17. As a birth day
It would however be severely superficial to confirm and repeat the naming birth day yearly without distinctness on what is said with it. It can mean nothing else than that the Lord’s answer to the imploring for salvation in the Vow, resulted in that a birth will take place, a life will come to be, which was not there before, and of which the beginning then will be remembered and celebrated on the day and date as a birth day.
It will be the birth of a people, bound to a life in accordance with what was undertaken in the Vow. The future that opens here, will serve no other purpose than to accommodate such a people’s existence. Another life than such a life will place him outside the purpose of the decision given to him from heaven on “the day and date.”
By celebrating his birthday on “the day and date each year,” will he testify before man and world that the life he received there, is the only life that there may be for him. He will every time on his birthday anew have to choose to be Vow People or . . . to disappear.
Christian believing Boer-Afrikaners who commit reconciliation with the communistic atheistic overpower are like light which became reconciled with undefeated darkness. You become a darkness joiner. You commit treason against the Vow. Your reconciliation kiss on 16 December unmistakably reflects Judas Iscariot’s kiss in Gethsemane. You over-kiss yourself with your own backbonelessness. Ultimately you choke therein all kissing.
“Shamelessly they shouted and call their lust truth,
their impotence lovely, their insulting virtue
something noble, and price it for the market”
- NP van Wyk Louw (Free translation)
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
18. A thanksgiving day
18. A thanksgiving day
On this day our words, our songs and our confessions will say audibly, what the semblance of our peoplehood, will visibly be declared by our deeds of every day. In doing so, “the heathens” also, who bear no knowledge of “the holy God of heaven and earth” and his high law, and for this reason find our values, our morals and our laws offensive, take notice, and in spite of themselves acknowledge: “...truly the Lord hath done great things for them.”(Psalm 126:2)
Then only will there from the life of the Vow People emerge among the people of the earth something in the fulfilling of the high calling: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”(St. Matthew 5:16)
We are not Vow bound to, suddenly on “day and date each year,” be the Vow People for which we shrank back to be real for the other 364 days. If we spend it this way, we make of it an abhorrent play day before the countenance of the Lord, and our yearly salute of what must have been a radiant future, becomes an in vain escape effort from our pitiful futurelessness.
On this day our words, our songs and our confessions will say audibly, what the semblance of our peoplehood, will visibly be declared by our deeds of every day. In doing so, “the heathens” also, who bear no knowledge of “the holy God of heaven and earth” and his high law, and for this reason find our values, our morals and our laws offensive, take notice, and in spite of themselves acknowledge: “...truly the Lord hath done great things for them.”(Psalm 126:2)
Then only will there from the life of the Vow People emerge among the people of the earth something in the fulfilling of the high calling: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”(St. Matthew 5:16)
We are not Vow bound to, suddenly on “day and date each year,” be the Vow People for which we shrank back to be real for the other 364 days. If we spend it this way, we make of it an abhorrent play day before the countenance of the Lord, and our yearly salute of what must have been a radiant future, becomes an in vain escape effort from our pitiful futurelessness.
19. Like a Sabbath
19. Like a Sabbath
On 52 Sundays it is about what He wants from us; on one thanksgiving day, “as a Sabbath,” it is about what we have wanted and received from Him, but also still ever, and in our present circumstances now again anew urgently implore. On all 53 He awaits payment of the Vow People’s Vow Debt to Him.
There is no question about settlement of our debt in one yearly payment, even if you would add “interest” in the form of unnecessary emotion.
52 Sundays are church festivals. Day of the Vow is people’s festival. All fifty-three are Christ’s festivals, because all fifty-three testify that all power in heaven and earth is given to Him and that He holds the church completely in His hand, that hand that has the scars of the spikes on the cross, to ensure church and people that He once triumphed completely over all the powers of darkness and evil in heaven and on earth, in man and in the world.
With this assurance the Vow People goes every time from the day of his people’s festival to meet anew his mission’s accomplishing in the face of that defeated powers of darkness and evil. His commemoration of his birthday as a thanksgiving day, “like a Sabbath” every time like a new birth, opens the gate to a future of renewed Being Vow People on earth, how more threatening, the more triumphantly.
On 52 Sundays it is about what He wants from us; on one thanksgiving day, “as a Sabbath,” it is about what we have wanted and received from Him, but also still ever, and in our present circumstances now again anew urgently implore. On all 53 He awaits payment of the Vow People’s Vow Debt to Him.
There is no question about settlement of our debt in one yearly payment, even if you would add “interest” in the form of unnecessary emotion.
