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The deutero-canonical books, accepted by some traditions, add their own notes. Wisdom of Solomon says wisdom “is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness” (Wisdom 7:26). If the divine image is a spotless mirror, it can appear wherever a human heart is polished by love. Sirach counsels, “Do not praise a man for his good looks” (Sirach 11:2), which is a quiet rebuke to any theology built on appearance. Second Esdras, found in some canons, speaks of a time when “the city that now is not seen shall appear” (2 Esdras 7:26), hinting that the decisive unveiling will make visible what our current arrangements hide.
The non-canonical early Christian texts, though not scripture for most churches, preserve how some early believers imagined the return. The Didache warns, “Then shall appear the signs of the truth: first the sign of an opening in heaven, then the sign of the sound of the trumpet, and third the resurrection of the dead-yet not of all, but as it is said: ‘The Lord will come and all his saints with him’” (Didache 16:6–7). The Apocalypse of Peter describes the Lord appearing in glory and the righteous shining, while the wicked are ashamed; the focus is moral transformation more than geography. The Epistle of Barnabas reads the “eighth day” as the beginning of a new world (Barnabas 15:8–9), a time-mark that suggests a new creation breaking into the old. The Odes of Solomon sing, “Put on the love of the Lord like a garment and know his love” (Ode 3), making love the vesture of the coming one.
Other ancient Christian writings press the same themes. The Ascension of Isaiah has the beloved descending through the heavens in disguise, unrecognized until his exaltation (Ascension 10–11). If the Beloved can be hidden on the way down, then our failure to recognize is part of the pattern. The Acts of Thomas has the apostle sing that the Messiah is “the one who was proclaimed by the prophets, who came in the last times and appeared in the world in a body of humanity” (Acts of Thomas 10), and it does not restrict where that humanity may be found. The Gospel of the Egyptians, though fragmentary, plays with the saying, “When the two become one… then you will enter the kingdom,” a union that BCS interprets as love dissolving division. The point is not to canonize every fragment but to see the arc: the early imagination was wide, not narrow.
The wider canon of humanity adds depth. The Qur’an names Jesus “a sign for the Hour” (43:61) and says none of the People of the Book will fail to believe in him before his death (4:159). Read together, these verses keep eschatology open and personal. The Bhagavad Gita repeats the promise of descent whenever dharma declines (4:7–8). The Dhammapada teaches that “hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal law” (verse 5). If the eternal law is love, then any return must be legible as love. The Guru Granth Sahib proclaims, “There is one God… by the Guru’s grace he is known” (Mul Mantar), and urges the recognition of the one Light in all. The Tao Te Ching says the sage “does not display himself, therefore he is luminous” (22), a perfect description of a presence that is hidden in plain sight.
Ancient African wisdom belongs in this chorus. The Egyptian Book of the Dead has the heart weighed against the feather of Maat; the one who passes is the one whose heart is light, truthful, and compassionate. The returning Christ, in any Christian grammar, is also a judge of hearts. The Yoruba proverb, “Iwa l’ewa” (character is beauty), fits Isaiah’s “no beauty that we should desire him” and Revelation’s fiery eyes: the beauty that matters is moral. The Akan say, “It is the patient person who will milk the cow,” a reminder that discernment takes time. If the return is like lightning, the preparation is like milking—slow, steady, and attentive. The Igbo counsel that “when the right hand washes the left, the left washes the right,” a picture of the unity BCS preaches.
Philosophers and mystics read these texts as pointing beyond tribal ownership of God. Nicholas of Cusa wrote of the “coincidence of opposites” in God, who is beyond our categories; a return that crosses our borders fits that logic. Meister Eckhart said, “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.” If that is true, then the recognition of the returning Christ is also God recognizing God in us. Simone Weil wrote that “love is not consolation; it is light.” A light that exposes and heals is what the prophets describe. Frantz Fanon’s warning that the colonized risk seeing themselves through the colonizer’s eyes is relevant: if we cannot imagine Christ in Africa, the problem is not with Africa.
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BCS reads these strands as converging on Olumba Olumba Obu’s teaching: love as law, unity as practice, self-surrender as path. “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God” (1 John 4:16). If God is love and love is the rule, then the one who teaches and embodies love is doing the work of Christ, whether we call it return, manifestation, or unveiling. The Didache’s “signs of the truth” are not fireworks but the opening of heaven, the trumpet blast, and the raising of the dead. Love opens heaven in ordinary rooms; truth is a trumpet; and the dead parts of us—our bitterness, our prejudice, our greed—can be raised to new life. That is a resurrection we can test.
If you want ancient words that sound like a description of what BCS claims, listen to 1 John again: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God” (4:7). Listen to the Gita: “He is the same to all beings” (9:29). Listen to the Qur’an: “We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another” (49:13). Listen to the Dhammapada: “Conquer anger by love” (223). Listen to the Guru Granth Sahib: “No one is my enemy, no one is a stranger; I get along with all” (Guru Arjan). If a teacher gathers these threads into a life and a community practices them, the controversy is not that the claim is too big; the controversy is that the demand is too simple and too hard.
So the question returns: can Christ come as a black man in Africa? The canon says the Son of Man comes when we do not expect him that his appearance will be like lightning, that his beauty is not the kind we chase, that his judgment is like fire, and that the Spirit is poured on all flesh. The deutero-canonical books warn against praising appearances and speak of a city now hidden that will appear. The non-canonical early writings imagine descent in disguise and the eighth day of a new creation.
The Qur’an keeps Jesus as a sign. The Gita promises the descent when righteousness wanes. The world’s wisdom names love as the eternal law. Africa’s proverbs name character as beauty. Put together, they do not prove a single identification; they do something better. They free us to recognize love when it shows up where we did not expect it, and to follow it when it costs us our preferences. That is the ancient insight that still unsettles and still saves.
The question of Christ’s return is not only about chronology; it is about recognition. The New Testament warns that “the Son of Man will come at an hour you do not expect” (Luke 12:40), and that his coming will be “like lightning that flashes and lights up the sky” (Luke 17:24). Lightning is sudden, public, and unmistakable, yet people still mistake it for something else if they are looking in the wrong direction. The Brotherhood of the Cross and Star (BCS) insists that Olumba Olumba Obu embodies the love and wisdom that Christ brings, and that his ministry is not a novelty but the unveiling of a pattern: when righteousness declines, the divine sends a reminder in flesh. That claim unsettles because it touches identity, authority, and imagination all at once.
