The Bible Actually“How can I trust the Bible when some churches used it to support Apartheid?”

Introduction

Good morning to you all and thank you for joining us this morning.

Today, we are dealing with part 2 of a 3 part series that I’ve titled

“Tough Stuff”. The purpose of these 3 talks is to probe some difficult

questions that we often raise from our reading of the Old Testament.

As you well know, we’ve been studying the book of Exodus over the

last few months in our morning services, looking at the story of how

Israel was rescued by God from slavery in Egypt in order to bring

them into the worship of God and thinking about what it all means

for us. That story of Israel of course continues to their possession of

the Promised Land and then to their exile and then their return until

we finally arrive at the coming of Jesus Christ. As the Old Testament

unpacks this story, questions arise from us the contemporary readers

that we don’t always have the opportunity to address; hence this 3

part series.

Now last week we dealt with the question “How can a good God

commission Israel to kill other people?” because that’s what Israel’s

possession of the Promised Land entailed, right? They didn’t just

walk into an open piece of land and live there. Under God’s

command, Israel killed inhabitants of the Promised Land.

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And for those of you who weren’t here, the main take away from last

week’s message was read the whole story before you make a

decision about a part of the story that makes you feel

uncomfortable. Whether you’re a Christian or a non-Christian here

this morning, it won’t help you in the long run to read snippets of the

Bible and not pay attention to the wider story in which those

snippets belong. That’s the path to distortion.

So the key to last week’s question was what scholars call, literary

context; which is simply taking into consideration the wider story.

The question we want to handle this morning is, “How can I trust the

Bible when some churches used it to support Apartheid?” This is

another difficult question that actually goes back to the reading of

the Old Testament and the story of Israel and it is a prevalent

question in our country and unsurprisingly so. This week the

difficulty is not so much with what the Old Testament directly says

like last week, right? It’s the use of what the Old Testament says or

the consequences of what the Old Testament says in our society.

And South Africa is not the first country to have to deal with this kind

of difficulty:

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The Crusades, between the 11th and the 15th century, were

essentially Christians killing others because Christians were the

people of God and the others were not; like Israel wiped out the

Canaanites. Reports say over a million people were killed at that time

in the name of Christianity, particularly in the name of defending the

Holy Promised Land. How can you trust the Bible when it’s used that

way, especially when you’re on the receiving end of that violence?

The Spanish Inquisition resulted in thousands of deaths and it was

about, again the church, punishing by death those who denied the

faith.

In North America, the killing and destruction of Native Americans by

Europeans and their enslavement of Africans was supported by this

notion that they were the people of God coming to settle in their

God given land. A few wars down the line they would pen a national

anthem that reads, “Blessed with victory and peace, may the

Heaven-rescued-land, Praise the Power that hath made and

preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is

just, And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'”

People had to deal with the kind of difficulty with Christianity and the

Bible that we also face in our country.

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I could go on and on citing many examples of Christians down the

centuries throughout most of the history of the church using the Old

Testament, particularly parts of the story of Israel as justification to

commit the most unbelievable atrocities.

But this morning we are focusing our attention on Apartheid which

occurred just yesterday from a historical point of view and is

obviously much closer to home and the legacy of which continues to

affect us in various ways.

Now it’s important for me to say this from the onset. There are a

number of players and factors that were responsible for the

construction of Apartheid and the church was one of them. It would

be dishonest and futile for me in my capacity as a minister of the

church to deny this. It would also be dishonest and futile for me in

my capacity as a minister of the church to say but I Solanga was not

there and I didn’t do anything. Go and take up your issues with

Groenewald and Du Toit who were the chief theologians at the time

formulating the underlying doctrines that undergirded Apartheid.

That would be disingenuous of me: I want to represent the church

and I want to be associated with the church so long as it looks good

and it suits me but I want to shun it and make myself an individual

that is detached from it whenever it looks bad. That’s shocking

hypocrisy.

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I am a part of the church; both as a believer and as a minister who’s

been called to serve in it. I must own the church, warts and all and

stand for Christ through it all!

