REMEMBER BLOOD RIVER
(This article is based on a transcription of a message preached at Orange Street Church on 21st November 2004)
HAVING looked at the Angels of Mons this morning we are now going to see what God did on behalf of another section of our Israel people, the Afrikaaner People, our blood kinsfolk in Southern Africa, hence our title.
All the sections of our English speaking people and other related Scandinavian and Holland Dutch people all have great dates in history that we can remember.
Being from Northern Ireland, we remember the events from 1690 when God sent William of Orange to deliver us from the Stuart Monarchy, from tyranny, and the arbitrary power of Romanism. So we have our little saying “Remember 1690!” We think of our American cousins who have their battle cry of “Remember the Alamo!” – how they were overwhelmed by superior Mexican forces but how that became a rallying cry and how they recovered Texas and brought it back into the United States.
Now we are going to look at this part of the Israel people dwelling in the Southern tip of Africa. The significance of which I hope to show you by the time we are finished. Because they too had a defining moment in their history; that defining moment was the 16th December 1838. It was the year of the Battle of Blood River.
Who were these Afrikaaner people, who are these Boer people who are so despised and ridiculed, especially today in the world media and the world press? Who were these people? They were, of course, a section of the dispersed House of Israel living on the Southern tip of Africa.
They had been gathered there from a number of different backgrounds. The initial settlement in what is now Cape Province had been by Holland-Dutch people, who had come there in the early 1600’s.The Holland-Dutch people went to the Southern tip of Africa, settled in the Cape Province at the same time as Scottish settlers went over and settled in the Plantation of Northern Ireland or Ulster and the same time as the James Town settlement and the Pilgrim Fathers were planting the seed of Israel in the North American Continent.
God was working to a plan and purpose; we read it there in Deuteronomy 32:8 where it says that when He fixed the bounds of the nations, He did so with a place in mind for Israel’s sons. What did that mean? It meant that God had reserved the very best parts of the earth, with the agriculture, minerals, geographical and weather patterns that were best suited for them – these best places were reserved for the Israelite people when they would be ready to go there.
Now I believe all of those places (this is just incidental) were visited by Israelites at the time of Solomon’s great Empire when his ships sailed to all sorts of places, but that’s another story.
But then subsequently God put as we do, when we’re selling a property a sign “sale agreed” – no more bidders – you can’t move on to or take that property.Well God did that in places like the continent of Australia, North America, Southern Africa – all of those places He kept them empty. Do we ever wonder why the Chinese or Japanese didn’t migrate across the Pacific and colonise Canada and America from the other side? Or why did they not go south and take Australia and make it an oriental empire? The simple reason was that those places were reserved – (God had fixed the bounds of the nations) – with the gold and the diamonds and all their wealth – with a “sale agreed” sign, waiting for His own Israelite people to come and take over these territories that God had reserved for them.
So the Dutch people went in the early 1600’s. Then in 1685 Louis XIVof France revoked the Edict of Nantes which was the Edict that had granted religious freedom to the Huguenot or Protestant French people and they suffered horribly and were persecuted. They fled, some of them coming to London, (this church was a Huguenot church in its origin) and at one time in the 1700’s nearly one third of the then population of London was made up of French Huguenot refugees. A few of them went up into Germany, some to Holland and many of them went to Cape Province, where there is a Huguenot monument in a place called Franschhoek. This monument depicts -(they knew who they were, you see, identity-wise) – it depicts a woman with great wings fleeing down from France down across the oceans to the tip of Southern Africa with the open Bible in her hand.
What is that based upon? Revelation 12 where in symbolism the woman Israel was given wings of a great eagle wherewith she might fly into the wilderness or empty spaces to a place of safety, fleeing from the persecution of the Romish-based system. These French Huguenots knew who they were, and one of the very earliest books written on our Israelite Identity was by a Huguenot clergy man, Dean Abbedie.
