Year skidding downhill

This year is fast fading, receding into oblivion, like others before it. It was almost like yesterday when we threw punches in the air, hollering ‘Happy New Year!’ But by tomorrow, 2019 would be talked about in the past tense. Yes, in about 24 hours hence, we shall be welcoming a successor to 2019. 

However, it is imperative to look deep within us to ascertain how we fared in the outgoing year before projecting into 2020. Did we realise our dreams for the year? Do we still feel suffocated by the economy, the insecurity and utter ugliness ravaging the land? Were there no beautiful memories to hold of this year?

So, as we end 2019 and welcome 2020, we need to situate ourselves in more ennobling pursuits in the New Year.

Most importantly, have you been travelling along life’s uncertain route without Jesus? Are you a wine bibber or a smoking chimney? Are you one that loved waking up on the laps of Delilah? Have you allowed strange men to squash your twin assets and poke at your oil rig anyhow? How much blood have you shed in the quest for power and wealth? Have you made your official beat unofficial Automated Teller Machine for personal enrichment? How faithful have you been to that office entrusted to you? If the Lord appears now, would He tell you ‘well done’?

There is also this social vermin the devil has injected humanity with. That is how come we have Risky Bobs, who need help fast to come out their evil bent but, sadly, the society has none to offer. Whatever would make a man turn to a woman or vice versa is abominable and highly condemnable. Whatever would make a man or woman drool for the same sex is inexplicably weird and nauseating.  How would the parents and siblings of such blokes feel? Unfortunately, we live in a society whose antenna is insensitive and unresponsive, hailing the quarantine of youths for months of unbridled sexual morass and debauchery. My prayer in 2020 is that God pulls these Bobs from the pit where the devil has dumped them so that His grace shall cleanse them, and all of us.

Of course, 2019 was a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly, depending on where one is viewing it from. More often than not though, we tend to weigh the success by how much money or material toys we have cluttered our lives with. But, sincerely, is this really a measure of success? I think there are things more subliminal than money.

That is why I am concerned about the flourishing roadside yahoo-yahoo prophets whom many patronise wholesale.

So, permit me then to publish excerpts from my past article, tiled:  Prophets or profits.

It’s another New Year and our preponderance of Nostradamuses is at it again. They have peeped into their crystal balls and telling revelations about tomorrow. They claim to speak for God but I’m not sure which God. There is only one true God and all of the prophets claim to speak ‘for Him’. My worry is how come we have one God yet many dissonant voices issuing contrary messages from this same one God. It could be that, for some, their vision is blurry or tainted by person, and not divine.

It is also surprising that Nigerian politics and politicians constitute the greater part of these prophecies (or guessing predictions). Why God would confine Himself to that narrow prism remains as confusing as the prophecies.

This piece does not intend to impugn on the integrity of faith but to caution believers to be circumspect. Prophecy is actually one of the five-fold ministry, according to Ephesians 4:11-12.

So, it is a very good office the Bible has records of many prophets like Elijah and Samuel, who really spoke for God and spoke truth to power, leaving lasting legacies.

There are still several genuine men of God in this country, who prefer to remain anonymous while yet doing great exploits for the kingdom of God. The problem is the few empty barrels that make the most noise, drawing perishing crowd.

However, fake prophecy is not new.  Jesus even flogged them out of the temple in His time and upturned their tables, accusing them of turning God’s house of prayer into a den of robbers. Did Balaam not fall to the temptation of Balak, hired to curse the children of Israel despite knowing it was impossible?

Fake prophets succeed because of the people who flock around them. They are like robbers and receivers of stolen goods. If there is no ‘market’ for their craft, they would close shop. Unfortunately, that time revealed in 2 Timothy 4: 3-4 has come, “when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

That is why such easy places of entertainment are overly bloated with ‘overflows’. Yet it is true that God is usually not found in winds, earthquakes or fire but in the small still voice 1Kings 19:11-13.

Prophecies are real, no doubt, and we must not scoff at them but must covet a discerning spirit for 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 says, “Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good.”

So, before you get ensnared again next year, watch out for that profit (sorry, prophet) who cares less about the state of your soul but rather focuses on prosperity of body and burgeoning bank account. Who, for fear of offending the members, glosses over their sins, refusing to call sin by its true name. Who props crowd-pulling comedians upon the pulpits, causing people to laugh and jest with the Holy Spirit. Who teaches you penance instead of repentance, misrepresenting grace as licence to keep sinning. Who teaches you of multiple ways to God whereas we know for sure that there is just one Way, Jesus. Who revels in ‘justified’ immoral living. Who encourages sissies to serenade the congregation, even the altars and duckling sisters stuffing Michelin tyre frames inside suffocating, sparse and tell-all outfits, in the name of contemporaneous fashion. Who revels in their crowd of converts gotten by loose sensual messages on polluted altars. Whose singular aim is doing the work of their father, the devil, through manipulation and cupidity, making merchandise of the gospel. Who covets God’s glory through mounted billboards and words of self-attestation.

Beware, brethren, lest that prophet whose place is reserved in hell takes you with him. Resist the devil so that he can flee far from you. Refuse to be oxygen for fakery in the name of God. You keep them in business when you go in quest of miracles sans the miracle worker, Jesus. You need only one miracle for things to fall in pleasant places for you, as you can find in Matthew 6:33.