If we don’t, it’s a little bit like us as South Africans saying, we won the

rugby world cup in 1995 and in 2007 and then saying eish… “those

rugby players”, those hooligans that wear green and gold were

horrible last year! We can’t do that. I was on cloud 9 last year when

we whitewashed the Aussies in the cricket, remember that? Feels

like forever ago now doesn’t it? But I sobbed in the 1999 world cup

when Klusener and Alan Donald… I can’t even bring myself to saying

what they did. I might just start crying again. I was broken hearted.

I’ve never quite gotten over that moment and I don’t like thinking

about for too long. But you get the point? We are the Springboks

through the thick and the thin. We are the Proteas and on a much

deeper and on a much more profound level we are the church. I

grew up with my mother saying to me, “watch yourself out there

because you represent me. You represent us.” Sometimes my wife

doesn’t like the way I’ve dressed and she tries to fix me up because I

reflect her. So whether it’s sports teams, or family or religion, there’s

an extent to which we are related and rightly identified with that

team or family or religion.

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And it’s disingenuous and dishonest and futile to try and pretend

otherwise or to play down our association. Jesus says for example to

people in the 1st century, “you killed the prophets”; Prophets that

died hundreds of years before they were born (Matt 23:35-36). You

will not at all be helpful as a Christian in our country if you choose to

go down a road that will absolve yourself from the church’s deeds.

So what I will do with the little time we have this morning is I will give

a quick-fire, rough sketch of what Apartheid was and what it

entailed, then I will I talk about how the church used the Bible to

justify it and then we will consider ‘The Bible Actually’. That is my

title for this sermon.

So what was apartheid?

It saddens me to know that many people in our country know the

histories of other nations better than we know our own. If I were to

ask you for example, how many Jews were killed in the holocaust?

You’ll be able to answer me without even thinking. That history sits

on your fingertips. The teaching of history in our schools to this day is

still very disappointing. Still today you find South Africans who can

tell you far more about Hitler and Churchill than Albert Luthuli or

Hendrik Verwoed. So it’s important that I unpack what Apartheid

was because no doubt, there will be things that I will say that too

many of us will hear for the first time this morning.

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First of all, we need to understand that Apartheid was a culmination

of a system of thought that began, not in 1948 when Apartheid was

legislated, but with the first European settlers that arrived in this

country in the 17th century. From the beginning, the settlers had a

very particular attitude towards people that lived outside of Europe.

One historian writes that, “indigenous peoples were not considered

to be human beings and that the colonisers were shaped by

"centuries of Ethnocentrism””. You thus had this tendency towards

separateness, which is what this word Apartheid means, right from

the beginning. It’s birthed by this notion of being superior to

another. That’s the basic tenet of colonialism. The Historian De

Gruchy writes, “Settlers held the view that native South Africans

were meant to be God’s “hewers of wood and drawers of water” as a

result of their culturally inferior position and the raised status of

those they were to serve which, according to the Dutch settlers, was

them”. “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. That was the classic

17th century designation of the African by the European. Even

missionaries, Gospel men and women, came with this superiority

complex and referred to Africans in their writings as untamed wild

savages. It’s devastating to read these things.

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These were the attitudes, right from the beginning, concerning the

supremacy of the European and the place of the native South African

which contributed to exploitation, segregation, and eventually, the

development of apartheid theology and apartheid planning.

South Africa of course is rich in natural resources and over the next

three centuries, Europeans, primarily of British and Dutch origin,

would expand their presence in South Africa to pursue the land’s

abundance of these resources such as diamonds and gold. This is

what they did in many other parts of the world as well. In 1910, they

founded the Union of South Africa, an independent arm of the British

Empire that gave the white minority control of the country, control

that they used effectively to completely disenfranchise the natives.

It was really in 1913 that the more formal beginnings of Apartheid

ensued with the signing into law of the Land Act. Although South

Africa was majority black, the white minority passed a series of Land

Acts that resulted in them occupying 80 to 90 percent of the

country’s land and pushed black people into peripheral territory.

That’s why today, you can live your whole life in Port Elizabeth

without ever coming across a township for example. It’s Apartheid

planning. So 1913 really marks the unofficial launch of the Apartheid

system from a formal institutional point of view. Officially, the policy

of Apartheid was legislated in 1948 and led to the development of

over 300 separate laws.

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Forced removals of people that began in 1913 were aggressively

carried on to the extent that it is estimated that there were about 5

million people who were forcibly uprooted from their homes and

deposited into what were called the Bantustans, where they were

plunged into poverty and hopelessness. There’s this one family in

Cape Town that attends the same church as the family that took over

their land and property. These are really hard things.