Later on there was a certain infusion of Judah-German people but not to any great extent. But the merger of those Huguenot, Holland/Dutch people produced what we call the Afrikaners and their language is a compound language made up of French and Dutch and so on. Of course those Dutch settlers, we know, were of the Israelite tribe of Zebulon – Holland is Zebulon. The French Huguenots were undoubtedly of the tribe of Rueben so the settlement was essentially Israelitish. More about that later.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Britain took over Cape Province and Cape Town and there was conflict – we can’t deny that there has always been inter-tribal conflict in Israel.There was conflict between these Boer people, these Afrikaaner people and the British Authorities.The Afrikaaners felt that their culture, their way of life and their language and everything to do with it was being suppressed and put down. So in the 1800’s a group of them known as the Voortrekkers left Cape Colony in their little covered wagons, just like the wagons that went into the Wild West in America. Their purpose was to move up into the interior of what we call South Africa today and there to establish their own free states to protect their language, culture and their way of life. They travelled in those covered wagons, sometimes over dreadful landscape, over, I think it’s the Drakensberg Mountains and other places, things that no one but pioneering Israelites would have dared to do. But they had that certain something in them by the Spirit of God that was driving them on.
Now let me say something that is not politically correct, that people will not believe today. There were no native people; there were no coloured or black people in those regions at that time. The only coloured people in Southern Africa at that time were bush men or Hottentots.
As the Afrikaaners were moving up, it is true to say that, because of tribal upheaval further north, the Zulu and Bantu and other dark peoples were moving down but this means that they were both moving into the region at the same time. Despite distorted history, let no one tell you that the land was stolen from the coloured people and similarly don’t let anybody tell you that America was stolen from the Indians or Australia from the Aborigines – these are myths of history.
So they were moving up at the same time as the Zulus were moving from the opposite direction. On February 5th, I think it would have perhaps been in 1838, the leader of the Voortrekkers called Piet Retief made a very foolish mistake. He sought to negotiate a peace treaty or agreement with the Zulu king Dingane.
Of course Israel has always been warned not to make treaties or agreements with the heathen because the heathen will break the agreement, and that is what actually happened. The treacherous Zulu leader and his followers murdered Retief and those who were with him. The Zulus then attacked en masse and they killed many, many Voortrekkers in other places all through the ensuing months. But in the month of November the Voortrekker selected a new leader a man called Andries Pretorius, a man of God, a strict Calvinistic man, a man who knew God’s word.
He was the new leader and it is in his honour that the city of Pretoria is named. But on the 16th of December 1838 the Voortrekkers found themselves surrounded by tens of thousands of Zulus. The Zulus were going to finish the job they had started and were going to wipe out the last of the white settlers who were coming into the land.
There were 460 Voortrekkers and an estimated fifteen to twenty thousand Zulus. Even if the Afrikaaner peoples had rifles, muskets, the overwhelming Zulu numbers would have led to their downfall and destruction. What did they do?
They prayed together, and they formed their wagons into what they called a laager, or circle. Inside that circle of wagons – and those could easily have been set ablaze and destroyed – for that was all the physical protection they had – were 400 odd Voortrekkers, God’s Israel people – people that honoured God and HisWord and knew who they were – men, women and children, plus 900 oxen and 500 horses.
Outside were the natives baying for their blood – fifteen to twenty thousand of the fiercest Zulu warriors armed with their assegais, their spears and their clubs and machetes, ready to destroy the settlers. Around their necks, hung necklaces of human skulls and bones from previous attacks that they had made. In the forefront, the special warriors, the key shock troops of the Zulu army of King Dingane, the Impis, they were put right to the very front – the odds were overwhelming.
Inside the circle of wagons the Boer Voortrekkers prayed and they made a promise, they made a vow, they took an oath to Almighty God and this is what they said:
“If His protection is with us we will give Him the honour and the glory and we will share this miracle with our children for generations to come and we will keep this day forever as a Holy Sabbath. ”
That was the promise, that was the vow, that was the oath of Blood River that God’s Israel people, the Voortrekkers took.
