UNDERSTANDING ZIMBABWE 2- WHY GOD LOVES ZIMBABWE SO MUCH

THE RISE OF THE SHONA TO THEIR GOLDEN AGE-

THE KINGDOM OF MWENE MUTAPA AND THE BUILDING OF GREAT ZIMBABWE

Do you know that God is crazy with love for this country?

In the days of Rhodesia, Rhodesian whites used to say

‘This is the country that God calls his own’, and truly God loves this nation and the people in it.

But you say ‘if God loves Zimbabwe, why are we suffering so much?’.

We have bought suffering on our own heads. Firstly the Whites of this nation were anti-social and racist, an abomination to Jesus, so he removed the whites from power. There has been a great revival true worship of God in Zimbabwe but Zimbabweans have to learn to obey God. To adopt his law as their own. Until Zimbabwe does, this nation will always be weak- though deeply loved by God. Ancestor worship and faith in magic has to be cleansed from the land. Small houses. jealousy, tribalism, racism, community division, lying, deceiving, covenant breaking. laziness has to go. When these practices go, Zimbabwe will rise up to its former glory. If these ungodly practices increase the nation will rot more and more. read Deuteronomy 28 and Jeremiah 18. This is the true prophetic word for Zimbabwe.

In  this series i am going to go deeper and deeper into the history and culture of this nation. …. and its spirituality. Then you will have a full grasp of what has happened and why it has happened. Why The Shona are loved by God, how they fell from grace and the place that Robert Mugabe has in restoring the kingdom back to The Shona.

LONG AGO THE SHONA LOVED YAHWEH AND OBEYED HIM

Long ago, maybe 1000 years ago, the people of Zimbabwe walked with Yahweh as Abraham walked with him. I knew that from prophetic revelation in 1978, but I could not support it from facts. Now i can.  I use the name Yahweh deliberately because the same Hebew God was the same God Mwari the Shona walked with. Yahweh and Mwari are one and the same person with one and the same name!……………………… Just how can I say that!!!

1. The word MWARI means MU [the one]   ARI [he is] or the one he is, 

This is a direct Shona translation of Yahweh, I am who I am, he is that he is

So the Shona worship I AM- Yahweh. But you ask me how did the Shona get to know Yahweh.

There is three possibilities

A.  LIKE ABRAHAM, THEY KNEW MWARI [YAHWEH] FROM THE BEGINNING

All human beings come from African ancestors that originated from Tanzania or Ethiopia. Adam knew Yahweh. The Proto-Shona knew Yahweh since Adam. They remained faithful to Yahweh. Therefore the Shona that moved into Zimbabwe 1000-1500 years ago were devoted to Yahweh [MWARI]. As they moved into Guruve and then Masvingo, they had the blessing of God and built a huge, rich, powerful civilization….. Great Zimbabwe that had its golden era under Mwene Mutapa. Jews from Egypt helped him build a city that was to last forever, made of stone. This is parallel to the jews who were a bunch of war vets under david, but who were a mighty civilization under Solomon. In other words, the Shona have always worshipped Yahweh just as the jews have always worshipped Yahweh.

When the Shona were devoted to Mwari, according to Deuteronomy 28, they obeyed God therefore they were blessed. They became Dzimbabwe under Mwene Mutapa, city that held people in awe, a nation that controlled the whole region, a city that was built to last forever. ………..The Jews became mighty when they were devoted to Yahweh and they were blessed by becoming a regional power under Solomon. They also built a city that was to last forever. The remains can be seen today.

But when the Shona began to disobey God, they lost their military power and regional influence, just as the Jews who disobeyed God lost their power and regional influence.  The Shona scattered to the whole of Zimbabwe and western Mozambique and the jews scattered throughout the world.

This story is the story that has been handed down to the generations. There was a time that people walked with God, just like Abraham, but then they got greedy and began to fight amongst each other and God withdrew from the tribe. he would no longer talk to people directly. I wil explain this in the next post.

B. 586 BC. REFUGEE JEWS FROM THE BABYLONIAN INVASION [DIASPORA]  first fled to their cousins in Egypt as recorded in the Bible, then when they were uncomfortable in Egypt, they began filtering down into Africa to make their own promised land. This is similar to the Boers who were uncomfortable under the British who had colonised them in the Cape, and then they moved up to the Transvaal and Orange Free State to get their own promised land where they would be free to obey their own customs and religion.Also like Abraham who moved from Haran to Canaan, then to Egypt and back to Canaan.

