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

glorious morn will break!Missionaries do not live before their time. Their great idea of converting the world to Christ, is noillusion. It is divine! Christianity will triumph! It is equal to all that it has to perform!"This was the mettle of those mighty missionaries, as they went out deeper and deeper from SouthAfrica into the areas to the north. And in the wake of all this, the stirring Reformed Church ofSouth Africa too marched through into Rhodesia (alias the modern Zimbabwe). There, after not toolong, the Reformed Church had a larger number of members among the converted Blacks than allthe other kinds of Christian denominations combined -- even though not one half of the Blackpopulation there has yet been christianised.Well now, the Scots arrived -- the Scottish Presbyterians. Many, if not most of them, were soonafrikanerised -- within the South African Reformed Church. Many Scottish place names inSouthern Africa in the nineteenth century attest to this new strain now coming into AfrikanerCalvinism. For there are South African place names such as Carnarvon, Cradock, MacGregor,Dundee, and Edinburgh -- and also a desert town in the Eastern Cape called Aberdeen.But, of course, the greatest and most famous of all the Scottish Preachers that arrived, was thefather of the world famous Dr. Andrew Murray. Dr. Murray was not a Scot by birth. His fatherwas, but not he. His father came out from Scotland -- but soon afrikanerised and became theMinister of the Reformed Church in Graaff-Reinet --just thirty miles from the Aberdeen to which Ihave just referred. Graaff-Reinet was the pulpit where Dr. Daniel Francois Malan, round about1912 or 1913, later gave his farewell sermon -- "Whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, weare to do all to the glory of God" -- and promptly entered politics and finally became the SouthAfrican Prime Minister.Dr. Andrew Murray grew up in that Reformed manse, where his father was the Reformed Preacher.There is a grapevine growing in the yard of that manse to this day. It was there when AndrewMurray was a little boy and it is still bearing grapes today. Andrew grew up in strict Calvinism.Then he went to Scotland and to Holland, in order to study theology at a time when the liberalismthat Groen van Prinsterer and Kuyper would later arise to oppose had swept through the land andeven the theological seminaries.On arrival in Holland, Andrew Murray was very instrumental in supporting the conservativeCalvinist Student Association there at the Seminary -- called "Zekar Dabar." That, you may detect,is Hebrew for: "Remember the Word! Murray was very instrumental as a South African student, infighting against Dutch theological liberalism. He also studied German theology massively. Then hereturned to South Africa in 1848.Back in South Africa, he soon became known as a godly man and a man of great prayer andhumility. In 1853, he represented the Orange Free State at the political independence talks inEngland. In 1860, he pioneered the annual ten-day Pentecost Prayer Meetings. And in 1862, hebecame Moderator of the General Assembly of the Reformed Church of South Africa (for the firstof six times).Murray was instrumental in liberating the South African Church from the control of the (Britishdominated)South African State. Back in 1806, the British had taken over the Cape -- with theirown idea of the Queen being the earthly head of the Anglican Church under God. Indeed, they hadsought to inflict this pattern even on the Reformed Church!Having the political clout, the British were able to try to do this -- for a few decades. At that time,