The attack began and, my friends, before sunset that night, under the fiercest and wildest attack of the very bravest of the natives that could attack them – at the end of it – 3,000 Zulus lay dead around the unbroken circle of wagons. The river ran red with blood to such an extent that it is known to this day as Blood River.
Within the compound, within the laager no Voortrekkers died! 3 were wounded and that was the height of their casualties. The God of Heaven who we read in Deuteronomy said “Fear not for the Lord your God shall fight for you”, did it one more time. Just as He did it and blew away the Spanish Armada, just as we learned about the Angels of Mons and the White Cavalry, God performed a miracle of deliverance on behalf of our Israel people in the Southern tip of Africa – the Zebulon people and the Reuben people and the people who had gathered there.
Now this is the interesting bit – you remember this morning when I read to you that when the Germans were interrogated after the White Cavalry incident they recounted what they had seen. Now some of the surviving Zulus were captured and those Zulus were interrogated as to what they had seen. And what did they say when they were put under questioning? They said that they had seen an army of luminous white shinning beings hovering on a cloud above the circles of wagons and they actually appeared to be shooting down at them, at the Zulus. What had these people seen? They had seen the heavenly hosts of God deployed for the deliverance of His people.
I think it’s marvellous. When I read these stories, I am moved no matter how many times I have heard them, that God would see fit to do such a mighty miracle. And He did, my friends, and we know what happened: the Voortrekkers were followed by many others; they opened up the interior of what is now South Africa. They established the two Afrikaaner speaking republics, The Orange Free State and the Transvaal which existed for many more years until they were incorporated into the Union of South Africa. None of that would have happened; the Zulus would have wiped them out – who knows what the future would have been but for the intervention of Almighty God.
Now all those years – that’s 160 to170 years – the Afrikaaner people have observed, as they promised, December the 16th as the day of the Vow. They have kept it as a Holy Sabbath to their God. They have the most beautiful monument built there to the events that took place and they gather there from all over South Africa – perhaps not now in the numbers that they once did because of changed circumstances, but they gather there for a religious service of thanksgiving. Every year they kept it as they promised as a Holy Sabbath to thank God and to let everyone know that they were there a vine planted in that part of God’s vineyard according to His purpose and God had preserved them. He had fought for them and the very same Angels that we read of this morning in the Book of Kings, intervened on their behalf. Remember what we read: Elisha was trapped in Dothan and his servant went up on the walls and he saw all of the Syrian armies round the city and he said “Oh my master what shall we do?”
What did Elisha do? He rebuked the fear and the doubt and unbelief and he said “0 Lord open that servant’s eyes.” You know what the servant could see then – the mountains all round the city full of the angelic fiery hosts of the Lord. God preserved Elisha in Dothan using the heavenly hosts. God preserved the Afrikaaner people trapped in the laager of wagons at Blood River, God preserved Britain’s armies with the Angels of Mons and the White Cavalry. God calmed the channel waters in 1940 to bring home our soldiers trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk – who would have been slaughtered and led into terrible captivity in Germany. God intervened time and time and time again my friends.
Why did He do that? Because He promised! We read it there – what did old Zechariah say, prophesying: “to perform the oaths, the promises He had made to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob”. God keeps His word!
But the trouble is, my friends, that we do not keep our word. And because we have turned away from God in Britain and because the Afrikaaner people turned away from God and forgot His holy laws, statutes and judgements, we are both under the power and dominion of our adversaries at this moment in time. We are in a terrible mess in Iraq. I watched an American General on television recently, saying they will have to send more and more troops in. He says if they leave Fallujah in the morning – and Fallujah is a battered ruin – the terrorists as he called them will flood back in. Have we stopped it by mass bombing it? No! The terrorism has spread to other cities once again.
