Valley of Grace

completion.

Chapter One

AN INTREPID MISSIONARY

‘The first pear tree planted by Georg Schmidt stood here and eventually it died after about 100 years. However, the life remained in the roots and soon a second pear tree grew next to where the first one stood. Once again when the tree died the life remained in the roots. And so a third tree grew from the roots and is the tree that stands here today.’ These descriptive words were spoken by Dr Isaac Balie, the Curator of the Museum at Genadendal on the 24th April 2003 when it was our privilege to visit the Mission. He was referring to the pear tree that is one of the central features of the Genadendal Mission.

Genadendal is a mission station which, for more than two Centuries has drawn visitors like pins to a magnet. The name Genadendal is the Dutch word meaning Valley of Grace. Local people from all walks of life including political leaders and international visitors have come to see this unique and remarkable historic village. The attraction is not only the activities of the people in the settlement, it is to the place, the buildings, museum, church and the awesome sense of history which pervades every corner of this impressive site and provides some of the detail that makes a visit to Genadendal unforgettable.

Only two hours drive on the N2 highway from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth, near Caledon, Genadendal affords a worthwhile outing for a day. However, this is not just another tourist attraction, museum or mission station to visit by following a tourist brochure, nor is it just a name on a map. For someone who has a sensitive and alert spirit to the realities of preaching and teaching the timeless truths contained in the Word of God, such a visit resembles a profound and unforgettable spiritual experience.

Robert Moffat had this to say about his visit there It is impossible to…. sit under the pear tree which that devoted missionary planted with his own hands, without feeling something like a holy envy, of so distinguished a person in the missionary band. (Balie, Isaac Die Geskiedenis van Genadendal 1738-1988 p114)

The story of Genadendal begins with the arrival of Georg Schmidt, on the ‘t Huis te Rensburg, an armed East Indiaman, at the Cape on the 9th July 1737. He stepped ashore after several months’ sea voyage from Holland. He was a bachelor and only 28 years old, who had already endured the agonies and distress accompanying six years in prison for encouraging oppressed Protestants in Salzburg and Moravia. Now, under the direction of the Moravian Mission in Herrnhut, and still fresh from an ongoing spiritual revival inspired by Count Nikolaus Ludwig Von Zinzendorf, he had responded to a call for missionaries to go to the Khoi people in the Cape.

The Moravian Mission in Hernnhut had its origins in the Moravian Brethren. This group of people were a product of Lutheranism in its pietistic phase coupled with a perpetuation of the old evangelical spirit in the remnants of the Bohemian Brethren. The combined groups were under the leadership of Zinzendorf who was born in 1700. He was reared by his grandmother who herself was an ardent pietist. From earliest childhood he displayed a religious enthusiasm that stayed with him all his life. He had a love for Jesus and an ambition to serve Him. At school he was a leader of religious activities and organised the Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed to promote personal piety among the boys.

At the insistence of his grandmother he studied Law at the University of Wittenberg. In 1722 he purchased his grandmother’s estate in Upper Lusatia and this property became the community of the Bohemian Brethren. In 1727 with several hundred of this group now resident there, the community was named Herrnhut (Lodge of the Lord). Herrnhut is about 30 miles or 48 kilometres from Dresden and on the border of Bohemia. In the same year (1727) there was a spiritual revival resembling that recorded in the book of Acts. A little girl Susanna Kiegal accepted the Lord and that event caused a mighty children’s revival in Germany. Children came together to sing and to pray on a little hill called Hoed and their voices echoed through the valley.

As a leader in the group Zinzendorf stood astride his loyalty to Lutheranism and the Brethren when he accepted formal leadership of the community. Among the other leaders in Herrnhut was a member of the Bohemian Brethren as well as one from the Reformed Church in Poland. Thus in Zinzendorf there was the coming together of the evangelical Lutheran and Reformed life. These two theological streams influenced his establishment not of a new denomination but rather of a platform from which he could launch a great Christian evangelizing agency.

Leadership was vested in a Board of 12 Elders at whose head stood Zinzendorf. The community was divided into sections for devotions, and prayer times were arranged in such a way that there was a constant cycle of prayer.

