JUMPING OVER WALLS Part 2

For by You I can run upon a troop; and by my God I can leap over a wall (Psalm 16:29)

Content 1

1. Childhood Walls

2. Climbing over the racial Walls

3. Fighting on more than one Front 4. Advocating for peaceful Change

5. A radical Anti-Apartheid Activist

6. Skirmishes of a multi-faceted Battle

7. Clearing Hurdles with the Pen

8. Taking on demonic Strongholds 9. Breaking out of Limitations

Part 2

10. The Run-up to Cape Spiritual Warfare

11. Tackling the Islamic Wall

12. Back to ‘School’

13. The Backlash

14. New Initiatives

15. Under personal Attack

16. Attacks on spiritual Strongholds

17. More Shots at the Islamic Bastions

18. A targeted Ministry to Foreigners

19. A 'new thing' Sprouting

20. Jews First 21. Walls to Conquer

20. The Start of the Breakthrough through Crises?................................................................ 111

21. Strongholds attacked – not without a Backlash ............................................................... 117

22. The almost insurmountable Drug Problem ...................................................................... 122

23. A Funeral as a Catalyst.................................................................................................... 129

24. The battle against Crime, War and Violence.................................................................... 135

25. Taking on the Prime Cape Strongholds ........................................................................... 142

Dear Grandchildren (In stead of a foreword)

I trust that all of you will be cherishing the memories of our recent clan reunion in the Vosges in France. There we did not speak about the first part of my personal recollections, for which I still had no editor in place at that time.

The possibility of the actual printing of the book has come nearer last week as we got ready for our return to South Africa. The one or other of your parents may recall that I was praying for an editor.

When we visited Zeist just prior to our return, our friends Hein and Wieneke Postma, both of them well into the seventies in the meantime, visited up there. I had just been reminded of my first printed book and how it came to pass. While talking to Hein, the name David Appelo just surfaced. To refresh your memory: Hein was the dear friend and brother who admonished me with regard to Honger na Geregtigheid (Hunger of Justice). After helping me in 1990 to get Involuntary Exile printed – but not fromally published - David Appelo edited my report of our visits to South Africa in 1975 and 1978, which I had intended as a gift in A4 cyclostyled format to my parents on the occasion of their Golden Weddiing anniversary in January 1981.

David Appelo duly agreed to assit with the editiing

10. The Run-up to Cape Spiritual Warfare

After the Seminary period in District Six my interest in Muslims and Islam remained dormant for quite a few years. After Ayatollah Khomeini had worked his way back to Iran in 1979, a book appeared in Germany that shook me somewhat. The author - Marius Baar - suggested the use of petrodollars after the oil crisis in 1973 as demonic, a diabolical imitation of God’s work through the Holy Spirit in the expansion of the Gospel. I knew that oil was seen in the Bible as a picture of the Spirit, e.g. the ten virgins in Matthew 25 that had to have oil in their lamps.

A stimulus to get engaged in reaching out lovingly to Muslims occurred in 1981 when I was teaching in Hanover Park. The openness of Muslims to the Gospel - if it is presented in a relevant and sensitive way – had struck me. In Holland we had been leading the Goed Nieuws Karavaan team from 1982. Outreach to Moroccan Muslims in Zeist had been pretty much at the centre of our interest there.

And then there had been the special encounter in Abidjan in February 1990 which nudged me very much in having a bash at the Islamic Wall.

Teaching from the Gulf War

Come January 1991 we were already in Bulstrode, the headquarters of WEC International for the missionary candidates’ orientation course. The Lord used this time to continue moulding us for our future ministry in Cape Town. There we were clearly confronted with the concept of spiritual warfare more intensely than ever before. I was not acquainted with terms like prayer walks, strategic and targeted prayer although I had practised it before. (We did this for example in Zeist, together with other believers, without using the fancy name to oppose a blasphemic film.)

The Gulf War at the beginning of 1991 made things very practical. In one of the devotionals Jenny Carter, a secretary at the WEC International Office, demonstrated why it was necessary for the allied aeroplanes to prepare the area for the onslaught of the artillery. Fundamentalist Islam became increasingly visible as a threat to world peace.

Studies in Bulstrode As part of our missionary training at Bulstrode we had to write an assignment called a ‘field study’ about the country where we intended to go to. I decided to study the history of and issues pertaining to the South African Indians. This led me into studying Hinduism and Islam, their two major religions. My experience in West Africa also influenced me in yet another way. I now also thought of the ‘Black’ South Africans as potential missionaries to the Muslim countries of the continent. I furthermore discerned how I was impacted while in exile, hoping that we could one day also inspire foreigners in South Africa in a similar way - to go and bless their home countries.

As part of our missionary orientation, we were required to read certain books. One of them was Don Richardson's book Peace Child. We derived an important lesson from the reading of this book, discovering how the author saw the cultural tradition of the peace child - a token of reconciliation between warring tribes - as a divine preparation to prepare the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea for the Gospel.

Missionary Orientation in Emmeloord

When we returned to Holland from England, we went for two months to Emmeloord, to the Dutch HQ of WEC. I challenged Dutch Christians to send their prayer ‘batteries’ to the Muslim stronghold of Bo-Kaap in the city where I was born and bred, to bombard the area before we as missionaries could go in as the infantry. The Holy Spirit had obviously started to prepare me for ministry in the prime Muslim area of the Mother City of South Africa.

In our correspondence with WEC South Africa we mentioned that we would like to have our hands free to spread the Gospel among the Cape Muslims. However, the South African WEC leadership wanted to use me for representation in the Western Cape. The stated strategy of WEC in SA was to focus on recruitment, and not to start new ministries. We on the other hand were not inclined to get involved a lot in administration and representation. We did not see that as our gifting. This created some tension.

Thankfully, all the differences could be resolved and a few months later we were accepted as WEC missionaries. It was agreed that we would help our colleague Shirley Charlton with representation in Cape Town in the first year and thereafter we would see how the Lord would lead us.

Awakened by a deafening Roar

When we came to the Cape from Holland in 1992 as a missionary family, we didn’t have any accommodation lined up. We were already considering approaching my faithful friend and teacher colleague Ritchie Arendse for the use of his caravan again when just before our departure to South Africa we heard that we could be accommodated in a Bible School in the suburb Athlone during the month of January.

The first morning after our arrival we were awakened by a deafening roar at half past four. The cause was the seven mosques within a radius of two kilometres of the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute.[1] This was the first indication that the Lord was perhaps calling us to get involved with the Cape Muslims. But we were not starkly aware of it as yet.

The Master clearly used our first days in Cape Town to make it unambiguously clear to all and sundry that we were called to minister to the Cape Muslims.

Accommodation as Priority The number one priority was to get semi-permanent accommodation. That the government had published its intention to scrap the Group Areas Act, the Law that prescribed where the respective races had to live - made matters a lot easier. This gave us more options to find suitable and affordable accommodation.

Finding a suitable house that was more or less affordable was almost like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Four bed-roomed houses were few and far between and usually very expensive. Whenever the home owners heard how many children we have, they were not interested any more. Thus we soon made a point of mentioning our five children right at the outset whenever we enquired. That spared us unnecessary waste of time, petrol and further disappointments.

We were quite frustrated when all our attempts at getting a house seemed to have brought us nowhere. We were in quite dire straits because we had to get out of the Bible School before the end of the month.

Sleeping on the Street? This was still the position on the 30^th of January. We could not believe our eyes when a house with four bedrooms plus another room was available in the suburb called Gardens at ‘our price’. (Our church in Holland had pledged a monthly amount. That we earmarked for the rent. For all other expenses we would trust the Lord to provide.) The house was not very far from the German school, albeit that a busy road had to be crossed. The timing seemed to be perfect, because it was almost the end of the month and we could move in straight away. The wife of the house owner took for granted that her husband would agree to have us because he was a German-speaking Swiss. We were really in the clouds when the phone call confirmed that he indeed agreed initially. We were already praising the Lord at the table at suppertime, when the phone rang once again. This time it was the husband himself. He had just heard from his wife that we have five children; this was a major problem to him. They would not rent their house to us. When I returned to the supper table with the shattering news, all of us were devastated. Little Tabitha vented her fears spontaneously as she cried uncontrollably: ‘Will we now have to sleep on the street?’ How thankful we were when Rafael could console her: ‘No, the Lord will see to it that we need not go and sleep on the street.’ I had a big lump in my throat at the child-like and yet also mature faith into which our children had started to grow.

Something happening in the heavenlies On Friday the 31st of January we packed all our belongings together without knowing where would be going the next day. On Sunday the influx of students was expected to start. We were now clinging to our last hope. Shirley Charlton, our WEC missionary colleague, would ask her landlord whether we could move into her two-bedroom flat in Diep River temporarily. She would then go to a friend. When we phoned Shirley the Saturday morning, this last hope was all but dashed …

Various people were praying for us. We knew of at least one group. They were Christians from the Community Bible Fellowship in Crawford that we had attended. They said that they would pray right through the night from Friday to Saturday, also for us!

In the heavenlies something had obviously been happening, because somewhere in the suburb of Kenilworth – a few kilometres from Crawford - a Greek lady could not sleep. Ireni Stephanis never had problems with sleeplessness – not even when her husband died - but that night she constantly had to think about the family from Holland about which she had heard from Shirley Charlton. Ireni was curious whether the family of seven had found accommodation in the meantime. After hearing of our predicament, Ireni offered to share her big house. Her daughter had just married and left the home. Ireni’s two adult sons were elsewhere. We gladly move into her spacious house.

Involvement with Drug Rehabilitation?

On the first Sunday after moving to Kenilworth, we attended the Living Hope Baptist Church with Ireni Stephanis. A couple there told us about their daughter who was addicted to drugs and who subsequently became a Muslim. We thus got in touch with a big problem of the Cape communities - drug addiction - almost from the word go.

We were reminded of the successful WEC Betel outreach to drug addicts in Spain, seeing this as a possible loving avenue of service to the Cape Muslim community. (Our mission agency WEC had significant success in Spain. Many former addicts started out as missionaries to other countries.) This was thus yet another nudge that we should get involved in compassionate outreach to the Muslim sector of the Cape population.

The problem of drug addiction in the Cape Muslim society was highlighted again and again. We were thus confronted with the need of a centre for rehabilitation where people could be set free through a personal faith in Jesus. This now became our model for the drug addicts of Cape Town. We were yearning to share the vision with Capetonian Christians. The initial response was general indifference.

Focus on Outreach to Cape Muslims?

To get more information about the German school, we were referred to the Pietzsch family. Horst Pietsch was also involved with the SIM Life Challenge missionary outreach.

Without making any special effort, we got in touch with various converts from Islam. This was quite special because there were only a few at the Cape who had been openly confessing their new faith. Many others went back to Islam quietly, e.g. after the lack of follow-up. (Many had responded at a big tent campaign in 1984 by Reinhard Bonnke, a German-background evangelist.)

A clear confirmation to engage in missionary outreach to Cape Muslims followed when we were able to rent a house in the suburb Tamboerskloof, almost a stone’s throw from Bo-Kaap, the prime stronghold of Islam in the Western Cape. This happened a few weeks after our arrival in the Mother City. God had evidently started fitting things together in his perfect mosaic.

At the beginning of our stay in Tamboerskloof Rosemarie and I decided to do prayer walking in Bo‑Kaap as a couple once a week. We started praying for the area, asking the Lord to lead us to those people where the Holy Spirit had already done some preparatory work.

More supernatural Guidance

I soon joined Manfred Jung's SIM Life Challenge missionary outreach team to Cape Muslims in the suburbs of Bo-Kaap, Walmer Estate and Woodstock. However, I soon felt very uncomfortable with the method of knocking at strange people’s doors to speak to them about my faith. This coincided with the cessation of the SIM Life Challenge outreach effort in Bo-Kaap.

A positive result of the door-to-door ministry with the SIM Life Challenge team was that I discovered that my knowledge of Islam was completely inadequate. I received permission from our WEC leaders to do a post-graduate course in Missiology at the Bible Institute of South Africa (BI) in Kalk Bay with a special focus on Islam.

Representation Work

The Western Cape Missions Commission, to which Shirley Charlton took me quite soon after our arrival at the Cape in January 1992, proved very valuable in terms of contacts. In this group I soon met the major role players of missionary recruitment at the Cape. Martin Heuvel and Bruce van Eeden were two members of this group who would play strategic roles in our future ministry at the Cape. Drawing from my manuscript that saw South Africa as ‘A Goldmine for missionary recruitment’, I suggested that we should start looking at sending out Blacks to the rest of our continent. For some participants this view was possibly too radical. That I used the term ‘New South Africa’ that President de Klerk had made fashionable, was however a strategic move. For some of the Western-orientated missionaries it might have been rather surprising – perhaps for some of them shocking - to hear me speak about potential missionaries from the 'New' South Africa. I proposed that ‘Blacks’ would theoretically be able to perform so much better than Europeans or Americans because they are naturally more immersed in African culture.[2] Yet, the folk listened to me with grace, albeit that only a few of them reacted with agreement. To implement this was another story. It would to take decades before South African ‘Blacks’ would start getting ready to become involved in cross-cultural missionary endeavour of any consequence.[3]

I represented WEC at a missionary event in the Afrikaner bastion of Wellington where I gladly took the opportunity to visit my close friend Jakes who was now a pastor there. It was already revolutionary that the main speaker was an Indian, Dr Lesley James from Durban. I noticed some very surprised 'White' faces when I suggested that South African churches should consider supporting missionaries of colour. It proved very difficult to sell the idea to the 'White' churches, who were still trapped in the apartheid mind-set, not ready to support missionary endeavour by disadvantaged South Africans. Soon they would however support indigenous Indians, resulting in tremendous growth of the Christian faith in that subcontinent over the subsequent decades. Pastor Bruce van Eeden, with whom we started to network - notably in the ‘Coloured’ townships of Hanover Park and Newfields - was a prominent role player in this regard.

After a few months Rosemarie and I started asking the Lord where we should start with ministry. By June 1992 our ministry was not focused at all. As I was speaking during a phone call to Val Kadalie, the matron of the G.H Starke retirement institution in Hanover Park, I sensed confirmation that this township, where I had been teaching in 1981, was the place to get involved with ministry. Soon I linked up with Norman Barnes, a former gangster and drug addict who was a convert from Islam. He was leading the prayer group at the G.H Starke City Mission institution on Saturday afternoons.

An event organised in 1993 with some link to the Western Cape Missions Commission was a workshop with John Robb of World Vision. I later used the list of participants at this occasion to organize Jesus Marches the following year.

Prayer as Part of the evangelistic Outreach at the Cape Prayer had been used quite substantially in the outreach to Cape Muslims, though not nearly sufficiently to make an impact spiritually. Under the leadership of the German missionary Gerhard Nehls, the founder of Life Challenge, his team had people praying while co-workers visited Muslim homes. In other cases, groups prayed before they would go on outreach. Thus, in the mid-1980s, his German missionary colleague Walter Gschwandtner had his group praying in the home of the Abrahams family in Bo-Kaap, where the Muslim head of the home came to faith in Jesus as his Lord just before he died in 1983. Knowledge about the Bo-Kaap prayer meetings almost went amiss when the Gschwandtner family left for Kenya.

Bo-Kaap Prayer Meetings Resume

During one of our Bo-Kaap prayer walks after we had moved to Tamboerskloof in February 1992, Rosemarie and I visited the Bo-Kaap Museum. There we heard about Cecilia Abrahams, the neighbour at 73 Wale Street, a committed believer. She is the widow of a convert from Islam in the strategic residential area. When we finally met up with her, we were blessed to find out that we could actually resume the prayer meetings, which had been conducted by Walter Gschwandtner, SIM Life Challenge missionary before he left for Kenya. We started with fortnightly prayer meetings in the Abrahams home in July 1992.

After a few weeks we sensed that we should not be alone in this venture. We needed the backing of other Christians. As a family we were attending the city branch of the Vineyard Church. Dave and Herma Adams, the local leaders, had a vision to reach out to the Muslims, although the denomination in general had no affinity as yet in that direction. Two members from the fellowship, Achmed Kariem, a Muslim background believer and Elizabeth Robertson, who had a special love for the Jews, joined us for prayer meetings in Wale Street, Bo-Kaap. We had as ultimate goal the planting of a church in Bo-Kaap, the most extreme Islamic stronghold of the Cape Peninsula. That was in those days regarded as quite a daunting challenge.

SIM had decided to stop their activities in Bo-Kaap, but Manfred Jung had brought me in touch with Hendrina van der Merwe, a fervent prayer warrior from the Cape Town Baptist Church. She was immediately ready and eager to join the new prayer group, introducing us to Daphne Davids, who also lived in Wale Street. Dave and Herma Adams, our local Vineyard Church leaders, gave their blessing that we could invite people for the regular prayer event. Soon Elizabeth Robertson and Achmed Kariem joined us for this purpose. In England Achmed had become addicted to drugs before he was miraculously freed through faith in Jesus. We learned a lot from him and the other converts from Islam.

We were less happy when Manfred Jung of the SIM team came to our home to discuss the respective ‘operating areas’ of ministry. We were not interested in rivalry and competition, preferring to network with other missionaries. We nevertheless agreed to concentrate on Bo-Kaap and Hanover Park where no other mission agency was operating at this time.

Fruitful Networking In the course of my representation work of our first year, I met Martin Heuvel, a pastor from Ravensmead. It was only natural that I would visit him when I helped prepare the October 1992 visit of Patrick Johnstone, the author of Operation World.[4] A touch of nostalgia was hardly to be prevented when I visited the premises of the Fountain Family Church complex in Ravensmead where our family property once had been.

When Shirley Charlton organised for me to preach at the Docks Mission Church in Lentegeur, another meaningful contact ensued. Pastor Walter Ackermann had a heart for missions second to very few in the Western Cape. I was soon preaching there regularly until Pastor Ackermann left the church at retirement age. Having ministered to Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, he was keen to introduce me to the prominent politician when he was the State President. Pastor Ackermann was rather concerned with the way the Mandela regime accepted financial assistance from the oil-rich Arab states. However, I could not quite see how a single meeting with President Nelson Mandela could influence matters. That I declined an opportunity that could have influenced matters, is something I do regret.

11. Tackling the Islamic Wall

At one of our Bo-Kaap prayer meetings, Achmed Kariem suggested that we should start a prayer meeting on a Friday at lunch time when the Muslims attend their major mosque weekly service. Such prayer events started in the Shepherd’s Watch, a little church hall at 98 Shortmarket Street near Riebeeck Square in September 1992.

Our vision, to initiate prayer groups all over the Peninsula, so that the spiritual eyes of Muslims might be opened to see Jesus as the Saviour of the World and as the Son of God, never really sparked. Here and there a prayer group started but petered out again. The only prayer meetings that kept functioning for many years was the one in Wale Street on every first Monday of the month and the Friday lunch hour prayer meetings which started at the Shepherd’s Watch in September 1992. (The latter one continued in the Koffiekamer of Straatwerk at 108 Bree Street until it had to close because of renovations to be made to the premises.)

Among the early regulars at the new Friday prayer meeting we had Alain Ravelo from Madagascar. Alain had been in the country for some time. He had been part of a group that met regularly, praying for the country when apartheid was still rife. He also had a vision for networking. Soon hereafter Arina Serdyn, an Afrikaner, joined us after she had retired from teaching. She was one of the best examples of networking. She was linked to our children’s work in Hanover Park while still having close links to the Ravelo’s who are linked to TEAM (The Evangelical Alliance Mission). Simultaneously she was also a co-worker of SIM Life Challenge.

Breaking new Ground through Prayer

At the Hanover Park City Mission congregation their Saturday weekly prayer meeting changed to a missionary prayer event once per month.

The Great Commission Conference at the Athlone Civic Centre in July 1992 brought about some direction for us when we met Pastor Bruce van Eeden of the Evangelical Bible Church. He wanted to start a children’s club in a clinic in Newfields, which is adjacent to Hanover Park. Being a neutral venue, we thought that this was just what the doctor ordered. We were really eager to include Muslims in our outreach. Hanover Park and Bo-Kaap became our target areas. With Norman Barnes, a Muslim background believer and former gangster drug addict as the leader of the City Mission prayer group, it was easy to share the burden of praying for these groups.

Operation Hanover Park

The vision to pray for missionaries called from their area was likewise gladly taken on board by the Hanover Park believers. The idea was completely new to them, but the Lord soon started answering the prayers miraculously. Within a few years various missionaries from the Lansdowne/Hanover Park/Manenberg area went abroad with different mission agencies.

The Saturday afternoon prayer meeting at the City Mission fused into the monthly prayer meeting of Operation Hanover Park towards the end of 1992. The stimulus for the latter operation was given by Everett Crowe, a police officer, who approached the churches in a last-ditch effort after the law enforcement agents could not handle the criminality of the area any more. Operation Hanover Park was formed with Pastor Jonathan Matthews of the Blomvlei Baptist Church as the pivot of the initiative.

Going into the last quarter of 1992, we had already become quite involved with children’s ministry at the Newfields clinic through Pastor Bruce van Eeden and with the establishment of Operation Hanover Park.

The latter initiative had prayer by believers of diverse church backgrounds as its main component. Dean Ramjoomia, a Muslim background believer, was eager to operate among the gangsters as the local missionary of the churches. Blomvlei Baptist Church, the home congregation of Pastor Jonathan Matthews, offered Dean and his family accommodation on the church premises and a few other churches pledged financial contributions. Things looked quite promising.

It seemed as if churches were finally getting out of their indifference in respect of Muslim Evangelism and gangsterism. Our suggestion to attempt solving the gangsterism problem on the long term - by starting Christian children’s clubs in different parts of the township - got many believers excited. Furthermore, it looked as if our vision - getting local churches working together in support for missionary work and in evangelism - was coming to fruition. At the same time, this would give an example to the rest of the country of how to combat criminality and violence! A miracle happened: Hanover Park experienced its ‘most quiet Christmas ever’, according to an older resident. A combined prayer effort by Christians from different churches was the mainstay of the operation.

An Attempt to unite Churches of the City Area

At the beginning of 1993 I attempt to unite churches of the city area, trying to get their congregants to pray for Muslims. In fact, I hoped that a network of prayer groups could be started across the Peninsula to this end. We organised for converts from Islam and various missionaries to speak in different churches of the Central areas of the city on the Sundays during Ramadan.

When I noticed that this merely resulted in entertainment - with no commitment in some way following it - I aborted the effort. Hereafter I would challenge churches to loving outreach to Muslims when they invited me to come and preach and bring along a convert. This did not deliver the goods. Hereafter I received far less invitations to come and preach. In retrospect I was wondering whether that move was the best one for that time. The bar was possibly raised too much – to use a term from High Jump!

So much more committed and interested was the WEC prayer group that we started in our home with a few elderly ladies. Margaret Curry, a member of this monthly WEC prayer group in our home, introduced us to the matron of St. Monica’s Maternity Home in Bo-Kaap. I vaguely remembered that my mother had mentioned that I was born at that institution. St. Monica’s hereafter played a special role in our getting to know people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

After initial hesitancy because of her complexion and foreign accent, Rosemarie would usually immediately harvest more trust from the patients when she mentioned that her husband had been born at St. Monica’s.

Gathering Believers from Muslim Background One of the most strategic moves of our ministry ensued when we started gathering the believers from Muslim background once a month. When Martin Heuvel suggested that we should try and gather these believers on a regular basis, he found an immediate resonance in my heart. Unknown to me, Alain Ravelo-Höerson and his wife Nicole, who hails from Reunion, had started making plans for such a group at their home in Southfield. Instead of doing my own thing, I decided to join them, functioning as a chauffeur, taking Muslim background believers along who worked in the city and from the Mowbray area with our VW Microbus. Independently I started another group with male Muslim background believers in Hanover Park. It was our vision to start little cells like that all over the Peninsula in conjunction with other missionary colleagues. This did not materialise however due to a spiritual backlash in September 1993.

A Drug Rehabilitation Centre?

We still thought that the establishment of a drug rehabilitation centre ‑ as a service of love and concern to the Muslim community ‑ would be a very effective way to make inroads into the ruling demonic forces. The related problem of gangsterism had spawned the establishment of Operation Hanover Park. A tract by our co-worker Dean Ramjoomiah, written in the slang of the gangsters, touched Ivan Walldeck,[5] a gang leader. Dean also succeeded to organize gangs to play soccer games against each other instead of shooting at each other. Soon peace was returning to the township. To God be the glory for the answer to the prayers! But hereafter Dean not only got estranged from the Blomvlei Baptist Church, but he also drifted away from the fellowship of believers after moral failure.

Operation Hanover Park was on the verge of achieving an early version of community transformation at the beginning of 1993 when a leadership tussle stifled the promising movement. What was left of the unity of the Body of Christ there, soon dissipated when a local pastor took over the leadership of the monthly prayer meetings without any vision for the spiritual dynamics at work.

Children’s Work The Alpha Centre of Hanover Park became another connection to the township. Vivian West was the Directress. (She had been an attendee of the student evangelical outreach at Harmony Park in the 1960s.) At the Alpha Centre we got involved with children’s and youth work once a week. We got the jitters there though when we discovered that some Muslim mother would peep secretly, to listen what we were doing. It turned out that the Holy Spirit had started touching her. A few months later she became the very first Cape Muslim we were privileged to lead to the Lord.

Our vision to train children’s workers in Hanover Park never came off the ground. We never found a solution to counter the lack of discipline and perseverance of gifted potential workers. That seemed to be part and parcel of the township sub‑culture.

