Publisher's note: Peter Hammond did not ask me to publish this letter. I did so of my own accord.
Greetings in the precious Name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
It was a surprise to see your article: “Inter-racial Marriage and Racism in Modern Ministry: Two Prominent Examples.” It was forwarded to me by concerned Christians. Published apparently on Good Friday, 30 March, when Christians in Africa are focused on the sufferings, betrayal, illegal trial, scourging and crucifixion of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Have we ever met? I am not aware of having ever met you or discussed any of these matters with you, either personally or by correspondence. Have you written to me concerning these matters to clarify my position? We do not seem to have any record of correspondence from you on any subject.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. My highest priority is to be faithful to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to love God with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength and to love my neighbour as myself. Christ’s Great Commission is my supreme ambition. To this end, since my conversion to Christ in 1977, I have been wholeheartedly consecrated to fulfilling the Great Commission in Africa.
We Africans do not understand the divisiveness of all too many Americans who seem ready to conduct witch hunts and summary inquisitions to damn to hell brothers in Christ over secondary issues. We work with believers who hold to the inerrancy of Scripture and the Deity of Christ. African Christians do not need to agree on all points of doctrine before we co-operate for the Kingdom of God. The enemy would like to divide us, but we chose to work together with many with whom we have serious disagreements over, for example, modes of baptism, forms of Church government and eschatology.
As a Missionary to persecuted Christians for over 36 years, I have had to be ready to die for Christ at a moment’s notice. As the Missionary who mentored me, Francis Grim, would remind us: “A missionary must be prepared to preach, pray or die at a moment’s notice.” In many parts of Africa that is literally true. I have been bombed at church services, ambushed, arrested and tortured.
We are a Reformed Mission and hold enthusiastically to the Five Solas of the Reformation: Scripture alone is our ultimate authority. We will not bow before any idols, including the idols of multiculturalism, no matter what their Thought Police may threaten or scream. Christ Alone is the Head of the Church and everything must be done to the glory of God alone.
Dr. James Kennedy expressed his frustration to me that instead of one pope in Rome, we now have “thousands of Presbyterian popes here in America” eager to conduct “inquisitions” and “heresy hunting.” We do need to respect the rights of fellow Christians to have different opinions and positions. Freedom of conscience and freedom of speech are essential for freedom.
We need to respond to any challenge in the same spirit as Professor Martin Luther, who declared: “Unless I am convinced by Scripture, or by clear reasoning, that I am in error, for popes and councils have often erred and contradicted themselves, I cannot recant. My conscience is captive to the Word of God. It is unsafe and dangerous to do anything against one’s conscience. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. So help me God. Amen.”
You condemn me as a racist. You do not even know me. I have lived my whole life, 58 years, in Africa. I am African born and bred. During apartheid I chose to study in a non-white (they called it “coloured” at the time) Baptist Theological College. As I was preparing for a life in Missions, I thought it most appropriate to conduct my Theological training amidst people of different races and cultures. This was considered so shocking at the time that there were members, even deacons, in my congregation who criticized and insulted me for it. Even as I was dodging stone-throwing, tyre-burning riotous mobs on my daily commute to college.
I have devoted most of my adult life to serving African Christians suffering in some of the worst persecuted areas on earth. I have frequently risked my life to deliver many tonnes of Bibles, New Testaments, Gospels and Christian books, medical supplies and agricultural tools and seed to beleaguered Christians in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and Christians under fire in South Sudan. I have served persecuted Churches in the Congo, Northern Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, indeed throughout Africa, for over 36 years.
There are hundreds-of-thousands of Christians throughout Africa who love me as one of their “best friends” and as some of them have put it, “the only person who cared enough to come to us during the dark years when we were under fire for our Faith”. They would be astounded and amused to hear that Joel McDurmon in Georgia has condemned me as a racist! “Who is Joel McDurmon?” they would ask? “When has he come to help us?” they could add.
If I should tell them that it is because I believe that people should ideally marry within their race, most Africans would agree with me. In fact, most Africans that I know oppose marriage outside of their tribe. Not merely outside of their race. Are all the Zulus, Matabele, Nuba, Moru, Bemba, Dinka and Nuer Christians racists? “Well, Yes, apparently by McDurmon’s new standard!”
They would then ask how well has McDurmon read the Bible? We know of many passages, such as in Nehemiah and Ezra, which forbid marrying nations around them, but no verses condemning those who teach that one should ideally marry within ones race.
We understand that the United States of America has become the most multicultural country on earth. We understand that refusing to bow before the altar of multiculturalism is treason to the New World Order, but we fail to see how it is a “heresy” or an “abomination” before God.
The Bible tells us of Jacob’s twin brother, Esau, who took Hittite wives: “and they were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebecca” Genesis 26:34-35. “Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him and said to him, ‘You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan’.” Genesis 28:1. The Law of God declares: “Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son.” Deuteronomy 7:3
In his great prayer of National Repentance, Ezra warned against mixed marriages (Ezra 9:2-6, 12,13-14). Intermarrying with the nations around them, Ezra describes as “our great guilt… our iniquities…” Similarly Nehemiah denounced intermarriage with other nations (Nehemiah 13:24-30).