What’s happening, why is there no divine intervention, why are the angel forces not fighting for our armies now? Because we have forsaken the God of our Salvation just like we saw how Israel captured Jericho by sticking strictly to the plan of God But when Achan stole the wedge of gold, speaking of materialism and the philosophy of greed, when he took the Babylonish garment which represented false religion, there was sin in the camp of Israel. And when they went up to the battle of the city Ai they were scattered left, right and centre because they were not walking with the Lord.
The Covenant was conditional on obedience, if we love God and we honour Him, if we obey Him He will fight our battles. Not just nationally but individually. If some of us are facing a battle today – maybe there is turmoil in our home or in the workplace or in business, maybe there is turmoil in our health and we have got a bad verdict from a doctor – yet God says He will fight all the things that come against us. God will step in and intervene on our behalf today.
What has happened, my friends in lovely South Africa? Well, ten years ago because they surrendered to world pressure, blackmail and propaganda, the land was turned over, not just to anybody and everybody – it was turned over to the ANC and it has an ANC government today. That government, of course, you can call it ANC if you want to ”African National Congress”, but in point of fact it was turned over to Marxists – Marxist that’s the thing to remember. Communism is not dead and finished as yet and the leaders of South Africa today are people not just with a Marxist past they have a Marxist present.
Do you know that since they took over – of course it is not reported here because it doesn’t suit the world media – possibly over 1,000 Boer Afrikaaner farmers have been killed on their farms. Not just shot my friends, I wouldn’t read the dreadful accounts to you today, in many cases horribly tortured and mutilated because just as has happened in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) the intention is that every farm will be taken over and destroyed and everyone of those people will be driven from the places they have lived, some of the families going right back to 1600’s.We should help those who are needy, who are poor. We’re air lifting all sorts to Africa, Ethiopia, Sudan and other places. Do you know that some of our own Christian Israelite people are starving in Southern Africa. They need our help they are our kinsfolk.
Last year we read about the Rhodesia Christian Group – the terrible accounts of our own people some of whom fought for Britain in WW2 – starving, unable get food. We published it in our Kingdom Tidings and we encouraged people to send money to help them. Who else even mentions them, how many people in Britain know? Rhodesia was just written out of the headlines – people don’t know what’s happening there.
Do you also know today that in the name of so called “affirmative action” there are many of our own Christian Israel people queuing at soup kitchens in Johannesburg and Pretoria, driven from their jobs to make place for others in the land that they developed. That there are orphanages for little abandoned Afrikaaner children today but who is sending finance to help them? Oh our people there who rejoiced in the victory that God gave them at Blood River have come on the hardest times of suffering.
Zephaniah’s prophecy in the Old Testament tells us:
“From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, even the daughter of my dispersed, shall bring mine offering. In that day shalt thou not be ashamed for all thy doings, wherein thou hast transgressed against me: for then I will take away out of the midst of thee them that rejoice in thy pride, and thou shalt no more be haughty because of my holy mountain. I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the LORD. The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies; neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth: for they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid.” – Zephaniah 3:10-13 (AV)
Now let’s place those people, from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia – now if you had a Bible map an ancient map like Ptolemy’s maps and you were Zephaniah and you were looking southward from Jerusalem, you’d be looking down right through the African Continent. Prophecy divides that continent into 3. We have the states of northern Africa running from Morocco to Egypt – prophecy calls that prophetic Libya. Then we have what I call sub-Sahara, Equatorial or Black Africa – dare we use that phrase not in a racist fashion but merely to describe it. That is what prophecy calls the Bible Ethiopia not just the little kingdom we used to know as Abyssinia but the whole of that area. Then there are 4 rivers that cut off the southern tip of Africa – those rivers are the Zambezi, the Cunene, Cubango and the Cuando rivers, and if you had a map you could see that they virtually cut off the southern tip.