Our involvement in the adjacent suburbs of Walmer Estate and Salt River started with prayer walking. In the latter instance it became the prelude to a children’s club that we commenced with Marika Pretorius - a SIM Life Challenge missionary colleague - after our return from ‘home assignment’ in Europe in 1995. In our absence she did further spadework with a holiday club in Salt River in the Burns Road Community Centre.[6]

At some stage Marika brought along her room-mate and co-worker from their Dutch Reformed congregation in Panorama, Jenny van den Berg. When Marika left for Germany to work among Turkish people, Jenny not only became our valued co-worker in Salt River, but in due course she would become one of the regular lecturers at the annual Muslim Evangelism course at the Bible Institute of South Africa that we started in 1996 under the auspices of CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims).

After we had handed the children’s work in Salt River to Eric Hofmeyer, Jenny van der Berg pioneered with a similar ministry in Woodstock, based at the renovated Baptist Church, She persevered with the ministry there for a number of years. Via our SIM missionary colleague Marika Pretorius who had a highly appreciated vision for networking and through whom we got to know our first Bo-Kaap families, we got acquainted with the Greek background nurse Cheryl Moskos, who was involved with children’s and youth work once a week at the Alpha Centre.

The Alpha Centre of Hanover Park became another important connection to that township. Our vision to train children’s workers however never came off the ground. We had no solution to counter the lack of discipline and perseverance of gifted potential workers. That seemed to be part and parcel of human nature, but even more so with regard to the township sub-culture. So many good ventures petered out after a while.

Operation Hanover Park was on the verge of achieving an early version of community transformation at the beginning of 1993 when a leadership tussle stifled the promising movement.

A Link through the Calls from Bo-Kaap Minarets

The Lord himself seemed to confirm our link to Cape Town Baptist Church using the eight-year-old daughter of one of the elders of the church. The girl had been terribly troubled by the calls from the minarets in the nearby mosques of Bo-Kaap. Her father, Brett Viviers, suggested that she should start praying for the Muslims.

That Heidi Pasques and her husband Louis were interested to become missionaries to a Muslim country became the factor that ultimately nudged me to join the congregation formally. Furthermore, two members of our Bo-Kaap prayer meeting, Hendrina van der Merwe and Daphne Davids, already belonged to the congregation. Yet, Rosemarie was not quite convinced that this was where we should be church-wise. Its proximity to Bo-Kaap, where we wanted a spiritual breakthrough, clinched the matter for me. There is where we wanted to plant a church. Rather hesitantly she agreed to join the church. For many years this would cause some strain in our relationship, notably when we were increasingly unhappy there. We had apparently not yet learned the lesson well enough that we should not proceed with major decisions like this without complete unity.

Attempt at Correction From our mission agency Rosemarie and I were expected to put a strong emphasis on missionary recruitment. However, we initially sensed an affinity to minister to street children. Soon after our arrival, the Lord guided us clearly towards an involvement with the Cape Muslims.[7] One of our aims at that time - 1992 - was a correction of the competitive spirit, which we discerned among the local missionaries. This was partly achieved by working together at a children’s club inter alia with Marika Pretorius, and helping TEAM missionaries with convert care by providing transport for the meetings at their home in the Cape Flats suburb of Southfield. The networking became especially practical through the initiative to join forces in the training of prospective missionaries to Muslim countries at the Bible Institute of South Africa. This started as an initiative to bring teaching on Muslim Evangelism at the Bible Colleges at the Cape, a project during which Manfred Jung and I joined forces.

12. Back to ‘School’

Apart from the many lessons that I still had to learn in the preceding years, I discerned that the Master was teaching me many more. A student from the Baptist Seminary, the Zambian Kalolo Mulenga, would become God’s instrument to lead me to the small Woodstock Baptist Church. There I started discovering more fully the lessons Jesus that had been teaching via his conversation with the Samaritan woman of John 4. At that congregation which had no full time pastor in 1992/3, I preached three sermons on that Bible chapter. I expanded on that in a repetition at the Cape Town sister fellowship which we joined in 1993. However, I collided with some of the missionary practices at the Cape when I went overboard. Some expatriate missionary colleagues especially found it rightfully unpalatable when I suggested much too radically that God could use the immoral lady better among her own people than Jesus. It was surely theologically flawed to suggest that a sinful woman was in that regard, so to speak, better than our sinless Lord.

My conviction that Muslim background believers could similarly witness much better to their peers and family than we as missionaries was however perfectly in order but this rubbed some of the colleagues up the wrong way. Being the only ‘Cape Coloured’ among many expatriate colleagues at that time, this was not very charitable and very unwise, interpreted by some as arrogant. Thankfully hardly any damage resulted from my haughty attitude. Nevertheless, I landed in some corner once again, from which I have never really recovered ever since.

Post-graduate Studies

Soon I was driving every Monday evening to Kalk Bay, doing a post-graduate course in Missiology at the Bible Institute of South Africa (BI) with a special focus on Islam. Things were auguring well for the future. Our friend Jutty Bredenkamp, who had visited us in Zeist a few times, had become professor of History at the University of the Western Cape. He assisted me in my research on the establishment and spread of Islam at the Cape for an assignment of the Bible Institute of South Africa. When I shared with him some of my discoveries, especially with regard to the misrepresentation of missions in the available literature - notably in the writings of Professor Robert Shell and Dr Achmat Davids - he encouraged me to publish my findings. One of my assignments about Jesus in the Qur’an – in conjunction with Bible Studies with monthly male Muslim background believers - would bring me to another great discovery, namely how the Cross of Calvary has been consistently, probably demonically, omitted in the Qur’an. After more research in Jewish and Talmudic literature, I wrote the treatise Pointers to Jesus which is accessible on our internet blog www. isaacandishmael.blogspot.com. I hoped to follow up my post-graduate studies in Islamics, by doing something at UWC in an effort to get in touch with Muslim students in a natural way. In consultation with the Dean of the theological faculty, Professor Daan Cloete (whom I knew from our common days in Holland) and the Missiology professor, I thought of doing a Masters, with the proviso that I would first do a course in Arabic. The idea was to use this as a spring board to get into dialogue with the next generation of Muslim leaders. This was not confirmed, but a WEC missionary colleague from Indonesia profited when I encouraged him to do this. He ultimately graduated there with a Ph.D.

Contacts with individual Muslim Leaders

I had the illusion that one should just be able to sit down with Muslim academics to show them how they have been deceived. Having seen how a few academics like Professors Willie Jonker and Johan Heyns had been used by God to bring Afrikaners to repentance, I hoped that Muslim leaders would then lead their people in a similar way into freedom once they understand the truth of the Gospel.

The contact with Dr Achmat Davids was quite cordial, but our conversations never went really deep. I learned a lot from him about the history of Islam, even though I soon challenged him on issues where I detected historical mistakes. He was a true academic, taking my opposition from an academic viewpoint in his stride. On theological topics he was however somewhat at a loss. This was just not his field of study.

Through the contact with Maulana Sulaiman Petersen I realised not only how naive my assumption was, but also that our work with Muslim converts had become quite perilous. When I suggested bringing Majiet Pophlonker along to discuss matters, Maulana Sulaiman Petersen was suddenly very angry and offended. How could I expect him to entertain murtats (apostates) in his home?

How demonic the Islamic bondage was we would see years later when our Muslim background friend Dr Mark Gabriel completed two doctorates – in Theology and Law – without making apparent impact, albeit that he had been a pioneer in exposing the violent nature of Islam in the mid-1990s.

Targeted Prayer

Prayer walks in Bo-Kaap resulted in the resumption of a fortnightly prayer meeting in mid-1992 in the home of Cecilia Abrahams, the widow of a Muslim background believer from Wale Street. The prayer meetings focused on reversing the effect of apartheid on Bo-Kaap. An interesting facet of this prayer meeting was the high percentage of Afrikaners. Next to Hendrina van der Merwe, an old intercessory stalwart, young ones became regulars.

Soon thereafter we also started with a monthly prayer meeting for the Middle East in our home in Tamboerskloof. This evolved from the fortnightly prayer event in Bo-Kaap. The vision grew to see Jews and Muslims reconciled around the person of Jesus Christ. This vision received fresh nourishment when we started praying on Signal Hill from September 1998 on every alternate Saturday morning at 6 a.m. (Signal Hill is situated just above three residential areas that are associated closely with the three Abrahamic religions. Tamboerskloof is a predominantly ‘Christian’ suburb, Bo-Kaap is still a vocal Muslim bastion and in the formerly ‘White’ suburb Sea Point the bulk of Cape Jews are living.[8])

On the Brink of Anarchy

Over the Easter Weekend of 1993 the whole country was thrown in turmoil when the news came through that Chris Hani, a leader of the Communist Party who headed set for high office in any new South African government, was assassinated. For a few days the country hovered on the brink of civil war. The brave action of a ‘White’ woman, who had seen the car of the assassins driving away, followed by the swift action of the police, prevented a major escalation of bloodshed.

Civil war may have sent us packing our bags to leave the country. The murder of Hani demonstrated the urgency of the situation, resulting in the date of the elections set soon hereafter for April 27, 1994.

Encouragements

If the arch enemy tried to give us one battering after the other, the Lord also encouraged us. In the second quarter of 1993 we felt that Rosemarie should visit her ailing mother again, to relieve her sister Waltraud. When we lived in Holland we would go to Germany in the school holidays to give Waltraud a break. But how could we finance such a trip? Just as Rosemarie and I started praying about the matter, the telephone rang. It was Waltraud from Germany. She and her husband had been thinking about funding a trip for Rosemarie to come and visit them. That would be much cheaper than trying to get the bed-ridden mother into an old-age institution for two weeks. My cousin Milly Joorst and her prayer warrior friend Magda Morkel were willing to come from Genadendal to cook for us in Tamboerskloof while Rosemarie was away. That was the beginning of a close prayer relationship to this couple.

When Rosemarie left for Germany in June 1993, things were not yet back to normal after the assassination of Chris Hani. Fearing the pending violent revolution, whosoever could leave the country, did so. While my darling was in Germany, money became available that her late father had intended as an inheritance for his grandchildren. For months we had experienced the need of a guest room. The need was amplified at the latest occasion with Milly and Magda.

The close relationship with Lothar and Barbara Buchhorn at the nearby German Stadtmission that contributed such a lot to make our children feel at home, was an added boon. But we did not feel comfortable to approach the Buchhorns repeatedly when we had visitors.

Rosemarie’s visit to Germany also contained a temptation. While being there, she heard how nothing was done to reach out to the many Turkish people of the area with the gospel. In order to share the good news with the children of the guest workers, it would not even be imperative to learn their language. In due course the enemy would abuse this snippet of information as a temptation to return to Germany. While Rosemarie was in Germany, she heard that an interest-free loan from Rosemarie’s mother and a bequest from her late father (for his grandchildren) was available. We were now in the fortunate position to consider buying a suitable house. Up to that point in time we did think about it, but a bond on a house with four bedrooms was well beyond our means. It was still the question whether the bank would grant us a bond because we had no fixed income. With Bo-Kaap and Hanover Park as the main areas of our activity, we looked at possibilities to purchase a house geographically somewhere between these localities, e.g. in the centrally situated suburb Pinelands. Soon after Rosemarie’s return to the Cape in July 1993 the whole of South Africa was shocked as possibly never before. On the last Sunday of that month terrorists killed a few congregants and maimed many believers wantonly in the St James Church, Kenilworth. It was a miracle in itself that not many more were killed. The arch enemy seemed to have planned this to become the start-shot of the revolution. It had been preceded by many attacks on innocent civilians. Although the date had been set for the first democratic elections, hardly anybody expected the run-up to the elections to be peaceful. Black townships like Khayelitsha were no-go areas for anyone who was not Black. Our friend Melvin Maxegwana had to flee the township for his life because the civic organisation had concocted allegations. As a pastor with contact to other races, he was suspected any way of collusion with the ‘Whites’. All around us people started making plans to leave South Africa. From overseas enquiries now came our way, when we were returning to Holland. Evacuation was taken for granted. The temptation to return to Germany to work among the Turks grew stronger by the day. But we had no inner peace to join the ranks of the emigrants. Satan had however overplayed his hand. The St James Church massacre turned out to be the instrument par excellence to start the movement towards reconciliation when those family members who lost dear ones received divine grace to forgive the brutal killers.

A Home of our own? At this time we received a letter from the owner of our home. The German owner wanted to sell the house. She gave us the first option to buy it. She was definitely not the only person who wanted to sell their house at this time. In fact, just about everybody who was in the position to emigrate, was considering this option. I was very sceptical when Rosemarie shared that the Lord had given her a vision of a house with a beautiful view in the city Bowl. I was absolutely sure that there would be no suitable house in the price range that we could afford. On Rosemarie’s insistence we went to an estate agent to indicate our interest in buying something in the area.

The first few houses that we viewed vindicated my scepticism. But then one day the agent phoned to inform us that a dilapidated house in Vredehoek, a suburb on the slopes of Table Mountain, was for sale. The re-possessed house was offered to the estate agent by the bank on condition that the potential buyer had to make an offer within two weeks. The mansion we entered at 25 Bradwell Road had broken windows and a stinking carpet in the living room which dogs had infested with fleas. But then Rosemarie saw the beautiful view the Lord had given her. I was however not yet convinced. We decided to ask Rainer Gülsow, a German friend who had been in the building trade, to give us his view. “A bargain, take it. You will never get this again.” This was as clear a cue as we needed. But the decision to make an offer within two weeks created some strain. The amount was still substantially higher than the price range that we had envisaged, but we had peace about making an offer.

A traumatic Weekend While these thoughts milled through our minds, an occurrence shook us tremendously. Whereas the violence and turmoil on the East Rand, in Natal or even Khayelitsha was still on the periphery of our lives, the weekend starting with the second Friday of September 1993 had us reeling. The theft of our minbus, followed by a demonic attack via a drug addicted conman brought home to us the spiritual dimension of the battle of the hearts. After the children had left for school at about 7.40h, Rosemarie and I had a short prayer session because we were to have our WEC prayer meeting in our home later that morning. For many years hereafter I tried to complete a report of those two days. I wrote down the following notes (slightly edited) shortly after the traumatic days:

9 a.m. Just after nine I leave the home with the little broom to sweep the car before I pick up the old ladies.

But the car is not there! I can’t believe my eyes. We wanted to get rid of the ancient 1976 combi, but not in this way! We had hoped to get something for it as a trade-in although it was getting less powerful.

Completely shattered, I could just run back to inform Rosemarie in Dutch, our home language: “De auto is weg!” I phone the police and Margaret Curry, one of the (WEC) prayer ladies, instructing her to phone the other participants. I would phone again when the police would have left. Then we would have to see whether we could still have our prayer meeting. Quite soon the police was there.

The occurrences of the next 30 hours were traumatic in the extreme. Our emotions swung like a very long pendulum from the heights of elation to the deepest despair. For many years hereafter I tried to complete a report of the events. But I was traumatized so much that I was never able to finish writing down the story within a reasonable time limit, in which the memory of the events was fresh enough. On the same Friday on which we discovered that our vehicle was stolen, a new ‘convert’ came to our one o’clock prayer meeting. Purportedly he was a drug addict who had just been ‘saved’. Thirty hours later we found out that he was a conman. In between, this fake convert had fooled us terribly. His demonic demeanour squashed our vision to work or challenge others towards the establishment of a drug rehabilitation in Cape Town almost completely.

The events of the weekend highlighted the temptation to return to Europe. The Lord however did not give us peace to leave the Mother City as yet. In fact, just under twenty four years later we are still living in the Vredehoek home that we subsequently bought.

The Holy Spirit inspired the compassionate sister Eta Kleber, an senior member of our Panweg Fellowship in Zeist to bless us with money to buy another vehicle. For R3,500 we could buy a 1981 Mazda that gave five years of wonderful service not only to us, but also for a few years thereafter to another couple in missionary service.

A sequence of special circumstances made the purchase possible. Melvin Maxegwana and Brett Viviers – whose 8-year old daughter the Lord had used to link us to the Cape Town Baptist Church and who was also unemployed at the time – toiled in harmony with Cameron Barnard, a believer from the Jubilee Church and the son of an elderly couple that was preparing to go to Turkey as WEC missionaries. The threesome renovated the dilapidated house in two months. The working together of Melvin and Brett especially was invaluable for that time. The example of a 'White' man working happily under a Black was not so common at all in South Africa!

Taking back what Satan had ‘stolen’

The indifference of the Cape churches for evangelistic outreach was a scourge all around the Peninsula. The situation in Woodstock and Salt River seemed to be the worst in this regard. The two suburbs had become predominantly Islamic within a few years after the increase of drug abuse, gangsterism and prostitution had driven Christians away.

We got involved there through a missions week with theological students at the Cape Town Baptist Church that Pastor Graham Gernetsky organized with the Baptist Seminary in March 1994. Reverend Gernetsky, the local minister, was open to the suggestion that we should do some prayer warfare with the students not only in Bo-Kaap, but also in Woodstock. We thus started an attempt to take back what Satan had 'stolen' territorially through drug abuse, prostitution and gangsterism.

Church Planting in Bo-Kaap?

There was also some fruit to observe in our ventures with Muslim converts. We invited Zane Abrahams, Adiel Adams, Salama Temmers and Majiet Poblonker to come to our home to discuss the possibility of starting a monthly meeting in Bo-Kaap as the forerunner to planting a church in the Muslim stronghold.

Only the former two could attend. The character of the planned meeting was completely changed when apart from Louis Pasques, one of the local Baptist church leaders, two other ministers from that denomination turned up. Nelson Abraham belonged to the mission committee of the denomination and Angelo Scheepers was the regional co-ordinator. Somehow they had hoped that we could plant a Baptist Church in Bo-Kaap. Graham Gernetsky, the senior pastor of the church, had already become excited when I pointed out during my teaching during the mission week at the church that their former daughter churches in Jarvis Street in Bo-Kaap and Sheppard Street in District Six were lost because of the Group Areas Act. (During the mission week we prayed at the locations where there formerly had been Baptist Churches.)

Perhaps it might have been not too difficult to try and start up a Baptist congregation in the building that now belonged to the Cape Town Photographic Society. However, I resisted the idea vehemently, thinking of all the converts in the Cape who came from different denominations. Adiel Adams supported me in my views, suggesting that we should have an over-arching ministry across the Peninsula. I insisted that a convert from Islam should lead such an initiative. Before long Friendship Ministries was born under the leadership of Adiel Adams. In retrospect, my insistence to have a non-denomination fellowship - supported by Adiel Adams was counterproductive. The Baptist leaders were not interested any more. (They were however also disappointed that I was not interested to relocate to Mitchells Plain to start outreach to Muslims there. I sensed a commission to Bo-Kaap.)

Peaceful Elections One morning in the period before the elections Pastor Walter Ackerman phoned to invite me to a meeting of pastors with Nelson Mandela, the leader of the ANC, in his church in Lentegeur. When Pastor Ackerman introduced Mr. Mandela he referred to the commitment to faith in Jesus of the political leader on Robben Island where Pastor Ackerman had been ministering during the apartheid era. Mandela did not comment, but significantly referred to the koeksisters that Muslims had been bringing to him there.

The miracle happened that has been documented in many books - peaceful elections countrywide. Nobody could deny that this was God’s supernatural intervention: the result of the countrywide prayer effort ignited by the St James Church massacre.

It soon became clear that the new State President was not following up on his Robben Island conversion. In fact, in the new parliament there was a disproportionate number of Muslims. President Mandela seemed to favour Muslims, some of whom like his first Minister of Justice, Dullah Omar, were of course very much involved in the freedom struggle. Discerning this development, Pastor Ackerman wanted to introduce me to the President privately, but I declined. I preferred to remain low-key, apart from the fact that I could see any purpose of such a meeting. I was not yet aware at that point in time of the visits of Nelson Mandela to the Kramat (Muslim shrine) of Robben Island from 1977.

My second sermon in the Cape Town Baptist Church on John 4 was held in May, just after the elections. I had invited Zane Abrahams to come and give his testimony at that occasion. Due to a misunderstanding, he didn’t pitch up. I erroneously thought that I now had to make up for it. I shared far too much from our personal experience in my sermon. That was unfortunate. I inadvertently offended some church members when I made a joke out of the fact that Rosemarie was expected to come into the country without her husband on our honeymoon journey. I was not asked anymore to complete my series of three sermons.

An important reason for the indifference to Muslims in the church hereafter was that the church leadership became embroiled in internal bickering. Interest in any outreach, least of all to the Muslims, waned in the next two months. A week of early morning prayer with Bob Bosworth hyped up some excitement but the writing was already on the wall. There was no real unity, the basic ingredient for any church outreach.

The indifference of the churches for evangelistic outreach was a scourge all around the Peninsula. The situation in Woodstock and Salt River was of the worst in this regard. The two suburbs had become predominantly Islamic within a few years. We got involved through a missions week with theological students at the Cape Town Baptist Church that Pastor Graham Gernetsky organised with students from the Baptist Seminary in March 1994.

More Lessons of March 1994

While lecturing at the mission week, Rosemarie and I received a big lesson in spiritual warfare as well. One morning early – we had times of prayer with the students starting at 5 a.m. - Rosemarie shared what she had ‘discovered’ in Galatians 1:8,9; namely that even an angel can bring a false message, if that would differ from the original Gospel revealed in Scripture. This amplified to us the origins of the Qur’an - that Muslims believe was brought to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. It is well-known that the crucifixion of Jesus is denied in the Muslim sacred book. We were filled with more compassion towards the Muslims when we discovered that they have been deceived in that way. This became to me the pristine beginnings of a major study of the angel Gabriel and other angels in the main scriptures of the Abrahamic religions, the Bible, the Qur’an, the Talmud and the Ahadith.[9] (The latter are Islamic traditions of Muhammad’s words and deeds that are regarded as equal in authority to the Qur’an.) The more I studied, the more I discovered how deceptive the arch enemy was, that he has indeed been masquerading as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14); that the consistent omission of everything alluding to the Cross in the Qur’an cannot be coincidence. The latter discovery surfaced when I prepared teachings for a group of male Muslim background believers.

Another lesson of the mission week was quite painful to me. When I taught the Bible college students something about the history of Islam in the Western Cape, I broke down in tears. I had to discover that deep in my heart there was still resentment towards the Dutch Reformed Church. I suppose that it developed when I discerned how the denomination opposed the government when Mr P.W. Botha and his Cabinet were ready to scrap the Mixed Marriages Act from the statute books. (This law had prevented my return to South Africa.)

The prayer walking in Woodstock was significant. As we strolled through the area, we also prayed at the ruins of the former Dutch Reformed Church in Aberdeen Street. Personally this church had some indirect nostalgia for me. Ds. Piet Bester, the minister I regarded as my mentor and the one who taught me the principles of evangelism, belonged to this church just before he came to Tiervlei (which later became Ravensmead) where he started his own ministry as a young minister in 1962.[10] On our prayer round through Woodstock we heard of a young pastor, William Tait, who had started to minister there from 1989.

The nearby Presbyterian Church was not a ruin yet, but likewise completely dilapidated. The area had become Islamic after the Christians had moved out. The initial reason for the decay was the expected implementation of Group Areas legislation to this area. In the 1990s the increase in drug addiction, prostitution and gangsterism were the causes of many Christians moving from the area.

The two derelict church buildings depicted the state of the body of Christ in the area. We prayed that the Lord would revive his church that the character of the suburb would change yet again, but this time in a positive direction. We discerned the same principle that saw vast areas of the world becoming Islamic. Just like the Middle East - where once biblical Christianity was thriving with leaders like Cyprian, Tertullian and Augustine - had been stolen by the enemy of souls through the slackness and indifference of the church, the devil had his way in Woodstock. We believe in the power of prayer. Just as Communism and apartheid were prayed down, I saw here a visible possibility to encourage believers to claim back the Islamic strongholds of the Middle East.

Slaughtering of Sheep in Bo-Kaap

In our low-profile outreach to Cape Muslims it seemed as if we could never penetrate to their hearts. We had been reading how Don Richardson had a similar problem in Papua New Guinea until he found the peace child as a key to the hearts of the indigenous people. We started praying along similar lines, to get a key to the hearts of Cape Muslims.

That Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son at their major Eid celebration, made me aware how near to each other the three world religions Christianity, Judaism and Islam actually are. The narrative of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of his son is central to all three faiths. As Christians many of us are aware that John the Baptist pointed to Jesus twice as the Lamb of God (1:29 and 1:35) but we tend to overlook that Paul, the prolific epistle-writing apostle, described our Lord as the Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7).

Witnessing the Islamic slaughtering of sheep in Bo-Kaap was a special blessing to my wife and me. The ceremony really brought to light the biblical prophecy of Isaiah 53 that I had learnt by heart as a child. To see how the sheep went to be slaughtered without any resistance reminded us of Jesus, whom John the Baptist called the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. We immediately knew that the Lord answered our prayer. He had given us the key to the hearts of Cape Muslims.

It was special to discover through my studies that according to a Jewish Midrash – which is very much part and parcel of the rabbinic oral teaching traditions – Isaac was purported to have carried the firewood for the altar on his shoulder, just like someone would carry a cross.

