighty.
Speaker 1:What type of advocacy have you done in your life and what has that looked like?
Speaker 2:I have worked as a, I became involved in the Pan-African movement and I have done writing. My writing is my greatest form of advocacy, so to speak, to reveal to people some of the things that I have learned about white supremacy in this country, to dissolve the myths that so many of us struggle with and that really hold us back, and so that's been a large part of what I do. It's something that I'm comfortable with. I've attended, of course, marches and those kind of things, and I've read a ton, done a ton of research Dorsey, on just things that dealt with African people in this country. I've done a lot of research on the founding politicians George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, I mean, and the things I've learned have just been amazing. Of course, abraham Lincoln as well, and try to get to the roots of the cause of things in this country. And the things I've learned have just been amazing. Of course, abraham Lincoln as well, and try to get to the roots of the cause of things in this country.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of research from a biblical perspective as well. I like to call it both prophecy and prophecy. Bible prophecy and earthly history connect. They're different sides of the same coin and so if you understand prophecy, you can better understand history, and if you understand history, you can better understand prophecy. And so God wants us to know. In fact, the Bible I think it's Amos 3, 7, he says he will reveal things to his prophets. He will do nothing without first revealing it to his prophets. And so God wants us to know what's going on in our environment, in our society, in our world, so that we can make informed decisions as to who to serve, because every choice we make is a choice for right or wrong.
Speaker 1:Right, and you mentioned about the myth that we've heard in our lifetime, and what are some of those myths that you think that we've learned, that we think about?
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, there's a ton of them. If you look at American society, for example, we are trained to believe that the founding politicians were Christians, that George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and the whole host of signatories on the Declaration of Independence were Christians. They were not. Most of them were what we now call deists, but they were men of enlightenment and they were not. Many of them did not believe in the Bible at all. In fact, if you know anything about Thomas Jefferson, he wrote his own Bible, and that Bible was called the Jefferson Bible, and it excluded most of what Jesus talked about in all of his miracles. George Washington was a Mason. In fact, he was sworn in using a Mason Bible in his first inauguration. Benjamin Franklin also was a deist and really did not espouse any religion per se, and he felt that religion, especially Christianity, had its place as a moral compass, but it was just not something that he espoused.
Speaker 2:And so we have been taught in the history books that this country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. The reality is and that is far from the truth. America is is truly an experiment in democracy, but it's also truly an experiment in tyranny At the same time, because on the one hand, you had the founding fathers of a select group of white men who orchestrated and maintained and kept power for themselves. You remember that black Americans couldn't vote, nor could Native Americans, and nor could women, and it took a century, basically, for women's suffrage to be granted. So, on the one hand, we are deluded into thinking that, no, this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, when in essence that has not been the case for most of our historical time period.
Speaker 1:Right. How do you view America's evolving role in shaping justice, leadership and the social things?
Speaker 2:think. Well, my belief is again, I have to look at history and prophecy In the Bible. If you look at Revelation, chapter 13, which is very seminal, that's the last book of the Bible and it's Jesus' revelation to John. The Apostle John is taken into vision throughout this entire book of Revelation and God reveals to him certain future events that are going to happen, and one of those events is the founding and the ending of America.
Speaker 2:Notice what I said both the founding of America is in the Bible and the ending of the country, and so if you read Revelation 13 and 14, it says that there is 13 talks about the dragon that gives his power to a multi-headed dragon, seven-headed dragon that gives his power to the beast to a sea beast, let me be precise. And then the sea beast also gives its power to the land beast, based on historical things, which I prove in my second book, my story of His Glory, book 2, the second beast in Revelation, or the land beast, the earth beast, is America, and so I talk about that in great detail in my second book.
Speaker 1:My second book. How do you think we could do better with becoming closer together when we deal with race relations and becoming better interacting with one another as a culture and as a society? I don't think we can as a culture and as a society.
Speaker 2:I don't think we can as a culture and society. I think it's too systemic and it's been with us far, far too long. I think we have to look at that on an individual level, and if I were to just take myself Dorsey, it would be the only way that can even happen. And it's going to have to happen on an individual level. And that individual level can only happen if we draw closer to God, because understanding this conflict, that basically there are only two sides in this conflict, there's good and there's evil, there's Christ and then there's Satan.
Speaker 2:So the purveyor of love is God. That's the only way we can love, and the further we are away from God, the less we are to love. You see what I'm saying. So there's no real way to do it on a macro level. We have to do it on a micro level, and I think that is what so many we try to fix the problem of sin through our own efforts. We can't do that. That's why Christ came. Christ destroyed death and sin, even though we're still on the battlefield, and the only way we can overcome is by allowing him to live in us is by allowing him to live in us.
Speaker 1:Is there a question that I did not ask you that you would like to answer, or ask and then answer that for yourself?
Speaker 2:I think that people have to understand we as Christians.
Speaker 2:There are probably over, from what I've read, over 200,000 different Christian denominations in the world. So how did that happen? And how does confusion because that's what I'm going to call it the confusion of doctrines and beliefs happen? So I think we need to find out what is truth, and we can only do that through a clear interpretation of the Bible and its prophecies, and I think that's what God is calling us to to find out, as Christ told the woman at the well in John 4, that God wants to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. And Christ said I am the way, the truth and the life. So there's only one truth, dorsey, but Christians, who were supposed to be purveyors of that truth, have somehow, and through the blinding and the resources of the enemy, we are confused and confounded as well. So, until we can learn to understand what the Bible is really saying, I think that, and that's, I think, what God is actually leading us to with the revelation of all these things that are going on right now, and so I hope that that answers your question.
Speaker 1:I think so yeah, as I get ready to close here, I always like to ask my guests to give an encouragement or word of knowledge to my audience and look at.
Speaker 2:A lot of times it's hard to interpret what the Bible says. But don't just take some other person's word for it. Confirm what you read in the Bible. And I would suggest, Dorsey, that people read my book, because I think I have done a tremendous job, honestly, of making things plain and simple. As I was preparing for your interview, I was thinking how God keeps things simple. For example, in the Garden of Eden, he told Adam and Eve you can eat from everything but one tree, just one tree. He gave us the Ten Commandments, which can be condensed to two commandments love God and love his fellow man. And so God does not complicate our lives, he simplifies our lives. We complicate, and the enemy is designed to throw confusion into the midst of this. So we got to seek God through spirit and truth so that we will not be confused and confounded and deceived.
Speaker 1:In these last days, when can people buy your?
Speaker 2:book. They can go to Amazoncom. Let me get the book real quick. Here's the book, I'll hold it up. They go to Amazoncom. It's called my Story. His Glory, book 2. Decoding Daniel Revelation and America's Destiny Decoding Daniel Revelation and America's Destiny. They can also go to my website, wwwhisglorypublishingcom. Wwwhisglorypublishingcom, and they can also get free things there. So it's wwwhisglorypublishingcom.
Speaker 1:Well, Nathaniel, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story and your expertise about what's going on in our country and in our society.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you, ross, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Well, guys and girls, thank you so much for coming on the show and for listening. We greatly appreciate having you. Please go and check out Nathaniel's website and his books, and hopefully you'll enjoy this episode and until next time, God bless. Bye-bye.