52 Sundays are church festivals. Day of the Vow is people’s festival. All fifty-three are Christ’s festivals, because all fifty-three testify that all power in heaven and earth is given to Him and that He holds the church completely in His hand, that hand that has the scars of the spikes on the cross, to ensure church and people that He once triumphed completely over all the powers of darkness and evil in heaven and on earth, in man and in the world.
With this assurance the Vow People goes every time from the day of his people’s festival to meet anew his mission’s accomplishing in the face of that defeated powers of darkness and evil. His commemoration of his birthday as a thanksgiving day, “like a Sabbath” every time like a new birth, opens the gate to a future of renewed Being Vow People on earth, how more threatening, the more triumphantly.
20. To his honour
20. To His honour
They give up everything precious and dear, and dare a wild and cruel wilderness to find freedom for total availability for the honour of God alone.
They sacrifice things and blood and ultimately present themselves, father, mother, wife and child, on the altar, rather than to bend soft and tender before - or flee for - the tyranny of injustice, treason, deceit and violence.
From such a faith comes, according to human judgement, the doomed and foolish, but afterwards seen as unnamed merciful journey of the last handful able-bodied men, to the hart of Zululand, with the women and children defenseless far behind in spread laagers. Not for the sake of revenge: after the triumph they let the Zulu People in full possession and full use of what belonged to them; but not let the supremacy of the injustice, the evil, avail.
Of the calling privilege to be freed of all earthly ties to be unconditionally available for the honour of God alone, there is no more eloquent token as the sabbath. Get rid of all worrying and trouble, and be full-out available for the honour to Him to Whom everyone and all belong.
The Sabbath Commandment invites thereto the Vow People of the Lord. In December 1838 the Vow People promised to honour Him in this way and their “upcoming generations” reconfirm it yearly on Vow Day.
“A thanksgiving day,” therefore, spent like a Sabbath “to his honour” as the hallmark of a Vow People, bonded and accepted to a peoplehood who will all the days, years, generations, centuries, millennia of his existence on the earth, totally and without reserve be available for the Honour to God alone.
Let nobody, however, associates a people’s existence to the honour of God alone with gloominess, sourness, pettiness! He who gives such an interpretation thereto, confuses the true God of the Bible with an illusion that the sinner man has made for himself, so that he can have a reason to flee away from it. Such a flight could well have salvation for him if he would flee from that monster of his own doing to the true God. Because to show honour to such an illusion, would be the most blasphemous thinkable dishonouring of the God of the Bible.
They give up everything precious and dear, and dare a wild and cruel wilderness to find freedom for total availability for the honour of God alone.
They sacrifice things and blood and ultimately present themselves, father, mother, wife and child, on the altar, rather than to bend soft and tender before - or flee for - the tyranny of injustice, treason, deceit and violence.
From such a faith comes, according to human judgement, the doomed and foolish, but afterwards seen as unnamed merciful journey of the last handful able-bodied men, to the hart of Zululand, with the women and children defenseless far behind in spread laagers. Not for the sake of revenge: after the triumph they let the Zulu People in full possession and full use of what belonged to them; but not let the supremacy of the injustice, the evil, avail.
Of the calling privilege to be freed of all earthly ties to be unconditionally available for the honour of God alone, there is no more eloquent token as the sabbath. Get rid of all worrying and trouble, and be full-out available for the honour to Him to Whom everyone and all belong.
The Sabbath Commandment invites thereto the Vow People of the Lord. In December 1838 the Vow People promised to honour Him in this way and their “upcoming generations” reconfirm it yearly on Vow Day.
“A thanksgiving day,” therefore, spent like a Sabbath “to his honour” as the hallmark of a Vow People, bonded and accepted to a peoplehood who will all the days, years, generations, centuries, millennia of his existence on the earth, totally and without reserve be available for the Honour to God alone.
Let nobody, however, associates a people’s existence to the honour of God alone with gloominess, sourness, pettiness! He who gives such an interpretation thereto, confuses the true God of the Bible with an illusion that the sinner man has made for himself, so that he can have a reason to flee away from it. Such a flight could well have salvation for him if he would flee from that monster of his own doing to the true God. Because to show honour to such an illusion, would be the most blasphemous thinkable dishonouring of the God of the Bible.
21. That we establish a temple
21. That we establish a temple
Can there be difference at all between church building and people building for the Vow People? Can congregation building ever anywhere else embogue than in the building together of a believing people life? Has the difference - even separation, the fencing-off and fencing-in of church and people in reciprocal seclusion - validity at all in the life and thinking of the Vow People?
Comes this fencing-off passion for reciprocal isolation between church and people not from the same direction as from the hatred instigated against the Vow People’s policy of respecting boundaries between peoples and cultures of the past century? Is it also not the direction from which the present fusion between every “religion” on earth comes from?
