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Monday, December 16th, 2013
This past weekend began the final farewell to Nelson Mandela, a lengthy period of mourning in his rural childhood village where he’ll be buried. After all the fanfare of world dignitaries saluting Mandela’s statesmanship, a very different aspect of the man now unfolds. The late leader’s spirituality was little-mentioned for good reason. No one was really sure what he believed. But there can be no mistaking what his last, final wishes were, and any mention of Christian values will now take a back seat to traditional African witchcraft. Whatever his politics, Mandela was a member of the Xhosa people, a tribe that still adheres to ancient demonic rituals. The Xhosa call on ancestral spirits for guidance and believe that the body of the dead must be properly introduced to the next life. Consequently, a family elder in the village of Qunu will sit by the coffined corpse and talk to Mandela’s spirit to explain what’s going on before the final funeral arrangements are concluded. Then an ox will be slaughtered as a blood covenant offering to the spirits and the food eaten by the mourners. A year from now, another ceremony will take place to bring back Mandela’s spirit to continue guiding his family.
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Secular cultural anthropologists and religious liberals may view all this as a quaint, affectionate way for tribal traditionalists to process the grief of death. But anyone who has dealt with witchcraft demons in Africa, as I have, knows that diabolical deeds are taking place during these tribal funeral rites. I’ve dealt many times with Africans who have participated in ceremonies such as these and can give first-person testimony that demons operate in such settings. The African demons summoned by animal sacrifices are some of the most powerful satanic spirits on the planet, and the blood offering of the slaughtered livestock enforces the spiritual darkness. Those who sit by Mandela’s graveside and eat of the ox killed in his name give permission to the worst kind of demons of enter them, even if that isn’t their intent. Mandela was a man of the western world, leading a country that at one time called itself Christian, notwithstanding the hypocrisy of apartheid. The memorialization of his death, and noble life, by such witchcraft rituals may spiritually undo much of the good he did by his acts of magnanimity.
An encouraging word: CHRISTIANS AT DEATH
Death for a Christian is much different from the passing of those who have no faith or have an occult view of the afterlife. To the atheist life is all there is and death is the end of everything. To the Eastern mystic, death is a transition to another life form, a reincarnated transmigration into whatever karma wills. To the believer in Christ, dying is to be “absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 8:8). Christians have the hope of heaven with no need of a second chance.
