THE TRAGEDY THAT WAS HIGHLIGHTED IN THE 2010 SOCCER WORLD CUP FOR ME AGAIN
Sakkie Parsons
At the time, during the 2010 soccer World Cup competition, which was held in South Africa, someone sent me what you are about to read below.
I don’t know if it really happened but I can very well believe that it did happen.
Following this letter that was sent to me, I want to share something with you at the end of it, which occurred to me at the time and made me feel sad, so I am asking for you to read it.
The person who sent it to me, following my view of how we should look at our fellow man, sent it to me for the truth and aggressively challenged me to read it.
Here it follows:
“Johannesburg – 25 May 2010 – An ox was slaughtered at the Soccer City stadium on Tuesday to bless the country’s stadiums for the FIFA World Cup.
Xhosa warrior, Zakhele Sigcawu, 70, of the Tshawe clan, speared the ox in the back of its neck between its horns.
“He is a specialist in doing this,” said Zolani Mkiva, president and director general of the Institute of African Royalty. “He came all the way from the rural Eastern Cape to do this.”
The ceremony, which started with the slaughter, was attended by about 2,000 people from most South African cultures, and most of them in traditional attire.
Mkhiva said the stadium was blessed by about 300 sangomas (diviners) – including a white sangoma – and inyanga (traditional healers).
They invoked “the spirits of our African ancestors to usher in their wisdom and energy in setting the scene of what was to follow in the day”, he said.
While the traditional herb, impepho, was burnt, traditional healers called on African ancestors and God to ensure a successful World Cup.
They all also communicated the “spirit” of the day’s proceedings to the other stadiums in the country “spiritually.
“We centralized it (the blessing) here as the tournament starts here and ends here,” he said, adding that the spiritual communication process was very “sacred”.
In African culture, the stadium was seen as a “house” and a place was created within the Soccer City precinct to act as a “kraal” where the ox was slaughtered.
“After that, the senior traditional healers walked into the stadium in song, drum-beating and dance, where they continued to bless the inside of the stadium with rituals,” said Mkhiva.
“Our stadiums are now officially blessed, according to our culture, for the tournament,” he said.
The ceremony included a blessing of everything related to the World Cup, including well wishes for Bafana, the organizers and the country as a whole.”
As I said, the person who sent it to me challenged me to read it.
I give the person a fictitious name.
Here then follows my answer to Francis at the time:
Good day Francis,
I accepted your challenge and read what you sent me. When I finished reading what you sent me, the following sad thought that has come to my heart many times before, when I read, hear or experience certain things like the high crime in my country – and I’m not going to challenge you to read further – but I still hope you will continue reading what I want to share with you.
I thought:
Wow –
More than 350 years ago, the first of many Christians walked off their ships onto the beach at the southern tip of Africa with the Bible, so to speak, open in their hands.
It is now more than 350 years later and in this enlightened age I read about this kind of thing in this so-called Christian country. Then I’m not even talking about the fact that this Christian country that I love so much is one of the countries in the world with the highest crime rate, and I come to the obvious conclusion that the Christians are failing miserably to date has in the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus, if this is the result we can show after more than 350 years.
The reason why we failed so miserably is, of course, also obvious in my opinion.
We ‘preached the Gospel of Jesus and added to it, among other things:
“We are going to be together in Heaven, but you may not sit next to me in a worship service, for example, and as far as that is concerned, it simply applies to all other places and seats as well.
In other words –
You are good enough for Heaven but you are not good enough for the place next to me, Not literally and not figuratively either.
This is certainly not how Jesus preached His gospel and it is certainly not how He teaches us in His Word, how His gospel should be preached.
We did it that way in the past and many of us still do it that way today.
We give all kinds of reasons and fancy names for why we act the way we act and preach the Gospel the way we preach it – but if you cut it to the bone, it’s because most of us think that we are just, to put it very lightly, a step or more higher than those to whom we must preach the Gospel of Jesus.
In other words, we preached then, and still preach a lot today.
Matt 22:36-40
36 “Teacher,” he asked, “what is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”
37 Jesus ‘ answer was: ” You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind .”
38 This is the first and most important commandment.
39 The second, equally important commandment is: You must love your neighbor as yourself.
40 All the other requirements of the law and the prophets rest on these two main commandments.”
Then we add to it:
1 COR 13:4-6
4 Love is patient and kind, love is not jealous, love does not blow its own bridle, is not full of itself.
5 It does not behave unworthily, does not put its own interests first, is not short on thread, does not keep track of the harm done to you.
6It mourns the injustice that takes place, and rejoices when the truth prevails.