‘Blacks’ as future Missionaries

Two of the student participants at the mission week were Kalolo Mulenga and Orlando Suarez, respectively from Zambia and Mozambique. The seed had already been sown in my heart to see South(ern) African ‘Blacks’ as future missionaries. Now the increasing number of expatriate Africans in Cape Town came sharper into my focus as potential missionaries, just like the Samaritan woman of John 4. The lessons in cross-cultural outreach that the Master Teacher passed to us through this Bible chapter impacted me significantly. I used the conversation of our Lord Jesus with a woman from another culture as a prime example for the outreach to Cape Muslims, and we were now also concentrating on the local converts from Islam in our ministry. We not only discovered that many of them had not been discipled, but we also noticed how much more effectively they were reaching out to their own people.[11]

Prayers for Woodstock answered

It was special to see how our prayers for Woodstock were being answered. Soon after the mission week we heard that the local Assemblies of God fellowship under the leadership of their young pastor William Tait had started with early morning prayer meetings. Every weekday at five o’clock a few church members came together to seek the face of the Lord for their crime-ridden residential area.

Through Elisabeth Phala, a committed believer and a devout late member of this fellowship, we were introduced to one of her Muslim neighbours of District Six whose brother was Maulana Petersen, a well-known and influential Cape Islamic clergyman who had studied in Pakistan for many years, a scholar of note. I got to know him fairly well. When Edgar Davids became ill – his remaining kidney started giving problems – I began preaching more regularly at the minute Woodstock Baptist Church. The small fellowship took the step in faith to sell their original property, the residence, to buy the ruin of the local former 'White' Dutch Reformed Church.[12] With the help of American believers – some of them were retired Southern Baptists – the fellowship soon started renovating the dilapidated building.

Impact of Jesus Marches

Jesus Marches were planned for a Saturday in the month of June 1994 all over the world. A friend and missionary colleague from Sheffield (England) wrote about their preparations for a Jesus March in their city. Inquiries on this side of the ocean dropped the co-ordination of the whole Western Cape effort into my lap. I had high expectations when I co-ordinated about 20 prayer marches in different parts of the Cape Peninsula, liaising closely with Danie Heyns and Chris Agenbach with regard to the northern suburbs of the city and the immediate ‘platteland’ (country side). Strategic contacts were forged at this time, notably to a few churches in Mitchells Plain and Logos Baptiste Gemeente in Brackenfell.

I hoped that this venture would result in a network of prayer across the Peninsula. However, the initial interest that our second attempt - with an updated slide series - had stimulated in various churches, fizzled out. I shared at this time what I had researched about the influence of the Kramats, the shrines on the heights of the Cape Peninsula.

A strategic contact of this initiative was Trefor Morris, who was closely linked to Radio Fish Hoek, a pioneering Christian Cape radio station. Trefor had been a regular of our Friday lunch time prayer meeting until his retirement. He had been a link to the radio station when Avril Thomas, the directress, invited me to come and give some advice and teaching to the ‘prayer friends’ of the station who had to speak to those Muslims who phoned Radio Fish Hoek.

Trefor’s radio series on old churches was valuable to me as an inspiration for further research. It was a model for a series on biblical figures in the Qur’an and the Talmud that was transmitted via the radio station towards the end of 1997 and repeated in 1999. Another important contact of this initiative was Freddie van Dyk, a link to the Logos Baptiste Gemeente in Brackenfell. Freddie van Dyk’s attendance at our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting led to a very strategic hospital outreach every Saturday morning.

The Muslim Prayer Focus Another concrete positive of 1994 was the start of a movement towards Christ in many Muslim countries. In 1992 mission leaders had decided to call the Christians worldwide to pray for the Muslim world during the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. This was a natural follow-up of the call of Open Doors for ten years of prayer for the Muslim world in 1990. Everybody was still vividly remembering the spectacular result of the seven years of prayer for the Soviet Union.

Meeting Muslim Background Believers

The meetings with Muslim Background Believers had another important spin-off. At one of my first discussions with Manfred Jung, the idea came up to write down the testimonies of converts from Islam. After we had these families with us in our home in Tamboerskloof in June 1992, the seed had already been sown in my heart when I heard Majiet Pophlonker’s moving testimony. I enjoyed collating the testimonies from some of the Muslim background believers, sometimes making notes at meetings and once I went with a tape recorder to a house. The result was ‘Op soek na waarheid’, a booklet that we hoped to launch at a prayer seminar in January 1995. Elizabeth Robertson - one of our regular prayer warriors - was on hand to draw a beautiful cover for the booklet that was later also translated into English. I had hoped that the publication of Search for Truth could become a CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) joint venture. Knowing how volatile testimonies are, my missionary colleagues however all got cold feet. A violent group PAGAD (People against Terrorism and Drugs) had started rearing its head. In the end we had to publish the booklet only under the name of WEC.

Centre for Missions at BI

Remembering my personal experience in District Six in 1972, when I noted the deficit regarding Islam in our seminary curriculum, I approached various Bible Schools to find out what was taught about this religion at these institutions. I discussed with Manfred Jung of SIM the possibility of teaching Muslim Evangelism at different Bible Schools.

When Patrick Johnstone visited South Africa once again, he also spoke in the Moravian Chapel in District Six, where a student ministry from the Church of England had started on Sunday evenings. At that occasion I chatted afterwards with Dr Roger Palmer of the YMCA. He was also a board member of the Bible Institute of South Africa (BI) in Kalk Bay. He aired his vision to have a centre for missions at BI. I thought that we could perhaps link this with my suggestion to see Islam taught in conjunction with other Cape Bible Schools. After Colin Tomlinson, a missionary from MECO (Middle East Christian Outreach), had returned from the field on home assignment, the BI venue was secured.[13] I had personally preferred the centrally situated Bethel Bible School in Crawford, also as a clear message that we appreciated to have students of colour as well. (An interesting partnership developed at the course of January 1999 when local churches started sponsoring believers from other African countries to attend our course.)

Linked to the countrywide Prayer Movement The Missions Commission contact that was forged with Jan Hanekom of the Hofmeyr Centre and SAAWE in Stellenbosch turned out to be quite strategic. Through him I got linked to the countrywide prayer movement. Jan Hanekom was a spiritual giant of South African missions and the prayer movement. (He was prayerfully preparing entry into Bhutan as a tent-making missionary when he died suddenly a few years later after contracting some mysterious disease.) Local Christians joined in as Jan Hanekom led a group to pray at the Islamic shrine of Shaykh Yusuf, the Muslim leader generally acknowledged to have brought Islam to South Africa. At this occasion we were encouraged to concentrate on uplifting Jesus. This was not done in a spirit of condemnation. We prayed that Muslims would experience more of Jesus' love for them.

At so many other ‘battle events’ I suggested subsequently to the prayer warriors to join me in singing Jesus, we enthrone you, we proclaim you as King...

Our Ministry a Threat?

One of the students at our first BI course for prospective missionaries was a staff member of Youth with a Mission (YWAM) with a link to the His People Church. She asked me to come and teach at the YWAM base in Muizenberg.

That our ministry could be presenting some threat not only in the spiritual realms, got home to us after Rosemarie and I had been teaching at that Youth with a Mission base in the first quarter of 1996. At this time Mark Gabriel,[14] a former shaykh and academic from Al Azhar University in Egypt, had just come to Muizenberg to do a Discipleship Training School (DTS) there. He had to flee his home country after he had decided to become a follower of Jesus. Also in Johannesburg there had been attempts to assassinate him. The YWAM leaders requested us to host Mark for the practical part of his DTS. We gladly obliged.

The presence of Mark in our home turned out to be a very fruitful two-way experience; I learned such a lot from him, for example when he referred to the Ebionites. My own discovery that Muhammad, the founder of the religion, had been intensely influenced by the Ebionite Jews, led to more studies in Judaism and subsequently to my personal discovery of the Ebionite Jewish-Christian roots of Islam. I proceeded to examine other roots of that religion in heretical Christianity.

The unpaid Debt of the Church Very soon I detected that Christianity had a much greater guilt to pay in respect of Islam than I was aware. I learned that Muhammad had been misled by a sectarian view of Biblical belief. I discerned that this is only one of many facets of what I dubbed ‘The unpaid debt of the church’. I wrote a treatise with that title, as well as one on the roots of Islam in heretical Christianity. How sad I was when I discovered how Islam adopted one doctrine after the other from heretical Christianity; yes, that even reputable theologians and church fathers like Augustine played a role in this development.

And then there was the role of the emperor Constantine, driving a rift between the Jews and Christians when he gave special favours to the latter group. In my private study the guilt of the church through the estrangement between Jewish believers and other Christians because of the advantages given by Emperor Constantine had become quite significant. I was also reminded how paganism was made fashionable via the worship of the sun god, when the emperor made Sunday a compulsory day of rest in 321 CE. This would keep me uneasy for many years. When I shared this with Christians, there was surprise, but also opposition and denial. Like the harsh realities around the practices of apartheid in the not too distant past, it seems to be very difficult for followers of Christ to swallow these hard truths. All efforts to publish the treatises failed. However, I was also not trying very hard. I firmly believed – and still do - in divine timing of my publications, to the chagrin of Rosemarie who felt that I was procrastinating unduly.

Mark Gabriel on the Run again Mark’s presence was not without hiccups. He joined me on a preaching engagement at the Moravian Church in Elsies River on the last Sunday of July 1996 where our friend Chris Wessels was the pastor.[15] We offered copies of Against the Tide in the Middle East, Mark’s testimony and Search for Truth for sale. I made a serious blunder, omitting to warn the congregation to pray before they would pass any autobiographical booklet to Muslims. In the evening Mark shared his testimony at a youth service at the same venue, with young Christians from other churches of the area attending. Three days later, on Wednesday 31 July, it was clear that Mark’s life was in danger yet again. Heinrich Grafen, a German missionary colleague, phoned me to warn us that a Maulana was looking for Mark. A few minutes later the Maulana phoned me as well, enquiring after the whereabouts of the apostate from Egypt who wrote a booklet with very offensive material. It was possibly not very wise of Mark to include a comparison of Muhammad and Jesus in his booklet. He intimated in the monograph that Muhammad was inspired by the devil. The ‘co-incidence’ of a combined meeting of the home ministry groups at the Cape Town Baptist Church the same evening gave us the opportunity to share the need of a hide-out for Mark. That turned out to become a decisive stepping-stone for Debbie Zaayman.[16] She offered her flat as a hiding place because she was going away for a few weeks.

The public execution of Rashaad Staggie by PAGAD (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs) a few days later on 4 August 1996 was the next major stimulus for prayer. It brought personal relief to us, because in the resulting turmoil the fundamentalist Muslims apparently forgot to hunt further for Mark Gabriel!

14. The Backlash

A positive result of the effort of the Jesus Marches of the second quarter in 1994 was an intensification of contact with a few churches in the city area. As a result, a local congregation started to show interest in outreach to the Muslims. As one of my last initiatives of the year I was able to conduct a short course on Muslim Evangelism in that church. From that congregation an initiative was also launched to take a cross to ‘Devil’s Peak’, thus planting a seed into my heart to attempt the name change of the mountain peak. As we headed for Christmas, I looked forward to get the Vredehoek congregation involved in the loving outreach to the stronghold of Bo-Kaap. The laater suburb had become Islamic because of apartheid legislation. Christians and churches had to move out.

Effects of the 'Toronto Blessing' When I returned to the same Vredehoek church early in 1995 to introduce the Ramadan prayer booklets, the congregants were not interested any more. The ‘Toronto Blessing’ had completely distracted them. Also the Cape Town Baptist Church and a few other congregations of the Peninsula were negatively affected by this so-called “blessing” which started to look more and more like a curse. In a few cases satan abused carnal traits to cause serious rifts and internal problems in certain churches.

As a couple, Rosemarie and I were thrown into a dilemma when a Christian friend seriously meant to impress on us the absolute necessity of personally experiencing the ‘Toronto Blessing’. We would be missing out significantly if we did not have this blessing. We had our doubts however.

Unknown to me, the excesses of the ‘Toronto blessing’ had become rife at the City Bowl fellowship where I had taught. I witnessed profuse ‘laughing in the Spirit’ which I could not appreciate. I went there with the hope of getting quite a few of the 30-day Ramadan Prayer focus booklets among the people because before Christmas there had been such interest in Muslim Outreach in that fellowship. Now there was hardly any interest in anything else than an overt ‘laughing in the Spirit’ that appeared to me rather carnal.

The penny dropped for Rosemarie and me due to an experience with Tabitha, our youngest daughter at this time. We had to learn that it is not the‘laughing in the Spirit’, but our weeping for the lost that honours God more!

An evangelistic Seminar in a Muslim Stronghold The New Year 1995 started quite well for us. We received a substantial sum of money from Rosemarie’s godmother, a retired dentist. We saw this as God’s provision to enable us to book air tickets for our four-month home assignment in Holland and Germany. (Our home church is in the former country. Rosemarie’s family and other supporting friends are in the latter one). But we still needed funds for the printing of Op Soek na Waarheid.

Just after the summer school holidays we staged a Muslim seminar in Rylands Estate, a predominantly Indian residential area. Rainer Gulsow and his wife Runa, friends from the nearby German Stadtmission, introduced us to Gerda Leithgöb, a fervent intercessor from Pretoria, who was still fairly unknown to Cape believers. Their recommendation was quite influential, nudging me to invite Gerda to come and teach at our seminar in Rylands Estate. ‘Spiritual Mapping’ is a term that has been used in recent decades for research into spiritual influences, especially those of a demonic or anti-Christian nature. In respect of Islam, Gerda Leithgöb introduced Spiritual Mapping at the Cape at the prayer seminar. Her talk changed the outlook of many a co-worker when they discovered the value of strategic prayer.

That we could stage the evangelistic seminar in a Hindu-Muslim stronghold was quite significant. For the rest however, the seminar was not a resounding success. Our time schedule for the publication of the testimony booklet was much too tight.

Prior to the prayer seminar I gave to Gerda Leithgöb some of my research results on the establishment and spread of Cape Islam. Among other things I pointed to the apparent effect of the shrines on the heights above the Cape Peninsula.

I mentioned the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 60 as part of a devotional in our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting. Gill Knaggs attended this on a one-off basis. This started a friendship that resulted in her being called into the mission to the Muslim World. Soon Gill was used by God to nudge the Muizenberg base of Youth with a Mission (YWAM) to become more interested in the outreach to Muslims. Concretely, an interest developed in Egypt where they started to network with the Coptic Church in that country via links through Mike Burnard. He was the Western Cape leader of Open Doors. When we started with a radio programme in 1998, she was on hand for the writing of the scripts, something that she continued to do for many years.

Thrust into the Front Line We still had little clue of the spiritual forces unleashed during the Islamic month of Ramadan. We had to learn that because we had been thrust into the front line of the battle at the Cape. The battle heated up during Ramadan. Through various experiences we learned that we needed a lot of prayer covering. In two cases we escaped serious car accidents on the highway by a whisk. In one of the instances it was very near to a miracle that Rosemarie was not killed. Some strange things also happened to our 1981 model Mazda that we had bought after our minibus had been stolen. Twice I had to be towed to Warren Abels, a pastor who worked as a mechanic in Fairways. On both occasions he could not find anything amiss with the vehicle and also thereafter we had no problems with the car. It was evident that there were demonic powers at work.

Our nerves were tested to the extreme when our two-monthly financial allocation did not arrive. It had left the bank in Holland, but inexplicably it never arrived at the bank of our headquarters in Durban. In the meantime, we were forced to start using the money that was scheduled for the air tickets for our home assignment in Holland and Germany.

Disappointments At about the same time two believers - one of our co-workers and one of our prayer warriors - became involved in moral failure. The brother was a gifted convert from Islam. Both he and his wife were sensing some calling to missionary involvement. The effect on him was such that he became suicidal.

In the other instance, one of our young prayer partners became pregnant from a Muslim young man. She was firm though not to marry him and to become a Muslim subsequently. She knew enough of the bondage under which other women had come after landing in a similar situation.

These were not the first disappointments. Right from the start it had been part of our vision to see Muslims from the Cape not only to become followers of Jesus but also praying that some of them may even be sent to other parts of Africa and the Middle East. Achmed Kariem, one of the first Muslim background believers with whom we had been in close contact and who had been a blessing to us during the first year of our ministry, completed a year at Bible School in 1993. He subsequently changed his course of study to political science. He however retained the vision for some time to get to the Middle East as a covert missionary in some capacity. But then he moved to some unknown address. We eventually lost contact with him for many a year. Around the turn of the century we could however assist to link him up with Dr Robbie Cairncross at SACOB, and later with Pastor Errol Naidoo when he started the Family Policy Institute.

A Lesson from a special Plant The Lord encouraged us after someone had tried to steal a very special plant from our garden. The plant had one beautiful flower on it. Rosemarie had been awakened in the early morning hours by sounds outside the house. When we switched on the light, the damage was already done. The thief ran away, but this turned out to become God’s way to teach us an important lesson. The plant looked completely ragged and ruined after it had been uprooted. Someone from our home ministry group gave us the advice to put the plant back into the soil and tie a stick to it.

In her quiet time, the Lord ministered to Rosemarie: we had to be such a stick to the spiritual casualties. Unlike other Christians who would only judge and condemn our battered brothers and sisters, we had to support them. The object lesson turned out to be a special blessing to the suicidal Muslim background believer when we told the young brother about the plant. He had really thought that there was no purpose in life left for him. Now he could see how the plant had recovered. However, it still took a few years until he got back onto the road spiritually.

Turmoil and Stress It was a very special blessing for Rosemarie and me to witness how the mother of five children, four of which were attending our children’s club in Hanover Park - came through to a living faith in Jesus. As we discipled her, we didn’t even dare to mention baptism. In fact, when we shared the Gospel with her we spelt out the possible consequences quite clearly. The posibility of having to find accommodation for the mother with her five children, if her husband would evict her after her conversion, was a fact we had to face squarely. We were not ready for that eventuality. It was nevertheless a joy for us to lead her to the Lord - after she had phoned us - but we did not encourage her to share her new faith with her husband. We suggested that he should see the difference in her life first. Yet, this experience was a valuable nudge for the need of a discipling house where we could disciple new believers.

The run-up to our home assignment in Germany and Holland, scheduled to start at the end of March 1995, resulting in extreme turmoil and stress. Apart from the money issue - which was resolved just in time - there was a major problem to get seats on a flight. One international airline had a special offer for which we provisionally booked.

Some tense weeks followed when the airline with whom we had booked (but not paid), cancelled our seats. Cape Town was fast becoming a favourite destination for tourists after the favourable utcome of the elections in 1994. The tension in the family in respect of getting seats became quite bad as the uncertainty took its toll.

By this time also the other airlines had no cheap seats available for a family of seven. The best that we could manage was to get wait-listed on different flights. Because of the uncertainty of securing seats, everybody in the family - also the children - had forgotten our 20^th wedding anniversary on the 22^nd of March. I furthermore was involved in a minor car accident the previous day. My nerves were all but wrecked!

A Red-letter Day Our wedding anniversary - twenty years after the special ceremony in the Moravian Church of the Black Forest village Königsfeld - nevertheless turned into a red-letter day. On that memorable Wednesday morning we baptized five converts who came from Islam, including the female convert from Hanover Park and Nasra Stemmet from Woodstock.

On the evening of 22 March the home ministry group of our fellowship sprang a big surprise on us. We had no clue what they were up to when the group came to our home for a special farewell. Everybody in the family had forgotten that it was our wedding anniversary, but Carol Günther did not. She requested the participants of our home ministry group to bring along some eats to make it a very special celebration. The day became perfect when the gentleman of Club Travel, who had been working overtime, phoned at approximately 9 p.m. that he could secure seats for all of us. This was thus only a few days before our intended departure! The three older children could fly on a youth fare of Lufthansa, with the rest of us flying Air France.

Praying with Pastors What a blessing it was when we heard that Edgar Davids had accepted the call to be the Woodstock Baptist Church. This augured well for a close link to the Cape Town Baptist Church only a few kilometres away, where Louis Pasques was now the interim pastor. Edgar Davids proved to be a real visionary and a man of God, along with his devout wife Sandra.

Just before our departure for Europe, I was praying with a few students of the Baptist College who had fellowship meetings in the home of the Davids family in Mountain Road, which was also the venue of the blessed small Woodstock Baptist Church fellowship. The visionary Edgar Davids - who still was a final year seminary student, was the initiator. I was excited, asking myself whether pastors would at last start to pray together for revival in the islamised residential area.

This initiative appeared to be not very persevering but after my return from a four-month home assignment in Europe, I did pray with Edgar Davids and Louis Pasques a few times. A split in the Cape Town Baptist Church as a result of the ‘Toronto Blessing’ left me praying with Louis regularly in an attempt to save the sinking ship .

‘Home’ Assignment in Germany and Holland In Germany and Holland we spread our vision of a prayer network across the Western Cape among the Christians. I thought that this should be a focus of our work on our return to South Africa. Some seed had been sown already the previous year when I was involved with the organization of the Jesus Marches.

Hermann and Mechthild Frick, my long-time friends since 1969/1970, were God’s instruments in linking us up with Doris and Freddy Kammies, who were also in Southern Germany at the time. The couple had been working as missionaries with OM on one of their ships and in Canada. Doris had previously been volunteering at the Elim Home and Freddy hailed from the township of Q’town near Athlone. We paid them a visit, after which they considered joining WEC. In due course they were in Cape Town, praying about joining our Muslim outreach team. They did not sense a call to join our team but a further few years on Freddy and Doris were pioneering a ministry among sexually broken people.

Back at the Cape Within our own family the first few days back at the Cape were quite traumatic. We returned from an extraordinary hot summer in Holland to an icy Cape Town. Our son Samuel promptly developed double pneumonia. Early on the first Sunday morning after our return we had to rush him to Somerset Hospital. It was touch and go or we could have lost him. That our eldest son Danny, 18 years old in the meantime, prayed with me when things looked very critical, was a special blessing indeed!!

After our return to Cape Town from our ‘home assignment’ in August 1995, there were also other blessings. It seemed as if our vision of a prayer network across the Peninsula was slowly coming off the ground. Gill Knaggs, who had been touched at one of our Friday prayer meetings, now helped with the English translation and editing of my booklet containing the testimonies of Muslim converts Search for Truth. She also began a weekly prayer group for the Muslims in her home. Was this the start of the exciting fulfilment of our vision to get a network of prayer across the Peninsula? This was unfortunately not to be. However, the group of believers would pray at Gill’s home in Muizenberg for quite a few years.

We regarded a network of prayer groups for the Muslims across the Cape Peninsula as one of the priorities. Towards this goal I thought it imperative to invite pastors primarily for united prayer. We were thrilled when things had actually started to develop while we were overseas.

Encouragements What a joy it was to find out that the idea had already been kindled in the hearts of pastors. In different parts of the city pastors were coming together for prayer on a weekly basis. This was very encouraging. I heard of a group around Pastor Theo Bowers and Ernst van der Walt. Before long I was attending a pastors’ prayer meeting in Rondebosch and another one in Cape Town. There was hardly any vision as yet to pray for the Muslims, but a first goal seemed to be on its way, namely to see pastors coming together for prayer.

With Louis Pasques and Edgar Davids we started up another group in the city. I already saw in my dreams a prayer network in the city coming to fruition.

Through Magdalene Overberg, a long-time youth friend, we also heard about Fatima Hendricks, a Muslim lady who was working with Edith le Grange in a factory in Woodstock. When we visited the factory during a lunch-hour, it turned out that Fatima had already secretly asked the Lord into her life. Hereafter we visited the factory regularly at lunchtime to encourage her. This was the pristine beginning of lunch-time ministry in factories. Magdalene also kept contact with a few MBB’s over many years, as well as supporting Linda Beig, a believer from our church who was married to a Pakistani. I was barred from their home after I had made a mistake by praying for their son in Jesus’ name in the presence of the Musim husband. He could not appreciate that.)

A satanic Attack After our return from Europe we saw the need of extra discipling for Shahida[17] from Hanover Park. Predominantly for this specific purpose we had put our car at Josephine and Adiel Adams’ disposal while we were in Europe, but we discerned the necessity to secure more regular fellowship and spiritual nurturing for Shahida. Her husband was often unemployed. Thus the financial needs of the family were severe. We invited her to come to us once a week to do household chores for which we had no time.

On one of these occasions she was ironing in the kitchen while I was deliberating with Manfred Jung, our SIM missionary colleague, in the living room. The Holy Spirit ministered to her so strongly that she almost wanted to interrupt our meeting. She knew for certain that she should dedicate her children to God in a church. Just like the baptismal service in March that had been performed on a Wednesday morning, she hoped that the dedication service could be done inconspicuously. We arranged with Charles Kadalie, the pastor of the City Mission fellowship in Hanover Park, to have the service on a Sunday afternoon. The 5^th of November 1995 was earmarked for the special occasion.

A memorable Day and its Aftermath The memorable day when Shahida came along with her son had an interesting sequel. Rosemarie gave the boy a copy of the comic strip Jesus Messiah to read while his mother was working. We had brought the picture books along from Holland. (These books are the brainchild of Willem de Vink, a member of our home church in Zeist. Someone from another fellowship in the Netherlands had donated us some copies to take along to South Africa). What a privilege it was to be present at the dedication of the five children of Shahida on the 5^thof November, 1995 at the G.H. Starke Centre with Pastor Charles Kadalie. A few weeks later Shahida told us what had transpired after her husband had discovered the comic strip Jesus Messiah in their home. Angrily he enquired from their son: “Where did you get it?” Fearing the worst, the boy replied timidly: “I got it from Aunty Rosemarie!” In a harsh commanding tone the dad responded: “Give it here, I want to read it!” This brought Rosemarie to a brilliant idea. She bought a copy of the full picture Bible at the Scripture Union bookshop in Rondebosch. It was not so cheap at all, but we regarded this as a good investment in the Kingdom. When we invited the whole family over for Christmas lunch, they also received a family present. This was spot on. Hereafter Shahida’s husband went to bed with the picture Bible and arose the next morning with it before he would go to work. This continued unabatedly until the fasting month of Ramadan 1996.

