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This comes as a result of the question from some readers who wanted to know if I am a Christian or Muslim. To them, if I am a follower of Jesus Christ, God would not be sending me to people to carry out sacrifices to win an election or overcome problems. They said the shedding of blood by Jesus on the Cross of Salvation had put an end to sacrifices, drawing my attention to the Bible Book of Hebrews Chapter 9 verses 23 – 28, which is on Christ’s sacrifice taking away sins by his death.
To my critics, if I am a Christian it is the clerics of the faith that the Heavenly Father would be sending me to, not Muslim ones. Some of them like Reverend Ndukwe, who phoned me on Sunday, said Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God. To them Christians serve a Lord who is three – in – one while Muslims’ Allah is one person.
The Christian – critics also frown at my saying that the 41 Muslim clerics in Ado – Ekiti are the ones the Ancient of Days had chosen since 1993 to fast and pray for those who would be president to lead the country to greatness. They saw this as my implying that Islam is superior to Christianity. To them, this is not and cannot be true because Jesus is the Son of God, not His prophet and for the fact that Christianity came more than 600 years before Islam.
Thus, to them the Lord could not have left the senior to choose the junior for such an assignment. But they forget that the Heavenly Father left seven senior sons of Jesse to pick David, the last of his male children as the King of Israel. With the Lord telling Samuel whom He sent on the assignment: “I do not judge as man judges. Man looks at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.” This was when Samuel thought Eliab, the first brought to him, who was tall and handsome was the Lord’s chosen one (I Samuel 16: 1 – 13).
As to my religion, I am a Christian and of the Anglican Communion. I am not a pastor or prophet but one with whom the Lord speaks one – to – one. But I do so through a spiritual guide. And the story I am about to tell is one that attests to the fact that Christians and Muslims worship the same deity. My first spiritual guide whom the King of Heaven sent to me in Akure in February 1969, when I was a graduate teacher at Aquinas College in the town, was a Christian of the Catholic persuasion.
I stopped using him in 1972 when the Lord did not fulfill a promise He made to me in 1969. I thought three years were long enough a time for Him to have acted. But 20 years later, the Most High on His own in 1992 sent for me, and as was the case in 1969, did so in February, which was the month my dad joined the Saints Triumphant in 1972.
The Ancient of Days did so through a paternal cousin of mine, with whom He had been speaking since 1984, through the leader of the 41 Ado – Ekiti Muslim clerics, who in 1992 was living in Lagos when I first met him. He relocated to Ado – Ekiti, his hometown, before the end of that year. I did not know that my cousin had the divine grace before he came to me. The Ado – Ekiti cleric was a member of the Catholic Church until 1975, when he was about 20 years old when the Lord called and told him to convert to Islam.
If in 1969 Almighty God sent a Christian spiritual guide to me and a Muslim one in 1992, is this not a clear proof that members of the two religions worship the same deity? Especially as the voice that has been speaking with me since 1992 has been sounding as the one I communicated with from 1969 – 72. No change in His tone or diction, unlike human beings whose voice in childhood is different from that in his or her adulthood and which changes again in old age.
Next week: Proofs that anyone God will discuss issues in the Bible with must carry out sacrifice with a cow.
Forcing gasbag Gasali into sobriety (2)
I took on Professor Gabriel Olusanya, the Director – General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), in my column in the Sunday Concord, for not seeing what we carried as a newsworthy story of front page quality. A situation, in which a colonel in uniform, wearing the pip of his rank and in an official car painted in army – green – colour, chased that of a professor in the University of Ibadan, on the streets of the Oyo State capital, over a distance of four kilometres as something extraordinary.
Given the fact that they could have caused an accident and got someone or some people wounded or killed by their reckless driving, and when a scuffle could have taken place if Colonel John Madaki’s driver had been able to stop the car of Professor Dupe Olatubosun.
Not to forget that it was also possible those around might have come to the aid of the don throwing stones at the colonel’s car and damaging it. There is also the fact that it was possible that the officer and his orderly could have come down from the car and shot at the civilians. I asked Professor Olusanya if such a reprehensible behavior by highly – placed personalities has ever happened anywhere in Nigeria since the country was created in 1914?
I also drew attention to the fact that his position as the DG of the NIIA was equivalent to that of a Permanent Secretary in a ministry or a General in the army. And that I did not believe such people would have granted interview to a reporter on whether a story qualified to be carried or not by a newspaper. I further stated that having time to talk to a reporter on such a topic, not a political science or international relations issue, meant that Professor Olusanya did not have much to do again and deserved to be relieved of his appointment. I did this because his criticism of my column could also have cost me my job.
The NTA reporter went to him in reaction to a story the Sunday Concord carried a few weeks earlier on a crisis in her father’s office. I pointed this out and that journalism had not come to the level where a professional would try to revenge by finding fault with a news story that did not deserve such focus. I also said it was bizarre a reporter would not see what Colonel Madaki did as newsworthy. A few months after my article, Professor Olusanya was removed from office, while the NTA did away with its bogus “Boo Boo Corner” programme.
Next week: The second abusive person I wrote about, two years ago, 30 years or so after Professor Olusanya.