So when Zephaniah looks from Jerusalem, he looks over the prophetic Libya and he looks beyond the prophetic Ethiopia and he sees beyond those rivers a third portion of Africa – The Land beyond the rivers of Ethiopia. Who peoples that land? Bible prophecy says it is inhabited by the Daughter of my Dispersed my suppliants. Who is the daughter of my dispersed? Latter day Israelite descendents of the so-called Lost Ten Tribes. So on the other side of those rivers looking south are the remnant of Reuben and Zebulon and, of course, the Ephraimite English speaking people who also went and settled in Natal and Cape Province. So they are there beyond the rivers where prophecy said they would be.
They are called God’s suppliants, what does that mean? A suppliant is one who calls on God in prayer, so they are Christian Israel people and even if some of them be only nominally Christians they are still God’s Christian Israel people dwelling where prophecy said they would be found.
And they are not in a very good way – they are a suffering people, they are in a bad, bad way – in point of fact Isaiah talks about a similar prophecy elsewhere (I think it is Isaiah 18) – he talks about them being a people scattered and peeled, meted out and trodden down. They’ve lost their power and the pride of their power is broken with the heathen the Communist ANC ruling over them today. If you look at the modern South African flag, there is like a black triangle merging in pushing back the other colours. Do you know what that is? It is the black spear of the nation and the spear of the nation was the ANC – they are the terrorist wing – and that is the black Communist spear of the nation pushing in the other colours, the colours of the old flags of the Boer Republics. And so that flag is saying we have broken, penetrated and pushed back the power of the Holy People.
But you see what God says – He says if they call upon Me, I will turn the tide. He says, regarding these people, the day is coming when they will not be ashamed anymore and they will bring my offering – I think I’m right in saying that in the Hebrew it means an offering fitted for a king. What offering can they bring? To forsake their sin, to separate themselves and to live in obedience once again to God’s Holy Laws and Commandments, Statutes and Judgements, they are going to do that!
Ezekiel the prophet looks down towards the same area, and God says “Look at the trees in the Southern Forest” – all these little nations which are ravaged to day by civil war, and famine. Did you see the Locust plague? I preached last Monday night in a town back home about this and the next day it was in all the news programmes about the locusts coming through devouring the greenery across Africa.A lady was on the phone to me and said it was on the news just like you said it was. You know sometimes you listen and you don’t always believe me when I tell you things, but when you see it the next day on the screen!
An AIDS epidemic is decimating the populations, with civil war, and the advance of Islam slowly southward into places like Kenya and our former Imperial Colonies once our restraining hand is lifted.
But God says look I’m preserving a people on the other side of those rivers and God’s not finished with them yet. The oath that their forefathers took at Blood River shall not be forgotten. God took them at their word and when they said they would do this, God honoured and delivered; the same God that delivered them will yet deliver them from their foolishness. Just as Piet Retief made a mistake of negotiating terms with the adversary so our friends there have done the same and have negotiated with their foes. It has brought them under judgement and terrible things might yet happen to them but God will preserve His people, His suppliants on the other side of the rivers. God will work a miracle yet.
So we have seen again, as before, the hand of God in human history honouring His oath that He would fight for His Israel people and deliver them when they would walk in obedience. Isn’t it marvellous? Unseen Angelic Hosts all around us even now fighting for us, standing up for us – God says the angel of the Lord encompasses, round about them that fear Him.Daniel says in that day shall Michael, the great Prince, stand up that standeth for my people Israel. When will that be? In the time of trouble, in the time (Daniel 12) of the scattering of the power of the Holy People.
Our power is scattered today – just walk round central London to see how far it is scattered – come down here late at night and have a walk around to see our power scattered. See the wicked people that reign over us, in our government today.
God will deal with all of that. You are not to lose heart, you are to take courage, God will turn the tide. He gave these lands to Israel and He will deliver us and He will revive us again. He will pour out of His Spirit if we just keep faithful.
A little verse keeps coming to me in recent days – the Lord quickened it to me “Cast not away your confidence.” So don’t go by what you see, don’t go by what you feel, don’t go by what you’re hearing, the spin doctors and the politicians and the clergymen of today, of this age and generation. Rather go by the Word of God and we will see the God of miracles move on behalf of His people once again.
