“God Of The Living!”

“God Of The Living!”(Mk.12:18-27).
O Great Jehovah, guide me, a pilgrim through this barren land!
When we were growing up in the village, there was a fool around Hausa quarter called “Corocoro.” The story we were told was that he was a Bamoum. It was said that he was the fiftieth person in a queue of those who were to be buried alive with a Sultan who died. Being the last in the line, Corocoro escaped and ran away until he found solace in Bali. In order to deceive the populace, he turned himself into a fool. He could not be taken back to Foumban because, as a fool, he couldn’t serve the purpose for which he was to be buried alive.
Only healthy and energetic “Nchindas” could be buried alive with a dead sacral ruler. These persons were to continue in the service of the ruler in the land of the dead.
This story – which is not an isolated case – reveals the concept of death and the hereafter in African traditional religions and philosophy.
Sacral rulers do not die; they merely change abode from this sphere of existence to the world beyond. In the land of the dead, they continue in sacral rulership and have to be served in the same way they were served in this life.
Sacral rulers and other dead who have attained the ranks of ancestors have to be remembered through ancestral veneration, which pioneer missionaries to Africa erroneously labelled, “ancestral worship.”
African ancestors, like other spirits, are second in line in African ontology. African ontology is a five tier category and is purely anthropocentric. God is at the top as creator and sustainer of all creation. Second are the spirits, including those who were created as such, and the ancestors. These spirits serve as intermediaries between God and human beings who are third in the category. (We do not even have to compare the ancestors to canonical saints because canonical sainthood originates from ancestral veneration – it is not the other way round).
Below humans are animate things, including animals and plants. The fifth in the rung are inanimate objects. Humans are at the centre, and all the others are made to serve humans.
Africa has become the heartland of Christianity not because Christianity was embraced as a better substitute but because Christianity is a better version of African traditional religion.
Christianity simply helped Africans to name Christ and also introduced the resurrection as a substitute for reincarnation.
The African understanding of the hereafter is that in the hereafter life continues the same as in this life until reincarnation takes place. And since they embrace continuity of life in the hereafter in a normal way as in this life, they can easily switch from this belief to the resurrection belief.
The biblical Sadducees rejected the resurrection because they did not see how life in the resurrection could function as in this life – especially in regards to surrogate marriages where a man married his dead brother’s wife to bear children for his late brother.
This is the error of the Sadducees, which Jesus corrected and explained that “When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”
Both John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul, the people around whom the NT revolves, did not marry – possibly as a practical demonstration of how light and free life in the resurrection is.
While we are in this life, we should enjoy it the best we can, as long as it is with fear of the LORD. However, we must fix our eyes on things above where Christ reigns because that is where we shall spend eternity. We shall be there as alive, though with spiritual bodies full of angelic bliss. In this world, they will pronounce us dead, but in that life we shall be alive in Christ for God “is not the God of the dead but of the living.”
To think otherwise is to be “badly mistaken!”
Prayer of the day and week: LORD, teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Amen!
Welcome back to a new working day and week! Have a blessed day and week! Peace be with you!
Rev Babila Fochang.
24/11/2025.