As early as 1728 plans for missions were being established. Visits were made to Turkey and Africa and by 1732 members were going out to preach the Gospel. In 1733 three men went to Greenland and in 1734 Lapland was visited while another group went to Georgia and Pennsylvania in the United States of America in 1735. Later in 1741 Zinzendorf also visited Pennsylvania where he found a large German population representing nearly every phase of religious life and thought, yet overcome by spiritual destitution.

Between 1741 and 1749 several constitutional issues caused much contention in the group at Herrnhut. By 1749 these had abated and the Saxon government invited Zinzendorf to establish other communities like Herrnhut.

The Moravians did much to keep a warm evangelical piety alive during a period of great spiritual darkness. This they did in the example they set to other Christian bodies in the consecration of their lives, work and property to the cause of world evangelisation. It was especially noticeable in the transformation which occurred in the life and views of John Wesley. As early as 1733 Wesley met members of the Moravian Church. For the next five years he was greatly influenced by individual members of that church.

One of the Moravian ministers, whose name was Spangenberg, pointedly asked John Wesley ‘Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that you are a child of God?’ Wesley was unable to answer. Again he was asked ‘Do you know Jesus Christ?’ – a question that was repeated over and over again. Wesley replied in the affirmative but feared his words were not from his heart.

He was further influenced by Peter Bőhler who also was from the Moravian community and who taught Wesley continuously about Salvation. Finally on 24 May 1738 John Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed and he trusted in Christ alone for Salvation receiving the assurance for which he longed. Later that year, he visited Herrnhut where he was influenced, refreshed and blessed as a result of his fellowship with members of the community and the preaching of Zinzendorf. He returned to England with a bundle of testimonies he had collected while sharing with and listening to the Moravians.

The physical layout of the community was on a rise with hills in the distance. There were beautiful green woods on two sides with gardens and cornfields also visible. There was accommodation for orphans, a shop which today would be called a pharmacy and a chapel able to seat 600 people. The houses were built in two squares. Zinzendorf’s house was small and plain with a large garden where he grew vegetables and fruit for day to day use.

In 1749 the settlement at Herrnhut was divided into three home provinces namely Germany, England and America. As late as 1953 Herrnhut still remained the centre of administration. Missions were established in Greenland, Labrador, Alaska, West Indies, Cape Colony, Australia, Tibet and among the North American Indians. The mission maintained leper hospitals and did evangelism. Educational work has been extensive and important as a means of training workers and bringing its religious influences to bear on vast numbers not united with the body.

Zinzendorf made it very clear to the missionaries that the essence of their work was to preach the Gospel. This was priority number one and thereafter their work was to establish Moravian churches. The people to whom the missionaries were going were told that they were born in sin and needed a Saviour. Hearers were touched by the Word and convicted by the Holy Spirit. The physical aspect of their mission, namely to establish communities in which the converts could live, meant that these people would grow and mature spiritually in a stable atmosphere conducive to peace and calm.

Schmidt was to find that in the Cape there was a population who suffered from, among other things, a shortage of water. He yearned to satisfy their spiritual thirst and to teach them about Jesus Who is Himself the Water of Life. If the boat trip resembled the inner horrors of the prison he had endured, now he was in a foreign environment which was the source of yet another kind of suffering. The contrasts in these climatic conditions were both startling and alarming. The weather in the Cape then, as today, varied from brilliant sun-filled days to days of rain and lashing winds. Tempestuous seas were only one of the terrifying features of the small community which was to become the Mother City and a peninsula that earned itself the name Cape of Storms.

Here at the furthermost end of the continent, life was also accompanied by the intermittent roar of lions that roamed the slopes of Table Mountain. Elephant added their loud trumpeting and shared the wild terrain with buck, zebra, hippo and ostrich. In fact the presence too of baboon, leopard and hyena served to heighten the reality for Schmidt of having arrived in a wild and frightening new country. Historic records depicting life in the Cape at this time give graphic descriptions of how traumatic life was for the people and their herds. The wild animals conducted unrestrained raids on livestock and on one