A few years back, I attended a church service held by a visiting conservative Reformed minister from the Netherlands in a town nearby Bloemfontein. I will never forget the minister’s very first comment as he introduced himself. He remarked that growing up as a boy in the Netherlands, his father taught him that South Africa is a Christian nation (of course, referring to the Afrikaners) and that he envied us for that. After saying this his facial expression, in typical Dutch fashion, rapidly became very serious, and he simply remarked: “Niet meer.” At the time of the remark, I thought to myself that while it is true that Afrikaners are in a moral and spiritual crisis, it was also significant that Afrikaners make up only 5% of the current population that is commonly referred to as “South Africans,”1 while the blacks, Indians, and coloreds have never really adopted the orthodox Christian religion on a significant scale. Those two Dutch words took on a new meaning for me this past weekend, as I truly witnessed the extent of the moral decline of the Afrikaner people.
The evangelist and radio-host, Riekert Botha, was fiercely attacked and ridiculed from all angles after publicly stating on his show’s Facebook page that homosexuality is a sin. Of course, the puppet mainstream media was at the forefront of it all, making a huge deal out of the fact that his show, Pleisters vir die Siel (Plasters for the Soul), was broadcasted on a state-owned station, RSG, the largest Afrikaans radio-station in the world; and they therefore decried that taxpayers were paying to give this man a platform for “hate speech” and his disregard for other people’s human rights. You would think that after the ANC’s recent centenary celebrations, which literally cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of Rands, this would be really minor issue – especially in Afrikaner circles – but apparently that’s not the case.
As a Reformed Christian, I don’t even regard Botha as a truly like-minded believer. From what I gathered, he’s a typical evangelical Baptist, and he even went on to say on his Facebook page that he didn’t mean to condemn homosexuals, since God doesn’t condemn them. He is of course, completely wrong, since God does condemn homosexuals. Scripture goes as far as saying that they shall not enter the kingdom of God without repenting (1 Cor. 6:10). Despite Botha’s compromise, he continued to be publicly crucified by both the media and masses of individuals from the Afrikaner public. In an online poll of the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper, Rapport, 73% of respondents said they would like to see pastor Botha’s show taken off the air, because he “doesn’t respect other peoples’ human rights.”2
This being said, however, by far the most shocking aspect of the weekend was the fact that the war on Botha was initiated by the news editor of the Kerkbode, the mouthpiece for the largest Afrikaner Church in the country, the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa.3 The Dutch Reformed Church is an apostate whore. All true followers of Christ should necessarily leave her. I have been ashamed to say I was baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church for many years now, and this weekend, I was ashamed to be associated with the bulk of the Afrikaner public. May God providentially spare a Boer remnant that would be faithful to his commandments.
Footnotes
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