You see, the government forcibly removed black South Africans from

areas designated as “white” without reimbursement or

compensation to the homelands, and sold their land at low prices to

white buyers. Of course it could be sold at very low prices because it

wasn’t bought, it was taken.

Just to give you a few highlights of what Apartheid achieved:

Population: 80% black, 20% white

Land allocation: 13% black, 87% white. That means 87% of South

African land was allocated to 20% of the population while 13 percent

of the land was allocated to 80% of the population. That’s why if you

drive into any township today it feels extremely cramped and

claustrophobic. That’s because it is.

Ratio of average income: A black person earned R1 to a white

person’s R14.

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Minimum taxable income: R360 for a black person, R750 for a white

person.

Doctors to population size: 1 for every 44000 blacks, 1 for every 400

whites.

Education expenditure: For every R6 spent educating a black person,

R100 was spent educating a white person.

Teacher to pupil ratio: 1 teacher for 60 black pupils, 1 teacher for 22

white children.

These are stats compiled in 1978. You’ve got to feel the weight of the

horror of this stuff…

And you need to understand that this is not mismanagement, or

maladministration, or undercover dealing. What I’m describing to

you is what was legally put in place. It is what was carried out by

design. This is what was considered right and proper. There’s still the

massacres and detentions without trial, the murders, the theft and

the same old government corruption! What I’m describing is what

was considered right and proper.

So for example, P.W. Botha towards the latter stages of Apartheid

amid greater and greater opposition to Apartheid, said:

“I am sick and tired of the hollow parrot-cry of "Apartheid!" I've said

many times that the word "Apartheid" means good neighbourliness.”

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Botha even said this when it came to medical services: “I am not

against the provision of the necessary medical assistance to

Coloureds and natives, because, unless they receive that medical aid,

they become a source of danger to the European community.” The 1

doctor that was spared for the assistance of 44 000 blacks was to

protect the European communities. This was considered good

neighbourliness.

As far as prohibiting education for Black people was concerned,

Hendrik Verwoed said, “Blacks should never be shown the greener

pastures of education. They should know that their station in life is to

be hewers of wood and drawers of water”, echoing the sentiments

of the 17th century settlers.

A politician named J.N. Le Roux put it nice and simply when he said,

"We should not give the Natives any academic education. If we do,

who is going to do the manual labour in the community?" It’s by

Apartheid design, for example, that the domestic worker is black and

the garden worker is black. It’s not by chance or just the way things

worked out or whatever. That’s the black person’s “station in life”, as

the popular saying went.

This kind of oppression of black people for the benefit of white

people was considered the right thing to do for centuries.

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And it’s very very hard to escape the thinking that a white person is

superior to a black person. It’s hard for a black person and it’s hard

for a white person.

That’s because it’s been conditioned in the whole world’s

consciousness over centuries and reinforced economically. And to

show you that this is still the kind of thinking we have in our society,

one of my lectures at Bible College confessed to me with great

contrition of heart that he is not at all phased or affected when he

passes a black beggar on the street because that’s what’s normal.

But when he passes a white beggar on the street then all of a sudden

he feels that something is wrong and feelings of empathy come

about. It’s very hard to escape the notion of white superiority and

that instinct of separateness, or apartheid. In our schools and in our

neighbourhoods, and in our shopping malls for example you know

what happens when black start coming in. What happens? White

people tend leave. The effects of Apartheid socially, economically,

vocationally, educationally and psychologically are very very hard to

undo and to escape. And burying our heads in the sand about them

simply will not do.

In 1986, the South African economy then took a significant hit when

the United States and Great Britain finally decided to change their

attitude and actually impose sanctions on the country because of its

practice of apartheid.

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And then 3 years later F.W. de Klerk became president of South

Africa and dismantled many of the laws that allowed apartheid to

become the way of life in the country.

That’s just a brief sketch of Apartheid. It’s important that you keep

studying our history and seriously engage it and not burry your head

in the sand about it. That does nothing to help.

Now how did the church use the Bible to justify it?