If so, is the respect of the natural given limits between peoples, as well as the Biblical prescribed limitation against every form of idolatry, abominable heresy; but inexorable “forced” separateness between church and people a merciless Biblical demand? Must the endeavor to “make disciples” of the nations then start with inexorable abolition of “peoplehood” itself? (St. Matthew 28:19)
Is that respecting and maintaining of limits, not far more obeying of the culture calling for guarding and cultivating of God’s handwork? - of which He, God himself, undoubtedly found: “...it was very good?” (Genesis 1:31)and with respect to which He Himself later, for avoiding the loss of the “goodness” of it, scattered the peoplehood since Babel in different peoples “upon the face of all the earth”? (Gen.11: 8,9)
Where and when are church and theology dismissed from co-responsibility, even in the front-line, for the “dressing and keeping” of God’s handwork, which also includes the “scattering” over the whole earth to different and distinguishable peoples, each with its own language?
Wherefrom comes this absurdity of a church that reckons that involvement with the life of a people will soil his hands? What pretends such a church to want to be doing on earth, while he wants nothing to do with the life of a people? May it be that he in reality long ago secretly became a partner to the abovementioned contra-culture actions, a participant to the destruction of peoples, and especially the Vow People’s existence?
There is expensive Vow debt on the account of the Vow People to demand answers on this from Afrikaans churches.
At the contemplation of this, one must bear in mind that also the Vow commitment to the Lord regarding “a temple to his honour” is entered by a people’s gathering on the initiative and under the command of a military commander. The Vow People wants to be church people, and stay, and ever “built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit,” also in the countenance of a misled and strayed church.
If he lets him be carried away by such a church on a road of alienism, as people in his people life of “the holy God of heaven and earth,” he stops being Vow People.
Any believer must constantly keep in mind the awful possibility that an organization who self-confidently calls himself “church,” can sow more evil than good in the life of any people. How much more, and how much more disastrous could it be in the life of a Vow People!
Even the Vow People is not exempted against the threat of “ . . . that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to smite his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken” (St. Matthew 24:48-49).
Can there be difference at all between church building and people building for the Vow People? Can congregation building ever anywhere else embogue than in the building together of a believing people life? Has the difference - even separation, the fencing-off and fencing-in of church and people in reciprocal seclusion - validity at all in the life and thinking of the Vow People?
Comes this fencing-off passion for reciprocal isolation between church and people not from the same direction as from the hatred instigated against the Vow People’s policy of respecting boundaries between peoples and cultures of the past century? Is it also not the direction from which the present fusion between every “religion” on earth comes from?
If so, is the respect of the natural given limits between peoples, as well as the Biblical prescribed limitation against every form of idolatry, abominable heresy; but inexorable “forced” separateness between church and people a merciless Biblical demand? Must the endeavor to “make disciples” of the nations then start with inexorable abolition of “peoplehood” itself? (St. Matthew 28:19)
Is that respecting and maintaining of limits, not far more obeying of the culture calling for guarding and cultivating of God’s handwork? - of which He, God himself, undoubtedly found: “...it was very good?” (Genesis 1:31)and with respect to which He Himself later, for avoiding the loss of the “goodness” of it, scattered the peoplehood since Babel in different peoples “upon the face of all the earth”? (Gen.11: 8,9)
Where and when are church and theology dismissed from co-responsibility, even in the front-line, for the “dressing and keeping” of God’s handwork, which also includes the “scattering” over the whole earth to different and distinguishable peoples, each with its own language?
Wherefrom comes this absurdity of a church that reckons that involvement with the life of a people will soil his hands? What pretends such a church to want to be doing on earth, while he wants nothing to do with the life of a people? May it be that he in reality long ago secretly became a partner to the abovementioned contra-culture actions, a participant to the destruction of peoples, and especially the Vow People’s existence?
There is expensive Vow debt on the account of the Vow People to demand answers on this from Afrikaans churches.
At the contemplation of this, one must bear in mind that also the Vow commitment to the Lord regarding “a temple to his honour” is entered by a people’s gathering on the initiative and under the command of a military commander. The Vow People wants to be church people, and stay, and ever “built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit,” also in the countenance of a misled and strayed church.
If he lets him be carried away by such a church on a road of alienism, as people in his people life of “the holy God of heaven and earth,” he stops being Vow People.
Any believer must constantly keep in mind the awful possibility that an organization who self-confidently calls himself “church,” can sow more evil than good in the life of any people. How much more, and how much more disastrous could it be in the life of a Vow People!
Even the Vow People is not exempted against the threat of “ . . . that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to smite his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken” (St. Matthew 24:48-49).