Networking between various Agencies and Churches We received a personal link to the new 30 day Prayer Focus booklets. I had been quite disappointed when Bennie Mostert from OM, who conducted the international contacts for the booklet, announced that they had to cancel the printing of the new edition because they couldn’t find up-front funding. I was amply consoled when our colleague Manfred Jung encouraged me to continue the negotiations with Bennie Mostert. It ended with us printing a few thousand copies in Cape Town. My hope to see information about Islam in South Africa being spread and prayed for, was realised when we inserted a page to that effect in this edition. In the school holidays our whole family and a few other young people from the Stellenberg Chapel, Manfred’s home church in Pinelands, were called in to assist with the manual collating of the booklets. The move secured the uninterrupted publication of the 30 day Prayer Focus in South Africa until the age of the internet made the method redundant. Subsequently two different Ramadan prayer booklets were printed. One with Afrikaans readers in view was the baby of Neville Truter, a faithful persevering missionary colleague since the 1970s. In the new millennium different missionary colleagues linked to Christian Concern for Muslims (CCM) published Light the Darkness annually – giving prayer fuel for Christians during Ramadan.

The spiritual Battle heats up once again

After our experiences of the previous year, we knew now that the spiritual battle would increase during the Islamic fasting month. We put ourselves more consciously under the blood of Jesus and also requested prayer covering from many quarters. At Shahida’s home in Hanover Park, her husband could get into frenzy over any little matter. He noticed that she would go to the shop on Sundays wearing her kitchen apparel, but staying away unusually long. Her husband knew that he could hurt her terribly, threatening to tear up the picture Bible.

We were quite excited to hear that he was still reading the Bible with the pictures every morning when he woke up. Finally however, what we all feared, happened: getting into a rage for some flimsy reason, he tore the picture Bible in two. Only demonic power could achieve this feat!

* * *

Alan Kay resigned his well-paid job at Telkom to become the administrator of the Cape Town Baptist congregation. He became the leader of a church home ministry group at his home while we were overseas. As Alan was living just a street away from us, we joined his group on Wednesday evenings after our return from Europe instead of resuming the one at our home.

In due course we told the group the story of the torn picture Bible. Gershin Philander, a local believer and a participant of the home ministry group, worked at the printing department of the University of the Western Cape. He suggested that we bring the torn parts of the Bible to him. Wonderfully he hereafter repaired the Bible in such a way that one could still read the Book without too much of a problem. How surprised Shahida's husband was when his wife returned the restored Bible to him after a few weeks.

Start of new Facets of Ministry

At one of the first Friday lunch hour prayer meetings of early 1996 Freddie van Dyk, a believer from the Logos Baptiste Gemeente in Brackenfell, joined us. I got to know him when I was organizing Jesus Marches in 1994. At this Friday lunch hour prayer meeting we prayed about our vision to get into the hospitals to visit people outside of the regular visiting hours. Freddie mentioned a training course in pastoral counselling that his wife had attended. When we followed up this information, it resulted in Rosemarie attending such a course, along with other befriended ladies. Dr Henry Dwyer, who headed up the pastoral work at the hospitals in the Cape, was an old friend of mine from our connections in the VCS, the student Christian movement in the 1960s.

Rosemarie was quite impressed by the commitment and quality of the participants at the course. One of the ladies aired the bright idea of having a teaching course in Muslim Evangelism at the same venue in Lansdowne. Dr Dwyer welcomed the suggestion of giving me a slot at one of his teaching sessions to invite the participants to our proposed course, due to start on the 27th of August, 1996.

A Lebanon Scenario?

The PAGAD (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs) issue highlighted the fear of and resentment (sometimes even hatred by some Christians) towards Muslims. The veiled threat of a Muslim state was now mentioned more often than was healthy for good relations between the adherents of the two major religions at the Cape. On Friday 16 August 1996, unknown arsonists broke into the Uniting Reformed Church in Lansdowne. The arson attempt on the church building was thankfully downplayed in the press. Satanists were accused of the arson attempt. Thankfully the damage was not too extensive.

When Pastor Walter Ackermann phoned me after reading a report in the newspaper, we were seriously challenged. a course one evening per week would have started at that church soon hereafter. We had unwisely called the course ‘Sharing your faith with your Muslim neighbour’ in the pamphlets that we had printed to advertise the course. It could not be ignored that some intolerant Muslims tried to destroy the venue. It was obviously also intended to intimidate us. This was possibly the reason for the church building, where we were planning to have the course, to be targeted for an attack.

We were unaware that Lansdowne was actually a PAGAD stronghold! With the arson attempt occurring only two weeks after the Salt River execution of Rashaad Staggie, the frightful possibility of a Lebanon scenario, where the Christians and Muslims would fight each other, drew scaringly close. It challenged followers of Jesus to get their act together. A wave of prayer followed! Thereafter we decided to put out another ‘fleece’. We decided to test the famous but ill-fated St James Church that had been attacked in July 1993 as a possible venue for our course, instead of cancelling it outright.[18] The name of the 10-week course (one night per week) that eventually did take place at the St James Church in Kenilworth, was changed to ‘Love your Muslim neighbour’.

A positive Change towards Refugees

The attitude in the Cape Town Baptist Church to which we were linked, hereafter gradually began to change positively towards refugees. West and Central Africans started attending the church, especially when special French-speaking church services were arranged first monthly and later twice a month. We hope that this could help to equip the French-speaking believers for loving outreach to the Muslim French-speakers from our continent. This did not materialise but the word spread. In due course also other churches started opening their doors to refugees.

The need for refugees to get employment was the spawn for the English language classes at the church to be revived. Previously English classes were predominatnly used to assist foreign tertiary level students. The simultaneous need for a discipling house for Muslim converts and a drug rehabilitation centre gave birth to the Dorcas Trust. I hoped that the city churches could take ownership of these ventures. That turned out to be easier said than done. Yet, the Dorcas Trust was finalised in 1998.

A difficult Month

I had to discover anew: If there were to occur a spiritual breakthrough, a revival in the Mother City of South Africa, it would be God’s sovereign work.

October 1996 was a month when we were very much involved in spiritual warfare, often at the receiving end. I started writing a diary that went as follows at some stage: “The attack starts not only very early in the month, but also early in the day. Neither Rosemarie nor I was able to sleep properly. For Rosemarie it was the second sleepless night in a row. She shares her concern that we were getting nowhere with our ministry: ‘For almost five years we have toiled here in Cape Town. And what have we achieved? Almost nothing! We might as well go back to Holland.’ I concede that I also feel completely depressed.”

The necessity of church unity was more than evident. It had to become one of our priorities! The risk of spiritual warfare became very evident when the arch enemy tried to attack us via the children. This seemed for Rosemarie to be the signal for us to stop with our ministry. To her the price was too high to have to sacrifice anyone of our children. Reminding her of the false alternatives, I had to face years ago when someone suggested that I should choose between my love for her and that for my country, I pointed out that we should fight in prayer for our second son, who seemed to be targeted yet again.[19] This definitely paid off. He came through the crisis with flying colours. He later became pivotal for the ministry of Cross Culture, a ministry among young people of a few city churches while he studied at Cornerstone Christian College.

On the other hand, Rafael’s close friendship with Gildas, a refugee Congolese teenager, helped to take the church as a whole to great heights in outreach to the poor and needy, setting an example for many other churches in the Cape Peninsula. The two were also the guinea pigs for a ministry to teenagers at the church. In due course a flourishing youth mnistry ensued with the basket ball facilities as a significant attraction.

Soon after our prayer stint of October 1996 we heard of rifts in various churches near to the Muslim stronghold Bo-Kaap. It was a sort of breakthrough to me that we could stage the launching of the new Ramadan booklet at the historic St Stephen’s Church, i.e. on the doorstep of Bo-Kaap only a few months after the great PAGAD scare.

Confession once again

It came really as a special boon when Christians overseas starting organising a Reconciliation Walk following the path of the Crusades. Bennie Mostert (Jericho Walls) faxed the lengthy confession of the organisers through to our Cape CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) Forum on the very day that we had one of our meetings. It looked to me as if God had his hand in it. But it turned out to be no cakewalk. In our meeting the lengthy confession was turned down out of hand because it was regarded as not relevant for us in South Africa. I managed to salvage the idea, suggesting that we should then write our own confession. At our Easter Conference 1997 at Wellington I reminded the missionary colleagues of the idea at a meeting of the leadership. They promptly gave me the homework to write a draft and send it to the relevant people in preparation for our leaders meeting in October, 1997. It looked pretty obvious to me that the bulk of the colleagues were just procrastinating, but I did not want to let them off the hook so easily. The matter was much too important to me for completely leaving it at that.

14. New Initiatives

We had to relocate our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting to the Koffiekamer below the St Stephen’s Dutch Reformed Church when the premises were sold. The prayer meeting soon became the start of yet another venture. A believer from the suburb Eerste River on the northern outskirts of the city, who had been a regular in the beginning of our prayer meetings, popped in again one day. He challenged us, mentioning the many French-speaking Muslim street traders from West Africa, who have been moving into the city: ‘Have you ever considered doing something about bringing the Gospel to them?’

Louis Pasques, who was raised in an Afrikaner set-up, had become the senior pastor of the Cape Town Baptist Church. Alan Kay resigned from his well-paid job at Telkom to become the administrator of the congregation.

Ministry to the Foreigner in our Gates

We started to pray seriously about the issue of foreigners. God surely used these occasions to prepare Louis Pasques’ heart. He had not only been a regular at the Friday lunch-hour prayer meeting in the Koffiekamer, but he also speaks French. Due to this fact and possibly also because of a brave sermon in which Louis confessed on behalf of the Afrikaners for the hurts to people of colour, West and Central Africans started attending the church, especially when we arranged special French-speaking church services first monthly and later twice a month. When the destitute teenager Surgildas (Gildas) Paka pitched up at the church, Louis and his wife Heidi sensed that God was challenging them to take special care of the youngster. When Louis and Heidi had their parents over for a weekend visit, they asked Alan Kay to accommodate the Congolese teenager. Gildas crept into Alan’s heart, igniting an extended and unusual adoption process.

A positive Change towards Refugees

The attitude in the Cape Town Baptist Church hereafter gradually began to change positively towards refugees. The word spread, so that in due course also other churches started opening their doors to refugees.

The need for refugees to get employment was the spawn for the English language classes at the church to be revitalised. (Carol Günther, an American missionary, and Heidi Pasques had been giving English lessons to paying foreign students.) The simultaneous need for a discipling house for Muslim converts and a drug rehabilitation centre gave birth to the Dorcas Trust. I hoped that the city churches could take ownership of these ventures. That turned out to be easier said than done. Yet, the Dorcas Trust was finalised in 1998.

Two F’s - Frustration and Fright

The WEC conference of 1996 was memorable in more than one sense. At an international leadership conference in 1994 the various sending bases were challenged to look at the remaining unreached people groups in respect of the gospel in their geographical areas. As I had already thought much along those lines, e.g. through my document about South Africa as a goldmine for missionary recruitment, I took on the challenge to research the topic before the next conference for Southern Africa. I expected to be given the opportunity to share the result of my research with the rest of the conference in May 1996. Here however I experienced one frustration after the other until I had to leave by bus again on the Friday, without being given the opportunity to report back. On the positive side, I was encouraged to hear of so many believers of Indian descent in Durban. This was to me something of a model for Bo-Kaap that was still the prime Muslim stronghold of our country.

The same conference in early May 1996 had an interesting aside when we heard that Ahmed Deedat, the well-known Muslim apologist, was admitted to hospital. With a missionary colleague from Brazil I went to the hospital where we prayed for Deedat, who was however in a coma.

Deedat had gone too far with his arrogant approach! He published a large offensive advertisement in a Durban newspaper. Local Christian clergymen including the missionary Dave Foster of Africa Evangelical Fellowship (AEF), requested Deedat to retract the offensive remarks. They warned the well-known Muslim leader that he would have to reckon with God's wrath in the case of his refusal to do it.

True to his reputation for arrogance, Deedat refused to comply. Promptly he was knocked down by a stroke. An instance of divine wrath would have been a logical conclusion. But even after his partial recovery he gave no indication of remorse. For many years Deedat remained in a condition that resembled a coma, completely out of action.

15. Under personal Attack

The evident demonic attack via one of our children in October 1996 was not an isolated experience. Other instances were not so stark, but nevertheless very real. However, every time we experienced how the Lord would bring us through supernaturally. We are so thankful for intercessors in different parts of the world who were praying for us. We would otherwise hardly have been able to survive all the onslaughts mentally and spiritually.

Ramadan Attacks

In previous years we had experienced major spiritual attacks during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In 1994 I twice had the experience that our car had to be towed away but no fault to be found. The year thereafter Rosemarie was almost killed in a car accident and during the same period we skidded on the high way and miraculously came out of the incident unscathed. In 1997 we experienced it almost as a satanic taunt when Rosemarie had symptoms of being pregnant just after Ramadan. That would effectively have ruled her out for much of our ministry.

Just prior to this we were so happy when a friend of Bo-Kaap brought her in touch with a home-craft club in the area. A pregnancy would have meant an abrupt end to her involvement with the new friendships. A scan did not show any foetus. A month or two later, when she was admitted to hospital for a suspected miscarriage, there was no trace of any pregnancy when the gynaecologist scraped the womb. What was this all about?

Crises in the Ministry

I had to learn the hard way through this experience once more that we should not give satan too much honour. Soon we discovered that the deceiver was actually attacking our marriage relationship once again. A tension developed as Rosemarie could not accept the validity of my office ministry, including research and writing. Indeed, I was far too much on the phone, organizing teaching courses and working behind the computer. This was happening at the expense of person-to-person contact. Communication between us was completely insufficient.

The Lord used the crisis to help me regain sight of the priority of actual outreach to the lost and the needy. The 1997 version of the Ramadan backlash appeared not as obvious. The trauma was nevertheless very real when the sale of the CEBI Bible School to a Muslim buyer came up during a prayer conference with our friend Gerda Leithgöb of Herald Ministries. This was the very same building at which we had been called into Muslim Outreach in January 1992.

During the year 1997 I had to see many of my hopes and dreams dashed. All our efforts to see the strategic old CEBI Bible School saved for Christianity, failed. It had been my dream to see this building used for the initial language teaching of future missionaries. There was little else to do than to take the latest disappointment in my stride.

A significant evangelistic Campaign

Pastor Walter Ackerman from the Docks Mission Church in Lentegeur was one of few pastors I knew at this time who had a very broad vision for both missions and prayer. I could call on him on short notice for assistance, for example when a friend from Holland wanted to be baptised in the middle of winter (It was Pastor Walter Ackerman who phoned me, after he had been reading in the Week End Argus of the arson attempt of a church in Lansdowne in August 1996).

It was really significant for the Cape Town metropolis in April 1997 when churches across the Cape Peninsula and from almost every denomination joined hands for a big campaign on the Newlands Cricket Stadium with Franklin Graham. Pastor Walter Ackerman from the Docks Mission Church in Lentegeur and Pastor Elijah Klaassen from a Pentecostal fellowship in Gugulethu/ Crossroads, worked tirelessly to enlist people from the Cape Flats and Black churches respectively for this event. Transport from the townships was provided free of charge. This thus became the model for the Transformation stadium events of the new millennium.

Eben Swart became the Western Cape coordinator for Herald Ministries, working closely with NUPSA (Network of United Prayer in Southern Africa), which had appointed Pastor Willy Oyegun as their coordinator in the Western Cape. Important work was done in research and spiritual mapping, along with Amanda Buys, who founded Kanaan Ministries. Some of her clients had been involved with satanism. Ernst van der Walt (jr) had ministered in China with OM on short term and Amanda Buys had been involved with the counselling of Christians with psychological problems.

More Knocks

The general disappointment at the basic disunity among our missionary colleagues was only one of a series of knocks. Just prior to the Easter conference we had to bury my father on the Elim mission station and shortly thereafter Rosemarie had to fly to Germany for the funeral of her mother.

While Rosemarie was in Germany, I spoke to Nadia telephonically. Nadia manipulated matters cleverly, so that I arranged with Rosemarie telephonically that we would take her into our home after Rosemarie’s return from Germany. Louis and Heidi Pasques, our pastor and his wife, agreed to accommodate Nadia until Rosemarie would be back. This we did at great personal cost. At the same time this highlighted the need for a discipling house.

I was encouraged when I visited my dear friend Jakes - breaking away for a few minutes from the CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) conference in Wellington. He shared his resolve to go on pension soon. Thereafter he wanted to get involved with Muslim outreach again. That made me quite happy, but it was not to be. A little more than a month later he suffered a stroke. When I prayed with his wife Ann in hospital, he was in a coma, with little hope given that he would survive. The next day our dear Jakes was with the Lord.

When Rosemarie and I arrived at the church for his funeral, there was not a single seat available.

I did not mind at all to sit on the wooden step just next to the coffin, which contained my late friend.

On the same evening of Jake’s funeral, Rosemarie had symptoms of having had a stroke as well. For a few minutes she could not see anything. (Nadia had manipulated in such a way that Rosemarie felt compelled to drive her to friends after our return from Wellington, although she was extremely exhausted.)

Divine Provision

Ekkehard Zöllner, a befriended doctor, referred us to a Christian specialist who quickly diagnosed that it was a nervous breakdown caused by stress. I was very near to burnout myself, completely exhausted - battered and bruised by the circumstances of the weeks prior to my best friend’s funeral. The specialist, to whom we were referred, ordered us at least two weeks’ rest. It was so good that Joyce Scott, our missionary colleague from England, a nurse, was on the spot. She spoilt our children to the hilt as we left for Betty’s Bay, to the holiday home of the Edwards family from our church.

Soon thereafter, Maria van Maarseveen, a member of our home church in Holland, came to do her Bible school practicum from the Africa School of Missions with us. With Nadia in the very late state of her pregnancy, it was wonderful to have Maria, a qualified midwife, with us. During this period Maria sensed a call to come and join us, after completing her Bible School training.

Many Hopes and Dreams dashed

During the course of the year 1997 I had to see many of our hopes and dreams dashed. All our efforts failed to see the strategic old CEBI Bible School saved for Christianity. We had especially thought of it as the building for our new national WEC headquarters, but it had also been my dream and vision to see the building used for the initial language teaching of future missionaries to all parts of the world.

How wonderful the prayer seminar with Gerda Leithgöb at the former Cape Evangelical Bible Institute was! This transpired still in April 1997. The news of the proposed sale of the former CEBI Bible Institute to Muslims coincided with the prayer seminar. What a sense of unity we experienced in spite of the sword of Damocles hanging over all of us. (The late Pastor Danny Pearson led the believers of the fellowship - that was using the premises at this time - on many a prayer walk in the area.)

Gerda Leithgöb approached me to become the co-ordinator for the Western Cape of Herald Ministries, but I had no peace to accept. I saw the need for strategic prayer, but nowhere did I sense a call for leading intercession events. Eben Swart turned out to be a much more capable person and gifted for that function.

The visit by Cindy Jacobs from the USA brought a significant number of ‘Coloured’ and ‘White’ intercessors together at the Shekinah Tabernacle in Mitchells Plain. She confirmed the need for confession with regard to the blight of District Six. When Sally approached me in October 1997 about the matter, I had already started to prepare a visit of intercessors from Heidelberg (Gauteng) that had been referred to me by Bennie Mostert.

Like-minded Partners

In his divine wisdom the Lord had already started to raise like-minded partners. I attended the monthly pastors and wives prayer meeting on the second Thursday of January 1998 after a lengthy absence. Pastor Eddie Edson asked me to address the group off the cuff about the latest issues in Cape Muslim outreach. As a result, an ‘unknown’ brother gave me his address card and a scribbled note in my hand as we lined up for the tea at the end of the meeting.

The content of the note had me looking up: ‘You don’t recognise me, but you were my Sunday School teacher!’ The circle was complete. Ernest, the writer of the note, hailed from the Sonnenburg family in Ravensmead. The Lord had used his parents to thrust me into missions while I was still an arrogant rebellious teenage Christian.

When Rosemarie and I visited Ernest and Eleanor, his wife, we sensed an immediate bond. Exactly those ideas that had been on my mind for years - and that I had struggled to put over to pastors - were aired by them. It turned out that Ernest also had training as a journalist. Ernest had been writing a regular newsletter to about 100 pastors.

Soon Rosemarie was ministering together with Eleanor in a factory every Thursday at lunchtime. Unfortunately, this ministry soon petered out, as did the other one with Edith la Grange after Fatima H. had left. The factory work would be resurrected in a different but more satisfactory form in 2003.

June Lehmensich has been one of the regulars at our prayer meetings. She introduced various workers and believers at the Cape Metropolitan Council that went through a complete re-organization in 1997. Reggie Clarke became one of the new regulars. Through him our contact to the Lighthouse Christian Centre of Parow received some more substance. This was one of the churches with which I had contact when I co-ordinated the Jesus Marches in 1994. Unfortunately the early promise of this contact soon faded, but it was revived through the involvement of Eben Swart, who belonged to the congregation as well as Billy Marais, one of the pastors. The latter had been a Baptist minister in Three Anchor Bay before the fellowship there merged with the Sea Point Assemblies of God. He was a pastor of the Lighthouse Christian Centre only for a few months, but just long enough to be a catalyst for the fellowship to open up for City-wide prayer events. I was happy to help facilitate the link to Eddy Edson, who had been the driving force of the meetings of ‘Coloured’ ministers.

The Hospital Ministry

The hospital ministry, led by Rosemarie and June Lehmensich, had interesting ramifications. At the Groote Schuur Hospital[20] she and June especially started visiting the cancer ward. A very special case occurred when we heard about a patient, Ayesha Hunter, who had undergone surgery. Rosemarie understood that she had more or less been sent home to die. This sort of situation was of course happening quite regularly from time to time in the cancer ward.

What a surprise we got when Reggie Clarke, a church member of the Lighthouse Christian Centre, mentioned at one of our Friday prayer meetings that Ayesha Hunter would share her testimony at one of their church home cell meetings. It turned out that the Lord had touched her body. She was not only given a new lease of life but she also now started ministering to patients on behalf of the Cancer Association. Soon a contact was established.

At that time we went to Grabouw more or less every second week, after our mother had been admitted to Huis Silwerjare, a home for the aged. In the hospital Rosemarie met an old Muslim lady from Belhar who seemed to be quite open to the gospel. As Belhar would not be too much of a detour en route to Grabouw, we popped in after the old terminally ill patient had been sent home basically to die. When we visited her, she spoke very lovingly about her grandchild who evidently had made her quite jealous to experience the wonderful love of Jesus. The old Muslim lady understood that die liefde van Jesus is wonderbaar (the love of Jesus is wonderful). Her heart was wonderfully prepared, so that Rosemarie could lead the old sick (grand)mother to the Lord. When we went to visit her again a few weeks later en route to Grabouw, we found a devastated couple that was not only in bereavement about their mother – they had been expecting that - but also because of the death of their 17-year old daughter. A man who was ‘playing with a pistol’ killed the young girl so-called accidentally. The parental couple went on to rave how other children loved their daughter at Kensington High School but they stopped short of accusing anybody. When they mentioned that the perpetrator had links to PAGAD (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs), suspicion did come through that it was no accident after all.

Radio Opportunities

Rosemarie and I would have loved to attend the Global Consultation of World Evangelisation (GCOWE) in Pretoria in July 1997, if only it were to utilise the opportunity to visit our son Danny. He was doing a year of orientation with Trans World Radio before the start of his tertiary studies in Electrical Engineering. But the ‘door’ never opened to enable us to go to Pretoria. After the experiences of March to May of that year, we understood why.

However, the Lord did something special in a sovereign way. Shortly after the GCOWE conference, we got a phone call from the Cape Community FM (CCFM) radio station. Avril Thomas, the directress, had been challenged at the conference to look at ways and means to spread the Gospel via the radio responsibly, also to the prime unreached group of South Africa, the Cape Muslims. At that stage CCFM had been passing telephonic contacts from Islamic background to us.

With a fairly full agenda already I did not see my way clear to commit myself to a regular radio slot. Rosemarie challenged me. How could we let such an opportunity slip to enter many Muslim homes? After serious consideration, I could envisage adapting my series of the lessons of Jesus on cross-cultural communication. I had used this series on the revolutionary conversation of Jesus with the Samaritan woman in John 4 as devotionals at various training courses.

However, after more thought and prayer, Rosemarie and I thought that the series was not suitable for radio devotionals. Instead, I would write a series on common personalities of the Abrahamic religions, which I had been using at the cell meetings with male Muslim background believers in Hanover Park. The result was ten talks about personalities such as Moses and Abraham, after more private study of the Qur’an and the Talmud. The proximity of not only two Western Cape theological faculties but also a Jewish and a Muslim library, apart from the Cape Town Campus of the South African Library[21] made matters so much easier for me in terms of research opportunities.

The consistent denial of the Cross in the sacred book of the Muslims was more than compelling. It was just too subtle to be man-made. Knowing the history of the compilation of the Qur’an, the question was how I could share this theoretically devastating information in a loving way to a possible Muslim audience. The fact that I would also be addressing Christians and Muslims via the radio simultaneously would of course not make things easy. During one of our prayer walks in Bo-Kaap it became clear to me that I should not go on the air myself. Someone else should read the script. CCFM agreed to the suggestion.

