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The obnoxious and noxious odour oozing out of the subjective mind of the anti-Christ has clearly made his odyssey so obtrude that the world at large is afraid but some earthly Shepherds who enjoy only tithe and offerings are being deliberately obtuse for obvious reasons. A pastor once said to me that the anti-Christ has overcome the Christ in a battle and that we should all wait and see. This information made me realize that the anti-Christ is really at work. Can the anti-Christ overcome the Christ? Has darkness ever overcome light? Can error overcome truth? Is this truly the condemnation that light has come into the world, and that men love darkness rather than light?
There is a question that makes many people shift in their seats: could Christ return not in the form the world expects, but as a black man in Africa? For the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star (BCS), the answer is already given in the life and teachings of Olumba Olumba Obu. The controversy is not only about a man and a movement; it is about how we read prophecy, how we imagine the divine, and whether we are willing to recognize light when it does not wear the robes we painted for it. The claim is simple and staggering: that Olumba Olumba Obu is a manifestation of Christ for this age, sent to teach love, unity, and self-surrender. If that claim unsettles us, it may be because it forces us to confront our own images and perceptions of God.
BCS teaches that Olumba Olumba Obu embodies divine love and wisdom, and that his mission fulfills what the prophets foretold. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). BCS reads this not as a closed historical event but as an ongoing revelation of love that can take fresh form when humanity needs it. The emphasis is not on spectacle but on transformation: love as law, love as rule, love as commandment, in Olumba’s own phrasing. The call is to become what we claim to believe.
The Qur’an keeps the door open for the return of the Messiah: “And there is none of the People of the Book but must believe in him before his death; and on the Day of Judgment he will be a witness against them” (Qur’an 4:159). Many see in this verse a sign that the Christ-spirit would again be manifest in the world, a witness for and against an age. The point is not to collapse differences between faiths but to notice a shared expectation: that heaven intervenes when the earth forgets mercy. The same intuition appears in the Bhagavad Gita: “Whenever there is a decline of righteousness and rise of unrighteousness, I manifest Myself” (Gita 4:7). The Gita names the pattern decline, return, renewal—and some sons of men name the face they have seen in their time: Olumba Olumba Obu.
If Christ can return, why not in Africa, and why not as a black man? The Hebrew prophets said the messenger would be despised and rejected, not that he would be European. “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). The Gospels show a Christ who eats with the marginal and is mistaken for a gardener after the resurrection (John 20:15). The Dhammapada reminds us that “the one who is free from all desire, who is detached, is called a noble one,” not the one who fits an imperial portrait. If the essence is love and self-emptying, then the vessel can be any that God chooses. Africa, which has carried so much of the world’s pain, is not a strange place for mercy to pitch its tent.
The Tao Te Ching, though not a book of prophecy, captures the manner of such a return: “The sage does not display himself, therefore he is luminous” (Tao Te Ching 22). Olumba’s simplicity of life, his refusal of pomp, his insistence that the teaching is not about him but about love justifies a lot of his divinity. The Guru Granth Sahib says, “There is one God, the supreme truth, the creator, without fear, without hatred” (Mul Mantar). BCS echoes this by insisting that God is not a tribal possession but the common breath of humanity. When you hear BCS members say “love is the law,” it is not branding; it is a distillation of many scriptures into one practice.
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The controversy grows because the claim touches identity and power. If Christ can appear as a black man in Calabar, then the centers of religious prestige shift. The philosopher Frantz Fanon warned that the colonized are often taught to see themselves through the eyes of the colonizer; a black Christ breaks that gaze. Marcus Garvey put it plainly: “We must see God through our own eyes.” Howard Thurman, the mystic who influenced Martin Luther King Jr., wrote that the religion of Jesus is a religion of the disinherited. A Christ who stands with the disinherited in Africa is not a novelty; it is a return to the root.
Skeptics raise two broad objections. The first is theological: they say the incarnation was once and for all. My humble response is that the Spirit who raised Christ is not limited by our calendars, and that the New Testament itself speaks of the Spirit leading into all truth (John 16:13). The second is ethical: they point to the movement’s strict rules and claim they create dependency. BCS members answer that discipline is not domination that love without order collapses into sentiment and that self-surrender is not the loss of self but the finding of the deeper self. As Paramahansa Yogananda said, “The true Christ is the Self within, the divine essence that is in every human being.” In that light, Olumba’s role is to replace the inner Christ and to awaken same to those who believe in him.
The major and minor scriptures, read together, offer a chorus that is hard to ignore. The Hebrew Bible promises that God will pour out His Spirit on all flesh (Joel 2:28). The New Testament says the Spirit blows where it wills (John 3:8). The Qur’an calls Jesus a sign of the Hour (43:61). The Gita promises divine descent when dharma declines (4:7–8). The Dhammapada teaches that “all beings tremble before danger; all fear death; seeing the likeness of others, one should not kill nor cause to kill” (verse 129), a practical ethic of love. The Guru Granth Sahib urges, “See the brotherhood of all mankind as the highest order of yogis” (Guru Nanak). The Book of Mormon declares that Christ manifests himself unto all nations (2 Nephi 26:33). Even in the Zend Avesta, the coming of the Saoshyant, the bringer of final renewal, is foretold. If these are different languages, they are singing a similar song: when love is scarce, heaven sends a reminder.
There is also the matter of phenotype and prejudice. The Song of Solomon says, “I am black and beautiful” (1:5). The early church father Origen read this as the soul’s beauty before God, not merely a physical description, but the text itself does not flinch from blackness. The Revelation of John sees the risen Christ with hair like wool and feet like burnished bronze (1:14–15)—images that, if taken literally, do not fit a pale European icon. The point is not to fix a skin tone; it is to free the imagination from captivity. A black Christ in Africa is not a contradiction of scripture; it is a challenge to the limited portraits we have inherited from Empire.
Wise voices outside the Christian canon help here. The Yoruba say, “Eniyan laso mi”—people are my covering. If God covers us through people, why not through this person? The Igbo proverb holds that “when the right hand washes the left, the left washes the right,” a picture of mutual service that mirrors Olumba’s call to unity. The Sufi poet Rumi wrote, “You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in a drop.” BCS would say the same of the divine in humanity: love is not far away; it is in the neighbour you refuse to see. The sage Laozi warned that “a great nation is like a great down-flowing river,” powerful because it is low. If the Christ-spirit appears lowly, among the overlooked, that is the way of the Tao.
Critics often quote “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1) to deflect criticism, but the deeper ethic is to test spirits and keep what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). BCS invites that testing, pointing to lives changed: the addict who stopped, the quarreling couple who reconciled, the proud who learned to serve. St. Francis of Assisi prayed, “For it is in giving that we receive.” Members of The Brotherhood of the Cross and Star practice public service, communal meals, and forgiveness as disciplines, not as slogans. If love is the measure, then love should be visible. The movement’s critics say the claim of divinity is too high; but my response is simple, the practice of love is too low in the world, and that is the real crisis.
