THE CHRISTIAN AFRIKANERS - The Works of F. N. Lee

well known -- is being pioneered in that land. And so too processes of enriching uranium at a verycheap price are being pioneered precisely there.Professor Danie Strauss wants to have the Afrikaner take over where the Dutch have left off as theleaders of world Calvinism. He envisions South Africa becoming the new Geneva -- and importingand training foreigners in South Africa to go back to their lands as sturdy Calvinists and then tocalvinise their own countries.My own personal vision is exactly the opposite. South African Calvinism should becomecentrifugal, rather than remain centripetal! Rather than become a new Geneva, I think South Africashould become like the old Jerusalem. It should send forth the Law from Zion to the four corners ofthe earth. There it should combine the best of South African Calvinism with the best of the foreignCalvinism it meets or helps create. Then it should be the Non-South Africans living in thoseterritories farther afield who themselves take all of this. They alone can amalgamate it in the correctmix for their circumstances -- and perfect it for each individual country. In this way, all of us wholove the Lord and the doctrines of grace -- together work toward the Calvinistic conquest of thewhole world.In 1967 Dr. Rousas John Rushdoony wrote me in a letter from California: "I believe South Africa,although unfortunately now showing signs of drifting, is still more Christian than any other countryof today, and has a major contribution to make. South African Reformed believers are more awareof the basic issues of our time. Too many American Reformed thinkers are prone to sentimentalhumanism as they view social issues!"This year, 1980, the Presbyterian Church of Australia's Rev. Prof. Dr. Harold Whitney -- a manwith three earned doctorates -- wrote me a heart-warming personal letter. Whitney is an admirer ofboth Van Til and Rushdoony. He is also a man who has himself written that "the whispers ofCalvary must not preclude the thunders of Sinai."As retiring Chairman of the Department of Systematic Theology at Emmanuel College ofQueensland University, Whitney recently wrote to congratulate me on his General Assembly'sappointment of me as his successor. Significantly, I believe, he then added the following words:"I am personally looking forward to your coming among us because, among other reasons, of mylove for South Africa. Four times I visited this fascinating land on evangelistic work -- apart frommy visits to Germany, Britain and the United States several times. I visited South Africa twice in1968, once in 1969, once in 1970 -- and, as the enclosed document will show, Dr. Lee -- I had theprivilege of speaking in many Reformed churches."Well, the enclosed document that Dr. Whitney referred to was an account of his 1970 visit to SouthAfrica. I believe in this last lecture I can do no better than to take a few minutes to quote from thisletter here. For I believe it gives an accurate insight by a Non-South African, an impartial outsider,into the true condition of Calvinism in South Africa much better than a "biased" person such asmyself could do!Says Dr. Whitney: "I learned the value of face to face confrontation. This is a good New Testamentpractice. Paul knew the value of witnessing before Governors. I was able, therefore, to spend amost profitable hour and a half over morning tea with Dr. Vorster, brother to the Prime Minister ofSouth Africa and leader and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Reformed Church. It wasthrough Dr. Vorster's courtesy that I was able to speak in the Reformed Mother Church in CapeTown." That, by the way, is the oldest church in South Africa.