Beliefs
These summaries introduce what Bantu Chosen Assembly believes and how we walk. They are written as beliefs — held with conviction, studied with care, and never presented as questions history has already closed.
The Most High
BCA's primary name for the Most High is uSoNINI NaNINI. We also use uSomandla for the same Most High. Worship and ultimate glory belong to Him.
Supporting passages are being gathered for this statement and will be added after assembly review.
The Savior
We believe uMsindisi was exactly that: a savior. Human born, designated by the Most High, called as His son and His prophet. Not a deity, and not the Most High in flesh.
He came in His Father’s name and never his own, and every praise he received he turned back to the Most High — as we do. The Most High made us in His image; He did not need to come in flesh to understand His creation. We do not hold the virgin birth, which we believe entered later from outside Scripture. Where a verse has him make himself equal to the Most High, we believe the text was altered, and we study it as such.
The Scriptures
Scripture grounds our life and teaching. We hold it as it was kept, not as it was cut: the sixty-six books, the Apocrypha the King James Bible carried from 1611, and the books of Enoch and Jubilees, as the assemblies of Ethiopia have kept them.
The King James Version is our English text for the books it holds, and we read the rest in the translations that carry them, saying which is which. We read the Word for ourselves, we prove all things, and we hold fast that which is good.
The Commandments
We seek to learn the commandments and practice truth in daily life, not only discuss it.
To obey is better than sacrifice. We do not substitute our reasoning for His instruction, and we do not call close enough obedience. Where we have turned from Him, the way back is repentance — not remorse — and a consistent direction toward Him afterward.
Identity and history
Our African/Bantu perspective informs how we study biblical identity, history, and inheritance. We distinguish our understanding from claims that history has conclusively settled every question.
We are a peculiar people — set apart, belonging specifically to Him. We live in the world, but we do not move by its calendar or find our identity in what it calls important.
Community
We gather remotely to study, teach, encourage, and hold one another accountable in love and truth.
No building, no borders — different cities and time zones, one assembly. We share Scripture with one another at every Samba, we carry one another when the road is hard, and we hold each other accountable here, as we hold ourselves: in love, and privately first. Iron sharpens iron.
Prophecy
The prophets of Scripture were His messengers, and their word stands. We also believe the gift has not ended: uSoNINI NaNINI still speaks a word into a person’s life through another, and still heals.
When He does, the word belongs to Him and not to the one who carried it — we point back to Him every time. The gift gives no one a claim over another’s life, and every word is tested: by Scripture, and by whether it comes to pass. We despise not prophesyings; we prove all things.
Prayer and worship
Praise is a calling, a weapon, and a lifestyle. We were formed to show forth His praise, and He inhabits it.
Praise is not a response to good circumstances; it is a sacrifice offered continually, and a decision settled in the ordinary before the trial comes. Prayer is the rhythm of our days, as it was Daniel’s — as he did aforetime.
Samba
Samba is our weekly set-apart day, kept from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown wherever we are. It is a sign between the Most High and His people throughout our generations — how we remember who sanctified us, and how He remembers who is His.
On Saturday morning we gather online for praise, prayer, Scripture, and teaching. His feasts are His — holy convocations, kept in their seasons on the calendar the assembly has adopted.
New Jerusalema
We do not wait on a messiah. Our hope is the return of uSoNINI NaNINI Himself, when He makes all things new and New Jerusalema comes down — in the motherland, where He was already known by name.
He Himself will be the temple of it, and He will dwell with His people. The promise is not only a return to a land; it is the land, at last, feeding its own.
The books we read
We hold the Apocrypha, the book of Enoch, and the book of Jubilees as Scripture — as Ethiopia has for as long as any canon has existed. We believe the world before the flood was as those books describe it.
The sixty-six-book Bible is a decision made in rooms: Athanasius in 367, Carthage in 397, Trent in 1546, and a Bible society in London that voted in 1826 to stop printing the Apocrypha the King James Bible had carried since 1611. Jude quotes Enoch and calls it prophecy. We read what the apostles read.
Words we use
You will meet these words across the site and in our gatherings. They are given here as we use them.
Scripture and our people
Our African and Bantu perspective is not a lens we add to Scripture; it is where we believe Scripture comes from. The names our peoples already had for the Most High, the places the story is set, the land it describes, and the peoples who still carry it — we set them out plainly, with the passages, and with the questions scholars still hold open.
Read the statementThe names we say
We say these names because they are the names our peoples already had for the Most High — in Sesotho and Setswana, in Igbo, in Kikongo, in Yoruba, in Shona, in the Congo basin, in isiXhosa — before any missionary arrived to conquer and convert.
That tells us something: uSoNINI NaNINI, I AM THAT I AM, was already with us as a people. Our connection to Him did not need a missionary’s religion to exist. He was never far from any of us.
“That they should seek uSoNINI NaNINI, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:”
— Acts 17:27 (KJV, as we read it)
“For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith uSoNINI NaNINI of hosts.”
— Malachi 1:11 (KJV, as we read it)
This is the understanding of our assembly, held with conviction and open to study.
A continuing study
Some matters are still under prayer, study, and assembly review. We welcome discussion, questions, and sincere seekers.
