Traditional leaders and political voices in South Africa keep calling for 8 May to become a public holiday, “Ancestor’s Day”, so as to decolonise the Christian calendar with pagan celebrations.  How should the Christian respond to such proposals?  Why do many professing Christians in Africa still worship the ancestors in times of trouble or to ward off evil?  How do believers handle family pressure to join in blood sacrifices to appease and honour the forefathers?  God’s Word offers solid answers to these burning questions.

Christian, could you explain the difference between the blood required by pagan religions compared to Christianity?  The Book of Hebrews often tells us how the blood of Christ was “better”, better than the blood of Abel, better than the blood of bulls and goats, better than the old covenant.  But how is the blood of Christ also better than African Traditional Religion (ATR) sacrifices?

Here are six ways that the blood of Christ is better than the blood of ATR sacrifices: 

1. A Better Origin

On what authority are ATR sacrifices offered?  Only oral tradition and family pressure, none other.  Nothing divinely revealed from heaven; only humanly required by earthly tradition and culture.

Not so for Christianity.  God has spoken in His inspired, infallible Word.  We have a written, historical, reliable record of which blood sacrifices God requires, and when and why. This biblical explanation is available to all God’s image-bearers, for any humans and every culture that will open His Scriptures and hear His voice (Gal. 1:12; 1 Jn. 1:2; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21).

2. A Better Purpose

ATR sacrifices are pragmatic, for the sake of resolving immediate crises, averting evil, avoiding danger, and securing earthly blessings.  Not so with the final sacrifice God required at Calvary in the death of His Son.  When Jesus died, He didn’t only provide for sin’s symptoms and fruits. His cross was the remedy for the deepest root of our guilt and rebellion against a holy God and His deserved wrath as a result.  For every sinner who will ever believe, they can receive eternal redemption, not merely some temporal benefits (Rom. 3:21-26; 2 Cor. 5:21).

God’s Word is clear:  “Without the shedding of blood, there was no forgiveness of sins” (Heb. 9:22).  “In Him [Christ] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace” (Eph. 1:7).

3. A Better Nature

ATR sacrifices, like a chicken, goat, or cow, have no value in the sight of a holy God.  It is just the death of a pet, a wasted sacrifice, blood spilt in vain.  Not so with the blood of Christ, a million times no!  We are not redeemed “through the blood of goats or calves, but through His own blood” (Heb. 9:12).  We were “not redeemed with perishable things, like silver or gold…but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb unblemished and spotless” (1 Pet. 1:18).

In ATR, there are lots of intermediaries and agents involved – from sangomas, priests, diviners, traditional healers (witchdoctors), etc.  But in biblical Christianity, “there is one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:7).

4. A Better Recipient

ATR sacrifices are offered to a variety of unseen beings in the spirit world, like the ancestors and other deities, because God the Creator is seen as remote, distant, and uninvolved.

Not so in biblical Christianity:  Christ’s blood is offered to the one true God, satisfying His justice and fulfilling His Law, atoning for our guilt.  We don’t provide the sacrifice or produce the offering; God Himself provided it!

God Himself became the propitiation, sending His very own Son. At the real Mount Moriah in Genesis 22, Abraham told his son, Isaac:  “God Himself will provide the sacrifice”.  “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all” – this is the heart of our Christian confession of faith (Rom. 8:32).

5. A Better Frequency 

In ATR, the blood sacrifices are ongoing, repeated for each new need or crisis, offered at every tombstone unveiling and elsewhere.  Nothing is finished or final.  Unlike our Lord who declared from His cross, “It is finished” (Jn. 19:30).  “For Christ entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption…. By a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Heb. 9:12; 10:14).  No further blood is needed; the sacrificial system is done, all is fulfilled in Christ for all who believe – gloriously good news!

6. A Better Result 

ATR sacrifices achieve nothing except appeasing the family, preserving pagan culture and inviting more demonic influence, darkness, superstition and ignorance.  Not so with the Jesus once-for-all atoning sacrifice: “the blood of Jesus… cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1:7).  “…having made peace through the blood of His cross” (Col. 1:20).  “But now in Christ Jesus you who were far off are brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13).

