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by Robert
L
Slimp
The Frontline Fellowship is one of
the most magnificent and effective mis
sionary groups I have ever encountered.
The Frontline Fellows are a group
o
South African and Rhodesian War
Veterans, including some men still on
active duty. Their mission is to bring
the Gospel o Jesus Christ to suffering
Black Christians in Angola, Mozam
bique, Zimbabwe and Southwest Africa.
The Director o Frontline Fellowship
is Peter Hammond, a handsome and
articulate former Rhodesian who served
in the South African Army as a combat
infantryman in Southwest Africa and
Angola.
Peter Hammond's adventures are as
exciting as an episode of the "A Team."
He and his fellow veterans make fre
quent forays, for example, into remote
parts o Mozambique, where, for weeks
on end, they travel by motor bike,
canoe and even by foot. They conduct
worship services, distribute Bibles and
tracts in the language
o
the people
to
whom they are witnessing. They also
show a two-hour film which they have
produced both in English and Portu
guese entitled "Jesus."
"We never stay in one place in Mo
zambique for more than two days," ex
plained Peter, "because the Communist
Army patrols are always trying to am
bush or capture us. It's dangerous work,
but the love
o
Christ compels
us
to
share the Gospel with people who are
suffering under Marxist oppression. It
would be impossible to have regular
missionaries stationed where we go
to
proclaim the GospeL In addition to the
Communist troops, there is malaria and
crocodile-infested swamps and rivers.
We always must be alert to danger. We
also must know how
to
present the
claims o Christ. Frontline Fellows
must be both physically and spiritually
fit.
"In the jungles
o
Mozambique,
we
have worship services that are some
times five and six hours long. Many
Christians walk 30, 50 and even
100 kilometers
to
attend. In our last
trip in July, 1986, we distributed over a
thousand Bibles in Portuguese, Lomwe
and Chichewa to
believers who had had
ll their Bibles destroyed
by
the Com
munists. It was a moving experience to
hear the testimonies o Christians who
had been tortured for Christ and
to
have
the opportunity to comfort the widows
and orphans o Christians martyred for
their faith."
I asked Peter to give me some speci
fic examples
o
his Christian work. He
simply started talking into my tape
recorder. Here
is
part o what he said
"In a small village in Tete Province
in Mozambique, over 100 people as
sembled for worship. One old pastor
had walked more than 150 kilometers
through the bush in order
to
meet me
and plead for a Bible. Oh what a joy it
was to give this dear old pastor the
Bible he had walked for five days to
receive. After the worship service,
which lasted nearly five hours, I prayed
with them and gave them Bibles. I was
then interrrupted by a young man who
identified himself as a Frelemo (Com
munist) soldier. He warned me to leave
quickly, as his comrades were looking
for me and were close at hand."
"After turning the new converts over
to the three pastors who were present
for follow up instruction and counsel
ling, I left on my motor bike. Speeding
down the pot-holed road on
my
over
loaded bike, I
was
so busy looking out
for signs o any imminent ambush that
I only noticed at the last possible
second that the bridge just ahead of me
was out. I skidded
to
a halt inches be
fore the edge o the destroyed bridge and
looked down into a muddy river. Turn
ing the bike around, I quickly set off
back down
the
road, trying
to
find
an
alternative route over the river. Sudden
ly two Renamo (anti-Communist) sol
diers stepped out onto the road. I stop
ped
to
ask them for directions. Then I
offered them a Bible in Portuguese, but
they only shook their heads. Looking
around in
my
bags, I found three Bibles
in Lomwe. I handed one o them a
Lomwe Bible. They both cried,
'Lomwe Lomwe ' They explained
to
me that they were both Christians from
the far North of Mozambique. They had
been praying for God
to
guide them
to
some Scriptures: 'There are no copies
o
the Bible in our area and we have prayed
and prayed that God would bless us
with our own copies
o
the Scriptures.
