Onze Kolonie

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The heart of the Church – the heart of the Country Part 1

I am writing this book primarily for the ministers of the Word and the confessing members of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa. With the confession we made before God and His congregation, we subjected ourselves to the authority of the Word of God and the Confessions of the church. We vowed to remain steadfast in this doctrine until the end of our lives and to reject all teachings that contradict it. Especially in the Reformed tradition the divine election has been regarded as the “heart of the church” – the cor ecclesiae. The Confessions teach that God’s gracious election does not occur based on any quality in mankind, but that mankind is saved solely by God’s grace in Jesus Christ. In the history of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, this confession has been compromised by accommodating racial prejudices. This has torn the church apart and built a wall of separation. This dividing wall stands in direct opposition to the Word of God, which teaches us that Jesus Christ, through His blood, has broken down the dividing wall (Eph. 2:14). In Christ’s church, “there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all,” (Col. 3:11). The Holy Communion is, above all, the symbol of this unity of Christ’s Body – the church. It is precisely in the Communion that this division began, deeply affecting the heart of the church. The wall of separation that was built, became entrenched in the structure of the church and later of the whole country. It is my conviction that rediscovering the heart of the church can bring healing to a fractured church and a divided country, because the heart of the nation has been shaped spiritually and structurally by the Dutch Reformed Church. Therefore, the healing of the heart of the church will also bring restoration to the heart of the country. This book also contains valuable information for researchers. It includes transcribed excerpts from the handwritten minutes of the Dutch Reformed Church in Somerset West (formerly known as Somerset Hottentots Holland), the Dutch Reformed Church in Stockenström (located in the towns of Hertzog and Balfour), the Dutch Reformed Grey Church, as well as the Presbytery of Albany and the Cape Synod of 1829, 1857, 1862, 1863, 1881 and 1883 concerning the unity and division of the church. There are also excerpts from various church newspapers and magazines related to this issue. The relevant minutes and reports are linked in the text to the transcribed Dutch, which are included as appendices at the end of the book. For quick reference, links from the appendices back to the headings in the text have also been provided. Efforts were made to keep the English text (my translation in the book) as close as possible to the original Dutch. The book is written in two parts. Part 1 deals mostly with the nineteenth-century history of the Dutch Reformed Church, while Part 2, which will follow later, will examine the twentieth century and the further developments in the Dutch Reformed Church on this matter. May Jesus Christ, the Word of God, heal the heart of the church and the heart of the country, even if the sword of His Holy Spirit must cut between joints and marrow to remove sin.