A regular Radio Programme

The contact to CCFM turned out to be quite strategic. After the initial radio series we felt that we could switch to a regular programme. We were praying about the format when we heard that Salama Temmers had resigned her full-time post at Standard Bank. Along with Ayesha, we would have two possible presenters from Muslim background for our envisaged programme. When we spoke to Avril Thomas about our plans, we heard that Gill Knaggs had volunteered to assist just prior to our meeting with her. (Gill had been our contact in Muizenberg for a few years, but we were not aware of her experience in secular radio work).

PAGAD (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs) was still breathing down our necks, soon also in the radio work. From the outset I felt compelled to mention to Avril the possibility of the bombing or arsonising of the radio station. But she was brave enough to take the risk. The greater risk would fall on Salama and Ayesha, two converts from Islam. But they were brave, ready to lose their lives for the cause of the Gospel if that was what was divinely required. On Wednesday, 7 January 1998 we took the decision to forge ahead. We would trust the Lord, come what may.

The same evening we were encouraged to read a newspaper report that the Muslim radio station has employed a convert from Christianity who had married a Pakistani cricketer. This precedent created space for us to follow suit with less fear of PAGAD reprisals if the Muslim radio station could use converts coming from Christianity.

Soon the format of the slot on the radio evolved - it would be a 15-minute women’s programme on a Thursday morning during one of the Life Issues slots. Gill Knaggs would be writing the scripts and the presentation done by Salama and Ayesha alternately. Phone calls to the station gave testimony that many homes, factories and even shops were impacted by the programmes that would be running until CCFM restructured their programmes in 2004.

Time for Confession?

I thought for a long time that it was high time that we as Christians should begin paying off the debt with regard to Islam and Judaism. Remorseful confession would be the right way to start, followed by concrete steps of restitution. But how could we convey the need for confession to the church at large? I knew that we had (and still have) to be patient. Remorse is not something which we can bring about through our efforts. Only God can do that through the Holy Spirit.

I was wondering whether the results of my studies could assist clergy and missionaries to discern the need for confession. But ‘doors’ would just not open. Or was I not persevering enough? Or was the timing for it not there?

Normally I would not have regarded the attendance of the CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) leadership conference in Johannesburg as a high priority. To spend big money to attend a conference of which the purpose and sense was not so clear to me, seemed to me a luxury. The optimal use of my time was also part and parcel of stewardship to me. A major draw-card for the visit to Gauteng was the possibility of seeing our son Danny, who was involved in a gap missionary year with Trans World Radio (TWR) in Pretoria.

The ‘final straw’ to go to Gauteng was the contact to the Dutch Reformed Suikerbosrand congregation in Heidelberg (Gauteng). The congregation wanted to send a delegatioon to undertake a prayer journey to the Mother City, to come and pray for the Cape Muslims. I thus decided to attend the conference on the Reef, plnning to visit Heidelberg thereafter.

A Case of Overkill?

At the CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) conference itself it was possibly a case of overkill when I suggested in my draft confession - which I had possibly sent much too late to the conference participants - that it could also be read in mosques. Because Ramadan and the start of 1998 co-incided, it appeared to me a good opportunity to present the confession. The timing of my suggestion was unwise, because we got side-tracked subsequently and I was branded.

Thus it was actually not so surprising that the discussion of the confession itself was postponed to the next CCM conference at Easter 1998. The overall reaction to my suggestions did not augur well for the future. I had the silent fear that not many colleagues were behind the idea. One of them was honest enough to state publicly that he was against my suggestion. Another one assured me privately afterwards that he wanted to work with me on the re-drafting of the confession.

My personal further participation in CCM got a serious blow when I could not discern a clear commitment to prayer with my colleagues. I was ashamed that the participants almost cold-shouldered Bennie Mostert, after he had come especially from Pretoria with the new copies of the 30 day Muslim Prayer Focus. The interest in taking booklets was minimal. I really could not understand how the colleagues expected a breakthrough in the ministry to Muslims without an increased prayer effort!

An ‘open letter’ to Clergymen

After hearing certain things said at the CCM leadership conference, I thought that I should try to disseminate the results of my studies as a matter of urgency. I started writing an ‘open letter’ to clergymen with the title My spiritual Odyssey as a summary of my studies. The title of the initial research was The unpaid debt of the Church. However, the dissemination/publication of neither manuscript was confirmed, disappearing to the pile of unpublished documents.

Yet, the conference also had positives. The main speaker, Dr Wasserman, came from the Carmel Mission in Southern Germany. He confirmed my suspicion of demonic involvement in the compilation of the Qur’an and I received important catalysts for further research. With regard to confirmations of my own independent study - the result of meticulous computer analysis with regard to the names of God, was just astonishing. I was for example not aware that the Arabic equivalent of Yahweh did not feature in the Qur’an at all.

Instead of gaining support for the idea of confession to be done by churches throughout the country at the beginning of 1998, I was shattered. I sensed that even if I had succeeded in gaining support, it would not have been from the heart. Very few colleagues showed any regret with regard to the guilt of Christians and Christianity. Basically only God could do that. I would have to find a way to disseminate my research in a way that the Holy Spirit could use to that effect. What an awesome task! For some of the participants, the Muslims had a bigger guilt and that was for them the end of the story.

In AWB territory

I would have left Gauteng a very frustrated and despondent person if I had to come back to the Cape straight from that conference. Instead, I returned from there overjoyed. The big difference was the visit to Heidelberg in Gauteng, where I met the group of believers that would leave for the Cape the very next day. At the occasion of the sending out of prayer teams to different spiritual strongholds in 1997, a team from the Dutch Reformed Church Suikerbosrand congregation from Heidelberg (Gauteng) followed the nudge of Bennie Mostert to come and pray in Bo-Kaap. In the spiritual realm this was significant because Heidelberg was the cradle of the racist Afrikaanse Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) when the town belonged to the Transvaal province of the old South Africa.

While I was still in Heidelberg, I heard telephonically that Fatima H, our factory contact, was about to lose the house that she had inherited as the only daughter. Just prior to this, she resigned her work at the factory where we had been ministering to her during lunch times, to care for her mother. Her family was pressurizing her to return to Islam if she wanted to keep the house. A Muslim lawyer would see to it that she gets the house under this condition. We were over-blessed to hear how she was determined not to recant, even if that would mean losing her house. The believers in Heidelberg joined in prayer for this emergency.

A scintillating Week of spiritual Warfare

Towards the end of 1997 I had to organise and prepare the visit of a group of intercessors from Heidelberg (Gauteng). Sally Kirkwood, who hosted a prayer group for the Cape Muslims at her home in Plumstead in the mid-1990s, phoned me at this time because she was burdened with guilt of ‘Whites’ in respect of District Six, the former slum area that had been declared a 'White' residential area. I took Sally to Bo-Kaap where we prayed. There the Lord reminded her of a prophetic word that was originally given for Jerusalem. However, she sensed that she had to apply this to the ‘Mother City’ of South Africa. The afflicted city would be spiritually rebuilt with beautiful gem stones. Intercessors felt that Cape Town was like a sleeping giant that was tied by its shoulders.

A scintillating week of spiritual warfare followed, which included an unforgettable day of repentance and reconciliation. As part of this visit from the Heidelberg (Gauteng) intercessors, a prayer meeting of confession was organized for Saturday November 1, 1997 on a gravel patch adjacent to the Moravian Church in District Six.

At the ceremony on November 1, 1997 tears of remorse flowed freely. English-speaking South Africans, Afrikaners and foreigners repented of the respective roles of their population group in exploiting the apartheid situation.

Drugs and Gangsterism once again

When the PAGAD crisis of 1996 in the Mother City subsided, pastors continued with the building of their own ‘kingdoms’. A year later, in November 1997, the gang war erupted once again. This time TEASA (The Evangelical Alliance of South Africa) called a meeting at the Baker House in Athlone. At this occasion I addressed the group, challenging them from Scripture how Jesus used outcasts like prostitutes; that David was at some stage little more than a gang leader.

The PAGAD issue highlighted the need for a drug rehabilitation centre. Anew we started to pray such a centre into being. What a blessing it thus was when we got in touch with the work of Ian Murray and his team on a farm in Philadelphia. A few members of that ministry team had been drug addicts themselves.

Rays of Light

Through my reading I initially perceived the role of the early 19th century missionary Dr Philip in the emancipation of slaves as extremely significant. I meant to discover that an important stimulus for the formal abolition of slavery worldwide had been given at the Cape. Dr Philip, who had been a missionary at the Cape, through his book Researches in South Africa and his personal friendship to William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, influenced matters worldwide. It is of course common knowledge that the British evangelical parliamentarian became the main driving force towards the outlawing of slavery. The appointment of Thomas Pringle, as secretary to Britain’s Anti-Slavery Society in 1826 after a stint at the Cape, where he had been a staunch fighter for press freedom, has hardly been recognised in the emancipation of slaves. Later I discovered in my research that Dr Philip was not much more than an important catalyst. Nevertheless, my crooked understanding of his role inspired me to see history repeat itself. Could we be the avant garde yet again, this time to emancipate the world of demonic religious enslavement, to usher in the return of the King of Kings?

In a sense some of this had already started in our home. While he stayed with us as a religious fugitive in 1996, the Egyptian academic Dr Mark Gabriel wrote his book Islam and Terrorism. Published soon after the Twin Tower saga of 11 September 2001, the book became a best seller in America in 2002. Subsequently it was translated into all the main languages plus many other ones, arguably exposing the intrinsic violent nature of Islam like no other book before it. If the violence perpetrated by Al-Queda in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Al Shabbab and Boko Haram in East and West Africa in recent years could still be doubted by anybody, the brutal ISIS terrorists confirmed this once and for all.

Demonic Conspiracies

For years I had been aware that the various forms of separation were demonic. In my studies I became aware of satan’s success at keeping the spiritual descendants of Abraham apart. It is a tragedy of history that the really great men were loners who had insufficient vision for the diabolic spiritual dynamics of separation as a tool of the arch enemy. Paul, the unique apostle, and Martin Luther, the special reformer, both belong to that category. It is sad that all these men were obviously headstrong, but basically misunderstood. I asked myself how Paul, who really was prepared to give his life for his people (see Romans 9-11) could be perceived by the Jews as someone who had cut himself off from them! To me, there was only one explanation: that it was a demonic conspiracy! How different things could have been if Muhammad, the great statesman had been explained the Gospel clearly and committed himself in faith to Jesus - not to regard the Master merely as a prophet.

I was quite sad to discover that Muhammad and Islam actually had precedents for their doctrines in heretical Christianity.

16. Attacks on spiritual Strongholds

The unofficial renaming attempt of ‘Devil’s Peak’ to ‘Disciples' Peak’ in 1994 - led by Pastor Johan Klopper of the Vredehoek Apostolic Faith Mission Church - and regular prayers at Rhodes Memorial, fitted into the pattern of spiritual warfare. These venues had been strongholds of Satanists. Next to the battle against the lie and deception of Islam the attempt to renaming of ‘Devil’s Peak’ to ‘Disciples' Peak’ would be a very big hurdle to surmount.

A few thousand Christians prayed over the city from Table Mountain. The event inspired a new initiative whereby a few believers from diverse backgrounds would come together again for prayer on Signal Hill on Saturdays every fortnight at 6 a.m. Quite a close relationship developed to Richard Mitchell and his family after we had started early morning prayer meetings on Signal Hill. When a door opened for a regular testimony programme on Friday evening on Radio CCFM, Richard Mitchell was a natural choice. The programme ‘God Changes Lives’ with him as presenter was also used to advertise the citywide prayer events.

More Attempts to rename Devil’s Peak Twenty thousand Cape Christians from different races and denominations marched in unity on 2 September 1998, fighting for religious freedom. One of the banners proclaimed 'United we stand'. This was a wry reminder of PAGAD’s main slogan. Wisely, the government dropped its plans to regulate radio stations prescriptively.

The mass march to Parliament in response to the perceived government attack on community radio stations was followed by a big prayer event on Table Mountain a few weeks later. At the big prayer rally on September 26, 1998 thousands of Christians prayed along the contour road of Table Mountain in an effort to rename the adjacent reviled peak ‘God’s Mountain.’ The event inspired a new initiative, whereby a few believers from diverse backgrounds started to come together at 6.a.m. for prayer on Signal Hill on Saturdays every alternate weeks.[22]

Murray Bridgman, a Cape Christian advocate, felt God’s leading to perform a prophetic act in District Six. He had previously researched the history of Devil’s Peak. Along with Eben Swart, Bridgman provided some research that encouraged Dr Henry Kirby to lobby Parliament to change the name of Devil’s Peak to Dove’s Peak. (Duivenkop had been an earlier name.) Kirby’s role as the prayer co-ordinator of the African Christian Democratic Party resulted in a motion tabled in the City Council in June 2002. The motion was unsuccessful, fuelling suspicion that satanists may have significant influence in the City Council. That the matter went dormant was no conscious Jonah stint. In 2009 God brought it back to memory.

Other Attacks on spiritual Strongholds That God works in mysterious ways was of course known to us. A special version of it happened when we conducted a ten week teaching course on Muslim Evangelism at the Logos Baptist church in Brackenfell. There appeared to be no immediate success in terms of people wanting to join us as co-workers. Yet, a few of the participants were deeply impacted. Among the participants there were for instance Johan Groenewald and his wife as well as Cheryl Müller, whom we picked up every week in District Six. The Groenewald couple took the message to the rural village of Eendekuil where he found a willing ear in Chris Saayman, the Dutch Reformed minister.

The Müller family in District Six was challenged to go full-time into the ministry of the Nazarene Church. They were however heavily attacked when Glen, her husband, had a mental burnout while they were in Johannesburg at the theological seminary. Glen nevertheless retained a prayerful interest in District Six. He introduced me to Saki Mispach, his neighbour across the road. My friendship to Saki, an avid reader with wide interests and an unheralded hero of the anti-apartheid struggle would impact me too as we inter-acted from time to time. As someone who was deeply involved with the Muslim drug rehabilitation programme at Schaapkraal, we had more than enough common ground. Without getting into doctrinal discussions, I sensed how the Holy Spirit was gradually breaking down his initial strong Marxist-atheist convictions.

Prayer walking once a month was another method used to break down strongholds of the deceiver at the Cape. A few Christians joined from as far afield as Melkbosstrand and Eendekuil. Results might not have been spectacular, but the lifting of a spiritual heaviness over the Muslim stronghold Bo-Kaap could definitely be discerned.

In another move on 25 April 1999, Christians were challenged at the Cape Town Baptist Church and the Eendekuil Dutch Reformed Church to pray for people living in the streets of Bo-Kaap. A few faithful aged prayer warriors of the Dutch Reformed Church in Rondebosch who had been coming to an early morning prayer meeting every Sunday, also became involved in this way. A group from Melkbosstrand, spearheaded by Celia Swanepoel and her husband Abrie had been coming to pray in Bo-Kaap every year at Ramadan even before this.

Intermittent prayer at the Tana Baru cemetery with important kramats (shrines) and its view over the harbour, especially during prayer walks in Bo-Kaap, included intercession against drug abuse and prostitution emanating from the Cape Town Docks. The dark spirit over the area clearly diminished towards the end of the century.

In October 2000 the prayer walk group was encouraged while walking in Bo-Kaap, when they met a Congolese Bible School student. He was on the verge of returning to his home country as an evangelist after being impacted and trained in Cape Town. This was one of my long-time visions. In 2006 Bertie de Jager, an Afrikaner linked to the Logos Christian Church of Brackenfell became deeply burdened to pray for Bo-Kaap.

Prayer efforts in the Cape Town City Bowl

A forty-day fast from Easter Sunday to Ascension Day 1998 included days of prayer and fasting by a few churches in the City Bowl. Rev Louis Pasques of the Cape Town Baptist Church, who also displayed a vision to reach out to the Cape Muslims with love, spearheaded this endeavour. After trying hard since September 1995 to get a ministers’ prayer group going in the City Bowl, this weekly meeting with a prayer emphasis gained ground slowly after the 40 day prayer effort from April to May 1998.

A corresponding move in 1999 - this time with a prayer period of 120 days - was concluded in the Western Cape in the traditional service of the Groote Kerk on Ascension Day, 1999. In the communion service pastors from different churches officiated, a signal of a growing church unity. Likewise a combined evening service in September 1999 in the Cape Town Baptist Church was significant. Dignitaries from the provincial government were present and prayed for.

At the Groote Kerk Ascension Day event, Dr Robbie Cairncross was divinely brought into the equation. He had been prepared by the Holy Spirit, coming to the Mother City with a vision to see a network of prayer developing in the Peninsula. After he had listened to the author speaking at the Groote Kerk, an appointment was set up. I was able to introduce him to the leaders of the Cape Peace Initiative, which was formed in the wake of the PAGAD disruptions in 1999. His prayer for an office for his Christian Coalition/Family Alliance near to Parliament was answered in a special way, and he could move into the premises of the Chamber of Commerce at 4 Church Square, a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament. Dr Robbie Cairncross’ plan became quite strategic when Achmed Kariem, a convert from Islam with a vision for taking and distributing prayer information, came onto his staff. Unfortunately the plan faltered somewhat when Robbie Cairncross had to leave the Chamber of Commerce because of financial constraints. Cairncross went on to become an international evangelist with a significant healing ministry.

In an initiative by Pastor Eddie Edson of Mitchells Plain, occasional all-night citywide prayer events started, one each on 25 June and 15 October 1999. Natural prayer fuel was provided by the possibility of an escalation of tension between Muslims and Jews in the Mother City, because of the situation in the Middle East.

Satanic Deception and a Backlash The New Age movement - with the formal variant of inter-faith - seemed to have drowned the evangelical roots at the Cape at the time of the World Parliament of Religions in December 1999. The World Parliament of Religions was held from 1 to 8 December 1999 in the Mother City. It became a spur for churches to get some idea of the spiritual threat to the country. Ironically, the opening took place at the very spot in District Six where the prayer event of confession took place on November 1, 1997. It soon became clear that the uniqueness of Jesus Christ was under attack at the World Parliament of Religions. A prayer event at the Moravian Church in District Six on 27 November 1999 brought together a broad spectrum of Christian churches. That in itself was a memorable occasion.

The role of drugs has still not been acknowledged sufficiently in spiritual warfare. For centuries the scourge of alcohol obstructed all church and evangelistic work at the Cape. The roots of cannabis (dagga) abuse goes back many centuries, when the Khoisan bartered cattle with Arab traders in Mozambique for the plant that they chewed before they learned to smoke it with a pipe.

Every year many new converts to Jesus got backslidden spiritually over the Christmas period when the increased consumption of alcoholic beverages takes its toll. Muslims have taken to drugs in the same manner as they have seen Cape Christians abuse wine. Mitchell’s Plain Muslims have strikingly been quoted as saying, in an effort to justify their drinking of wine at Lebaran (Eid-al-Fitr): “It is mos our Christmas!” The impact of drugs has had the same devastating result: a tragic addiction that has been wrecking family life. The churches at the Cape became guilty themselves when far too often they hardly made an effort to assist their members who experienced problems related to drug or alcohol abuse. From the 1980s Satanism received many recruits from the drug scene, making spiritual warfare even more necessary.

Special moves in Woodstock and Salt River The Fountain of Joy Assemblies of God Church in Woodstock valiantly held the fort under the leadership of Pastor William Tait, also with outreach efforts. In a series of Bible Studies held at their church in June 2000, Christians from other churches were invited to come and have a look at the teachings on Islam as seen through the eye of the Bible. The pastor had a vision for getting more church members involved in evangelism.

The spiritual battle is still raging in the area. In spite of aid from a ‘White’ Afrikaans-speaking church - the Logos Baptiste Kerk in Bellville – the Woodstock sister church struggled to survive after the tragic death of their devout Pastor Edgar Davids in March 1998. Jennie van der Berg, who also worked with us in the City Mission facilities in a children’s club in Salt River, started children's ministry in that area, with the local Baptist Church as her base. Eric Hofmeyer had been using the building as a base to get into many a school with his Adullam Ministries.

It seemed as though the Church at the Cape started to regain its former missionary zeal. There are however only very few indications that the church is at last also awakening to its responsibility towards the Muslims, who still form the prime unreached group of the Cape in terms of the Gospel. Are Christians getting ready to share the Good News in a culturally acceptable manner?

Church-led Restitution? The 1996 visit of Pastor Ed Silvoso of Argentina to South Africa had a significant follow-up at the Cape when Dr Robbie Cairncross was very much of a catalyst in getting a group of church leaders to go to Argentina.

At this occasion Pastor Martin Heuvel of the Fountain Christian Centre in Ravensmead was challenged to apply the principal of restitution to the South African set-up. His efforts to get other ‘White’ church leaders to move beyond mere oral confession and especially towards restitution for the evils of apartheid took more than two years. Some of these personalities who were challenged, had been involved with the prayer movement in the country for many years. In 2002 Martin Heuvel approached Charles Robertson, a prayer warrior of many years standing and the catalyst of the monthly prayer concerts at the Cape, where he found a prepared heart. This finally led to the founding of the Foundation for Church-led Restitution, where believers from different races and church backgrounds met from time to time. They started to discuss possibilities to nudge the church towards meaningful restitution, especially to address and rectify the wrongs of apartheid.. Some of the church leaders, who had been involved with the Cape Peace Initiative in 1999, got involved in this organization. Robertson jotted down some of the results of their deliberations in a book, which also stressed personal intimacy with God. The disparity between poor and rich, which has been growing to great proportions, is a cancer of our society that developed out of the race policies of the previous regime. An interesting suggestion of Robertson is to challenge the church to see the distribution of material goods in restitution of our past as a volksbesnydenis, a circumcision of the nation. After reading one of the author’s manuscripts, Charles Robertson approached me in November 2004, to discuss an effort to implement church-led confession and restitution for the wrongs perpetrated to Muslims and Jews. But nothing came from it. Every effort to get churches even half-way interested, floundered.

17. More Shots at the Islamic Bastions

In the beginning of 1999 PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) was still terrorising the Cape Peninsula, part of a sinister plan to Islamise South Africa and attempting the violent overthrow of the government in the Western Cape where the bulk of the Muslims in the country are living.[23] Gangsters and other criminals gladly jumped on board with high-jackings, rape and all sorts of crime to make the Western Cape ungovernable. Some of them enjoyed the anarchic conditions created, started taking protection money not only from shop keepers, but even dared to request this in individual cases from churches.

Almost bereaved as a Family

It was touch and go or we as a family were also bereaved at this time. I was taking a week-end retreat in the little village of Mc Gregor with our friends Elma and Freddy van Dyk when Rosemarie reported a traumatic experience telephonically. In the era before we had the use of cell-phones at our disposal, she was taking our daughter Magdalena to one of her friends in Sea Point. After using a telephone booth to find the exact location of Magdalena’s friend, she returned to our VW Minibus, which still is very much of a favourite vehicle for use as township taxis.[24] She was about to drive off, when her head was supernaturally turned to the right, just in time to notice a man with one hand going for the vehicle handle next to her. In the other hand he had a pistol. Reacting instantly, she pressed down the locking knob, driving off without looking into the mirror. This caused some consternation, which had the potential high-jacker fleeing. Not only Rosemarie and Magdalena were thus spared an even more traumatic experience.

Former Gang Leaders shot

Achmat Cassiem, the leader of the Hisbollah-Hamas related Qibla, was a frequent spokesman for PAGAD. Rashied Staggie, the Cape drug lord and leader of the Hard Livings Gang, had become quite well known with frequent media appearances. Two weeks before Easter, Staggie was shot and hospitalised, with PAGAD almost sure to be behind the assassination attempt. He made the news headlines soon thereafter from his bed in the Louis Leipoldt Clinic in Bellville through his public confession of faith in Jesus as his Lord and Saviour. He recovered miraculously.

Shortly after Rashied Staggie also Glen Khan, another Hard Living gang leader and drug lord, committed his life to the Lord at the Shekinah Tabernacle in Mitchells Plain. He became a Muslim after his marriage to Lameez, who was already a secret believer by now. She had been counselled by Ayesha Hunter, with whom we were linked. Glen Khan secretly heard the gospel in this way. He was also clandestinely funding a feeding distribution scheme to poor kids related to the Hard Living gang for which Ayesha took some responsibility. Sharing the gospel with them, she used the first letters (HL) of the notorious gang, calling the children the Heaven’s Little Kids.

Thrust into the spiritual Battlefield

We returned from the Easter CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) conference 1999 in Wellington in high spirits. My efforts, which started already in 1996, to nudge the umbrella organisation to give guidance to the Church at large to confess our sad historic role in the establishment and spread of Islam, looked promising at last.

We were however thrown into the spiritual battlefield on another level much sooner than we could anticipate. Our spirits were already dampened the same afternoon when the bag of Maria van Maarseveen, our Dutch colleague, was stolen from our minibus in front of our house while we were drinking coffee and before we would take her to her home nearby. In broad daylight the vehicle was broken into.

Only a few hours later, we were shattered when Ayesha phoned, telling us that Glen Khan had been shot and killed. The next morning we left for Mitchells Plain to assist with the funeral arrangements because a crisis had arisen. The Muslim family was claiming to have the corpse for an Islamic funeral that would have happened within 24 hours! Lameez, the young widow and still a secret follower of Jesus, was very brave to refuse to release the body of her late husband for such a funeral. She knew of course how he had just recently made a public commitment, indicating that he also wanted to follow Jesus. She insisted that he should have a funeral from the Shekinah Tabernacle where he made that commitment under the ministry of Pastor Eddie Edson.