As Spurgeon declared,

“There is no peace like the peace that comes from the blood of Jesus; it speaks peace to the conscience, peace to the heart, and peace with God forever. …The blood of the Lamb is the hope of the hopeless, the strength of the weak, and the victory of the defeated; by it we overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil.”

Conclusion

No Christian has any business going near the worship or appeasement of dead ancestors.  “Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?  [We are to go] To the Law and the Testimony!” (Isa. 8:19-20).  Only God’s Word can light the way out of such darkness.

We’ve seen six ways the blood of Christ is better than the blood of ATR—in its origin, purpose, nature, recipient, frequency and results.  As saintly Samuel Rutherford once wrote, “I have cast my soul’s anchor in the wounds of my Saviour, and there I find the blood that washes me whiter than the driven snow.”

The timeless hymn captures it best:

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow, that makes me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus!

I still remember as a 17 year-old young man, in 1991, hearing this anonymous quote from Dr. MacArthur when he came to preach at a nearby church in Houston, Texas, where I grew up.  That was nearly 35 years ago, yet I vividly recall how God used it to intensify my call to the ministry, convincing me that God’s Word was truly a “fire in my bones” that had to be let out (Jer. 20:9), and bracing me for what was ahead.  I had this quote hanging on my wall for many years after that.  This morning I was expounding 1 Timothy 6:11-16 on the man of God to our men at church, and I came across it and was deeply moved by it again.  How I praise God for the faithful men of God who have imparted His Word and sound doctrine to me.  How I pray that God would keep sending our church and seminary His choice men to train up as faithful expositors – the most urgent need of the hour!

“Fling him into his office. Tear the “Office” sign from the door and nail on the sign, “Study.” Take him off the mailing list. Lock him up with his books and his typewriter and his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts and broken hearts and the flock of lives of a superficial flock and a holy God.

Force him to be the one man in our surfeited communities who knows about God. Throw him into the ring to box with God until he learns how short his arms are. Engage him to wrestle with God all the night through. And let him come out only when he’s bruised and beaten into being a blessing.

Shut his mouth forever spouting remarks, and stop his tongue forever tripping lightly over every nonessential. Require him to have something to say before he dares break the silence. Bend his knees in the lonesome valley.

Burn his eyes with weary study. Wreck his emotional poise with worry for God. And make him exchange his pious stance for a humble walk with God and man. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God. Rip out his telephone. Burn up his ecclesiastical success sheets.

Put water in his gas tank. Give him a Bible and tie him to the pulpit. And make him preach the Word of the living God!

Test him. Quiz him. Examine him. Humiliate him for his ignorance of things divine. Shame him for his good comprehension of finances, batting averages, and political in-fighting. Laugh at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist. Form a choir and raise a chant and haunt him with it night and day-“Sir, we would see Jesus.”

When at long last he dares assay the pulpit, ask him if he has a word from God. If he does not, then dismiss him. Tell him you can read the morning paper and digest the television commentaries, and think through the day’s superficial problems, and manage the community’s weary drives, and bless the sordid baked potatoes and green beans, ad infinitum, better than he can.

Command him not to come back until he’s read and reread, written and rewritten, until he can stand up, worn and forlorn, and say, “Thus saith the Lord.”

Break him across the board of his ill-gotten popularity. Smack him hard with his own prestige. Corner him with questions about God. Cover him with demands for celestial wisdom. And give him no escape until he’s back against the wall of the Word.

And sit down before him and listen to the only word he has left-God’s Word. Let him be totally ignorant of the down-street gossip, but give him a chapter and order him to walk around it, camp on it, sup with it, and come at last to speak it backward and forward, until all he says about it rings with the truth of eternity.

And when he’s burned out by the flaming Word, when he’s consumed at last by the fiery grace blazing through him, and when he’s privileged to translate the truth of God to man, finally transferred from earth to heaven, then bear him away gently and blow a muted trumpet and lay him down softly. Place a two-edged sword in his coffin, and raise the tomb triumphant. For he was a brave soldier of the Word. And ere he died, he had become a man of God.”