22. Establish
22. Establish
The commitment to establish a temple the Vow People in this way takes before the Lord co-responsibility to set up, if they are saved, in the everyday meaning of the word, “establish,” a congregation, a church and an uninterrupted wholesome ecclesiastic care of the people society. This will naturally include the erection of an appropriate meeting place, which is a church building; and not singly on one place, but “ . . . wherever it may please Him”.
The Vow People as people apart from his church is committed to the Lord that this beneficial process of “establishment,” that is building up in faith, is continuously maintained in the life of the people. If he as people becomes careless on this, and becomes reconciled with religious neutrality, starting to experiment with a “rainbow religion,” he already ceased being Vow People.
The commitment to establish a temple the Vow People in this way takes before the Lord co-responsibility to set up, if they are saved, in the everyday meaning of the word, “establish,” a congregation, a church and an uninterrupted wholesome ecclesiastic care of the people society. This will naturally include the erection of an appropriate meeting place, which is a church building; and not singly on one place, but “ . . . wherever it may please Him”.
The Vow People as people apart from his church is committed to the Lord that this beneficial process of “establishment,” that is building up in faith, is continuously maintained in the life of the people. If he as people becomes careless on this, and becomes reconciled with religious neutrality, starting to experiment with a “rainbow religion,” he already ceased being Vow People.
23. Temple to His honour
23. Temple to His honour
That the lives of people who wandered around through all the centuries without purpose on the earth, are altered, get eternal value, is the fruit of this community’s testimony. When the Child who was then born there, completed his work, the antependium of the temple is torn into two (St. Matthew 27:51), the admission to that salvation is widely opened, He commands: “Make disciples of all the peoples; baptize them and teach them,” in other words go live among the peoples your life of belief and live full-out and testify, so that what became reality in your life, would also happen with them, that they also learn “to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” that their lives also receive eternal value.
When this task someday on the threshold of eternity will be completed, a great multitude from all peoples and tribes and nations who will not be countable, stand before the throne and before the Lamb, the heavenly hosts again will rejoice: “...the honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever.” (Revelations 7:12)
When the glorification nears completion by the announcement: “...the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” (Revelations 19:6), it goes along with the heavenly hosts’ rejoicing cry: “...the honour, and the power unto the Lord our God!”(Revelations 19:1)
Ultimately the glorification becomes perfect when the New Jerusalem is filled with “the glorification and the honour by the kings of the earth,” which is brought in with “the glorification and the honour by the peoples”(Revelations 21:24 and 26). Then God receives the honour He deserves, not only from the heavenly hosts, but also from “every tribe and language and people and nation” on earth.
That the lives of people who wandered around through all the centuries without purpose on the earth, are altered, get eternal value, is the fruit of this community’s testimony. When the Child who was then born there, completed his work, the antependium of the temple is torn into two (St. Matthew 27:51), the admission to that salvation is widely opened, He commands: “Make disciples of all the peoples; baptize them and teach them,” in other words go live among the peoples your life of belief and live full-out and testify, so that what became reality in your life, would also happen with them, that they also learn “to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” that their lives also receive eternal value.
When this task someday on the threshold of eternity will be completed, a great multitude from all peoples and tribes and nations who will not be countable, stand before the throne and before the Lamb, the heavenly hosts again will rejoice: “...the honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever.” (Revelations 7:12)
When the glorification nears completion by the announcement: “...the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” (Revelations 19:6), it goes along with the heavenly hosts’ rejoicing cry: “...the honour, and the power unto the Lord our God!”(Revelations 19:1)
Ultimately the glorification becomes perfect when the New Jerusalem is filled with “the glorification and the honour by the kings of the earth,” which is brought in with “the glorification and the honour by the peoples”(Revelations 21:24 and 26). Then God receives the honour He deserves, not only from the heavenly hosts, but also from “every tribe and language and people and nation” on earth.
24. Wherever it may please Him
24. Wherever it may please Him
The intention is: the Lord will decide thereon. We would depreciate those 470 Voortrekkers with an opinion that they secretly by themselves would have had the condition that there would after all not be expected of them more than one such an effort.
The viewpoint that this Vow-element is finally fulfilled and completed by the erection of the first Vow church in Pietermaritzburg, which is presently the museum, roars directly against the total spirit of the Vow. It would signify that “our children” - from whom is directly hereafter expected “to participate therein with us,” thereafter also still further unlimited extended to “our upcoming generations” - are exempt from any duty in this regard.
The intention is: the Lord will decide thereon. We would depreciate those 470 Voortrekkers with an opinion that they secretly by themselves would have had the condition that there would after all not be expected of them more than one such an effort.
