THE CHRISTIAN AFRIKANERS
A Brief History of Calvinistic Afrikanerdom from 1652 -
1980
by
Rev. Prof. Dr. Francis Nigel Lee
Foreword
by Rev. Owen Fourie, Vice-Chairman, Gospel
Defence
League, Cape Town, Republic of South Africa
It
is with great pleasure that I commend this book to the Christian world at large.
These ten lectures constitute the last of a series of twenty-five. They were all
originally delivered during 1980 at Geneva Divinity School in Texas, which
kindly released the cassette tapes hereof to the Mt. Olive Presbyterian Tape
Library in Bassfield, Mississippi.
This present book is based on my
transcription from those cassette tapes. Miss Nancy Hooper of Griffin, Georgia,
USA, who has been assisting Gospel Defence League, typeset the manuscript and
did the artwork. A few further observations about this are necessary, especially
for readers in the nineteen-nineties.
First, the author
of these lectures. Dr. Lee was born in Britain (of a South African father) in
1934, but resided in South Africa from the age of seven until his departure in
1967. Dramatically converted in a Welkom goldmine in 1955 -- he received his
initial tertiary education at the Universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch, the
Orange Free State, and Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education.
As a Church History Professor who has lived on four continents, Dr. Lee is
ideally equipped to give a truly objective evaluation of "The Christian
Afrikaners."
Second, the time of these lectures. Dr. Lee
delivered them in 1980. They represent his perception of the Afrikaners, till
his leaving the RSA -- together with his ongoing perception of them, while he
was living in the USA for eleven years till 1980. He is well aware of
developrnents in the RSA since then, but thinks it best -- especially for the
sake of Afrikaners - to remind them of what they were in 1980 (rather than what
some of them had becorne by 1992).
Third, the place of
these lectures. Dr. Lee delivered them, by special invitation, in Texas -- right
before he left the USA to take up his present professorship in Australia.
American, British, Australian and South African readers are all asked to bear in
mind that he was then endeavouring to present his subject in a way easily
understandable especially to enquiring Americans.
Fourth, the
relevance of these lectures. There have been drastic changes in
the RSA since Dr. Lee departed in 1967, and especially since he subsequently
delivered these lectures in 1980. Yet the writer of this Foreword believes there
is great merit in presenting these lectures just as they are -- especially in
the hope of calling the Afrikaner back to his better values (which are now quite
obviously being coinpromised in so many ways).
Fifth, the
incompleteness of these lectures. It must be remembered they
were delivered only after fifteen immediately antecedent studies on the general
theme: "The Eschatology of Victory from Adam to the Afrikaners." Those fifteen
lectures dealt with the eschatology of victory respectively in: the Old
Testament; the Apocrypha; the New Testament; the Apostolic Fathers; the
Second-Century Patristics; the Third Century; the Fourth and Fifth Centuries;
the Middle Ages to the Protestant Reformation; John Calvin (on the Law of God);
John Calvin (on Eschatology); the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic
Confession; John Knox to the Synod of Dordt; Seventeenth-Century Dutch Reformed
Thought; Dutch Calvinism from Groen van Prinsterer to Kuyper and Bavinck; and
Dutch Calvinism from Willem Geesink to A.A. van Ruler.
Hopefully those
fifteen antecedent lectures can yet get published at some later time, in order
to give the full sweep of Dr. Lee's "Eschatology of Victory from Adam to the
Afrikaners." Meantime, may God richly bless the following lectures throughout
the Western world!
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