Our village
is
going
to
rejoice because
our prayers are answered.' I gave them
all three copies
o the Lomwe ~ i l e s
and we had prayer together. They
warned me that Communist patrols
were out in force
in
the area where I
would be traveling and told me that the
roads were unsafe because
o
land mines
and ambushes.
"Sure enough, I had gone only about
10 kilometers when I rode straight
through an ambush. I
was
still praising
and worshipping God for His sovereign
guidance and for the testimony and joy
o those two Lomwe Chr:lstian soldiers,
when four guerillas leaped out
o the
jungle with their
Ak
47's. But before
they could scramble into position and
open fire, I
had already sped past them.
"For the next two days, I saw only
burned down villages and burned out
fields and unburied corpses. Throughout
the districts covered, I never saw a
single domestic or livestock animal.
For four consecutive days, I saw differ
ent crops and villages burning from a
distance. I never saw a Mozambican
wearing shoes. Most o the people were
dressed in rags, sacks and skins made
from the bark
o
trees. Some even wore
caked mud. In many villages, the men
asked me
to
excuse the absence o their
women: 'They send you greetings, but
are too ashamed to come because they
have nothing to wear.' All the people
looked thin and hungry. Many were
eating insects, roots and boiled grass.
Most were malnourished and sick.
age
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The Coun'Sel
o
Chalcedon, February-March, 1989
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There were vastly more women than
men: 'Frelemo has killed most of our
men.' There were far more children than
adults and almost no teenagers or men
in their twenties. The teenagers and
youths had been sent to Maputo for
training and the brightest among them
had been sent on to Cuba or the Soviet
Union. Often, the leaders apologized to
me
because their children followed
me
everywhere, staring and trying to touch
my
hair and skin:
e
have seen Whites
before-- but our children never have. '
Peter Hammond told me that he has
about 20 active Frontline Fellows. All
of
them are doing missionary work.
Most of them work and spend their
vacations on missionary journeys. In
addition to these are several hundred
Frontline fellows who are on active
duty
with
the
South African defense
forces. These men distribute Bibles and
conduct services for the Black tribal
people whom they contact. This
is
now
encouraged
by
many commanding offi
cers and chaplains. These servicemen
hold prayer meetings and Bible studies
within their units and work closely
with their chaplains. He told me that
about 7 percent of the South African
defense force personnel regularly attend
worship services.
Peter Hammond is supported almost
exclusively
by
active duty service per
sonnel plus his local church, Pinelands
Baptist. From observing Peter's life
style,
he
obviously needs more support
and the work he does merits more
support. He desperately needs money
for Bibles and for transportation for his
missionary journeys. Money is needed
for his volunteer co-workers, all of
whom are very dedicated Christians
from Baptist, Dutch Reformed, and
Lutheran backgrounds.
For those who wish
to
help in this
worthy cause, Peter Hammond's address
is
: Peter Hammond, Frontline
Fellowship, P.O. Box 74, New
lands 7725, Republic of South
Africa.
Even though Peter
is
seldom able to
stay in one place more than a very few
(Continued on page 41)
The Counsel of Chalcedon, February-March,
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Frontline Fellowship
Continued from page 29
days because of the risk of capture,
he
assured me that there are indigenous
pastors who are willing to follow
through on the converts and who super
vise the distribution of the precious
Scriptures.
Never have I encountered more de
voted missionaries of the cross than
these courageous young men, who,
after fighting together for their country
in combat, are now taking the Gospel
of
the Prince
of
Peace to places where
most missionaries would be unable to
go and where no missionary could
possibly stay. They deserve our prayers
and our support.