Lameez requested me to speak on behalf of the family in the church at the funeral, even though I never got to know Glen personally. I did not mind at all when instead ‘Brother Rashied’ was called up to give a tribute just as I was about to speak. This caused quite a stir because the media had evidently been tipped off that he would be there as well. Almost overnight he had become a celebrity of a different sort. The new babe in Christ gave a powerful message to the packed church.

Many people were listening outside to the funeral service that was relayed by microphone. The funeral audience included a significant contingent of gangsters. Staggie, who had been avidly reading the Bible in the preceding weeks, challenged his many followers present, quoting from scripture: ‘My kom die wraak toe’.[25] “We are not going to retaliate!” Coming from someone who had virtually returned from the brink of death because of an assassination attempt, the message could hardly miss the mark.

Aftermath of the Glen Khan funeral

In the wake of the Glen Khan funeral on 7 April 1999 and the powerful testimony of Staggie at that occasion, a trickle of Muslims started turning to Christ. Suddenly PAGAD was marginalised even more. It was not surprising that they frantically sought to get credibility. This was God at work supernaturally, but Pastor Eddie Edson and his colleagues were not immediately aware of it.

When Eddie Edson phoned me the afternoon of 13 April for prayer support because ‘Muslim leaders’ wanted to speak to him in the evening, we feared a confrontation because rumours were spread that Muslims have been coming to faith in Jesus, for example as a result of preaching in the trains. We called the intercessors to bathe the proposed meeting with ‘Muslim leaders’ in prayer. A crisis was feared once again.

Pastor Edson was surprised when the ‘Muslim leaders’ turned out to be no less than representatives of PAGAD. This was a major turn-around on their part. It was however quite surprising that the PAGAD leaders now had become willing to speak to pastors. Only a few weeks prior to this they refused to meet any Christians or other mediators.

Whatever satan had planned in terms of havoc, was thus curtailed. A direct result of all this was the birth of the Cape Peace Initiative (CPI). Pastor Richard Mitchell, who was closely involved with the CPI attempt at negotiating peace between the gangsters and PAGAD, kept us informed. Thus we could pray intelligently for the proceedings on 22 April. The meeting with PAGAD that took place at the Pinelands Civic Centre was followed by discussions with gang leaders the same day.

I could link Eben Swart to the predominantly ‘Coloured’ praying pastors at a strategic prayer occasion in District Six on 1 November 1997. He started to work closely with Eddie Edson, who remained the steadfast motor for citywide prayer events. With Swart’s base as the Lighthouse Christian Centre, ‘White’ churches more readily linked up in the Cape Peace Initiative (CPI). Debby Lamb, a pastor with roots at the well-known His People fellowship, hereafter started working closely with Vivian Rix, a pastor at the Shekina Tabernacle of Mitchell’s Plain, where Edson was the senior pastor.

‘Coloured’ pastors verbalized their disquiet to Eddie Edson that the Cape Peace Initiative gave the impression of making PAGAD fashionable. Some clergymen were unhappy that the CPI leaders had been speaking to PAGAD.

Pastor Eddie Edson organised occasional all-night citywide prayer events, one each on 25 June and 15 October 1999. Natural prayer fuel was provided by the possibility of an escalation of tension between Muslims and Jews in the Mother City, because of the situation in the Middle East.

Beginning of Community Transformation

Around this time Father Trevor Pearce from the Anglican Church linked up with Ernst van der Walt in a vision to spread the Transformations video, which was just being distributed worldwide. The Transformation of Communities, led by Reverend Trevor Pearce, saved the Cape Peace Initiative (CPI) after it had come in disrepute. At a half night prayer meeting on the Grand Parade, much of the unity was restored. The same weekend the two Dutchmen, Pieter Bos and Cees Vork,[26] representing the prayer movement of Holland, joined local Christians in confession for the sins of the forefathers and in praying against satanic strongholds in the Peninsula.

Trevor Pearce had been impacted by the vision during a visit to Washington D.C., starting a procedure to invite George Otis and Allistair Petrie to the Mother City for a conference of his denomination from 29 October to November 2, 2000. Soon it was agreed to add a conference at the Lighthouse Christian Centre, Parow from 3-5 November of the same year. Trevor Pearce likewise had a vision for citywide prayer. The Transformation concept brought the evangelicals from the mainline churches and the Charismatic-Pentecostal traditions together. Even more significant was the fact that the prayer event at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in November 2000 saw the end of the bombing spree that kept the city in suspense for months.

A traumatic Incident

A pattern of traumatic incidents happening at home during my absence continued when Rosemarie and I attended our WEC conference in Natal in October 1999. When we phoned our home we heard that our 21-year old son Danny had to counsel Nazeema (not her real name), the Muslim background believer we had taken into our home. She had threatened to commit suicide.[27]

Shortly after our return from our conference in Natal, I received an invitation to attend an international conference on Muslim Evangelism in Nairobi as the South African delegate, with all expenses to be paid by TEAR FUND, a British development and charity agency. Knowing that travelling in Africa by air is very expensive, I enquired how much a ticket to Europe would cost. I had just heard that I would lose my Dutch passport unless I interrupt my residence in South Africa before January 2002. We thought that a guest lecturing period at the Cornerstone Christian College, a WEC institution in Holland, could be the solution. A visit to Holland would have been expedient to arrange that. Without much ado the itinerary was finalised. I would fly with the Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) to Nairobi via Holland (and Spain).[28]

A strategic Detour The overseas trip turned out to be quite strategic on the short term. My two days in Holland were special, pivotal in getting funds for our discipling house. An evening was organised on short notice to speak to some of our friends. There I showed a picture of the house we intended to buy for use as a discipling house. The mother of Martie Dieperink, one of the believers who attended that event, died soon after my visit. Shortly after having heard of the need of a discipling house in Cape Town where new believers coming from another faith could be nurtured, Martie offered to help us with a substantial amount as an interest-free loan, to be paid back over a period of five years. This set in motion the acquisition of a building that became an important asset of our ministry. The furniture from the house of her mother was part of the content of a container that was sent in 2001.

I discovered that the invitation to the international conference in Nairobi was a part of God’s strategy. The Nairobi conference ran parallel to a traumatic event at home. While I was still in Spain, our son Danny was rushed to hospital after his appendix had burst. He turned out to be allergic to the medication given to him. According to reports it was touch and go or we could have lost him.

Rosemarie sensed that this was an attack from the arch enemy yet again while I was away. She alerted prayer warriors at home and abroad. I got the news that they were fighting for Danny’s life at a strategic moment in Nairobi, when we were not making much headway to get a draft on paper which we could report back to our respective missionary sending bodies.

Divine Elements When someone at the Nairobi conference tried to share something about spiritual warfare, I had the opportunity to chip in. The impact was tangible when I reported how I had just heard how our son escaped death narrowly. In the months hereafter we heard from different people how they had been praying to save Danny's life.

This was happening on the eve of the World Parliament of Religion in Cape Town. I discovered that there was some divine element in the invitation to the international conference in Nairobi. It served to keep me in low profile, out of the limelight while the World Parliament of Religion took place. Even more important was the fact that the detour via Holland and Spain would be pivotal in getting funds for our discipling house. The Spanish part of the trip did not deliver the goods, but seed was sown. We were nevertheless encouraged when a Muslim drug addict was not only supernaturally delivered from drug abuse, but he also became an avid student at an evening Bible school. His prowess was such, also in his church, that we had liberty to use his testimony in a tract in 2002. We also did this with that of Zulpha and Abdul Morris, two converts from the same background whom God used profoundly, especially in the Mitchells Plain area.

On home soil the news of Danny’s fight for life brought home to some Christians the simultaneous urgency to prayer for the World Parliament of Religions. Thus God turned the attack on Danny’s life and on our ministry around for his sovereign purposes.

Convert Care

Already in our first year of ministry at the Cape Rosemarie and I discovered ever more how important it was to support converts coming from Islam. We were so grateful when a few of our friends took this lesson to heart. Best of all from this category was possibly Magdalene Overberg from the Docks Mission in Factreton. She not only invited the converts to their church, but the friend of many decades also showed a personal interest in their whereabouts like very few other Christians.

Things started to happen in a big way when Zulpha Morris, a Muslim lady from Mitchell’s Plain, became a Christian through divine intervention via a vision in July 1998. Through a further vision she was challenged to convert her home into a shelter for abandoned babies and abused women. In spite of many attacks and difficulties, she persevered. Miraculously her Muslim husband sacrificed his house and even his garage for the venture. She received assistance from many churches – also from overseas. Soon the Heaven’s Shelter of Rambler Road in Beacon Valley (Mitchells Plain) not only received visitors from all over the world, but many Muslims also came there for prayer, knowing very well that the prayer would be offered in Jesus’ name.

Rosemarie did regular Bible studies with a few Muslim background women in Mitchells Plain. This was fruitful when Zulpha and her husband decided to start a weekly cell group of Muslim background believers from the Mitchells Plain area. Soon quite a big group was gathering at their home every week, often including more than 20 Muslim background believers. After a few years, also Abdul, her husband, decided to become a follower of Jesus.

Cape Town emulates Sodom

Sexual perversion became a spiritual stronghold, which soon had the country firm in its grip. The new government since 1994 outlawed racism, but it opened the floodgates of sexual perversion with laws to legalize abortion and allowing gay tourism to thrive.

Cape Town took the continent-wide lead to emulate Sodom when the Western Cape’s person responsible for tourism seemed to have a free hand to promote the Mother City to compete with San Francisco and Sydney for the title of the gay capital of the world. I was rather sad to read that support for the gay movement was forthcoming from the Dean of St George’s Cathedral, the church that played such a big role in opposition to apartheid. Louis Pasques made a point of it to share his personal experience and deliverance with the dean of the cathedral, but that appeared to be like water on a duck’s back.

A casino in Goodwood with all the known vice surrounding such institutions - at the site where in former years agricultural shows and evangelistic meetings were held[29] - typified the moral degradation of the metropolis. A 24-hour prayer watch was needed to counter this. Dear Hendrina van der Merwe, faithful prayer warrior of our Bo-Kaap group, had been praying for years for such a prayer watch.

The evident spiritual warfare around the World Parliament of Religions was fuel to set up an all-night prayer meeting on the Grand Parade on short notice. Just at this time Cees Vork and Pieter Bos[30] started corresponding about their intentions to come to Cape Town. It was clear that God was at work orchestrating things when Mike Winfield and others were simultaneously busy with ‘Closing the Gates’ meetings, where we were looking at the sinful roots of our society. It was special that we could gain valuable prayer fuel from Nim Rajagukguk, a new colleague who hailed from Indonesia, sharing of what had been happening in his home country Indonesia in the preceding years.

Towards a 24-hour Prayer Watch

In September 1999 a new type of initiative emerged worldwide. God also started to speak nationally about 24-hour prayer watches. We felt that this is what Cape Town needed more than anything else.

We thought: 'What better place for the 24-hour prayer watch could be found than the Moravian Hill complex in District Six that now belonged to the Cape Technikon?' Murray Bridgman, a local advocate had similar ideas. But I evaded responsibility for initiating or leading a 24-hour prayer watch in the City, thinking that someone else should do that.

In February 2000, Susan and Ned Hill, a couple from Atlanta (USA) linked to the Blood ‘n Fire Ministries, visited the Mother City on an orientation visit after they sensed a call to come and minister to the poor and needy in South Africa. When they visited the District Six Museum – at that time temporarily housed in the Moravian Chapel – they learned of the tragic story of the former cosmopolitan slum area of the Mother City. With Susan Hill’s vision for prayer it was only natural that they should get linked to the prayer watch movement. Susan came into the frame as a possible coordinator for a prayer watch to be started in the City Bowl. During 2002 and 2003 she organized prayer events at the Moravian Church every third Saturday of the month.

In 2002 the government gave the Moravian Hill complex back to the original owners. Hendrina van der Merwe, our faithful but sickly prayer warrior, had been praying for years for a 24-hour prayer watch to be started at the Moravian Church. She hoped to be part of the beginning of it before her death. However, when she got accommodated at the historic St. Andrews Presbyterian Church[31] in Green Point towards the end of 2003, we all thought that this building should be the venue for the prayer watch. When this turned out not to be practical, I approached the Moravian Church towards the end of 2003 formally, pointing to the origins of the modern prayer movement going back to Herrnhut in 1727. The request was approved, along with permission to have monthly meetings with Muslim background believers in the District Six church where I received my initial spiritual nourishment in my childhood.

18. A Life-threatening Situation

An inappropriate reaction from my side to a manipulative phone call from one of the Moriah Discipling House inhabitants on my birthday in 2001 set off a stressful chain reaction. The next two and a half months kept our stress levels extremely high. Carelessness on my part, by just resuming ministry after travelling for 20 hours by bus throughout the night sparked off a stress-related loss of memory the next day. (When Rosemarie asked me, noticing that I reacted strangely, I could not even tell her how many children I have.) After a day in hospital and further medical treatment, I was cleared with the instruction to come back after a year. Medication for blood pressure was prescribed that I was instructed to take till the end of my life.

The rest of the year 2002 was very stressful. The ministry at the discipling house brought us to the brink of resignation more than once. It was a special blessing when the relationship to the house parents could be restored at the wedding of Shubashni, one of the Discipling House occupants in October 2003. Our joy was marred though when soon hereafter Shubashni was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer in a terminal stage. (In mid-2005 I had the unenviable task to bring the devotional message at the first funeral of one of our Muslim background believers! That we did not support the widower after the funeral properly remains one of the moments of guilt that I had to carry with me ever since.)

The Going gets rough once again

We had been taking some photos at Sedgefield and Knysna of beautiful waves during a time of holiday in July 2003. Somewhere we found Psalm 93:4 engraved on a stone. That was exactly the Bible verse that Rosemarie received on the day of her confirmation in the Andreaskirche of Mühlacker way back in the mid-1960s. ‘Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty!

The run-up to the publication of a second booklet of testimonies, true-life stories of Muslim background believers from the Cape as Search for Truth 2, was quite a trial as one hassle followed the other. The first draft had already been on my computer in the first half of 2002, but the actual printing only took place in January 2004.

Diagnosed with Prostate Cancer

A medical check-up was due a year after my stress-related temporary loss of memory in March 2002. This led to a period that seemed to lead to the last lap of my 'race' on earth.

After going to the doctor for the blood pressure check-up at the end of September 2003 - without having any complaint - he suggested a PSA blood test because of my age. The physician hereafter referred me to an urologist, who did a biopsy on 7 October 2003 – just to make sure!

Perhaps the arch enemy tried to knock me out. I was so confident that the result of the biopsy would be negative because I had no physical discomfort up to that point in time and the doctors to whom I had spoken, pointed out that the PSA count was only minimally above normal. A high count would have pointed to cancerous activity. Neither of them had initial reason for concern. There could have been other causes for the abnormal count, e.g. infection. When a phone call came from the hospital on Thursday 9 October 2003, I was caught off-guard.

I was told that I had contracted

Prostate Gland cancer

Without any ado the urologist gave me the result of the biopsy: I had contracted prostate cancer in an early stage. Through an extra-ordinary set of circumstances, the Lord however prepared me for the diagnosis. At that time – on 8 October 2003 to be exact – I was encouraged by the ‘Watchword’, as the Moravians have been traditionally calling the Old Testament Scripture for the day: ‘I will not die but live and proclaim what the LORD has done’ (Psalm 118:17).

Looking back over my life, it seemed as if my (semi-) academic studies and anti-apartheid activism did not bring me anywhere. But the Lord gave me a ‘second wind’ after the removal of my Prostate Gland during a surgical operation in December 2003.

19. A targeted Ministry to Foreigners

Around this time Rosemarie had a strange dream in which a young married couple, clad in Middle Eastern garb, was ready to go as missionaries to the Middle East. Suddenly the scene changed in the dream. While the two of us were praying over the city from our dining room facing the Cape Town CBD, a massive wave came from the sea, rolling over Bo-Kaap, the prime Islamic stronghold. The next moment the water engulfed us, but we were still holding each other by the hand. There was something threatening about the wave, but somehow we also experienced a sense of thrill. Then Rosemarie woke up, very conscious that God seemed to say something to us through this dream. But what was God trying to convey?

The very next day we heard about a conference of Middle Eastern Muslim leaders in the newly built Convention Centre of Cape Town. We decided on short notice to have our Friday prayer meeting there nearby instead of in the regular venue, the Koffiekamer of Straatwerk. Lillian James, one of our prayer partners, was on hand to arrange a venue for us near to the new Convention Centre.

A Wave of Opportunity

The same Friday afternoon Rosemarie and our colleague Rochelle Malachowski went to the nearby Waterfront where they literally walked into a group of ladies with Middle Eastern garb. The outgoing Rochelle had no qualms to start chatting to one of them. Having resided among Palestinians in Israel, she knows some Arabic. Soon they were swarmed by other women who were of course very surprised to be addressed in their home language by a ‘White’ lady with an American accent. A cordial exchange of words followed.

Rosemarie was reminded of her dream, sensing that God might be sending in a wave of people to Cape Town from Muslim countries. We understood that we should also get ready to send young missionaries to that area of the world when it opens itself up to the Gospel. Shortly hereafter we heard of various groups of foreigners who had come to the Mother City, including a minority group from China.

In 2003 Rosemarie and I were already seriously praying about a possible change of ministry. After almost 12 years at the Cape in the same ministry, we thought that we should consider a change for the last stretch before retirement. With our youngest daughter about to finish her schooling at the end of 2004, we even considered relocation. But no ‘doors’ opened with regard to any change. Instead, we felt increasingly challenged to reach out to refugees and foreigners locally, for example by using English language teaching as a compassionate vehicle. (In a similar way we had intended to initiate a rehabilitation programme of drug rehabilitation as a loving outreach to the Muslim Community, hoping that some of them may discover the love of God demonstrated in Jesus' sacrificial life and death.) We prayed that the Lord would give us more clarity with regard to our future ministry by the end of 2003.

The Unity of the Body of Christ as a Priority

An Event Film

When the movie The Passion of the Christ was released in March 2003, it was clear that this would be another event film. For an Indonesian missionary colleague who had worked in China years before, it was very special to watch the video version in our home together with two Uyghur female medical doctors from China. Our colleague had a special burden for the Uyghur, a Muslim tribe in the Northwest of the vast and populous country. For years she prayed for those people, without seeing any change. And now God brought some of them to Cape Town. Within months we had contact with more Uyghur folk who had come to Cape Town. (The increased interaction with the Peoples' Republic of China saw many nationals from that country coming to Cape Town. With the Olympic Games of 2008 looming, many students came to learn English in Cape Town.)

At this time we were introduced to Leigh Telli who loves the Jews. Her husband, a North African Arab, comes from Muslim background. An old vision was revived, serving to confirm our calling of ministering to foreigners and linking our ministry to Messianic Jews, unearthing a dormant wish of us to facilitate reconciliation of Jews and Muslims at the Cape through faith in Jesus as Lord and Messiah.

Little Movement in Respect of Guilt towards Islam

On an issue that was close to my heart, confession of the role of Christians with regard to the origins and spread of Islam, there was little movement in South Africa. Yet, apart from the flicker of hope, which I had experienced via Kobus Cilliers and a colleague from Mozambique in November 2003, hardly anything of consequence happened. In the aftermath of the conference we worked on a document that we subsequently called a manifesto because other missionary colleagues had problems to use the term confession. The result of the discussion with a few colleagues on 23 April 2004 at the home of Manfred Jung would be sent to Professor Greyling and Herb Ward, who had co-ordinated our training course at BI in previous years. When I returned from Europe a few months later, I found that this was not done. In fact, within CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) I was maligned at the CCM leadership conferences of 2004 and 2005 in my absence and the manifesto sent to the scrap heap of unused material.

The CCM leaders’ consultation in Constantia in December 2006 did not deliver any spectacular goods to encourage me to get excited, but there was just enough happening to remain a partner in the movement.

Declining Leadership Positions

My radio ministry with CCFM appeared to have made some impact. When Andrew McDonald, the African leader of Trans World Radio (TWR), however phoned me with the request to lead the programmes for the outreach to Muslim countries of the continent, I did not have to pray much. We knew that our Muslim outreach work at the Cape was still far from finished.

Rosemarie and I were also approached to be nominated for the position of national leaders of WEC prior to the annual conference in the Free State in 2004. But we had no liberty to accept nomination because this implied relocation to Durban. Also at the conference itself near to the little town Senekal we were nominated again in a plenary session to join the leadership team. We explained that the Lord had confirmed through the tidal wave of opportunity that we felt that we needed to remain in Cape Town.

The Unity of the Body of Christ as a Priority

When I was in hospital for my prostate gland operation, I was challenged anew to look at the City Bowl 24-hour watch as a matter of priority for the first half of 2004. The unity of the body of Christ, i.e. believers in the crucified and risen Saviour, had been very much on our hearts. We believe that the prayer watch could be a decisive vehicle to make this more visible - to be used as a powerful means to take the city for God. When Rosemarie challenged me about my indecisiveness in certain matters, I was just busy revising an autobiographical manuscript Some Things wrought by Prayer. I discovered how radical I had been in earlier days. The issue of worship on a Sunday – with its pagan background that had estranged us from our Jewish roots - were bogging me once again as I was reading Jewish authors. I was ready to be radical to resign from the Cape Town Baptist Church, but not ready to join another church fellowship that also congregates on Sunday morning for their main service. The unity of the body of Christ was also the issue which held me back from taking a step, which could rock the boat of the Church in the Cape Town City Bowl. Aware that the house church movement in China is the closest to New Testament Christianity in our day and age, this was now my model. But I was also oh so wary to start yet another church fellowship. I preferred to procrastinate on this issue, to the frustration of Rosemarie. She liked the fellowship at the Calvary Chapel, especially the exegetical preaching of Dmitri Nikiforos who actually once had our daughter Magdalena in his Sunday School class. However, on biblical grounds we had some reservations about monologue-type sermons.

We felt quite uncomfortable for months on end at the Cape Town Baptist Church as different issues, especially when the Holder family returned to the USA. We really enjoyed Jeff’s preaching. Yet, we hung in there at the Cape Town Baptist Church especially because we still had two children in the church by the end of 2005.

A new Crisis

Brian Wood, the new pastor had hardly started when a new crisis developed around a very trivial matter. He took me and Jeff Holder, an American missionary, into his confidence. It was good that I had refused nomination to the church leadership more than once and Jeff was a new man on the block. Yet, I was also attacked at this time, accused of ‘laundering money’ from overseas. The member of the church council who came with the accusation had been a trustee of the Dorcas Trust on behalf of the church. He should have known better. (When I did not want to keep the money earmarked for our Discipling House in our private account until the Dorcas Trust would be finalised, I had asked Alan Kay as the church administrator, whether we could keep the funds temporarily in the church account. This was now maliciously interpreted as money laundering.) A new crisis developed in the church council over some gay organist who had played there. Suddenly we heard that three influential members resigned. A few other members also left the church in the wake of the saga. We also felt like leaving but we decided to stay on because of our children. Just as there had been the consideration of saving a sinking ship and giving support to Louis, the new interim pastor in 1995, it was again the children which still kept us there. Not many months down the road also the youth pastor, resigned and soon thereafter his father who had put it many hours of voluntary work to get the church books on par, also decided to leave. It seemed as if the church was going from one crisis to the next.

A new Pattern of Crises

As years went on Rosemarie and I got quite close to Louis and Heidi Pasques. On many a Monday we would go to some place or have a picnic together. Not very long after our return from Europe in 2000, a new pattern of crises had become evident. Louis took me into his confidence that there was a crisis in their marriage. Disunity within the church executive started to come into the mix. I initially withheld such information from Rosemarie. From our side, we did share some of the frustrations we experienced in our ministry with Louis and Heidi, notably those from the Discipling House. Invariably we would also pray with each other for family matters.

Louis explained one day, that Heidi had to be taken somewhere for spiritual and psychological assistance after she had suffered burnout. Between Louis and Alan Kay, the administrator, some differences between them now also got blown up out of all proportion. A rift between the two of them developed, which was of course very unhealthy for the church as a whole. Things went from bad to worse until Louis was given leave of absence and Alan was more or less forced to resign as administrator. Finally Louis also resigned and their marriage fell apart as well after devastating facts surfaced.

The Need of a Discipling House amplified

We were confronted with the drug scene in a very real way when Ayesha H. approached us with regard to a young woman whose life was threatened. Kevin,[32] the husband of the young woman, was a gangster. He had been involved with many crimes. Kevin had been abusing Shehaam[33] almost in every way possible. She was a new Muslim background believer. After praying about the matter, we had peace to take Shehaam into our home.

What a joy it was to see how the young woman grew rapidly in her new faith. I was deeply moved to hear Shehaam share the burden she had for the residential area where she grew up. In Woodlands, a part of Mitchells Plain, drug addiction and gangsterism was a way of life. But Shehaam knew that she first had to become spiritually strong and mature.

Soon we were counselling her together with Kevin. I roped in Eric Hofmeyer to this end. He had been a gang leader himself who later became a pastor.

Far too soon however, we allowed the couple to live together again. The end result was final separation. Thereafter she returned to her earlier life style. It was little consolation that Kevin grew spiritually to some extent. I encouraged him to go to the police to confess his criminal deeds. He only wanted to do it in God’s time. Even though I had problems with this view, I would not consider putting pressure on him. He had definitely stopped with his old life-style and that was something for which we were very thankful. Unfortunately that was not permanent.