All these passages are well known and often taught and quoted in African churches that we minister amongst. We also study the great Creeds and Councils of the Church. Which Creed, Council or Confession of the Christian Church condemns those who teach that marriage should be within ones race? African women have expressed their strong opposition to mixed marriages. They feel devalued by incessant media promotion of black men with white women. Black women see it as an attack on their worth – that they are “not good enough for our own men.”
McDurmon, you and the multiculturalists of America and the New World Order have now invented a new standard for Christianity. A standard completely unknown by Christians of previous centuries. Indeed almost two millenniums of church history. By your standard, Christians such as Augustine, Patrick, Athanasius, Luther, Tyndale, Calvin, Zwingli, Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Andrew Murray and Charles Spurgeon would be condemned for not holding to your new standard, which just coincidentally happens to be the standard avidly promoted by Marxists and the secular media in the world today.
We are not teaching anything different from Dr. R.J. Rushdoony, or Professor Francis Nigel Lee, Robert Lewis Dabney, the Chief of Staff to Stonewell Jackson and General Robert Lee, would similarly be damned by your standards. Indeed, so too would most of the Christians of the last 20 centuries and certainly most of the Christians alive in Africa today, would fall under your condemnation by these Marxist standards of the New World Order.
The Frankfurt School advocated breaking every tie of blood, soil, family, race and nation. Certainly their Marxist disciples have been so busy and effective in doing so that the secularisation, paganisation and Islamisation of Europe is far advanced. The United States of America is also facing tremendous social and moral upheavals. Multiculturalism and guilt manipulation have played a major role in this revolution.
With all the gender confusion, pornography plague, abortion holocaust, crime and violence, resurgence of slavery and human trafficking, Islamic Jihad and savage persecution of Christians in the Middle East, it is inexplicable that you should want to distract Christians from our priorities in serving the suffering and making disciples of all nations.
Joel McDurmon, you are wrong in declaring that I have published these views on marriage. You can scour the over 50 books and manuals that I have authored in vain to find that. What you have declared are our published works, are actually only some counselling letters on an obscure part of one of our websites under Answers to Critical Questions. There are more than 100 such letters dealing with different subjects on that site and you have chosen to quote one of them out of context.
You have declared that I have forbidden certain marriages. Where have I forbidden any marriages? My replies to enquiries and responses to counselling questions are hardly to be confused with forbidding or excommunicating anybody!
How often have you visited Africa?
How far and wide have you travelled in Africa?
Are you aware that over 800,000 Tutsi Christians were slaughtered in just 100 days in 1994 – just because they were of the Tutsi tribe?
How much do you know about the Gukurahundi massacres of Matabele people in Zimbabwe in the 1980s?
Are you aware that white people in South Africa are facing genocidal hatred whipped up by the Marxist ANC and EFF?
Are you aware that many prominent politicians in South Africa are calling to suspend all protections of property and life for white people in order to seize, without compensation, their farms?
Are you aware that since Mandela became president of South Africa in 1994, over 650,000 people have been murdered in South Africa? Are you aware that of that number, over 75,000 were white South Africans? Are you further aware that over 4,000 white commercial farmers and their family members have been tortured to death in the most gruesome and sadistic measures imaginable since 1994? Are you aware that, just this year, measures have been taken in the South African parliament that have shocked observers worldwide and caused Genocide Watch to sound the alarm that white people in South Africa are in danger of extermination?
It is not possible for you, in the safety, seclusion and comfort of Georgia to possibly fathom what Christians in Africa are facing, or the dangers with which we daily deal. We are not playing marketing games, splitting hairs and seeking to generate some academic discussion. We are striving to fulfil the Great Commission at the risk of our lives in a continent in the grip of savage war. The Marxist and Jihadists must be delighted at your efforts to attack Christian ministries and bring division within the church.
It may be too much to ask you to understand, to care, or to support, but would it be too much to ask you to mind our own business and do proper research before damning people in other hemispheres and continents?
Could you please be a little bit more charitable and Christian in your dealings and writings with people, ministries, countries, cultures and hemispheres you evidently do not understand.
The Bible warns us that: "Pride only breeds quarrels" Proverbs 13:10.
The Apostle Paul warned of antagonists: "He is conceited ...he has an unhealthy interest in controversies and arguments that result in envy, quarrelling, malicious talk, evil suspicions..."
1 Timothy 6:4
The Word of God warns us of: "Those who with a word make a man out to be guilty, who ensnare the defender in court and with false testimony deprive the innocent of justice." Isaiah 29:20-21
May God have mercy upon you and lead you into all truth.
Yours for the fulfilment of the Great Commission
Dr. Peter Hammond
Director
1 comment for “Peter Hammond Responds to Joel McDurmon”