30. For the honour of His name will be glorified

30. For the honour of His name will be glorified

The Vow unites the honouring of the day of the Lord, the continuation of the church service and the transfer to the youth of the Vow People’s calling debt together as core elements of the people’s life; and so well clearly that state, church and school, with house and family, will be bound in co-responsibility for the honour of God for ever.

This is the only people, among all the Christian peoples on earth, who has as people no heathen past. He is by way of speech “born in the covenant.” His oncoming appearance on 6 April 1652 is preceded by a prayer for the extension of the Reformed Christian faith on the Dark Continent, “to Your holy Name’s praise and Honour.”

If the light of life breaks through for him on 16 December 1838 through the darkness of Dark Africa on a future road opening before him next to a river, red with blood, he sees it as Vow People, in his birth hour irrevocably committed “to glorify the honour of his Name” on that future road before man and world, before friend and enemy, before child and grandchild.

There is no doubt about the Biblical background for our Voortrekker predecessors’ thinking on the glorifying of the honour of the Lord’s Name. In both Testaments in the Bible the same word stem is used for the translation of the two concepts. The basic meaning thereof is that of heavy or important, and then the verb form, to make heavy, important, to let somebody be important, to allot weight, to esteem highly, etc. And then, if it is said about people, but especially about God, it is to esteem, to honour, to glorify.
The doubling of the concept as in “the honour of His name be glorified”, is often found in the Bible, and intends here to emphasize God’s right and claim on the most high honouring: “that the honour and the glory of His name may still be more exalted”.