"Jesus answered, "Be on your guard, and do not let anyone deceive you. Many men, claiming to speak for me, will come and say, 'I am the Messiah!' and they will deceive many people" (Mt 24:4-5)
write this piece with utmost sense of anger in my heart because of what Christianity has been reduced to these days by some miscreants parading themselves as men of God. I recently attended a church service in one Pentecostal church in Johannesburg, South Africa. And after a firebrand sermon and prayer session, the pastor asked everyone present to bring out all the money they had in their pockets, wallets and bags, drop them on the floor and to stand on them. Immediately, I became suspicious of his motive but chose to remain silent, after all I was only visiting there for the first time.
The church had around 300 people in attendance. Many people including my humble self obeyed him, but in all honesty I didn't bring out all the money I had on me for security reasons. The reverend gentleman then prayed, gyrated, screamed, shouted and casted out all kinds of demons ranging from familiar spirits to monitoring spirits, ancestral spirits, marine spirits, demons of leaking pockets etc. He demanded that we voiced out all our problems on the money beneath our feet. After the marathon prayer session, he commanded us to jump off the money and we dutifully obeyed. At last, he added that we should not pick the money back because according to him, if we did, we would have taken our problems back into our lives.
His statement threw many people off balance, because many weren't envisaging that they would be parting ways with their money in that manner. The girl that sat next to me in the church put down a 100 rand note which I suspected was all she had on her at that point. She was so confused at this pastor's statement that tears started rolling down her cheeks. At that point, I concluded within myself that the church service had turned into another thing too hard for me to fathom. I courageously took back my money from the floor and put it back into my pocket. Mind you, this exercise was done after the normal Sunday church offering and tithe had been collected.
Fortunately or unfortunately for me, while I was taking back my money back, the pastor saw me (though I didn't care) and his mood change to an expression of anger. My courageous act made many others to pick back their money, though some (whom I suspected were regular church members) succumbed to his prank.
At the end of the service, the pastor asked one of his assistants to call me, and I obeyed. On one-on-one meeting with him, he turned into a murderous rage, and it took the grace of God for the two of us not to have engaged ourselves in a physical combat. He demanded to know who I was. I declined to identify myself to him. I told him in clear terms that what he acted out there in the service was unbiblical and an exercise in fraud. I demanded to know from him why he was perturbed about me taking back my problems as he said about those who would take back their money, after all this was my life and not his. I put it to him directly that I didn't believe that standing on money, praying and then jumping off the money only for the ushers to come around and take the money would in anyway solve my life's financial problems. At that point, he called me the modern pharaoh and warned me not to set my two feet in his church again, to which I gladly said "no problem".
I took out time and space to narrate this my encounter with this pastor because nowadays, some so called pastors, people who are supposed to be shepherds of the flock have turned themselves into wolves feasting on the flock. The rate at which charlatans and money-desperados, masquerading as men of God, are turning church services into profit-oriented ventures is quite alarming. And you know what surprises me the most? It is the silence and utter submission of the congregants to these fraudulent theatrics. I understand that we are in the much-talked about endtime, and bizarre things, all in the name of God and worship are happening, but the bible warned us to be ever careful and on our guard (Mathew 24:4-5). Some of these modern day pastors are just wolves in sheep's clothing laying traps for their gullible and unsuspecting followers.
It baffles me to an uncomfortable extent as to the level of gullibility prevalent in most Christians today. Many of today's Christians, all in the bid to answer 'good people', have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by some crooks masquerading as men of God. So many Christians have allowed themselves to be boxed into the tight corner of fear and submission by these so called men of God that faith in God has been replaced by the fear of the man of God. Some pastors have become so 'big' that they have taken the place of God in the lives of their members (God forbid). A lot of Christians these days do not see beyond their pastors to the ONE who was, who is and who will continue to be, the Almighty God.