Well, the use of the Bible to justify apartheid was quite unique in the

world and I’ll tell you how. Let’s use America as an example. The

Bible was used to justify the slave trade in America, initially as a

defensive counter argument to Christians who were challenging the

slave trade on the basis of the Bible. With Apartheid, the Bible was

used as a point of departure. In other words, the Bible was used as

the textbook for Apartheid in the first place and not merely for

countering scripture-based arguments against Apartheid. Are you

following?

You’ve got to know that formal segregation of people according to

race was begun within the Dutch Reformed Church in the 1800’s. As

the church evangelised and grew and became multi-ethnic, black

congregants were separated from white congregants and so a

theology of segregation was then developed to justify that move.

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The political segregation that followed was following the model that

was already established by the church. So the church was not

watching and supporting Apartheid to a lesser or larger extent, it was

part and parcel of the pioneering process and it transferred its

congregational theology of separate racial congregations to the

national social sphere as well.

The Dutch Reformed Church used this rationale to do this: They said,

“It is the primary task of the church to preach the Word of God and

to equip its adherents for service in all spheres of life, which includes

their own society. In fact, wherever the Word of God should demand

it, the church should fulfil its prophetic function in spite of popular

opinion.” So if you had any problems with the implementation of

Apartheid, that doctrinal principle solved it for you.

You see then, once members of the church were happy that it was

Biblical and right for the congregations to separate on the basis of

race, it was then an easy logical step to accept its application to the

society as a whole.

The leading Apartheid-justifying-theologians as I mentioned earlier

were 2 guys named Groenewald and du Toit. And Groenewald is

famous for saying this in Biblically justifying apartheid: “I don’t have

a single Bible text to justify apartheid… I’ve got the whole Bible.” And

sure enough beginning with Genesis 1 he started tracing out a theme

of separation in the Bible.

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In the beginning God separated the day from the night, the waters

below from the waters above, the sea from the land and worked his

way through finding the virtue of separateness throughout the Bible

(the tower of Babel in Genesis 11 and so on). So that was one angle.

But the other significant angle was this: What happened was that the

Afrikaner community was theologically identified as having been

chosen as the ‘new Israel’…

And what did God say to His people Israel when He had formed them

into a nation? “Look, I am giving all this land to you! Go in and

occupy it, for it is the land the LORD swore to give to your ancestors

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to all their descendants.'" Deut 1:8

Now you ask yourself, how could they have thought of themselves in

this way? Well they could identify with Israel’s story: They saw

connections between themselves and Israel. You know the story.

They pursued Afrikaner national identity and preservation and

flourishing after oppression from the British… so did Israel! Israel

also was in pursuit of establishing its nation having kicked off the

shackles of Egyptian rule. Afrikaners gained their independence from

the English just as Israel had also found independence from Egypt.

And what did God say to Israel with regards to the people in Canaan

in the land? “Get rid of them and do not mix with them. Conquer

them and separate yourselves from them.”

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When congregants with a conscience objected and said but “unity in

diversity is all over the Bible”, they said “mixing puts you at a greater

risk to sin”, obviously referring to what God said to the Israelites

about mixing with the Canaanites. A whole host of other gymnastic

manoeuvres were done on the Biblical text to suit the political

agenda.

One scholar writes, “the Apartheid architects had an in-depth

analysis of selected biblical texts which were obviously read with the

view to justifying the racial ideology that was being mooted by the

Nationalist Party.”

Apartheid was so bound with theology that in 1982, the World

Alliance of Reformed Churches declared Apartheid a heresy! For

something to be declared a heresy by a group of churches it must be

a teaching from the Bible, however false it might be.

Now Israel of course was to repeat this oppression of people in the

Promised Land just a few decades ago. This time it was the Arabic

Palestinians who were there, not the Canaanites. That oppression

carries on to this very day. It’s referred to as Israeli Apartheid.

Interestingly, In 1961, there was a vote taking place at the United

Nations about Apartheid in South Africa and Israel voted against

Apartheid. This was a shock to the South African prime minister at

the time and architect of South Africa's apartheid policies, Hendrik

Verwoerd, because he was following Israel’s lead!

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And He was quick to point out their hypocrisy at the United Nations

when he said, "Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid

attitude ... they took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived

there for a thousand years. [And] In that, I agree with them [of

course]. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state."

