Working For Reformation In Africa

In 1652 the founding father of South Africa, Jan van Riebeeck , landed in Table Bay and knelt on the shore of what was to become Cape Town, mother South the city of Africa.

His prayer was that the settlement he was about to establish would he for the glory of God and for the “spreading of the light of the Reformed Faith” throughout “the dark continent” of Africa.

This missionary vision was shared by the Dutch Reformed settlers that accompanied him and by the Huguenot refugees who fled to the Cape to escape renewed persecution in France. German Calvinists and Scottish Presbyterians later joined the growing community of Reformed Christians who made up the expanding civilization on the southern tip of the vast continent of Africa.

The missionary influence of the Afrikaners (the first people ever to call themselves Africans were these Calvinist settlers and their descendants) spread rapidly from 1836 as the pilgrims migrated away from what they saw as the decadent British Colonial influence. (The British had seized the Cape during the Napoleonic wars.) This great migration became known as the Great Trek as thousands of families loaded their belongings into covered wagons and set off to establish their own Boer (or farmers) Republic.

The Transvaal Republic under President Paul Kruger limited citizenship to Christians in fellowship with a Reformed church which subscribed to the Synod of Dort. With the Reformation Faith as their firm foundation the Boer Republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State flourished.

However, the discovery of gold in the mineral-rich republics attracted the attention of the British Empire and after the vicious Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) the whole of South Africa fell under the might of the greatest World Power of that time. In a parallel to the war it would fight against another world power — the Soviet Union — in the latter part of the twentieth century, the Boer commandos won the battles — but lost the war.

When the mighty British army failed to defeat the Boers militarily it resorted to taking the war to the population. The British destroyed all the Boer farms, dynamiting their homes, burning their crops, slaughtering their cattle and imprisoning the Boer women and children in concentration camps. Thus the twentieth century began with innovations which were to dominate the rest of the century: scorched-earth tactics and concentration camps. So many Boer women and children died in the unhygienic, overcrowded concentration camps that the Afrikaans population is today less than half the number of what it would have been had this atrocity not been forced upon them.

Unbeaten on the battlefield the Boer forces came to surrender because of the threat to all their families. In effect terrorism and intimidation won the war. As one monument declares the Boers were: “Beaten but not defeated.” Yet even in the dark days of concentration camps and conquest, Bible studies and prayer meetings flourished. And a great missionary movement followed the war with Afrikaans Reformed missionaries going back to the lands they had been exiled to and imprisoned in — Ceylon, Madagascar, Bermuda, St. Helena, and throughout Africa.

Time For a New Reformation

In recent years South Africa has sent thousands of missionaries to Asia, Africa, Europe and South America. In some years South Africa has produced more Bibles in more languages than any other country in the world. The gospel is broadcast by radio in many languages throughout the African continent.

For decades, state schools in South Africa have begun each day with Bible reading and prayer. Evangelical religious instruction with the stated aim of: “bringing every child to a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior” has been and, at the time of writing still is, part of the syllabus of public schools. And Creation has been taught in the classrooms. Laws have previously protected South Africa from the evils of pornography, homosexuality, and abortion. On Sundays, trading was curtailed and cinemas were closed in honor of the Lord’s Day.

Yet during the last few years all these things have been under attack. As a missionary sending base South Africa is being seriously undermined. South Africa today is being flooded with imported filth at an alarming rate. Seemingly from every side, especially from the mass media, pornography, and abortion are being glamorized, promoted and forced upon us.

Since the death penalty for murderers was suspended on February 2, 1990 and 100,000 criminals released, over 120,0002, people have been murdered in the biggest crime wave in SA history. Since “softcore” pornography was allowed in February 1990, child abuse (which was virtually unknown before) has escalated. Now, for the first time cinemas have been allowed to operate on Sundays and sex education is being introduced into many government schools. Over the last six years pro-abortion advocates have been relentlessly bombarding South Africans with pro-choice rhetoric and one-sided propaganda for abortion. The spiritual results of these and many similar trends have been painfully obvious: the moral and spiritual foundations of SA are being eroded and corrupted.

When considered along with the thirty years of terrorist attacks, international sanctions, boycotts and economic sabotage, these assaults represent an overwhelming threat to the future of Christian civilization in Southern Africa.

Clearly South Africa needs a new reformation.

The Task of Frontline Fellowship

In recent years the Lord has raised up a new movement that is working for reformation and revival in Southern Africa.