We were however very disappointed in the meantime. We had to face the fact that Shehaam was the third failure with a Muslim background believer, into whose life we had invested quite a lot of time and energy. We were thrown back on the grace of God. The need for a discipling house where we could nurture these new Christians for a longer period, was amplified once again.

We had hardly recovered from this disappointment, when we were confronted with a similar case. Nazeema[34] had been a Christian for quite a few years but she was still very immature. For years she had been abused by her husband Keith,[35] more than once she was almost killed. In spite of a few interdicts against him, Keith would not leave her alone.

A Ministry to Foreigners

During 2003 it seems as if the Lord was leading us more and more to a ministry to foreigners. While Lynn Holder’s husband Jeff preached one Sunday, Rosemarie received a vision of our Moriah Discipling House to be used for refugee-type foreigners.

Around the turn of the millennium Rosemarie was battling with the discipling of new Muslim background believers (MBB’s) and general convert care. The bulk of them were females. We were glad that we could hand over the responsibility for the hospital ministry to Maria van Maarseveen, our Dutch colleague.

Towards Muslim/Jewish Dialogue and Reconciliation

For many years our love for the Jews found very limited expression. This changed from 2004 when we increased our networking with missionary colleagues who ministered to Jews. After the arrival of Leigh and Rabbah (Paul) Telli at the Cape in 2003/4, Rosemarie and I were very much encouraged anew to attempt stimulating Jewish dialogue and reconciliation at the Cape. Leigh Telli loves the Jews. Her husband, a North African Arab, comes from a Muslim background. An old vision of us was revived, confirming our call of ministering to foreigners and linking our ministry to Messianic Jews.

On 19 February 2005 a few believers from both Jewish and Muslim backgrounds were present at.a seminar in the suburb of Durbanville. At that occasion Leigh Telli and I spoke respectively on 'What are God’s purposes for Isaac's and Ishmael’s descendants in these last days?' We proceeded with the printing of an A4 manual with the talks of Leigh and me at the seminar. The manual also included some paintings of Leigh. On the cover a Jew and a Muslim – a painting of Leigh - are depicted in discussion with a broken wall in the background. This was the start of an effort towards reconciliation of Jews and Muslims at the Cape under the leadership of our Lord, alongside other followers of Jesus. But our vision did not get off the ground as yet.

More Involvement in the Prayer Movement During my hospitalisation in December 2003 I felt very much challenged to attempt something to facilitate a 24-hour prayer watch in the City Bowl. When Jericho Walls suggested the first week of February, I was challenged anew. A phone call by Trevor Peters,[36] a car guard and tourist guide at the Groote Kerk, was just the nudge I needed. I was not aware that he had been in touch for months with Reverend Angeline Swart, the leader of the Moravian Church. We were blessed to hear a few days before the event that the superintendent of the Central Police Station in Buitenkant Street, an institution that was notorious in the apartheid days as Caledon Square had a room for us for 24-hour prayer - and thus a real neutral venue. After the week of prayer at the Moravian Hill Church, a few of us went to go and pray there every week.

The step of obedience to get involved locally would have global repercussions. Daniel Brink, the Jericho Walls leader in the Western Cape, phoned me a few weeks later to approach the Moravian Church leaders for permission to use the District Six premises to host the launch of the 7-days prayer initiative on 9 May 2004.[37] I gladly obliged. In the run-up to this event, some of us were reminded of the special prayer occasions of the late 1990s. The 7-days prayer initiative moved subsequently through the whole country, a week apiece of 24 hour prayer at a different city or town, culminating in the first Global Day of Prayer on 15 May, 2005.

19. A 'new thing' Sprouting

Rosemarie and I were busy with all sorts of 'good' things at this time. But we were not in the centre of God’s will for us anymore. He had to use a rather traumatic situation within our WEC team to bring us back to the vision he had given us in October 2003, namely that we should focus on the foreigners.

The internal situation in our team led to a stage where Rosemarie and I decided that it would be in the best interest of our team to resign as leaders. After talks with our national leadership, who specially came from Durban to discuss matters, a new structure of regional leadership was put in place. I would be part of an umbrella structure until the end of July 2005, the date we had set for terminating our position as leaders. The two of us were encouraged by Isaiah 43:18 to expect a 'new thing' that has been sprouting.

The 'New Thing' sprouting

During the first term of 2006 an OM missionary started working more closely with us who also had a vision to minister to foreigners. In the course of looking for a neutral venue where we could help the sojourners from other countries with English lessons, the young OM colleague suggested that we pop in at the home of Theo Dennis, one of the OM leaders in the Western Cape. When Theo spoke about their ministry in Coventry in the UK with the name Friends from Abroad, I once again had a sense of home-coming, especially when he mentioned that the group does not operate there under this name any more.

The very next day I took Rosemarie along to him, starting discussions for the establishment of an alliance with other mission agencies and local churches to be called Friends from Abroad. Both of us felt that this was the new thing that has been sprouting, a renewed challenge to get involved with foreigners.

A very traumatic period was ushered in via our mission agency leaders, but the two of us decided to forget the past and to expect a ‘new thing’ that has been sprouting (Isaiah 43:18).

In our hearts we wanted to remain in WEC until the end of our ministry days. This led to a severe crisis, with the result that we had a letter of resignation already on our computer on 29 April 2006, just ahead of the national conference that was due to start the next day in the Cape, in Stellenbosch.

We definitely did not close ourselves to the possibility that the ‘new thing’ could still happen within WEC (Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ) confines. We remained committed to operate in a positive frame of mind until the end of July, while we prayed for clarity about what God had in store for us. We were sure that our ministry in Cape Town had not been completed yet.

When we heard that Floyd and Sally McClung, the founders of All Nations International were coming to Cape Town with the vision to establish a training and outreach community that impacts Africa from Cape Town to Cairo and the vision ‘for a multi-cultural community that exemplifies the kingdom of God’, we were quite excited. This was more or less what we wanted to see coming to pass, albeit that our vision was somewhat wider, also for countries outside of Africa to be impacted from Cape Town. All Nations International later also sent people long term to different countries. Getting the vision over to local Christians and pastors was a much bigger challenge.

In Need of Counselling

In on-going discussion with our WEC national leaders serious problems arose. Our nerves were on end and we had no energy left to continue with our missionary work. Our colleague Rochelle suggested that we should get counselling. What a blessing Dave Peter of YWAM could counsel us at this time! The advice of Dave helped us to carry on. He challenged us - never to leave a ministry in defeat.

I had made a mistake mentioning the name Friends from Abroad in correspondence to our leaders, although everything was very much still in an orientation stage. This caused a serious problem. We were nevertheless completely surprised when our national WEC leaders would not give us a ‘green light’ to continue working within this context as WEC missionaries, without giving a proper reason. Towards the end of April things followed each other up in quick succession, so that a letter of resignation was already on our computer on the 29^thof April. The Lord intervened via a SMS from someone who knew nothing of what had transpired. The divine instruction via this channel was to wait on the Lord. This kept us from formally handing in our resignation straight away. We now received a warning email out of the blue that simultaneously encouraged us with Psalm 7:14 to wait on the Lord.

The next few weeks were not easy though, but the Lord carried us through in a special way as we did the ‘Experiencing God’ course at the Cape Town Baptist Church. As the weeks passed by our situation in the mission became worse.

We had not yet fully recovered from these shocks when the lack of news from our daughter in the Netherlands strained our nerves further. She had sent an SMS from Scotland in mid-April that she was heading for Holland from where should would send us her new telephone number. We were not unduly worried initially. When there was no news, we still took it in our stride. But when she also did not phone for Mother’s Day nor congratulate her sister Tabitha on her birthday on the 25^th April – as we erroneously thought - we were terribly worried. A few days later the fear that she might not be alive was allayed after we had also alarmed our friends in Holland. The circumstance prepared us in some way for the rather disappointing news a few months later that she was expecting our first grandchild.

Start of Friends from Abroad

In October 2006 we were back at the Cape, all set to get going with Friends from Abroad. We were however hardly back when the ‘battle’ resumed. We were very sad to read notions in the minutes from the national committee of WEC, which were distributed widely, that reflected quite negatively on us. From our colleagues we furthermore had to find out that they had attempted in vain to request the leaders to wait for our pending return before taking drastic decisions. This was not heeded. We requested the minutes to be rectified but no action followed. We were especially sad that a situation arose whereby we had no say in the running of the discipling house, which came into being through our endeavours and which had been running through gifts from our family and friends in Germany and Holland. It had become more a matter of time before we would finally resign. We still wanted to leave WEC in victory, asking God to lead us clearly and unambiguously in the new thing, which we believed was still sprouting.

We resumed our contact with Bruce van Eeden, the former pastor of the Newfields EBC, with whom we had started children’s work in 1992. In 1995 he initiated a Mitchell’s Plain-based mission agency called Ten Forty Outreach, which concentrated on sending out short-term workers to India. We thought he could be a valuable complement to our Friends from Abroad concept, making use of indigenous Christians. Through Pastor Theo Dennis we linked up with Ds. Richard Verreyne, a mission-minded pastor of the Soter Christelike Gereformeerde Kerk in Parow. To the core team of Friends from Abroad (FFA) co-workers there also belonged a couple with mission ministry experience in North Africa. Two highly valued American co-workers assisted in starting up English classes in Parow.

On Thursday 30 November 2006 we had a progress meeting towards starting Friends from Abroad formally. Here the Lord clearly over-ruled. I had invited our friend Pastor Bruce van Eeden, whom we had been assisting to pioneer an EBC congregation in Newfields, to come and share for about ten minutes at our meeting. What a blessing it was for those present to hear how God has been using this brother from the Cape Flats in China and India.[38] We heard at the meeting how the Lord put Africa on his heart in recent years after an invitation to Uganda in 2003.

Kindred Spirits My wife Rosemarie and I were encouraged by the arrival of Floyd and Sally McClung at the end of 2006, especially because we detected kindred spirits when we got to read their reason for coming to the Cape. We now started to endeavour even more to see a church planting movement established among those foreigners who have come to the Mother City of our country. We longed intensely for the metropolis to become the Father's City.

CPx Pioneering in Africa One thing led to the next until Rosemarie and I were ready to join the Church Planting Experience (CPx) course at the beginning of 2008, with the intention of becoming members of the All Nations International family. Along with our Friends from Abroad colleagues we now started to partner with local fellowships, to get believers in home groups from the nations equipped, hoping and praying that they would minister in their countries of origin in a similar way in the future.

All Nations International teaches a new dimension of church via the Church Planting Experience (CPx) - whereby simple non-denominational independent churches are planted that attempt to come as closely as possible to the practice of the first generation of ‘New Testament’ followers of Jesus. The first CPx of All Nations in Kommetjie broke new ground in many a way. We were very much privileged to participate in that course and we enjoyed it more than any other training we had ever attended up to that point in time.

A special personal highlight was when I discerned where my over-reaction to injustice came from. Childhood experiences in District Six which I always regarded as unimportant had been the cause of hurts about which I haad never spoken with anyone.

I befriended Munyaradzi Hove, a lone participant from Zimbabwe, who got to be well known subsequently in All Nations circles around the world as Munya in due course.[39] He was not only a member of our home church but also a member of the small team that Rosemarie and I led for the outreach phase of the CPx. Munya was a member of this team along with two couples from Cameroon and Nigeria respectively. Their outreach at Green Market Square would have major ramifications when a little 'simple church' could be started there. One of the participants, Valentine Chrume, also hailed from Zimbabwe. He would later alo join All Nations.

Munya personified the vision and philosophy of Friends from Abroad more than anybody else before or after him. After he returned to his home country, initially as a part of teams that he led, he and other All Nations young people led many people in Victoria Falls to faith in Christ. Thereafter, when he returned there permanently in 2010, he gathered the new disciples of our Lord in discipleship groups and simple churches. We were blessed to see also others impacted at the Cape who would return to their home countries or who went to other countries to share the Good News of Christ.

20. Jews First

Elizabeth Robertson, who attended our evening Bo-Kaap prayer meeting from the beginning in 1992, really loves Israel and the Jews. A few years prior to this she had been on the verge of marrying a Jew in Israel. Soon we decided to pray for the Middle East at every alternate Monday prayer meeting, including Muslims and Jews. Hereafter I visited the Beth Ariel fellowship of Messianic Jews in Sea Point from time to time. In later years Lillian James, who grew up in Woodstock, started to pray with us. She had a heart for both Muslims and Jews.[40]

Soon thereafter we also started with a monthly prayer meeting for the Middle East in our home in Tamboerskloof. This evolved from the fortnightly event in Bo-Kaap. The vision grew to see Jews and Muslims reconciled around the person of Jesus Christ. This vision received fresh nourishment when we started praying on Signal Hill from September 1998 on every alternate Saturday morning at 6 a.m. Signal Hill is situated just above three residential areas that are associated closely with the three Abrahamic religions. Tamboerskloof is a predominantly ‘Christian’ suburb, Bo-Kaap is still a vocal Muslim bastion and in Sea Point the bulk of Cape Jews are living.

During a lunchtime prayer meeting of City Bowl ministers in October 1996, a Messianic Jewish pastor entered who was known at that time as Bruce Rudnick. Bruce was the leader of the Beth Ariel Fellowship of Messianic believers in Sea Point. That is where I got to know the choice servant of God who later changed his name to Baruch Maayan.

Fulfilment of Messianic Prophecies For many centuries the fulfilment of Messianic prophecies remained fairly obscure while the Replacement theology was prominent. In recent years things started to change gradually, notably at the Lausanne Consultation of Jewish Evangelism global event here in Cape Town in 2010.

Isaiah 19:25 was regarded by a few individuals down the ages as a prophecy of wide-spread conversion to Jesus as the Saviour and Messiah in Egypt, (As)syria and Israel – in that order. The general interpretation of the prophecy was furthermore understood to usher in the reign of our Lord as global ruler for a thousand years.

The African Highway of Holiness In 1997 Pastor Bruce Rudnick attended the ‘All Africa Prayer Convocation’ in Ethiopia. Bruce was the leader of the Beth Ariel Fellowship of Messianic believers in Sea Point. A prophetic word that came strongly at that time was 'An African Highway from Cape Town to Jerusalem.' This theme was not new. In due course the Church was regarded as a spiritual body on the continent of Africa with the feet in South Africa, the knees in Kenya, Uganda stands in this symbolism for the womb and thus for birthing and the heart is in Ethiopia. The head is Egypt. One hand reaches over to Morocco and the other hand to Jerusalem. This was, as it were, the Body of Christ in Africa. This body needed to be awakened to come into its calling and function. The vision would become an integral part of the prophecy of Isaiah 19:25.

Baruch and his family made aliya, leaving for Israel in 1999. He taught subsequently that Egypt stands in this prophecy for Africa and Assyria for Asia. (The Back to Jerusalem Movement had been around for many years already, starting in China.) In Israel Bruce changed his surname to Maayan.

Towards Muslim/Jewish Dialogue and Reconciliation For many years our love for the Jews found very limited expression. This changed from 2004 when we increased our networking with missionary colleagues who ministered to Jews. After the arrival of Leigh and Rabbah (Paul) Telli at the Cape in 2003/4, Rosemarie and I were very much encouraged anew to attempt stimulating Jewish dialogue and reconciliation at the Cape. Leigh Telli loves the Jews. Her husband, a North African Arab, comes from a Muslim background. An old vision of us was revived, confirming our call of ministering to foreigners and linking our ministry to Messianic Jews.

On 19 February 2005 a few believers from both Jewish and Muslim backgrounds were present at a seminar in the suburb of Durbanville. At that occasion Leigh Telli and the author shared respectively on 'What are God’s purposes for Isaac's and Ishmael’s descendants in these last days?' We proceeded with the printing of an A4 manual with the talks of Leigh and me at the seminar. The manual also included some paintings of Leigh. On the cover a Jew and a Muslim – a painting of Leigh - are depicted in discussion with a broken wall in the background. This was the start of an effort towards reconciliation of Jews and Muslims at the Cape under the leadership of our Lord, alongside other followers of Jesus. But our vision did not get off the ground as yet.

Isaac and Ishmael reconciled? At the beginning of 2010 I was deeply touched when I discerned that Isaac and Ishmael, the two eldest sons of Abraham, had actually buried their father together (Genesis 25:9). The evident reconciliation was probably preceded by confession and some remorse. Or was there some reconciling agent involved? I started to pray more intensely that a representative body of Christians might express regret and offer an apology on behalf of Christians for the side-lining and persecution of Jews by Christians.

On 11 October 2010 the Lord ministered to me from Romans 1:16 when we received the Lausanne Consultation for Jewish Evangelism (LCJE) Quarterly Bulletin. That edition of the LCJE Bulletin highlighted the legacy of Moishe Rosen, the founder of Jews for Jesus. In the paper that Rosen delivered as part of the Jewish Evangelism track at Lausanne II in Manila in 1989, he highlighted 'Jews first' from Romans 1:16. In the printed summary of his paper one could read that he regarded 'God’s formula' for worldwide evangelization as the bringing of the Gospel to the Jew first. Highlighting the example of Paul: ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek’ (Romans 1:16), Rosen proposed in the same paper that ‘by not following God’s programme for worldwide evangelisation – that is, beginning with Jerusalem (Israel and the Jews) – we not only develop a bad theology because of weak foundations, but we also develop poor missiological practices.’ I felt personally challenged to get involved with outreach to Jews as well.

Replacement Theology still an Issue? It was very special for Rosemarie and me to attend the international LCJE Conference on 15 October, 2010. For the first time this was held in Cape Town. People from all over the world attended who are somehow involved with outreach to Jews - including of course those who specially came for Lausanne III – at the International Convention Centre. It was however very much of a shock to us to hear that a few lines in the draft for Lausanne III were supportive of so-called Replacement Theology - that the Church has replaced Israel as God's special instrument. The flaw was thankfully corrected in the final revision when it was published in the Cape Town Commitment.

Overawed by a Sense of Guilt On 19 October 2010, i.e. we received an email from our friend Liz Campbell, with whom we started prayer meetings for the Middle East in the early 1990s. She shared 'that Baruch and Karen Maayan (Rudnick) and their five amazing children are back in Cape Town from Israel. A quick and sovereign move of God believe me, and worth coming and finding out why! … we have sent this out to not only those who know Baruch and Karen but also to those we know will be greatly touched and taught by Baruch's ministry.'

The meeting on the Saturday afternoon of 23 October at a private address in Milnerton with the Maayan family was a defining moment. Baruch shared his conviction that he was sent to Cape Town a second time to challenge believers with the highway message.

I was very much embarrassed however when I broke down in tears uncontrollably. I was completely overawed by a sense of guilt towards Jews, while I felt a deep urge to apologise on behalf of Christians for the fact that our fore-bears had been side-lining the Jews. Christians have haughtily suggested that the Church replaced the nation of Israel and the Jews. My weeping was an answer to my own prayers, but it was nevertheless very embarrassing, especially as many others present followed suit. (The 'sea of tears' however knitted our hearts to the Maayan family. After an absence of 11 years, the Lord had called them back to be part of a movement to take the Gospel via simple churches from Cape Town throughout the continent of Africa, ultimately back to Jerusalem. Ethiopia featured centrally in his experiences.

A special Visit On Sunday evening 24 October 2010 I received an SMS from our friend Richard Mitchell whether he could come and stay with us for a few days. (We had been working together so closely in the mid and late 1990s in the prayer movement at the Cape and especially in the fight against the PAGAD onslaught and in the battle against the effort to islamise the Western Cape, until his departure for the UK in 1999. Richard had also been my presenter on the CCFM radio programme 'God changes Lives.') I knew that Richard was attending Lausanne III, but somehow we could not find a moment to meet each other.

Tuesday 26 October 2010 was quite eventful as I took Richard along to Noordhoek where we had a wonderful post-Lausanne report back by Floyd McClung, our leader. He requested me to share as well, knowing that Rosemarie and I attended Connected 2010, the conference specially organised for all those who were not invited to the main event at the International Convention Centre. Rather spontaneously I went overboard in Noordhoek, by also sharing our concern that a few lines in the draft for Lausanne III were supportive of so-called Replacement Theology. I was not aware that our leader Floyd had opposite convictions. I received a severe reprimand that almost saw Rosemarie and me parting ways with All Nations. We decided to keep our conviction to ourselves in order to keep the peace. However, I felt very hypocritical about the matter.

Start of the Highway Fellowship Soon after the Milnerton meeting of October 2010, Baruch Maayan approached Brett Viviers and me. At a meeting in the Company Gardens, he announced that he would start with weekly prayer on Monday evenings at the home of Gay French in Claremont. After a few months it was decided to start with Highway meetings every last Saturday of the month at the Sea Point High School. Pastor Light Eze, a Nigerian pastor, who had responded obediently to a divine call to rally the Church at the Cape to repentance and prayer, was at this time fairly closely linked to the group. He had also started a fellowship in Parow, where Maditshaba Moloko became a prominent member. She would also become connected to the Maayan family and the Highway fellowship when the family moved to Pinelands....'

When a problem arose with Sea Point High School as a venue for the monthly Highway events, the upstairs minor hall at 14 Hope Street, a former Jewish building from where His People Ministries operated, became the new place of monthly worship. After only a few months, weekly meetings started at that venue.

21. Fighting Corruption

At the end of February 2007 we were greatly encouraged to hear things which we perceived as answers to prayer. The annual comparative statistics of the Cape Town Central Police Station - where we were praying every Wednesday morning - showed a marked decrease of crime almost across the board. The few exceptions show only a marginal increase. The station commander, Ms Gerda van Niekerk, received various accolades. This was also a great encouragement for us.

The arch enemy was however also pulled out all stops at this time. At government level an ambitious up and coming politician was leading the ANCYL, the ANC Youth League. Julius Malema and his cronies manipulated cleverly to get Jacob Zuma elected as ANC President. The latter had many charges of corruption against him and also an axe to grind with the incumbent State president, Thabo Mbeki who was effectively ousted in 2008. Malema lobbied for the corrupt Jacob Zuma, who had been who was basically a white-collar criminal with many skeletons including rape and corruption in the cupboard. He nevertheless became Sate President after the elections of 2009

Growth of the Prayer Movement In due course Die Losie became our regular prayer venue. As preparation for the 2006 Global Day of Prayer, prayer drives were organised during which participants prayed Scripture. The prayer drives converged at the Central Police Station in Buitenkant Street. God used this event to touch at least one person in a special way. Wim Ferreira had been a transport engineer working with the City Council. He was challenged to resign from his position to concentrate on prayer for the City. He was hereafter invited to work with the Deputy Mayor of the metropolis.

When all the groups had arrived at the former freemason lodge, Daniel Brink, the co-ordinator of the event, asked me to share in a few words how God had changed things at the police station. I became too emotional. However, at this moment, Wim Ferreira was deeply moved. He promptly requested a room for prayer in the metropolitan Civic Centre where he had just started to work. This was another divinely orchestrated move. A few months further on, a regular Friday prayer time was functioning in a board room of the Civic Centre. Before long, a trickle of workers from all walks of life was coming to faith in Jesus as their Lord as a result of these prayers. On Wednesdays at lunch time believers from different denominational backgrounds gathered there to pray and intercede for the city. The Lord also challenged Wim Ferreira to start a 24-hour prayer facility at the Civic Centre premises. Soon a prayer room near to the parking area on the ground floor was frequented by many people throughout the day. The foundation stone towards 24/7 prayer in the CBD of the metropolis was laid.

Internationally, prayer groups started in all sorts of places. In Cape Town, Helen Phillips became the divine instrument to get a prayer ‘mushroom’, the equivalent of a spiritual atomic bomb, off the ground.

Prayer Warriors invade Chambers of Government

Other interesting things had also been happening at the Cape. After Pentecost 2007, I joined Wim Ferreira and other prayer warriors in a board room at the Cape Metropolitan Civic Centre for prayer every Friday.

The Lord put the unity of

the Body of Christ on our

prayer agenda once again

The Lord had put the unity of the Body of Christ on our prayer agenda once again. We continued with efforts to get Capetonian believers to pray together. This was to us an important step towards the revival we yearned for.

Wim Ferreira linked up with Pastor Barry Isaacs, the new co-ordinator of the Transformation Committee. As a result of their deliberations, prayer meetings started in October 2007 at the Uni-City Council Chambers on the third Saturday morning of every month at 5.30 a.m. Wonderful answers to prayer were subsequently experienced month after month. At one of these occasions, the lack of the availability of the Civic Centre Banqueting Hall for a combined prayer event on Ascension Day touched Peter Williams, the secretary of the Provincial Parliament. He promptly extended a provisional invitation to the group to come and pray there as well.

On 31 May 2008 more than 100 believers gathered in the legislative house of the Western Cape for prayer at 6 a.m. Three days later there was a hush – and no mocking - as two Christians shared their biblical convictions at the same venue, as part of normal parliamentary procedure. This was for Peter Williams a direct result of the united prayer at that venue!

Corruption flares up once again The satisfaction to see corruption all but stamped out at the Cape Town Home Affairs offices, was short-lived and replaced by sadness and anger. Dean Pillay had hardly turned his back, leaving Home Affairs to take up a vocational position outside of government, when corruption flared up once again. Within weeks it was worse than ever before. We battled in vain a few weeks later to try and assist someone to get refugee status. In that case it was the obvious result of corruption at the Nyanga Home Affairs Refugee Centre.

