Gateway News questions influential South African author, speaker and Christian leader Afrika Mhlophe about his latest book, Turning from God to Diviners and Fortune-tellers
Tell us a little about yourself
I am married with two children. I have been preaching the Gospel since 1998 and have been privileged to feature on various platforms in South Africa and various other countries.
This is your fourth book. Is there a thread that runs through your book series or is each one a standalone?
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South Africa is emerging from a divided past where people have been polarised around race. The consequence of this is that some people assume that each ethnic group’s way of life or culture should be the standard used to determine right and wrong. My books tend to counter this way of thinking by showing that culture – being a man-made system — will always be inferior to God’s Word, the Bible. Thus I am drawn to the intersection between the biblical worldview and all others.
What inspired you to take on the topic of turning away from God to diviners and fortune tellers?
I have been noticing a resurgence and growth of African spirituality and the phenomenon known as ukuthwasa (divination). Some people do not know that the God condemned divination thousands of years before it ever became part of today’s cultures. It is, in fact, one of the reasons God judged the Canaanites and had them annihilated from the face of the Earth. Hence, in my book I show that divination is prohibited for what it is and not necessarily for who is doing it. This is important because some people rush to make this into a racial issue. Whereas, African people were not in view when God led Moses to include the prohibition against all forms of divination in the Torah.
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If diviners help people, why should the Bible condemn them?
This question is based on consequentialism – a doctrine or theory that says actions should be judged on the basis of their consequences. In other words, whether an act is right or wrong depends solely on its results. An example is a person who steals to feed himself. Consequentialism removes the need to trust in God and HIs word to produce a good outcome. It suggests that God’s commands are arbitrary, not well thought through and that by obeying them a person will be prejudiced. Moreover, people tend to separate means from ends and justify anything by pointing to the results they get. But God knows that the short-term gains from divination are nothing compared to the long-term damage.
Isn’t the call to be a diviner inescapable?
African religion primes people into thinking that the call to become a diviner is inescapable. This way of thinking is referred to as fatalism — the belief that a person has no power to influence the future, or indeed, his own actions. In a fatalistic worldview, the events in a person’s life are believed to be determined by fate and therefore inevitable. Hence people are encouraged to reconcile themselves to their fate.
But I can assure you that God has never planned for anyone to become a diviner. Instead, God has predestined us “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). Resembling Jesus is in line with God’s original plan for creating humans (Genesis 1:26-28). Remember, God made humans in His image, they fell into sin, and through Jesus, He is restoring them back to a place they would have been had sin not interfered.
Who should read this book and how will it benefit them?
Anyone who is interested in the advancement of the Gospel, especially on the African continent, should read this book. In it you will learn how to minister to people who practice syncretism and those who are drawn to historical revisionism. By this, I mean people who ignore chunks of history and inconvenient facts in order to advance the idea that the Bible is against African culture and that some people have a unique and ethnic-based spiritual path.
Where can we buy the book?
People can obtain the book by sending an email to info@afrikam.co.za
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