Honour thy father, worship only Yah.

Important to know:
Q: As the Israelites(Bantu/Negro/Yisolele), are we supposed to worship our ancestors or are we supposed to honour them?

First of all, worship is only for a god, if you worship anything or anyone, technically that’s your god, if you praise someone or something in a manner of worship that’s your god too. The bible doesn’t in anyway encourage ancestor worshipping or worship for other dead or living beings as stated in Exodus 20:4 “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth”. In Ecclesiastes 9:5 the Bible clearly continues saying “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun”. This simply saying you can’t seek wisdom or help from the dead, as they have nothing to offer, and that you are in the better position to change things than they are.

Worship and honour are two different things but unfortunately most religious people mistake them as the same, the bible says to respect your parents Ephesians 6:2 and that includes your ancestors. As the Israelites/Bantu, we respect/honour our ancestors as well as our parents, that’s why the bible speaks of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Note this, just like the Israelites in the bible, we can’t ignore the fact that among our ancestors some were good spiritually but others indeed had bad spirits and practiced idol worshipping, and when the Most High Yah in Exodus 20:3 says “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.“, he is forbidding us from practicing any form of worship to another person or thing but unto himself, but we are still required to respect our parents and all our forefathers and shouldn’t be scared of them, for instance naming your children after your parents or your ancestors is a form of honour/respect and not worship, it’s also a revolutionary way of preserving of one’s cultural heritage Judges 19:28-29.

A little more about why raising, worshiping or making blood sacrifices for the dead is forbidden, Leviticus 19:31 explains about seeking mediums “Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Most High your God”. Now a lot of people fail to understand this part because of 1 Samuel 28, where Saul consulted a Canaanite witch to help him raise Samuel from the dead when the Most High had turned his face from him, other are struggling with why would Yehoshua be seen standing and speaking with Elijah and Moses in Matthew 17:3. First of all, Elijah never died a human death which explains why Yehoshua was in contact with him and Moses’s body was taken away by the Most High to prevent his body from being used by the devil so these are very different cases…to close this chapter, we all know though Yehoshua was in human body, He was not an ordinary human.

It is true witchcraft does exist, but it is forbidden to the Israelites/Bantu, now if you read carefully 1 Samuel 28 you will realise that from 12 to 14 the witch was terrified because everything went out of her control and Saul obviously couldn’t see anything but a voice that’s why he asked her “What do you see?”, and “What is his appearance?”, and the Canaanite witch in her heathen self responded to have seen gods because she saw a divine figure she couldn’t understand but Saul simply assumed the voice was Samuel’s because that’s who was in his mind, you will also notice that during the whole conversation between Saul and Samuel(spirit) the witch was out of the picture which possibly means she had passed out or couldn’t interfere. It is pretty clear what came of Saul and his rule for his evil deeds, therefore do not raise the dead, do not seek mediums and do not make blood sacrifices for any dead or living beings, let us remember that a soul leaves the body the minute someone dies. The Most High is at your disposability 24/7?
Baraka to you Yisolele.