I was so sad that things had deteriorated such a lot since March 2008 when we thought that the corruption and the duping of the destitute and hapless refugees at the Home Affairs offices had been stamped out. Now it was much worse.

Run-up to the Isaiah 19 Prayer Room After Baruch challenged all of us in mid-2011 to pray about becoming a part of the South African group to the annual Jerusalem prayer convocation, also other Monday evening regulars were blessed in special ways. On June 27 Baruch, Karen and a few other believers in Claremont prayed fervently that the Lord would confirm clearly whether Rosemarie and I should step out in faith to join the Jerusalem convocation. Knowing that our children wanted to sponsor Rosemarie for her 60^th birthday in July 2011 so that we could fulfil this secret wish, I had to pray now for confirmation before the 30^th. This was very clearly confirmed. The very next day a letter which I received from Germany informed me that I would receive a small monthly pension, retrospective from 1 January 2011. I don't know how the German Social Services got my address. (Possibly the folk retrieved our address via the Moravian Head Office in Germany. There I had been paying into the pension fund in the few years from 1973 to December 1980.) On Thursday morning, the 30^th June, during my quiet time I felt that this was the confirmation to trust the Lord for all the funding necessary for the Jerusalem convocation, even though the situation in Israel was very unsettled because of the threats of the Palestinians.

For Rosemarie it was very special that she could now be a part of the South African delegation. (She went to Israel in 1973 to assist in a children's home after the work permit and tourist visa for South Africa had been refused.) Their leader had expounded from a Bible study during her visit to the Holy Land that nations would in future be going up to Jerusalem.

Semi-political Involvement At this time things started hotting up as the Palestinian Authority stepped forward to declare themselves independent unilaterally. Archbishop Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak had been making statements which give the impression that South African Christians in general supported this. I felt constrained to attempt getting involved to set the record straight. I doubted sincerely that the two church leaders had the backing of the bulk of believers in this country.

Thinking that the Consultation of Christian Churches was the best institution to make an attempt towards an inclusive statement that stays clear from divisive issues like Replacement Theology, I wrote an email to Rev Peter Langerman to this effect. I was misled to perceive that the Security Council of the UN was set to vote very soon.

I suggested that the CCC executive send an email to its members with a request for a quick response to a press statement which could run along the following lines:

… Very much aware that the founder of our faith was a Jew, Christians have a natural affinity to Israel and Jews in general. Whilst aware that the Israeli state and military apparatus have not been innocent in past decades in an attempt to enforce their authority, we are also aware that Christian Arabs in general are very contented to live in the country, rather than in any of the neighbouring states. We are satisfied that the country adheres to democratic principles and that no group is being officially discriminated against as we had it in our country in the sad apartheid era. Arabs are even represented in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament...

I hoped that our government would encourage the counterparts on both sides of the main Middle East tussle to continue vigorously to achieve a negotiated settlement and to refrain from unilateral decisions. At a meeting with three members of the CCC executive we decided however not to proceed with any further action at that point in time. In retrospect, that was not the best decision. The situation deteriorated gradually. In October 2015 our government even made an agreement with the extremist HAMAS leaders, who had come to the country on the invitation of the ruling ANC.

I also tried to get an informal appointment with Archbishop Tutu, but this was unsuccessful. That signalled the end of any effort on my side of semi-political involvement to nudge the government to firmer commitment towards a reconciliation effort in the Middle East. I have still not given up hope that the present situation might change, that our government will be a conduit for reconciliation in the Middle East.

Peace of Jerusalem as a rallying Point At the end of 2010 we made another attempt at Muslim/Jewish dialogue and reconciliation, an effort to link Messianic Jewish believers and Muslim background believers at the Cape. Initially it did not reap much success however. On Fridays Brett Vivier and I started doing prayer drives and prayer walks in Sea Point. This petered out in due course.

Tuesday 26 October 2010 was quite eventful as I took Richard along to Noordhoek where we had a wonderful post-Lausanne report back by Floyd McClung, our leader. He requested me to share as well, knowing that Rosemarie and I attended Connected 2010, the conference specially organised for all those who were not invited to the main event at the International Convention Centre. Rather spontaneously I went overboard in Noordhoek, by also sharing our concern that a few lines in the draft for Lausanne III were supportive of so-called Replacement Theology. I was not aware that Floyd had opposite convictions. I received a severe reprimand that almost saw us parted ways with All Nations. We decided to keep our conviction to ourselves in order to keep the peace, feeling very hypocritical about the matter. I was like Jonah once again!

A negative of our link to All Nations was that an interest in the strongholds of Bo-Kaap and Sea Point never took off. In fact, interest in loving outreach to Jews remained almost non-existent. We chose to hang in there, not wanting to be like Jonah to run away. Towards the end of 2015 we felt though that we had come to the end of the road with All Nations International because we had also been hoping for new leaders to lead the ministry at least in Bo-Kaap. Nothing was forthcoming, only tentative interest by various people.

Fighting for the Unity of the Body of Christ

A negative effect of an email from a dear friend to me in October 2010 was that my manuscript The Unity of the Body of Christ - a top Priority? became untenable. On 11 September 2011, I wrote an email confirming a telephonic conversation regarding the availability of Moravian Hill for a combined service of believers from the City Bowl on Saturday afternoon 24 September (Heritage Day), including Jewish Messianic and followers of Jesus from Muslim backgrounds, along with Christians coming from other countries.

Could you please include in your reply all relevant information in the light of the possibility of using the building thereafter on a regular basis. We would be very grateful if you could supply this information ASAP so that we could inform the people who attend our service tomorrow evening in the Sea Point High School.
When I didn’t get any response I had to send another email. Thereafter I heard that my request was declined. No reason was given. I took no trouble for finding the reason for the refusal. Four years later, on 19 August, 2015 I made sure that the same thing would not happen again.

The result was even more devasting when we requested the use of the church as venue for a prayer walk to counter the Islamasition of District Six. The reason for declining our request amounted to fear of a possible Muslim backlash. I was asked whether I was not afraid of an attack on my life of ISIS. The hurt was very deep as a realised that I was almost completely ostrasized from my Moravian roots.

Hosting Speakers from Abroad

From the middle of 2012 we were challenged with the hosting speakers from abroad. I did not even consider Jonah activity, trying to duck or dive from any responsibility. In fact, I loved the challenge. Linked to the Lausanne Consultation for Jewish Consultation, we had little hesitation to host Pastor Umar Mulinde and a niece, a nurse. He was attacked by a Muslim fanatic at the end of 2011 who threw acid on him. He had survived miraculously and was subsequently treated in Israel. Using him as our keynote speaker was quite a risk. It was finalized when he was still in hospital. God used Pastor Umar Mulinde powerfully in South Africa to wake up some Christians to the danger of militant Islam. He stressed that we must love Muslims but we must oppose, even hate the demonic spirit at the base of the religion.

Just prior to his arrival in this country a Deputy Minister discouraged South Africans publicly to visit Israel. Umar Mulinde highlighted the link to the Marikana Platinum Mine tragedy two days later on 16 August, which resulted in the deaths of 44 people, the majority of whom were striking mineworkers, Pastor Mulinde had no doubt that it was ideologically and spiritually linked to the hate-filled speech of the Muslim Deputy Minister. We became very much aware of the fact that South Africa was cursed as a nation because of the anti-Israel stand of the government. The rand plummeted as a currency, a sign of a general economic decline.

Other speakers we were requested to host and to organize itineraries for, got us quite excited. Pastor Youssef Ourahmane, a Muslim-raised Algerian and his Malaysian wife Hie Tee, whom God had used in the run-up to the revival among the Berbers of that country, challenged us to get a prayer and fasting chain going in order to achieve a breakthrough, notably in Bo-Kaap, the Islamic stronghold for which we had been praying for more than 20 years. Alon Grimberg, a German who has been living in Israel for many years and who married an Arab believer, encouraged us in our vision to see reconciliation between Jews and Muslims at the Cape through faith in Jesus. We felt ourselves so much on the same page with these speakers.

A modern Version of Gideon's Fleece Christmas 2011 came without any movement on the front towards a prayer room. On the first Sunday of 2012 we were challenged to put forward our faith visions for the new year. A young man shared his hope for a prayer room in Long Street to counter the week-end vice of our city, to which we eagerly added the prayer room to be built at our home. We had been receiving a few gifts ear-marked for the project, but nothing substantial. Rosemarie and I started praying for confirmation of the vision. One morning Rosemarie stepped out on to the balcony outside our dining room. She was completely flabbergasted to see drops on the table and on the awning next to the place where the prayer room would be built, but everywhere else it was dry. This was to us no less than a modern version of Gideon's fleece (Judges 6), confirmation that the vision of the prayer room was a divine issue and not our own wish.

Provision with the Vision Another few months elapsed with no significant movement. We consulted various people related to the building trade including the husband of Rochelle Smetherham, a civil engineer who offered his services to assist with the drawing of the plan for us free of charge.

At this time a German medical student had been joining us every week during our outreach. He came along with us on Thursday, 23 February 2012. We told him about the prayer room we hoped to see erected. His natural question was how it would be funded. We believe – and that we had seen over the decades - that with the vision he would give the provision.

I was never overwhelmed and overawed when I saw the next day that an email came in from Holland with the following text in translation: Two years ago we were informed that we as WEC Netherlands were co-heirs of the bequest of Mrs Ans Antoni. In her testament one could read that the bequest should be spent on the mission work of the Cloetes. The question to you is whether you accept this gift...[41]

We had no hesitation to accept, knowing that this was the Lord's financial confirmation for the prayer room we hoped to see built.

In a counter to the preparations for the ANC centenary celebrations of January 2012 that included a lot of ancestor worship, Pastor Light Eze initiated '8 Days of prevailing prophetic prayers

In mid- 2015 Amanda Hattingh initiated prayer walks on the first Saturday of the month in Sea Point and in Muizenberg on the third Saturday.

Pursuing the Unity of the Body of Christ I was actively pursuing the visible expression of the unity of the Body of Christ. The monthly prayer meetings with Pastor Barry Isaacs at the Provincial Parliament and the Civic centre had become important tools to spread the word about any events to this end. The monthly ‘highway meetings’ with Pastor Baruch Maayan petered out when the fellowship around him also had weekly events.

Occasional events like one on the Grand Parade in October 2012, where Pastor Light Eze was the pivot caused the spiritual fire to flare-up briefly. Notably, one of his congregants, Maditshaba Moloko, a lay Christian and a City businesswoman, came through as a Christian leader as the Mistress of Ceremonies at that occasion. She subsequently felt led to invite believers to a two-day conference at the Good Hope Centre on 10/11 December 2012 around the five-fold ministry. Known as someone who had a heart for Israel and for missionary work, God blessed her business so much that she was soon renting strategic premises in the City Centre. The Prowess premises on the 20^th Floor of the Thibault Square sky scraper, which she moved into in 2015, also included a prayer room. Maditshaba Moloko became the South African co-ordinator for the annual International prayer convocation in Jerusalem in 2014.

Divine Timing Regarding the prayer room, we still had to learn that confirmation is one thing, but that divine timing was still needed. Our patience was severely tested over many months as delay upon delay followed because of different reasons. We had learned however over the years that it is best to wait on the Lord and not to rush things.

Towards the end of 2012, we felt quite ambivalent. There had been so many encouragements As a result of the event at the Good Hope Christian Centre around the five-fold ministry, a few believers followed this up with discussion around the issue of restitution at the home of Hilary Solomon. The spur was the message delivered by Pastor Martin Heuvel at that occasion. There Hilary Solomon came to the fore as a leader on behalf of the First Nation. In due course this terminology came to replace Khoisan. At a meeting at her home on 7 January 2013, a programme of five R's were tabled -Repentance, Reconciliation, Restoration, Restitution and Revival. A 'road map' was suggested where the united body of Christ could work towards achievable goals.

Naive Hope I hoped naively to get church leaders on board against the government's anti-Israel stance in 2012. I e.g. wrote the following email:

Dear Pastoral Colleagues,

At the City Bowl ministers' fraternal this week, one of the colleagues brought up the concern that a cabinet minister has recently presented a government view that is in all likelihood only supported by a small majority of the population.

The tragedy is that the anti-Israel position our country has taken, may take us towards an economic precipice. It is probably no co-incidence that the view expressed on 14 August was followed by the Lonmin mine disaster two days later which brought the currency decline and the unprecedented rise in the price of petrol and a string of mine strikes in its train. (This is definitely not the first time that some form of divine wrath followed the 'cursing' of the apple of God's eye (Compare Genesis 12:3).

The brother colleague expressed his concern at the ministers' fraternal that the Church is so quiet. In recent weeks Pastor Umar Mulinde of Uganda encouraged us with the example in the country when a minority succeeded to get a proposal for Shariah Law onto their statute books. The Church stood up in united opposition to that move.

The question is: Must we wait until similar moves also happen here? The point is that there are many a precedent in Africa where countries went into serious economic decline after turning against Israel in recent decades (DR Congo (Zaire), Malawi).

In a recent radio broadcast Pastor Barry Isaacs gave seven reasons why Christians should support Israel. I asked him to email this to me. Please consider them in the attached document and please comment. Do you agree that it is time that the Church should speak out; that it is time for the silent majority – which we believe is present in South Africa, notably in the Church – should we take a stand in opposition to those in government who express views which will harm all of us in due course?

There was hardly any response. Also other efforts to get the local churches of the Cape Town City Bowl joining in concerted action, floundered. Although the Lord had already comforted me at the end of 2011 on this score that unless he builds the house, I would toil in vain, I was nevertheless disappointed when there never seemed to come a change in this regard.

A Role for the Church in corporate Restitution? Participating in a group of believers which looked at the follow-up of the conference at the Drill Hall in December as the 5 R's with restitution at its core, the quest was of course also to get some unified action by the Body of Christ. In a response to notes by Hilary-Jane Solomons, I wrote the following lines after attending one of the meetings where I was so excited to hear of biblical research around Sabah and Ramah as the possible ancestors of the first nation of South Africa:

Confession by the Body of Christ for the gradual increase in the first A.D. Centuries of anti-Semitism of non-Jewish background Christian believers and for the Replacement Theology of theologians, including the Church Fathers – that the Church replaced Israel. General global confession is also needed for the subsequent side-lining of Israel and Jews (notably by the decrees of Emperor Constantine in the early 4th century) and for the general neglect of the Tenach ('OT') as second-rate in respect of the 'New Testament' by the Body of Christ at large.

I believe that a possible subsequent return of the Body of Christ to the Torah in a non-legalist and loving way and/or giving prominence to it could be the result which the Father will honour in a big way. (I learned on Monday from Edgar Phillips and JP (??) from their exciting biblical research around Sabah and Ramah. Surmising that the neglect of the Torah could have been the reason for the punishment (exile into becoming hidden for centuries) is still perhaps a bit much, but it does make a lot of sense. It surely does provide a promising basis for more research.)

A Breakthrough at last?

In the space of a few weeks we saw seven people baptised with some link to our Discipling House at the end of 2013 and in January 2014 I baptised five of them – only one of the seven had not been a Muslim before. When I heard soon thereafter of a MBB pastor, it all became rather exciting. It unfortunately surfaced in due course that the testimony and life-style of this township-ordained pastor, who knows the Bible very well and who has astounding biblical insight, included lies and deception. (We know that the lying spirit which is so typical of folk coming from Islamic background). He managed to keep up the deception for a number of years.

Another Discipling House? During the first half of 2014 the unprecedented additions to the male complement of MBBs brought us immense excitement, while we enjoyed a four-month sabbatical overseas. A crisis at our Discipling House (intended for females) during our absence brought the need of another Discipling House, one for males, into the frame. Folk in Holland started making plans to send us a container in which they wanted to send us various artifacts as they did at the beginning of the millennium.

It all turned out to be very premature. While we took it in our stride that the new MBBs came from the drug culture, we knew that this would not be easy. We were very much blessed when Andre van der Westhuizen, a member of the DRC Bergsig Church in Durbanville took a keen interest along with a few members of that congregation to bring a Discipling House for males into being. When Almo Bouwer, a builder, revealed that the Lord had challenged him to build something in District Six, the venture got somehow also linked to the mountain peak name change operation that meandered very low-key. An injection was given when it turned out that a MBB couple is in the queue there, waiting for a massive pay out due to them as well as property given to people – or their descendants - who had to leave District Six because of the Group Areas evictions of the 1960s to 1980s.

Disappointments The attitude of the Moravian Church when we wanted to use Crises around the threat of islamisation of District Six brought massive disappointment. We hoped to use the Moravian Hill premises during a prayer walk on 21 August in an attempt to pray that a Christian presence might be restored as it has been before Group Areas involvement and that the Cape might impact our country again as it did in the past.

Dear Rev. Cloete,

In view of relationship that the Moravian Church in South Africa has with other religious groups in South Africa, and in view of the public nature of your prayer walk in District Six for the purposes as contained in your e-mail below, your request for use of the Moravian Hill Chapel was declined...

Joy turning Sour Towards the end of 2015 the joy of new MBB converts of 2014 turned out to be premature. The pervasive lying spirit among some of them brought about tremendous strain. Just under two years later we had to attempt to control damages.

Another breakthrough? On another score the initiative of Pastor Maditshaba Moloko, to invite believers to come and prayer for Israel and the Jews once a month on a Saturday evening at her 20th floor Thibault Square premises from June 2015, drew an increasing number of folk, for the first time also includiing a significant segment from the Xhosa community. On the other hand, our monthly prayer on Signal Hill, aided by bad weather on a few occasions, petered out completely. We decided to relocate this monthly prayer especially for Jews and Muslims to our prayer room every first Saturday of the month..

A very special Occasion A very special occasion happened at the end of November. When an American couple linked to the Sukkot Hallel prayer house was here, a meeting was called on short notice. At this meeting at Maditshaba Moloko’s Thibault Square premises, Lyndy Haslam and Gay French were in attendance - two believers who had been in our Jewish Messianic fellowship that met on Saturday evenings when Baruch Maayan was here with his family. When the couple from America brought a message from Rick Ridings regarding a prophetic act with a staff outside the waters of Cape Town, Gay was immediately reminded of an almond stick that Baruch had taken to Uganda in 2012. ‘If Baruch would have been around, he should do that act’, was the common thought. Lyndy knew that Baruch had actually left that stick in her custody. Was it mere chance that two other sticks with a special history would be available on Friday 11 December?

Just at that point in time Karen Maayan was sending a message from Israel via her mobile phone to Maditshaba that Baruch had been asked to come and speak at an event in Johannesburg. When Maditshaba saw this after the meeting, it was arranged for his itinerary to be changed to include Cape Town where his mother is in a retirement centre.

On short notice a meeting was arranged to take place at Cape Point and a few other places. Also at other venues across the continent intercessors joined. When all this was organised, nobody suspected that President Zuma would sack his Finance Minister and replace him with an inexperienced backbencher. This had the immediate effect that the Rand, our currency took a nose dive, causing deep concern country-wide that our country was going down the drain economically. The result was that the State President’s advisors got him to make a rare summersault, appointing a former Finance Minister who had a good track record in a matter of days. The economic situation of our country was a prayer point not only around the country on Friday 11 December, but also at our Signal Hill prayer time the next morning. All of us knew that this situation was a direct result of the nation praying unitedly once again. We hoped that the breakthrough would also transpire in a few other areas, to signify that the revival trigger had been pulled.

21. Walls to Conquer

Erika heart attack zumamustfall

As I set out into the seventies, human speaking the last stretch of my life, there are still a few walls to conquer. Physical energy is obviously significantly reduced and emotional drive and passion not what it used to be. I am still very much committed to attempt the name change of the mountain peak above Cape Town, notably because we see the link to the corruption that is epitomised by our State President.

Angus Buchan 22 April 2017

On 8 August 2017 he survived a vote of no confidence once again. That it was done by secret ballot after an extended process and possibly a lot of back-stage manipulation, gave hope beccause so much of the state capture link to the Guptas, a rich Indian family, was exposed. That around 30 ANC parlaimentarians gave hope that the deap-seated corruption might still be halted.

[1] The institution, later called Cornerstone Christian College, was started as a parallel Bible school for ‘Coloureds’ to the renowned Bible Institute of South Africa in the ‘White’ suburb of Kalk Bay.

[2] WEC had actually already pioneered in this regard at this time with Newman Muzwondiwa from Zimbabwe and a South African 'Black', Abraham Thulare. But both of them were ministering in Japan.

[3] Gloria Cube, who was born at St Monica’s Maternity Clinic, the Xhosa-speaking daughter of a domestic servant who was working in the posh suburb of Rondebosch. She was one of the very first local ‘Blacks’ to reach out to Cape Muslims. Later she joined Africa Evangelical Fellowship as a missionary to Mozambique.

[4] That special book had already influenced the praying for missions like possibly no other.

[5] A few years later the Lord would use Ivan Walldeck to disciple Rashied Staggie, a well-known drug lord who became a follower of Jesus, albeit that his testimony became very blurred in due course.

[6] A personal connection was that the funding of the intensive renovation of the property was enabled by the mission agency in Stuttgart (Germany) where our friend Hermann Frick was working.

[7]We had been prepared though to reach out to Muslims when we were getting ready to work in the Ivory Coast in 1990. This was confirmed during our preparation as missionary candidates in Bulstrode, the international headquarters of WEC in 1991.

[8]In preparation of a church service in September 2011, in which we celebrated the various cultures in our city, we were quite surprised to discover that there are so many more Jews in Sea Point (15000) than Muslims in Bo-Kaap (7,100). We know of course that Sea Point is space-wise much bigger than Bo-Kaap.

[9]Accessible as Gabriel and Jibril at www. isaacandishmael.blogspot.com

[10]He helped out at the Sendingkerk down the road in Aberdeen Street while he was a theological student in Stellenbosch.

[11] I subsequently completed a treatise that I called A Revolutionary Conversation - lessons in cross-cultural outreach.

[12] The fellowship that worshipped there in the apartheid days signalled the tragic image of the political system like very few others. Just down the road ‘Coloureds’ of the same denomination were coming together every Sunday almost at the same time in a shack-like building.

[13]Personally I would have preferred a more central venue but I compromised, not wanting to wreck the initiative because of a peripheral matter.

[14] This is his adopted pseudonym, with which he became widely known around the world in later years.

[15] Chris had been imprisoned in the apartheid era. His main ‘offence’ was that he had been caring for the families of political prisoners. As far as I know, he was never brought before a court of law.

[16] Although already almost at retirement age, the 57-year old nurse decided to venture into missions, entering the Africa School of Missions the following year. The year thereafter she was already on her way to the mission field, to the Indian subcontinent as a ‘tent-making’ missionary, using her nursing skills in a loving way to the down and outs. It became simultaneously the opportunity for us to upgrade our ‘fleet’, taking over her 1989 Mazda for a song. That car would give us many years of faithful service until it was stolen in 2001.

[17] Not her real name.

[18]The St James Church massacre of July 1993 ironically caused a temporary break on the escalation of violence that sent the country to the precipice of a civil war of enormous dimensions. Inter alia, it spawned unprecedented prayer all around the country, bringing home the seriousness of terrorism that would not even stop at sacred places.

[19]It was he who appeared to have made the biggest sacrifice of the children when we came to Cape Town after having had a fairly close friendship to Michael van der Wolf in Zeist and being without any friends in Cape Town for many months.

[20] The hospital became renowned worldwide in 1967 through the first heart transplant operation by Professor Chris Barnard and his team.

[21] I also had quite a few Bible School libraries at my disposal.

[22]This was later changed to a monthly event.

[23] The model was the ANC, which had given encouragement from exile. In January 1985 it had been suggested that the oppressed should make the country ungovernable. This should become its strategy to get ‘people’s power’ in place.

[24]In 1993 our previous model had been stolen

[25] Meaning(God saying)’revenge is mine’.

[26] I had prior contact with them in Holland, with Pieter Bos in the formation of the first Dutch Regiogebed in 1988 and with Cees Vork during one the Opwekking conferences at Vierhouten about ten years later.

[27]We took care of Nazeema after her ex-husband had shot her in her leg. Thereafter she fled to friends in the neighbourhood.

[28] Subsequently the need for an extended stint in Holland became redundant when the Dutch law was changed.

[29] This was in fact the venue of my own conversion experience on 17 September 1961.

[30] I knew him from the start of the Regiogebed in Holland in 1988 and I had also met Cees Vork in Holland.

[31] A mini-revival started there after the emancipation of slaves on 1 December 1838.

[32]Not his real name

[33]Not her real name

[34]Not her real name

[35]Not his real name

[36]He had been a gangster and drug Lord before God supernaturally intervened in his life.

[37]At that complex I had received my theological training from 1971 to 1973.

[38] A fuller version of his involvement can be found in other manuscripts.

[39] This relationship would affect the whole All Nations family in due course very positively.

[40]Lillian James was God’s strategic instrument to link us up with Leigh and Rabbah (Paul) Telli, when they came from the UK early in the new millennium.

[41] Literally: Twee jaar geleden werd ons medegedeeld dat we als WEC-Nederland mede erfgenaam waren van de nalatenschap van mevr. J.F.Antoni. In het testament was te lezen dat de overleden mevrouw Antoni de wens had dat de erfenis aan het zendingswerk van de Cloetes zou besteed worden... De vraag aan jullie is nu: willen jullie deze gift aanvaarden...?

Isaac and Ishmael

Friday, December 21, 2018

Jumping over Walls Part 1 October 2017