The viewpoint that this Vow-element is finally fulfilled and completed by the erection of the first Vow church in Pietermaritzburg, which is presently the museum, roars directly against the total spirit of the Vow. It would signify that “our children” - from whom is directly hereafter expected “to participate therein with us,” thereafter also still further unlimited extended to “our upcoming generations” - are exempt from any duty in this regard.
25. That we shall tell it
25. That we shall tell it
We will not hide the meaning of the sign under chairs and tables; we will not fear to make it known; will not hesitate to appear as people for it; not shrink back to stand up and be “counted” as Vow People; we will say to the world, without timidity and without fear: we exist as people singly and only because the Lord has mercy on us; for our existence as people we are indebted to Him; really indebted, and therefore we devote our existence also as sacrifice without reserve to Him and to his service.
And if it has to be said real convincingly, we will not only say it by words; it will be said by the works of our hands, by the planning of our lives, by what we as Vow People’s doings on whatever area of our lives: who looks and listens to our arts of music and drama, who has interest in our commerce and industry, who becomes involved in our exercising of science and technology, who has to do with our politics and diplomacy, who collides with our safety forces, will undeniably find in our doings depicted that the Lord our God has mercy on us, and that we now live out of thankfulness from his contention of love for people and world - and with us, the Vow People, therein.
Therefore we want to be nothing else but the Vow People for whom the road would have ended there, and for whom the Lord in his almighty love then opened it; the people who fulfilled his faith calling on Africa soil as civilized Christian white people only in the freedom with which Christ liberated us, and therefore may yield to neither imperialistic overpower, nor barbaric swallowing.
-------
We are not Vow People by showing yearly on 16 December in tens of thousands a sign of a Christian-national people’s existence, which we then do it against our will, nothing other than nearly clumsy and helpless, while the other 364 days of the year we live non-Christian, materialistic, non-Christian hedonistic, that is enslaved to comfort, convenience, pleasure and money.
Then we say with our festivities on our People’s thanksgiving day something that, by the appearance of our being a people, would make all the other days a lie. Then the world will seek the reality in the direction to which the sign directs on 16 December, and . . . there is nothing! Then the only reality what the sign to any onlooker would mean, would be that we are the victims of boundless deception of ourselves, a lot of pompous Pharisees. The darkest night in our history will be the day when it is our children and grandchildren who ask, and being answered by us, in vain seek the reality, and determine that it is a total meaningless and empty sign.
26. Also to our children
26. Also to our children
If the narration, and the thereby stimulated reliving of that event by the “upcoming generations” are not there, or if the “celebration speech” is something else, then we do not pay the Vow. Then we make of the Day of the Vow either self over-estimatingly a total obsolete 53rd Church Sunday, or impudently a political party rally. Both are precisely evenly rejectable.
Which somnambulist between the realities of Africa, is it then who on the threshold of the Third Thousand Years goes with the thick peels of self-deception on his eyes and mumbles saintly questions about the right of the Voortrekkers to plunge their offspring in Vow Debt?
However, it will also have no result if we take our children on 16 December with us to the Vow Celebration, so that they may hear the history - even transcendently narrated - but then they hear the other 364 days nothing of it, and especially in the life of the Vow People of whom every child sees the front line in his own parents, see nothing of it.
It is surely clear: you are heir of the gift of a civilised faithful manhood with eternal value on Africa soil, and if you really received it and it is your most precious possession on earth, then you are also mutually committed for its safekeeping for the coming generations; or you are partaking in the extermination fury staged against it by the “spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12), who wants to defeat such a manhood. There is indeed no middle course between these two alternatives!
The question about the right which our predecessors would not have had, shoots from the same poisoned source than the feigned concern on the “right of children” to decide on their own comings and doings. It exalts this absurdity properly to a basic fundamental human right which children then might have had: to be only delivered to themselves.
If the narration, and the thereby stimulated reliving of that event by the “upcoming generations” are not there, or if the “celebration speech” is something else, then we do not pay the Vow. Then we make of the Day of the Vow either self over-estimatingly a total obsolete 53rd Church Sunday, or impudently a political party rally. Both are precisely evenly rejectable.
Which somnambulist between the realities of Africa, is it then who on the threshold of the Third Thousand Years goes with the thick peels of self-deception on his eyes and mumbles saintly questions about the right of the Voortrekkers to plunge their offspring in Vow Debt?
However, it will also have no result if we take our children on 16 December with us to the Vow Celebration, so that they may hear the history - even transcendently narrated - but then they hear the other 364 days nothing of it, and especially in the life of the Vow People of whom every child sees the front line in his own parents, see nothing of it.