Frontline Fellowship is a unique mission primarily made up of Christians from a military background who have pioneered missionary work in the war zones of Africa. Since 1982 FF has recruited soldiers from a wide variety of special forces, airborne and infantry backgrounds and trained them as missionary scouts to infiltrate communist and Muslim lands with the Gospel of Christ.

From an initially short-term evangelistic mission which distributed New Testaments rather than full Bibles so as “not to confuse people with the Old Testament,” Frontline Fellowship developed into a thoroughly Reformed mission committed to teaching “the whole counsel of God.” As we discovered that there was more truth per square inch in the writings of the sixteenth-century reformers than we had found in any other theological work, every aspect of our lives and work was challenged and transformed.

Our literature ministry grew from just distributing Gospel tracts to importing, or producing, transporting and distributing tens of thousands of Reformed books. Leadership training courses became the most important part of our mission trips.

We developed and conducted hundreds of leadership training seminars such as the Discipleship Training Course, Triumph Amidst Tribulation Seminars, Reformation and Revival Seminars, Biblical Worldview Seminars, God and Government Seminars and Great Commission Workshops.

Frontline Fellowship conducts an average of fifty such seminars, workshops or conferences each year. These courses have been held in Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa and Sudan.

Frontline Fellowship has been in the forefront of: Pioneering missionary work into war-ravaged Mozambique, Angola and Sudan; Scouting and researching neglected areas; Opening up “closed areas” and forbidden territories; Assisting persecuted Christians and prisoners with emergency relief aid (including tons of medicines, food and clothes), encouragement, Bibles and Bible teaching; Developing a network of couriers and evangelists to deliver tons of Bibles, Gospel records and Christian literature in 100 languages, to suffering Christians; Providing in-depth leadership training for thousands of pastors, evangelists and other Christian leaders in neglected areas; Speaking up for the persecuted, publishing the sufferings and testimonies of believers in print, on radio and TV and in hundreds of international meetings every year.

Since 1982 Frontline missionaries have travelled millions of miles by foot, by motorbikes, by dugout canoes, trucks and aircraft to boldly proclaim the Gospel of repentance and faith in Christ to soldiers, guerrillas, resistance fighters and civilians on all sides of many conflicts in Africa.

I have personally carried out over 85 missions behind enemy lines and conducted over 1,000 outreaches among soldiers in twenty-one countries. In the course of my missionary activities I have been ambushed, come under mortar fire, been stabbed, shot at, beaten by mobs, arrested and imprisoned. Over the years, sixteen people involved in Frontline Fellowship outreaches have been imprisoned in Marxist countries. Yet, by the grace of God, every one was freed in response to persistent prayer and pressure.

Frontline Fellowship has also been in the forefront of working for revival and reformation in Southern Africa: As a founder member of United Christian Action (a coalition of fifteen Bible believing organizations); and the founder of Cape Christian Action (a network of twenty Bible-based groups), and a co-founder of the Christian Voice (a coalition of concerned churches and ministries which have mobilized tens of thousands of Christians in marches to Parliament, prayer vigils and rallies for righteousness). Frontline Fellowship is a leading force in leadership training, networking and co-ordinating a united Christian stand for righteousness and truth.

Frontline Fellowship and its sister ministries, Africa Christian Action, United Christian Action, Zambia Christian Action and Christian Liberty Books, publish an average of sixty items a year and distribute well over a million copies of Gospel tracts, leaflets, booklets, books and Bibles in 100 languages, throughout Africa each year. Through literature and leadership training. Frontline Fellowship is educating and enlisting tens of thousands of Christians to “disciple the nations... teaching obedience.” Through Project Nehemiah hundreds of Bible study and prayer groups have been mobilized to study, proclaim and obey the Word of God in all areas of life.

Basis of Faith

Frontline Fellowship submits to the Bible as the only complete, inspired, inerrant and authoritative Word of God. Frontline Fellowship calls on all people and institutions to submit to the Lordship of Christ in all areas of life.

The mission accepts and proclaims the Sovereignty of God, the total depravity of man, unconditional election by the grace of God alone, limited atonement, the irresistible grace of Almighty God and the perseverance of the saints.

The ultimate purpose of Frontline Fellowship is to glorify God. Therefore leadership training and discipleship teaching on the nature of God and the Law of God, repentance and faith, obedience and holiness, reformation principles and revival are priorities in the mission.