All this is to say that Apartheid justification was entrenched in

theology, especially this notion that the Afrikaner community is this

special community, the New Israel that has been given this land

flowing with milk and honey by God.

And how do we as the church respond to this today?

How do we respond to the mistrust of the Bible because of how it

has been used? I’m going to make 3 main points.

Firstly, by acknowledging our complicity as the church. It pains me as

a believer and it should pain you too as a believer that the church of

which I am a part, could construct the rationale for wickedness of the

magnitude of apartheid. When someone says to you how could your

church do this Christian? Express deepest regret for those actions of

the church. Don’t automatically switch to defensive mode. Admit

that Christians have done atrocious things, including supporting

apartheid theologically. Share your own heartbreak over that.

The second response is this. The evil actions of Christians do not

prove that the Bible is untrustworthy or inherently evil.

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If you look at all the atrocities committed by people throughout

history you’ll discover that most of those people didn’t need a Bible

to be able to do the things they did.

The common denominator in all the horrible things that people have

done across history is not the Bible, it’s the human being. The fact

that Christians in this country used the Bible to justify Apartheid does

not prove the corruption of the Bible but the corruption of the

human heart. Think for a moment about things done by people in

history who hated the Bible, people who were Atheists.

Napoleon , who claimed that “all religions have been made by men”,

during his 17 year reign was responsible for the bankruptcy of France

and six million dead Europeans in just one generation.

Kim Jong il: former leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of

Korea: responsible for the deaths of four million of his fellow

Koreans. His son is busy starving His people and preparing to wage

war any day now.

J effrey Dahmer , the infamous serial killer and atheist who was

sentenced to 900 years in prison, reasoned “if a person does not

think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what’s the point

of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable

ranges?”

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Mussolini is notorious for his war crimes as a dictator during World

War II. In 1935, he invaded Ethiopia, using poison gas, bombing Red

Cross hospitals and concentration camps to kill civilians and destroy

“inferior” cultures.

Mao Zedong the notorious leader of China has been blamed for the

death of between 20 and 67 million people.

How about Stalin? In total, estimates of the total number murdered

under Stalin’s reign, range from 10 million to 60 million. His

government promoted atheism with mass propaganda in school, and

held a terror campaign against the religious. He crushed the Russian

Orthodox Church, destroying thousands of churches and shooting

more than 100,000 priests, monks and nuns between 1937 and 1938.

I list all these things because it’s become popular today to say that if

it wasn’t for Christianity or religion in general, the world would be a

great place. That’s simply not true. The Christian apologist Gregory

Koukl wrote that "the accusation and assertion that religion has

caused most of the killing and bloodshed in the world is empirically

false.”

It is reported that Atheistic Communism is responsible for between

60 and 260 million deaths in the 20th century alone. Just in the last

100 years.

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So the first thing to do when asked about the complicity of the

church in Apartheid is to be humble and admit the fact and express

your horror and regret over what happened. Do not try to distance

yourself from the church simply because it was not you personally

who was there and personally came up with the justifications.

The second thing is to show that the Bible is not what’s common

among all the horrible things that have ever been done, as if the

Bible is the source of the evils in the world. It’s obviously not. The

common denominator among all the horrible things that have ever

been done is people! The rational conclusion to the question of the

Bible’s use to justify apartheid is that human beings are really wicked

creatures. And they need a Saviour.

The third thing is this and it’s crucial. Christians justified Apartheid in

spite of the Bible not because of it. Christians justified apartheid in

spite of the Bible not because of it. I’m gonna make 4 sub-points

here.

Firstly, nowhere in the Bible are Christians or race groups told that

they are now the new Israel and they must copy Israel’s conquest of

the Promised Land in the Old Testament in their present day

circumstances. If you want to understand Israel’s conquest of the

Promised Land and its significance today, you must come here last

week! We discussed it then.

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Nowhere in the Bible are Christians or races groups told that they are

now the new Israel and they must therefore copy Israel’s conquest of

the Promised Land.

Secondly, the lesson we must learn from our history is that it is

extremely dangerous to use your experiences to interpret the Bible.

