A God-Seeker in Ethiopia
A Case Study
We have maintained throughout this paper that any who seek God and spiritual truth from God will find what they seek. The evidence of the truth of this we will present in various ways. The following is one of them.
In the hill country of south central Ethiopia live a people who believe in an all powerful creator. However, these several million people have had little concern for Magano, as he is called. Of the half million Gedeo or Darassa tribe, concern has been more focused upon appeasing an evil being called Sheit’an. When asked, "How is it that you regard Magano with profound awe, yet sacrifice to Sheit’an?" the reply was, "We sacrifice to Sheit’an, not because we love him, but because we simply do not enjoy close enough ties with Magano to allow us to be done with Sheit’an."
One man, Warrasa Wange, a relative of the Gedeo royal family, began to seek Magano. This simple pursuit of spiritual truth from his believed creator had very startling results. He had a vision of two unknown white men erecting a tent near Warrasa's home town of Dilla. Then he saw sturdier shiny-roofed buildings being built until they covered the entire hillside. Warrasa had never seen aluminum buildings, only the tin roofed houses of the village and grass roofed huts of his home.
Then he heard a voice saying, "These men will bring you a message from Magano, the God you seek. Wait for them."
he heard a voice saying, "These men will bring you a message from Magano, the God you seek. Wait for them."
Finally he saw himself taking the center pole of his own hut and laying it next to one of the strange shiny-roofed buildings. For the Gedeo, the central pole of a man's hut represents his life. Warrasa understood that Magano wanted his complete self-commitment and his identification with the message of the strangers.
For eight years he waited as other Gedeo sages prophesied that Magano would send a message through strangers. Then in 1948 an Australian and a Canadian missionary came to Dilla. They set up their tent under a large sycamore exactly as Warrasa had seen in his vision years before.
The missionaries had hoped to begin their work deeper into the center of the Gedeo land but failed to do so because of political resistance. Ethiopian officials who opposed their work felt they would have little impact on the tribe if they had to work from such a peripheral town as Dilla. They were wrong. The entire tribe was influenced. Many thousands embraced Christianity because of the work of those like Warrasa who had been literally waiting for the messengers to come.
This account is taken from Don Richardson's book, Eternity in Their Hearts (Regal, 1981, 48–50) with some additions via correspondence with one of the missionaries, Albert Brant. There are many accounts we could have selected from. I would recommend Richardson's book for additional examples. I hope it is clear that I am presenting the evidence as I find it. I simply have not yet found evidence of God-seekers who have discovered conflicting or contrary spiritual truth.
Dennis Jensen, 1984