This Francis, is what we said then that we preach and this is what we say, we still preach today, but because of our own important self, which is placed above the true Gospel of Jesus, the following tragedy then applied and it still holds true today:
Most of us preach the gospel of Jesus Christ but we live our own kind of gospel.
So much for my letter to Francis.
In what I am going to write now, I just want to mention again what I have already mentioned in the past.
I am not saying that it is wrong to pamper what is important to you, but I am saying that nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing, may become more important to us than what our God expect from us.
Understand what now follows and what has gone before against this background.
How absolutely tragic it is.
We read in the Word that the following applies to all who have accepted Jesus Christ as his/her Lord and Saviour:
1PET 2:9 … because God has chosen you as His people . You are a kingdom that consists of priests, a nation that is completely in God’s service, a people that is completely God’s. God worked this out so that you can show everyone how good He is. After all, it is He who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.
1PET 2:10 Formerly you were not a people; but now you are the people of God. Earlier, God showed you no undeserved love; but now you have his undeserved love.”
The Word tell me that this nation was bought by Jesus‘ blood and is made up of the following:
REV 5:9 Then they sang a new song with these words: “You are worthy enough to take the scroll and break its seals because You were slaughtered and with Your blood redeemed people for God, from every tribe and language group, people and nation.
REV 5:10 You let them share in Your royal government and made them priests for our God and they will rule as kings over the earth.”
These are only a few examples from the Word to show that all who have accepted Jesus Christ as his/her Lord and Saviour, belong to one people – the people of Christ.
Yet there are people who call themselves Christians, who look at fellow Christians and distance themselves from those Christians, and speak of those other Christians as foreigners and can you believe it, in many cases do not even want to serve our Lord with them in the same building. Even if they know that our Lord show us in His Word – that I must not look down on anyone, no matter how low that person is in the eyes of society, even if that society is my kind of society.
COL 3:9-14
9 Do not lie to each other. You must have stripped off the previous person and his lifestyle like clothes
10 and put on the new man. This person constantly gains new insight and is changed and made new in such a way as to resemble the Creator more and more.
11 For such newly created people, it does not matter whether someone is a Greek or a Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, of a foreign culture or a barbarian, a slave or a freeman. All that matters is Christ who is all in everyone.
12 You are the people whom God has chosen to be His and whom He loves. Therefore you must put on the following as clothing: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience.
13 Bear with one another and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive one another. Forgive each other as the Lord forgave you.
14 The most important thing you must attract is love. Love binds everything together perfectly.
A interesting fact to take notice of:
The HAT Explanatory Handbook of the Afrikaans Language, declares the
Word “barbaric” among other things like this:
Member of an uncivilized tribe-people.
How terrible is the sin of someone who distances himself/herself from a person, just because it pleased God to create the other person not in the same people, nation, or so-called race, or give the person the same colour, of which she/he is a part.
As I’ve said before, I’ll say it again –
It pleased our Lord to create me white.
It was our Lord’s choice, not mine and therefore no one may look down on me because I am white.
What applies to me, applies to every other person on this earth – regardless of his/her colour or race.
Someone who looks down on me or any other person because of our colour or race is looking down on God’s handiwork.
So fellow Christians, let us not discriminate against any person simply because the person is not of our colour or speak our language. .
Let us preach the Gospel of Christ as the Word preaches it – and not according to our own sinful likes and dislikes and then, I believe, our Lord, through the great variety of Christians in this country and its people, will truly make our country a Christian country.
Finally then, just read again the following from the Word:
Mat 28:18-20
18 Jesus then approached and said to his disciples: “God has entrusted me with full power over heaven and earth.
19 Go then, make all the nations My disciples, and baptize them in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
20 Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And know for sure: I am with you forever, until the end of world history.”
Listen, and I now quote the Old Translation:
Mat 22:36-40
36 Master, what is the great commandment in the law?
37 And Jesus answered him: You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind .
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second which is equal to this: You must love your neighbor as yourself .
40 On these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets.
Read what Jesus says about His law of love:
JHN 14:15 If you love Me, you will obey My commands.
JHN 14:21 He who keeps My commands and obeys them , that is the person who loves Me . Whoever loves Me, my Father will also love him, and I will also love him and make Myself known to him.”
1JHN 2:4 If someone says: “I live in a personal relationship with God, but do not obey his commands, such a person lives a lie and the truth has no place in his life.
So my friend and disciple of Jesus –
Let you and I not preach a gospel like so many in the past but let us preach THE Gospel.
To put it in another way:
“Let us not only talk the talk, but let us also walk the walk.”
Sakkie
Email: bediening@sakkieparsons.co.za
Website: www.sakkieparsons.co.za
Cell: 083 457 6669
Jude 1:24-25 To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy, to the only God our Saviour be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.
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