These Jews could have moved down to the place where the Proto- Shona were in Tanzania or thereabouts. Their religion influenced the Proto-Shona. They were then uncomfortable living amongst other tribes who were steeped in paganism, ancestor worship and spirit worship, so they, like the Boers and like Abraham, moved to find their own promised land. When they moved into Zimbabwe they were already devoted to Mwari, the one who is. Like the the family of Abraham, this group of people grew and grew and grew, ending up in Masvingo. They grew in military and economic power, finally building Dzimbabwe under Mwene Mutapa. There are black African Jews in Zimbabwe and Nigeria that are evidence for this.

The record of these jews has been lost because it was so long ago and there was no culture of writing. All that is now known is that from long ago, or from the beginning of cultural memory, the Shona have known Mwari.

C. AFTER 300 AD – REFUGEE JEWS FROM EGYPT were uncomfortable living there and decided to move down into Africa. A group of them moved into Zimbabwe where they were influential in changing the customs and laws of the Shona who were living in the region of great Zimbabwe. As this Shona group began obeying God more and more, they were blessed more and more according to Deut 28. The climax of the greatness of the Shona civilization was the building of the city of Dzimbabwe in Masvingo. This city, like the pyramids, was built to last forever by using stone.

But at the peak of the civilization under Mwene Mutapa, they began to disobey Mwari. They were greedy. They began to break the laws of God and finally the Zimbabwe civilization began to break apart. They lost economic power and lost military power, military power. There were divisions from within. The Mwene Mutapa civilization decayed into the Rozvi dynasty, and there were further divisions. Groups began to break away to form the Rosvi clan and became the Zezuru, Korekore [Mount Darwin to Karoi], Manyika, Ndau and Nambya [Hwange region] and possibly other smaller groups.

My opinion is [A] that the Proto-Shona did walk with God, reaching right back to Adam.  This small faithful minority God wanted to bless, so he gave them their promised land- Zimbabwe. I say this because this is what the tribal legends talk about. They walked with God. They spoke to God directly. But then there was a fall from grace. They were alienated from God. Blessing was removed. God withdrew to the heavens. Jews did come from Egypt and did help build Zimbabwe, but when the civilization decayed, they moved from Zimbabwe to the South east of the country and established their own land with their Mosiac laws and customs.  They claim Jacob as their ancestor. They also have the genes of Aaron in their blood.  This is now common knowledge. 

By the way, the Jews of the Bible have always been ‘Black’. Israel, Egypt and Ethiopia are cousins with a similar language structure. When ever the jews were in trouble, they went to their relatives , their Egyptian cousins where they sheltered until it was Ok to return. Abraham, Isaac and even Jesus were refugees in Egypt. If you do a word search for the word ‘black’, you will see that Jews boasted that they had black skin more than once. The penultimate beauty of the bible, mentioned in the Song of Solomon said openly ‘I am black, but i am lovely’. Africans have a smooth skin like Jacob and Europeans have a hairy skin like Esau. I live amongst Africans and it is remarkable how this small test shows that the ancestors of Jesus were smooth skinned, therefore they were certainly not hairy ‘Whites’.

The Shona who came from Tanzania probably were already faithful to Mwari. They  settled in Guruve first of all, then a group of them moved down to Masvingo. That group became strong and very rich, and they built great Zimbabwe. 

You can see the influence Mwene Mutapa had when you look at ancient maps. Some show Mwene Mutapa [monomatapa] ruling from the Zambezi to the Southern tip of Africa that we call Cape town. 

other maps show him ruling the whole interior of Africa right up to the Congo.

This power came from the order that the Shona had because they had started knowing and obeying YAHWEH [Mwari].

If you examine Shona culture and the Old Testament, you will notice that BIBLE CULTURE and Shona culture are similar in many respects. This is because they loved God and may have been influenced by the Jews at Dzimbabwe.

Because the Shona walked with God, they grew in numbers, in economic strength and military power. BECAUSE THEY LOVED, WORSHIPPED AND OBEYED GOD [deuteronomy  28, jeremiah 18]. They were truly blessed by God more than any other tribe south of Egypt. BUT …… they began to disobey God and lost the favour they had with God BECAUSE THEY DISOBEYED GOD [Deut 28, jer 18]. 

……. BUT …… God is planning to bless Zimbabwe mightily … but will Zimbabwe move from getting blessings from God to actually obeying him??????