Acts 17:26
Acts 17:2626From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands.
— "he made out of one man every nation of men" — is not a frequent Watchtower proof-text in current literature. It does appear in the book's backdrop, being the verse once deployed (along with Genesis 11) by Dutch Reformed apologists to defend apartheid theology — an episode the Watchtower sometimes brings up as "Protestants did terrible things too" when Watchtower history is pressed.
The Reformed tradition has to be honest about . Yes, twentieth-century Dutch Reformed theologians did try to read "the set limits of the dwelling of men" as divinely ordained national-racial separation, and that reading was the theological scaffolding for apartheid. And that reading was publicly repudiated: the 1982 World Alliance of Reformed Churches declared apartheid a heresy, the Belhar Confession of 1986 confessed unity and reconciliation against it, the 1990 Rustenburg Declaration brought the churches together in formal confession and a call for restitution, and the NGK itself reversed at synod in 1986. Named signatories, dated documents, surviving texts. That is what a public reform mechanism looks like. itself, read in Paul's own context, is the opposite of apartheid — it establishes the shared humanity of every nation (ek henos — "out of one man") so that all are equally summoned to repentance () and all are equally sought out by God. The reading the reform mechanism rejected was the reading the context never authorised.