Legio Maria - Messianic Theology

Messianic Theology

According to Legio Maria teaching Simeo Ondetto is the son of God sent to establish God the Father's dispensation. Legio Maria believes in dispensations or times when God has stepped into human history after the fall of man. The first is found in the Old Testament “when the High Priest Melchizedek appeared to Abraham. Melchizedek established a reign of a monotheistic awareness which ended with the arrival of Jesus. The dispensation established by Jesus was one of recognizing the trinity, of individual salvation, and established universal barometer of religion which is love. Instead of the law, the second dispensation is characterized by love. The third dispensation is the reign of God established by Simeo Ondetto as Lodvikus, that is the son of God sent to show the glory of God to the World. In Legio Maria theology, the second person of the trinity has appeared in history three times: as Melchizedek Son of God to define the history of the human redemption by blessing God's chosen race through Abraham; as Jesus to conclude the mission of redemption, opening it and teaching the core element which is love; and as Simeo Lodvikus, to reveal the glory of life after death and the nature of God. To Legio Maria faithfuls, Simeo Ondetto, Jesus of Nazareth and Melchizedek are one and the same person incarnated during different dispensations of human history. Simeo Ondeto is known as the Lodvikus or The Glory of God, whose role is to bring the world to understand the hidden treasures of life after death and dramatize the reality of eternal life. According to Legio Maria the promise by Jesus to return has been fulfilled by the coming of Simeo. Legio Maria also seems not to believe in a final judgement of the whole world. They believe in immediate judgement of individuals immediately after death. This is supported by the long list of adored Legio saints. Some of the official Legio Maria saints include Timotheo Atila, Maria Ombwayo, Tobias Oongo, Petro Otieno, Mumbo Carilus and Angi Clement. Church leaders distinguish Messias Simeo Ondeto's mission as separate from that of Jesus. He was not sent to replace Jesus, for Jesus was a name given to the son of God when he accomplished a second dispensational mission. Instead, Messias Simeo Ondeto is God incarnated in another context, specifically for the third dispensation of the glory of God. Often, 1 John 4:1 is used as biblical support for the confession that God has again come into the flesh through Messias Simeo Ondeto, for “every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God and every Spirit that does not confess Jesus is not of God…Therefore we say that Jesus has come in the flesh. Finding Africa in the yoke of colonialism, Simeo is also talked of as a savior from the oppression of colonialism and “healer and protector from the evils of witchcraft.” Simeo Ondeto is not seen merely God’s messenger, but as “the actual embodiment of God in history.”

In their affirmation that Messias Simeo Ondeto is the Black Messiah, the Legio Maria do not exclude the possibility and reality that the Messiah has been incarnated in multiple times and contexts. In interviews during her three years researching the Legio Maria Church, Nancy Schwartz relates,

most Legios insisted to me that theirs was not the only way to choose light and Heaven. The Baba Messias Ondeto had preached that ‘God is a polygynist’ who loves ‘all the houses in his home’. All religions, he had said, are akin to ‘branches of a tree that bears fruit’. Legios reiterated that black and white people could both get to Heaven, if they followed their faiths.

Thus, salvation is available through other religions and revelations of God. While the Legio are clear that God has provided specific revelations and even incarnations for different peoples of the world, this does not translate into an exclusivist position in which only adherents of Legio Maria will be with God in heaven. According to Schwartz, “most Legios affirmed that Heaven was a place where the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Mary, saints, angels and Old Testament prophets and patriarchs are without color, a place where there is nothing like Mzungu (European/white person) and African.” She concludes that the Legio Maria Church has “formulat their own version of an anti-racist black liberation theology,” which is very unique.