[The
Rev. Robert Slimp is a free
lance writer in the P CA
who
has
travelled extensively. This article is
reprinted rom
the
November-December
1987 issue o Journey magazine. It
is
used by permission.] D
John Knox
Continued from page 36
unconditionally. In this respect his in
fluence on the Reformation is incalcu
lable and finds magnificent expression
in
the Scottish Confession
of
Faith,
Cap XIX:
.. we affirm and avow the authority
of
the same
to
be of God, and neither to
depend on men nor angels. We affirm
therefore that such
as
allege the Scrip
ture to have no (other) authority, but
that which
is
received from the Kirk, to
be blasphemous against God, and injuri
ous to the true
Kirk,
which always hear
eth and obeyeth the voice of her own
Spouse and Pastor, but taketh not upon
her to be mistress over the same.
fThis article contains excerpts from Prof.
V.E. D'Assonville's chapter
11
in
Calvinus
ReformaJor, Potchefstroom University for
Cnristian Higher Education, 1982, Potchef
stroom, Soutli Africa.] 0
JOHNCAU IN
News Briefs
Continued from page 30
Africa, an organization supporting Com
munist dictatorship in the third world is
a leading voice in the uproar over divest
ment in South Africa. He too favors
revolutionary action to overthrow the
South African government. Robinson
does not like Savimbi, and he said this
about the Dec. 22 accord signed by
South Africa, Angola and Cuba: If the
settlement actually comes off, Chester
Crocker will have produced fruit from a
very barren source and will deserve ku
dos for a major effort.
Chester Crocker, an assistant secre
tary of state, who is soft on commun
ism, has been working on
an
agreement
such
as
the one mentioned above for
years. The question asked by Human
Events The National Conservative
Weekly,
is
Can this pact be so sound
i this bosom buddy
of
Red revolution
aries (Robinson) appears so content?
The Soviet Union is very interested
in South Africa because of the country's
geostrategic position. Gorbachev, as
other Communist USSR leaders before
him, wants to run the world. A report
published in a Washington, D.C., news
paper Dec. 26, shows that Moscow
doesn't care
as
much about communist
doctrine as much
as
furthering world
conquest. The Soviets have been im-
pressing some South African officials
and making friends because
of
osten
sible changes in the communist sys
tem.
To summarize what has been hap
pening between South Africa and the
Soviet Union, a spokesman for the
South African Department of Foreign
Affairs said, We have made a com
parison
of
Soviet and American press
reports in recent months, and it makes
interesting reading. While the American
press,
as
a whole, continues
to
high
light apartheid and the grievances of the
black population, the Soviet press
is
running articles
on
South Africa that
are mainly informative. If you had told
me two years ago that we sould be
; getting a more objective press from
Russia than from America, I would
never have believed it.
Three terrorists, members of the Afri
can National Congress, were sentenced
in Cape Town Jan. 16 for planting land
mines on white-owned farms in
Swaziland. The mastermind
of
the
scheme was Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim, a
South African Indian. That
is
an appro
priate middle name for a terrorist (Gen.
16:11, 12). Ebrahim was sentenced to
20 years in prison, but the judge said he
had strong moral qualities. Whatever
these strong moral qualities may be,
they don't apply to marriage. He has a
common-law wife named Julie Wells.
The tragic part
of
this trial was not
that more terrorists will take up cell
space in South Africa. According to one
report, a Deputy Chief State Prose
cutor, Louise van der Walt, showed her
extremist sympathies after the verdict
was handed down. The convicted men
went to their cells, the blacks in the
gallery started to sing, and Mrs. Van der
Walt raised her hand in the salute of the
Afrikaaner Resistance Movement. Ebra-
him and his comrades had aimed to kill
when they planted the mines, and Mrs.
Vander Walt was right to demand the
death penalty for the terrorists.
But she certainly didn't enhance the
credibility
of
her correct commitment to
proper criminal penalties with this
apalling action. Ori the other hand, she
too has a point when she asks her
colleagues in the courtroom, Why do
you have to shut me up while others
are allowed to sing? This event under
scores the need for Christians not to
choose between the two false options
concerning South Africa. When both
sides are wrong, we must not be afraid
to say so D
Join us
in
the
Worship
of
God