It is surely clear: you are heir of the gift of a civilised faithful manhood with eternal value on Africa soil, and if you really received it and it is your most precious possession on earth, then you are also mutually committed for its safekeeping for the coming generations; or you are partaking in the extermination fury staged against it by the “spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12), who wants to defeat such a manhood. There is indeed no middle course between these two alternatives!
The question about the right which our predecessors would not have had, shoots from the same poisoned source than the feigned concern on the “right of children” to decide on their own comings and doings. It exalts this absurdity properly to a basic fundamental human right which children then might have had: to be only delivered to themselves.
27. That they must participate therein with us
27 That they must participate therein with us
Something of the future in freedom that was the content of their wildest dreams that they now received from the holy God of heaven and earth lies hidden in that small word “moeten” (must) regarding the participation of our children with us in the payment of our and their Vow Debt. It speaks of spontaneous compulsion through overwhelmed thankfulness. Such may be the Vow People at birth, the moment when he sees the light of day, when he as suckling appears with an open future road in front of him between the peoples on the earth.
A Vow Day celebration up to the far future that not at least breathes something of this joyous deliverance from being accepted in mercy by the holy God of heaven and earth as Vow People, keeps itself busy with signs without real meaning (betekenis).
Nevertheless, if a generation of children is carried along by such a spontaneous compulsion of overwhelmed thankfulness, then they must experience that thankfulness with their parents. That will only be the case if something becomes visible from the parents of what the Bible calls: “...thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand . . . and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:8 and 9), because then alone will it sound convincingly when you “teach them diligently . . . and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up”. (Deuteronomy 6: 7)
Remember now that nobody on earth knows our lives on its inside better than our children. You can cheat the whole world on what it in the last instance matters (Philippians1:10); your children know what is important to you and what is mere window dressing.
Something of the future in freedom that was the content of their wildest dreams that they now received from the holy God of heaven and earth lies hidden in that small word “moeten” (must) regarding the participation of our children with us in the payment of our and their Vow Debt. It speaks of spontaneous compulsion through overwhelmed thankfulness. Such may be the Vow People at birth, the moment when he sees the light of day, when he as suckling appears with an open future road in front of him between the peoples on the earth.
A Vow Day celebration up to the far future that not at least breathes something of this joyous deliverance from being accepted in mercy by the holy God of heaven and earth as Vow People, keeps itself busy with signs without real meaning (betekenis).
Nevertheless, if a generation of children is carried along by such a spontaneous compulsion of overwhelmed thankfulness, then they must experience that thankfulness with their parents. That will only be the case if something becomes visible from the parents of what the Bible calls: “...thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand . . . and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:8 and 9), because then alone will it sound convincingly when you “teach them diligently . . . and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up”. (Deuteronomy 6: 7)
Remember now that nobody on earth knows our lives on its inside better than our children. You can cheat the whole world on what it in the last instance matters (Philippians1:10); your children know what is important to you and what is mere window dressing.
28. As commemoration
28. As commemoration
Vow Day testifies that it pleased the “holy God of heaven and earth”to deploy against the forces of imperialism and barbarism of the 19th century in Africa a Vow People who makes holy seriousness with his Vow heritage; but simultaneously with it also that He in doing so would just prepare that people ahead (in the Third Thousand Year?) to bring disgrace upon those same forces, then a thousand times more puffed up and arrogant, merely by being serious with his Vow heritage.
Therefore expressly, by the name, “to commemoration . . . for our upcoming generations”: they, the coming generations, will still have more need to such a commemoration than the generations passed . . . The battle becomes not easier, but harder; the road not more even, but steeper. It becomes however still more visible true that “ . . . men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers . . . traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof . . . ” (II Timothy 3:2 to 5)
Vow Day testifies that it pleased the “holy God of heaven and earth”to deploy against the forces of imperialism and barbarism of the 19th century in Africa a Vow People who makes holy seriousness with his Vow heritage; but simultaneously with it also that He in doing so would just prepare that people ahead (in the Third Thousand Year?) to bring disgrace upon those same forces, then a thousand times more puffed up and arrogant, merely by being serious with his Vow heritage.
Therefore expressly, by the name, “to commemoration . . . for our upcoming generations”: they, the coming generations, will still have more need to such a commemoration than the generations passed . . . The battle becomes not easier, but harder; the road not more even, but steeper. It becomes however still more visible true that “ . . . men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers . . . traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof . . . ” (II Timothy 3:2 to 5)
29. Also for our upcoming generations
29. Also for our upcoming generations
Vow heritage is not naturally possessed, but is gained culturally; it does not become yours by inheriting it, but also for every physical descendant, gained only by acquiring it along the road of receptive commitment, conscious acceptance, principle decision, persevered appropriation, anxious identification.
