Lucifer has been in the business of troubling the nations for time immemorial. No wonder it was said concerning him: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations!” (Isaiah 14:12-2). How eagerly the nations await that prophetic demise! Precisely because none has been left untouched by the reach of his ravenous tyranny. The prophet Isaiah offers a promise of hope through the redeemed, that “they shall rebuild the old ruins, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations” (Isaiah 61:4). The unrelenting question remains, how can this be done for South Africa?
The chronology of South Africa, a land of unmatched beauty, with broad, sunlit and open spaces, clear blue skies and smiling faces, catalogues a litany of political, cultural and ideological contestation, leaving a bitter trail of conquest and bloodshed. A glance across the horizon of its troubled history brings to mind images of scuffles between Dutch and the Khoisan, the Xhosa and the Khoisan, colonisation by the Dutch and counter annexation by the British, series of frontier wars, many internecine and highly distressing tribal wars, notably the infamous Mfecane instigated by bellicose Zulu warrior-king, Shaka, two bitter Anglo Boer Wars and finally the abhorrent system of institutionalised racial domination of apartheid. Indeed, one finds little reason to disagree with the British missionary Mary Moffat, who over 200 years ago lamented, “it requires some little fortitude to live at rest in such a tumultuous land”. Even in our day, her words continue to find unsavoury resonance with many South Africans.
In its present form, it is a relatively young nation, born 17 years ago in 1994. Its history books attest the reality of its fierce contestation, where one group or the other, has found it to their advantage at sundry times to revise the story of its origin. Nowhere is this more applicable than the date of the first arrival of Bantu South Africans, the largest cultural group, one that was preceded by the Khoisan by many centuries. The quest to attain what semblance of legitimacy possible was well served by the attempt at historical revisionism that sought to date this arrival centuries later.
While the exact date of arrival of the Bantu is unclear, archaeological evidence points to their presence in South Africa as early as 700AD. The landing of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652, soon followed by the first crop of Malays in 1657, the British in 1795, with Indian and Chinese immigrants following later, would later give rise to the apt appellation, the "Rainbow Nation". Rather than benefiting from the multiplicity of advantages associated with multiethnicity, seen in such nations as the US, this diversity precipitated a fractious epoch in the history of our country that culminated in the Apartheid system, which left a deeply imbedded socio-economic wound.
The advent of democracy in 1994 brought with it waves of hope for the country in general and the previously oppressed majority in particular. Hope that the democratic era would erase the fruit of centuries of hatred and injustice, ushering an era of freedom, peace and prosperity. The entire nation, if not the world, could hardly resist being caught up in raptures of euphoric optimism about the prospect of this “miracle” nation. A survey of the national mood 18 years down the road paints a picture of nation overcome by a growing restless angst, smouldering disillusionment and increasingly common outbursts of public indignation and violence, a language that is well entrenched in the national psyche, bringing to mind Langston Hughes poem, The Dream Deferred:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Rather than steady progress towards the hoped-for utopian ideal, the journey has been rocky, fraught with disappointment and a multitude of snares. The reasons are complex, including a combination of unrealistic expectations about the cost of true progress and the time it takes to build great nations. This notwithstanding, the post apartheid ANC government, hamstrung by its own misdemeanours, reminiscent of countless liberation movements across the world, has sadly been an impediment rather than an aid to progress. Rampant corruption, poor leadership and maladministration have added to the ills of apartheid such that the convenient excuse of blaming apartheid has begun to lose some of its erstwhile lustre.
Our generation is therefore faced with formidable social, political and economic challenges to which we are called to find answers that have so far eluded the present generation of leaders. An inexhaustive list thereof includes:
- Economic inequalities
- Insufficient social cohesion
- Endemic corruption and maladministration
- Poverty and unemployment
- Education and skills crisis
- Crime
- Infrastructure backlogs
- A growing lawlessness
The challenges are undeniably formidable; nevertheless we draw much hope from unshakeable truth encapsulated in the "great and precious promises" by which the natural is transcended. Among which is the assurance that authority over the nations is no longer with Lucifer, the destroyer of nations. The biblical invitation to the Son, chronicled in the old covenant is so captured:
“Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession”. (Psalms 2:8)
The Father, in his infinite faithfulness, has been true to His promise, giving the promised nations to the Son who has relinquished them with His blood from the rapacious grasp of the Satan. Accordingly, He says to His ecclesia:
“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you”. (Matthew 28:18)
We are therefore assured that for the Lord Jesus and his strategy, the church, victory is inevitable. (The English word “church” is a translation of the Greek word “ecclesia”, which incidentally has nothing to do with a building but refers to “those called out to rule.”) This unshakeable conviction is rooted in our knowledge of the Lord who cannot lie and to whom nothing is too difficult, whose promise to us continues to speak:
“ I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it”. (Matthew 16:18)
This scripture speaks of the inexorable but imperfect advance of the church through history and the certainty of its ultimate defeat of the enemy. Rather than joining the growing ranks of the disillusioned, with hearts filled with unshakable faith, let us strengthen our hands to work. Our work must be strategic, with future generations firmly in our minds involving the following:
1. Rebuilding the family. The family as the first institution established by God and the most foundational building block of any nation must be restored. It is here where identity and self worth are forged. It is in the family where we receive our value system and learn how to relate to other human beings. No nation can be enduringly great with a broken family system because all politicians, teachers, trade unionists and businessmen come from a family. When the family is functional, there is no stopping a nation. Malachi 4: 4-5 reads:
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.”