You cannot read yourself into the story where it seems convenient

for you to do so. The Bible is telling its own story which is not firstly

about you but about Jesus Christ. So whether you are reading Exodus

or Deuteronomy or Joshua the most important question is what is

this telling me about Jesus? It’s not how closely does your experience

resemble the passage that will help you understand a passage of

scripture in the Old Testament, it’s how closely does the passage

resemble Jesus. What did Jesus say in Luke 24? “How foolish you are

and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter His

glory? And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained

to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself…

Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of

Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” He is saying the whole Old

Testament is about Himself. And it’s only when we see it’s relation to

Jesus that we can understand and appreciate its significance for us.

Thirdly, what Apartheid hoped to achieve was the exact opposite of

what Jesus died to achieve.

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Apartheid was designed to oppress some people for the benefit of

others. Jesus died for our sins to free all people. Free them from

what? Free them from the very power of sin which leads to

oppression from the oppressor and bitterness, hatred and anger

from the oppressed. Jesus bore our sins and took the punishment for

them so that sin might not have power over our thinking and our

feeling and our doing anymore. Apartheid came and separated and

created a wall of hostility between blacks and whites. Jesus died to

unite people and to get rid of these fake stupid black and white

divisions among human beings who are created by God in His own

image. Ephesians 2 says this: “For Jesus Himself is our peace, who

has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing

wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the Law with its

commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in

Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this

one body reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which

He put to death their hostility.”

Jesus died to achieve unity amongst peoples. There isn’t a black Jesus

and a white Jesus. There is one Saviour of both. Both have sinned

against God. Both are freely forgiven because Jesus died for them.

Both belong to the same Father and have the same Spirit. Both are

part of the same family of the forgiven sons and daughters of God.

Both share the promise of eternal life together.

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You cannot have a deeper basis for unity than that. It is eternal.

Apartheid is indefensible from the Bible. It couldn’t be more contrary

to the Bible’s message. It’s the complete opposite of what the Bible

is about. Yes some churches used it justify apartheid but the abuse of

something good does not prove that that thing is evil, it just proves

that you are abusive.

So the third point I am making here is that Christians justified

Apartheid in spite of the Bible not because of it. Christians justified

apartheid in spite of the Bible not because of it.

(1) The bible does not command any group of people to copy Israel’s

conquest of the Promised Land, (2) you can’t use your experiences to

make it say what you want it to say. It’s not firstly about you, it’s

about Jesus and (3) what Jesus died to accomplish was unity amongst

us, not Apartheid.

Fourthly, although we don’t deny that Christians badly used the

Bible, there were also Christians who did not abuse the Bible to

rationalise the Apartheid political agenda theologically. They were

there right from the beginning. There were Christians who were

using the Bible to fight against Apartheid from even within the

Afrikaans community. One of the leading voices was Rev Ben Marais.

In 1947 writing for “Op die Horison”, he beautifully said:

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“I want to point out that our usual reference to the Old Testament in

defence of apartheid is based on highly dubious grounds. We cannot

simply transfer the prescriptions to Israel regarding ‘separateness’ to

us or the English or the natives.” Spot on! And then in his book called

“The unsolved problem of the West” he went on to say, “What

Scripture emphasises is not racial apartheid, but apartheid as a result

of sin.” There were dissenting Christian voices arguing against the

abuse of the Bible right in the thick of Apartheid.

Conclusion

Let me close with a word of warning for us today as Bible believing

Christians today. Listen to this quote:

“It seems too easy to challenge the proponents of the biblical

justification of apartheid as simply immoral or evil, or bad exegetes,

or people who were merely pawns in the hand of politicians. The

more haunting questions are: Why were these ideas received so

favourably in the church? And: Why were the dissenting voices not

heard more widely and, when they were, often scapegoated? And:

Are we aware of our own ideological distortions as we appropriate

the Bible for our seemingly good causes today? The need remains to

grapple with these questions as we reflect on the uses and abuses of

the Bible in public discourse today.”

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Can I say that if you are not part of a Bible study here at St. James as

someone who considers this church your home church, may I

strongly encourage you, in this new term, to be a part of one… make

a fresh start so that you can be sharpened in your reading of your

Bible. That’s our responsibility now: To be careful readers of the

Bible. Apartheid was yesterday, just over 20 years ago and we the

church contributed significantly to it through bad Bible reading! For

the future of our country and the glory of the Gospel, we want St.

James church to be part of the people of God who are handling the

Word of God correctly so that the good that Jesus died for in this

world might be manifested through us.

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