Then it becomes in the course of time second nature; but exactly so every morning delightfully new, touchingly pretty, overwhelmingly precious: a joyful, able-bodied, subservient, meaningful, merciful human, faithful Afrikaner-human, called Boere-Afrikaner-human!
The Vow People is never finished, finalised, completed. His existence is in the last instance nothing else but pure movement, single inspired voyage, a never completed eternity second of decision between a mighty calling deed of God on the road behind him and a mighty calling task entrusted to him over the horisons before him.
Vow heritage is not naturally possessed, but is gained culturally; it does not become yours by inheriting it, but also for every physical descendant, gained only by acquiring it along the road of receptive commitment, conscious acceptance, principle decision, persevered appropriation, anxious identification.
Then it becomes in the course of time second nature; but exactly so every morning delightfully new, touchingly pretty, overwhelmingly precious: a joyful, able-bodied, subservient, meaningful, merciful human, faithful Afrikaner-human, called Boere-Afrikaner-human!
The Vow People is never finished, finalised, completed. His existence is in the last instance nothing else but pure movement, single inspired voyage, a never completed eternity second of decision between a mighty calling deed of God on the road behind him and a mighty calling task entrusted to him over the horisons before him.
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”.
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”.
31. That the glory and the honour for the triumph..
31. That the glory and the honour for the triumph . . .
The events of the year 1838 in Natal would first really mean glory and honour for his Name when the conquered people would jubilate as forgiven Christian people, like the conquering people, at the experience that the death also for him is swallowed up in the triumph by Jesus Christ, in the face of death and grave: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (I Corinthians 15:55)
Nevertheless, the conquered Zulu People become such a “more than conqueror” only after his military defeat when he also is worsted against - decisively conquered by - “ . . . the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Ephesians 6:17) Only this second defeat, that of all people’s natural resistance against the almightiness of God’s love in Jesus Christ, makes the Zulu People, with the then only triumphant Vow People, “ . . . more than conquerors through him that loved us.” (Romans 8:37)
The Vow “ . . . that the glory and the honour of the triumph be given to Him . . . ” becomes real when:
-the Zulu People on his own people’s birth day, like his fellow believing neighbour people, the Vow People on Vow Day, to the same “holy God of heaven and earth”, gives the honour for his people’s existence as believing, proud and free people with an own calling;
- he, like the Vow People on Vow Day, brings thanks to the same God who on 16 December 1838 opened the road for Christianity and civilization at the south end of Africa, exactly by opening a road to a future for free peoples in submissiveness and responsibility to Him alone;
-he, the Zulu People, like the Vow People, reaches out to the completion, to have as people part in the fulfilled promise that God himself will abide with them and they will be his people (Revelations 21:3)
The events of the year 1838 in Natal would first really mean glory and honour for his Name when the conquered people would jubilate as forgiven Christian people, like the conquering people, at the experience that the death also for him is swallowed up in the triumph by Jesus Christ, in the face of death and grave: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (I Corinthians 15:55)
Nevertheless, the conquered Zulu People become such a “more than conqueror” only after his military defeat when he also is worsted against - decisively conquered by - “ . . . the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Ephesians 6:17) Only this second defeat, that of all people’s natural resistance against the almightiness of God’s love in Jesus Christ, makes the Zulu People, with the then only triumphant Vow People, “ . . . more than conquerors through him that loved us.” (Romans 8:37)
The Vow “ . . . that the glory and the honour of the triumph be given to Him . . . ” becomes real when:
-the Zulu People on his own people’s birth day, like his fellow believing neighbour people, the Vow People on Vow Day, to the same “holy God of heaven and earth”, gives the honour for his people’s existence as believing, proud and free people with an own calling;
- he, like the Vow People on Vow Day, brings thanks to the same God who on 16 December 1838 opened the road for Christianity and civilization at the south end of Africa, exactly by opening a road to a future for free peoples in submissiveness and responsibility to Him alone;
-he, the Zulu People, like the Vow People, reaches out to the completion, to have as people part in the fulfilled promise that God himself will abide with them and they will be his people (Revelations 21:3)
32. Will be given to Him
32. Will be given to Him
Whatever the holy God of heaven and earth may regard necessary to his honour, they are available for it. If on this journey his honour would demand that the birth moment of a Vow People will also be the death moment of that people, then “we die to the honour of the Lord.” (Romans 14:8)
If He prefers that such a birth struggle will be the beginning of millennium long people’s existence in a never-ending struggle with the powers of darkness, then “we live to the honour of the Lord”(Romans 14:8) “ . . . whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8)
Whether it will now be life or death, we go to meet it in any case with the triumphant knowledge of being “more than conquerors” because we are “persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our `Lord” (Romans 8:37 to 38)
The result of it will in any case be triumph, a triumph achieved in the face of the powers of darkness; a triumph of which “the glory and the honour will be given to Him.”