Sadly, broken families characterised by fatherlessness litter the streets of our beautiful nation, with evidence of the promised curse all too apparent. If you do not believe me, I invite you to peruse any newspaper in South Africa. Let us allow therefore, God to plant in each of our hearts a vision of prosperous families across the nation, beginning with our own.
2. Rediscover the apostolic mandate given to the church. The mandate given to the church is simple: “make disciples of all nations”. There is much that can be said about the institutional church and its role, which at times has been of regrettable complicity with the tyranny of apartheid. It is a colourful tale with much that is noble and ignoble, whose glorious true colours were glowingly manifest during the very cavernous sunset years of apartheid and the transition into the “New South Africa”. Those were treacherous years of great heartache and uncertainty, with an omnipresent threat of civil war that cut an unnerving feature over the horizon, casting the nation into a perpetual state of anxiety.
The church led the charge of praying for the troubled nation, storming the proverbial gates of heaven and averting what appeared certain catastrophe. Men such as Ray McCauley, among many others, rose to the occasion showing leadership that secures their place among the pantheon of great South African leaders. The church acted, as the church should and the nation rejoiced.
Sadly, the post-apartheid era gave way to an inward focus and a preoccupation with the spirit of the age, aptly captured by Francis Schaeffer as the pursuit of “personal peace and prosperity”. Predictably, this coincided with an inevitable national moral decline because when the church withdraws, the nations cannot but travail. When the church ought to have occupied itself with discipling a new generation of South Africans - men and women with the solid moral character and vision such as was required to lead the quest of restoring a country still reeling from the effects of an unjust system - it turned rather to a ‘self-help’ gospel, which placed an inordinate emphasis on material enrichment and personal comfort for the individual believer, with out the concomitant regard to his heavenly responsibilities.
It tragically blended, as such, with a culture preoccupied with self-enrichment at any cost. This meant that the army of morally upright and principled future leaders that should have flowed from the church into education, politics, business, nursing, the family and every arena of human endeavour were tragically no where to be found. It is axiomatic that nature abhors a vacuum. Men of corrupt minds, destitute of the truth, therefore duly filled the vacuum and so the nation travails.
3. We must see our vocation as a holy calling from God and make it a life long ambition to discover the applicability of God’s word in every facet of it. The pursuit of soul- winning in the marketplace must be complemented by the application of God’s way and will in the actual content of work. Some may be called to demonstrate what a kingdom business looks, others of may be called to shape the arts, the media and education. Perhaps you might be a part of a new generation of godly politicians to provide visionary, integrous and competent leadership to our communities.
4. We must embrace the biblical call to be disciples of Christ first and then disciplers of nations. A disciple is a disciplined learner, one who is on a lifelong journey toward mastering those truths that have truly captured their heart. In all of history, those who change the world for better or worse invariably are disciples of someone. Examples include the likes of Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Buddha, Mohammed and others. Jesus distinguishes Himself from anyone in history, in that He did not merely claim to show us the way, the truth and the life, but declared Himself the embodiment of these realities, proving this by His unprecedented and unmatched resurrection from the dead. In heeding His commission, we must embrace a vision of discipleship that seeks to affect not only individuals but also nations. We must seek to be catalysts of change who shape the institutional infrastructure of our nation, affecting what it values, how it thinks and operates for generations to come.
Once again the clouds have begun to gather around the horizon, not unlike numerous moments in our history. The advance of corrupt and wicked men seems inexorable. Our families and schools seem a wasteland. We scour the horizon in vain for the emergence of leaders to guide us to a hopeful tomorrow. Our search should look no further than ourselves, as the church of Jesus Christ. For we have been empowered and entrusted with the sacred task of stewarding the nations. The nations will thrive or prosper to the extent of our faithfulness to this holy stewardship and no further. With and for us is the victorious One whose death on the Cross has earned Him the supreme title: Lord of heaven and earth. Also with and in us is the same Spirit who once upon a time hovered upon a dark and formless planet, far from being daunted by the chaos that was before Him, He soon released a gush of power that created the orderly planet we have come to know. As those whose hope is drawn not from this world and its passing comforts and pleasures, let us dust ourselves from our slumber and prepare for a heavenly mission that cannot fail, “For the earth will be filled With the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, As the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2:14)