Faith, I sincerely believe is not the same thing as stupidity. The call to a Christ-like life style is not an initiation into the cult of unreasonableness. In as much as faith can be described as a leap into the dark with a believe assurance of light at the end, this leap for me must be a reasoned action. You cannot just believe every and anything without a clarity on why you are believing. I don't believe that the embracement of Christianity means that one must now wear the garment of irrationality all in the name of a faithful church goer. That one is a child of God doesn't mean that one must believe and accept hook, line and sinker everything one's pastor says or does even when the later is in the wrong. Apostle John admonishes us thus: "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirit to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world" (1 John4:1). And this testing includes that of your pastor.
One of the tragedies of today's Christianity lies in the fact that many Christians do not give God His proper place in their lives. All you hear today among Christians is: 'My pastor said this, my pastor said that'. But these same Christians care less about what God said or is saying. I am not in any way opining that one should not respect and honour one's pastor. No, that is not the aim of this write up. He or she is your spiritual leader and most definitely deserves your respect, obedience and honour. But what I don't advocate and support is for one to so respect, obey and honour one's spiritual leader to the extent that he or she now takes the place of God in one's life. Worthy of note at this juncture is that even your pastor is still on this race to blissful eternity with God. He or she will also be subjected to the demands of judgment by God, and believe you me, he or she can and might be found wanting, if he or she refuses to live according the ordinances of God. What this simply shows is that your pastor is not God and must not be made a God in your life. There is only one Almighty God, and to Him alone must your worship go to.
I have discovered that one of the reasons why Christianity is making little or no meaningful impact in the world today is because most of the so called Christians are themselves not grounded in the things of God. A Latin adage says: "Nemo dat quod non habet", meaning: "No one gives what he doesn't have". For one to speak efficiently and effectively for God, one must first know God for one's self. One can hardly become an effective witness for God if one does not know God personally. St. Paul was able to become a giant for God, in his generation and beyond, because he could declare about God that "I know Him whom I believe in" (2 Timothy 1:12).
Even the 3 Hebrew boys of the Book of Daniel (Shedrach, Meshach, and Abednego), were able to survive the fiery burning furnace of King Nebuchadnezzar, because they declared in faith about God thus: "O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, OUR GOD WHOM WE SERVE is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and HE WILL DELIVR US OUT OF THINE HAND, O King. But if not, be it known unto thee, O King, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up" (Dan3:16-18).
The question to you dear reader is: Do you know God for yourself? Can you confidently declare, like St Paul did, that "I know Him whom I have believed"? Can you declare like the 3 Hebrew boys did that "we know that the God whom we serve is well able to deliver us"? Note that neither St Paul nor the 3 Hebrew boys placed their faith in anything or anyone other than the God they served. And believe you me, God did not disappoint them. And it is my prayer for you this day that you will come to that point in your life where you have total faith in God and God alone. Because when you give God His proper place in your life, He will do for you that which you or any other human being cannot do in your life. A personal and intimate knowledge of God is a proof that you are a well grounded Christian who can effectively and efficiently witness in the name of God.
And to you my dearest man of God, be reminded that Moses, in all his efforts and closeness to God, did not enter the Promised Land with the rest of the Israelites. And I am sure you know the reason for this (Numbers 20:8-12). I might not be a pastor but I write as a child of God: Money was here on earth before you came, and it will be here when you leave this world. Are all the atrocities you are committing in the name of money worth your calling and your desire for a blissful eternity with God? If you are truly called to the service of God, don't you think that the ONE who called you is able to sustain you through? (Luke 22:35).
The reason you are struggling in your ministry, and as a result doing bizarre things to survive, might perhaps be that you are in the wrong calling. An Igbo adage has it that "onye jiri aka onwe ya lie onwe ya, otu aka ya ga ato n'elu", loosely translated as: "if one buries himself, one of his hands must definitely come out uncovered".
I choose to conclude this write up with one of the most important advice I got from my father some years back. He advised me thus: "My son Obilor, in life, it is better for you to have problem with the devil and you can run to God for safety. Never ever wish in your life to have problem with God. If you do, to whom shall you run for safety? Even the devil cannot save you from the anger and wrath of God, because he himself would be running for cover".