If it may be life, that soli deo gloria will then be the characteristic stamp of our total different kind of life as people between the peoples on earth. That will determine our distinguishing identity as opposed to them all; in our relation with other peoples, in our politics, our economy, our social life, the education of our youth, our industry, our labour relations, our academic work, our public and personal honesty and morality, our Sunday legislation, our arts practice, entertainment and sport.
Every single aspect of our total life as people will attribute that the glory and honour of the triumph obtained here, and which opened the road for our continued existence as people, will be given to Him.
Whatever the holy God of heaven and earth may regard necessary to his honour, they are available for it. If on this journey his honour would demand that the birth moment of a Vow People will also be the death moment of that people, then “we die to the honour of the Lord.” (Romans 14:8)
If He prefers that such a birth struggle will be the beginning of millennium long people’s existence in a never-ending struggle with the powers of darkness, then “we live to the honour of the Lord”(Romans 14:8) “ . . . whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8)
Whether it will now be life or death, we go to meet it in any case with the triumphant knowledge of being “more than conquerors” because we are “persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our `Lord” (Romans 8:37 to 38)
The result of it will in any case be triumph, a triumph achieved in the face of the powers of darkness; a triumph of which “the glory and the honour will be given to Him.”
If it may be life, that soli deo gloria will then be the characteristic stamp of our total different kind of life as people between the peoples on earth. That will determine our distinguishing identity as opposed to them all; in our relation with other peoples, in our politics, our economy, our social life, the education of our youth, our industry, our labour relations, our academic work, our public and personal honesty and morality, our Sunday legislation, our arts practice, entertainment and sport.
Every single aspect of our total life as people will attribute that the glory and honour of the triumph obtained here, and which opened the road for our continued existence as people, will be given to Him.
33. Amen
33. Amen
The word “Amen” in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and also in the New Testament, where it is produced untranslated in Greek, has the basic meaning of standing immovable, be certain. Its use during the order of the religious service in both testaments was twofold.
On the one side it was the conclusion of a commitment by a preacher or leader to another or to others. It is then indicated: What is announced, committed, promised, is sure; it is valid, it can not be made undone or be recalled.
Nowhere in our ecclesiastical life is the meaning of the word more clear and and more literally as in the serving of the sacrament of Baptism, where it is prescribed in the formula: “XYZ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen”
Of this all the “amen” at the end on the lips of the leader then on behalf of the church, as procurator of Christ himself for this duty says: it is sure, it is valid into eternity for this christened, it can never be made undone.
The “amen” is an underlining of what was emphasized already by the repeated “seal”: it bears the seal of Him who reigns over all that exist, it is an irrevocable commitment on the most high Authority there is.
The “Amen” is not only the confirmation of what is committed from the highest authority from God’s side to humankind. It is perhaps on still more places in the Bible the faithful confirmation from the side of the praying, the petitioner, the thanksgiving, the confessing, the praising, the receiver of the commitment of promise; with precisely the same meaning: it is sure, it is valid, it is irrevocably certain, it is not again to be made undone.
-o0o-
The word “Amen” in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and also in the New Testament, where it is produced untranslated in Greek, has the basic meaning of standing immovable, be certain. Its use during the order of the religious service in both testaments was twofold.
On the one side it was the conclusion of a commitment by a preacher or leader to another or to others. It is then indicated: What is announced, committed, promised, is sure; it is valid, it can not be made undone or be recalled.
Nowhere in our ecclesiastical life is the meaning of the word more clear and and more literally as in the serving of the sacrament of Baptism, where it is prescribed in the formula: “XYZ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen”
Of this all the “amen” at the end on the lips of the leader then on behalf of the church, as procurator of Christ himself for this duty says: it is sure, it is valid into eternity for this christened, it can never be made undone.
The “amen” is an underlining of what was emphasized already by the repeated “seal”: it bears the seal of Him who reigns over all that exist, it is an irrevocable commitment on the most high Authority there is.
The “Amen” is not only the confirmation of what is committed from the highest authority from God’s side to humankind. It is perhaps on still more places in the Bible the faithful confirmation from the side of the praying, the petitioner, the thanksgiving, the confessing, the praising, the receiver of the commitment of promise; with precisely the same meaning: it is sure, it is valid, it is irrevocably certain, it is not again to be made undone.
-o0o-
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