Ghana (MNN) ― Every Child Ministries' workers say the key to presenting the Gospel in Ghana's idol shrines is to go back many times. For years, their teams have been developing relationships with priests and devotees of idol shrines as a part of their project to liberate shrine slaves called trokosi.
ECM's Lorella Rouster says traditional idol worshipers have a hard time fully accepting the Gospel. "Many of them understood and mentally accepted many of the basic facts of the Gospel. But the thing that surprised all of them and that none of them had ever heard of before, was that God's law forbade the worship of these spirits."
On a recent trip to Ghana, Rouster was able to work with some of ECM's Ghanaian workers presenting the Gospel to priests and priestesses presiding over shrines of African Traditional Religion, and devotees of the shrines. These are shrines are built around an idol, representing a spirit that traditional worshipers call the "lesser gods."
ECM spent time going over the Ten Commandments and explaining what God meant by 'No other gods' and 'no idols.' Rouster describes an irony during one of their conversations. "We presented the Gospel in the courtyard of a shrine that had beautiful murals of Bible scenes painted on the outside walls, along with scenes of African divination. On the front of the shrine was a beautiful picture of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments and then breaking the Ten Commandments. Right beside that was a picture of African divination, which is forbidden several times in the Law of Moses. Underneath the picture of the Ten Commandments, a real-life diviner sat doing his thing, and a priest offered chickens in sacrifice to the spirits of the shrine."
The team chatted with the shrine owners who were there watching this scene. When the team asked what the Ten Commandments taught, no one at the shrine seemed to know. They knew they were a good thing, but they were not aware of the content. They were shocked to learn that they were violating the Ten Commandments right underneath a picture of it.
The team felt it was important to point this out, because people have to understand that they are sinners who cannot save themselves before they can come to Christ. Rouster says there's a long road ahead. "We ask people to pray that God's spirit will draw people to Himself and help people to fully commit themselves to Him, and also that we'll be guided by God's spirit in our future efforts and be able to explain the Gospel in ways that they can understand."
