Many of the southern states of the United States have their own unique way of speaking American English. This creates somewhat of a common bond among these states, at least linguistically. Anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line you would be exposed to amusing expressions that are unique to this part of the world.

Take for instance the common address, “ya’ll.” When translated into regular English it basically means “you all.” Then, of course, if there was ever the slight possibility of leaving anyone out, or to be misunderstood by anyone already included in your former address, you can intensify matters by employing the term “all ya’ll.” One of my favourites is the very descriptive “fixin’ to,” or “fixing to.” Nearly anyone of a particular generation in the southern states who was about to take some course of action was “fixin’ to” do it. According to this reasoning, whether it is planning to do something as simple as taking out the rubbish, or something as complex as performing open heart surgery, one can be “fixin’ to” do so…

So here is something that we as a church should be “fixin’ to” do this year, as we remain firmly committed to all other ways we are commanded in Scripture...

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I remember when we first moved to the Cape, how it took a while to get familiar with our new surroundings. Even though I could get around Johannesburg and Pretoria without GPS with regular ease, the same was not true of the Cape. There were many things I had to learn about our new home. For starters, I learned that we are actually living in an area called “False Bay,” and that it is a massive area stretching all the way from Hang Clip to around Simon’s Town, and embracing many towns in between. But I kept wondering about the origin of its name. Interestingly, False Bay owes its name to a case of mistaken identity. Sailors who thought they had reached Table Bay, only to find out that they didn’t, gave False Bay its real name. There are many humorous examples like this to be found all over South Africa. Like False Bay, this is also the story of the little Free State town of Verkeerde Vlei or “wrong marsh.” Apparently the name was born when some of the first pioneers noticed the stream was flowing from east to west instead of the usual west to east, which was the norm for the district.

Spiritually speaking though, it is to be lamented that our country has become a type of “false bay” and a “wrong marsh” as it involves the sexual orientations of people. “Mistaken identities” and “upstream,” unbiblical living seem to abound, especially here in Cape Town, which boasts its own annual “gay-pride parade,” rendering it South Africa’s very own “San Francisco.” There are a good representation of people living here who either identify with one or more of the letters in the acronym LGBTQ (not knowing where it will stop), or who identify with and defend the people who represent these letters—or both! And sadly, the church, or the so-called representatives of Christ are setting the pace for the normalising of something which, scripturally speaking, is still described as sinful.

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​In all evangelistic and apologetic endeavors it is vitally important to point the one being evangelised to the problem of sin early on in the process. This is indeed the source of the unregenerate’s problem before God (Rom. 3:23), and up to this point, most conservative scholarship would agree. However, not all would agree about the actual content of God’s laws which the unregenerate has broken. Assuming the total inability of people to save themselves, and the totality of their depravity or fallenness inherited by being born in Adam, the following study seeks to provide an answer to the actual laws that God holds people accountable to (Rom. 5:12; Eph. 2:1-2; Tit. 3:5-6). In effort to answer this question, many have assumed that the Decalogue is the standard of law that God still requires, even until New Testament times, thus making it the basis for showing the unbeliever, first, their transgression of God’s law, but second, their inability to keep God’s law.

Although the latter employment of the Decalogue could very well be substantiated from the New Testament (Rom. 3:20), it is the insistence of this study that the former cannot.
 
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