He who lags behind, as we indeed are in Africa, must strive thrice, to thrive in times. Were the Indians, Chinese, even Americans not colonised by same Great Britain? They have all left us holding the bags of empty promissory notes. While we are busy exporting scriptures they taught us and enslaved our minds with, centuries ago. They are in utter amazement and disillusioned about us. What’s the mission of these Latter -Day – Saints or The Born-again disciples in all shades and variants, surging and thriving on the despair and disenfranchised minds of our youths? Prospering and marching on the nation like red ants with the ferocity of giant all-conquering soldier ants. What’s thy mission? I AM AFRAID THEIR PENTECOSTAL NOISE IS BLOCKING OUR GENUINE PRAYERS AND EBBING OUR YOUTHS’ FACULTIES, RECKLESSLY, SHAMELESSLY! What differentiates most African Christians from that of developed climes, is our passion and deception to be holier than the Pope.
I was on a train ride on, Am track, from New-York city to Boston. I sat next to a young white man. A college Professor, as introduced, he looks relatively in his forties. We were both engrossed as soon as we took off in a good conversation ;and we veered into Africa’s growth. He was very politely objective, I was naturally, fairly defensive and subjective on the spot moments; naturally. Then approaching the state of Connecticut, power system of the train suddenly shut down. We were grounded and stranded on the train track, in the fairly desolate woods. Then came the announcement, please give us a few minutes, about 10 minutes, we will restore power. Please bear with us. I had jokingly mocked him politely; here goes your invention pal. So, we all relaxed as their engineers went to work, in just about seven minutes, the power came back. I exclaimed, as most Africans are wont to: THANK GOD! He instantly, politely rebuked me “ What has God got to do with that? They made announcement that their engineers will go to work and rectify things. They just did! I think you should thank the engineers” Honestly in short of defence, I pressed the conversation forward; God gave them the brain. We both had a hearty laugh.
MIRACLES! MIRACLES!! MIRACLES!!! Yet, insolence, mediocrity and most unprintable vices and crimes reign supreme in our lands. Who is fooling who? Lord have mercy! They are claiming to be atoning for our sins leading us to the path of righteousness. Then, why is the nation running on parallel lanes with all indices of true growth and virtues in the twenty-first-century? What sins in our past can be worse than these wildly and flourishing, growing cases of arrested development in our land. The negatives of religious doctrines that impaired minds of our youths faculties with orchestrated religious indoctrination of all hues today must be halted, if our nation will grow her full potentials. Religious war is not as blurred in focus in our nation as it seems, if tomorrow dawns. Boko Haram was totally eclipsed in our thoughts, consciousness and imaginations as, unthinkable! I hereby repeat, my reservations are in this organic movements, growing and branching out into all sorts of variants. Definitely not in the liberty of individual’s right of worship.
Stately and satellite churches on mountains, in valleys, mushrooming in the most unlikely and unreasonable and compromised spaces in our neighbourhoods, truncated our roads. Renting the air-waves at most inauspicious and ungodly hours with audio and visual noises, polluting our ears and minds, compounding the woes of our economy by strangulation of our traffic in the most economic sensitive routes should prick and repel our Christian leaders and followers conscience. This practice rings with a degree of impunity, negates the decorum of yesteryears, earned respect, which were the hallmark of the Christian faith.” DO ONTO OTHERS, AS YOU WILL OTHERS DO UNTO YOU.”
Imagine all these makeshift churches in our neighbourhoods are Budas, Synagogues and Mosques dotting every available spaces with the attendant Imams’ streaking voices calling the faithful to prayers renting the air night and day with ALLAHU-AKBAR!ALLAHU-AKBAR!! A L L A H U – A K B A R ! ! ! Preaching in Arabic tongues. Hum, some of us will run out of town, knowing human level of intolerance, Christians would have been repulsed to the hilt, but screaming Hallelujah has sweet-rings to it, tolerable and soothes our senses, as we collectively chorus in very loud Amen!
Is somebody out here listening? Since the last 50 years of the pronounced movements of the Pentecostal flocks. Remember the SCRIPTURE UNION MOVEMENTS DAYS’ in our secondary school days in the ‘60s? One thing can, unarguably, not be denied them in the last fifty years. They have grown into a bewildering and frightening number of prayer warriors; mushrooming like locust. Delivering less on substance but more pronounced on theatrical and histrionics. By their thousands they are charging and chanting in tongues, dancing to all genre of music, twisting and re defining the scriptures recklessly; each one by his own interpretations as his faculties dim in passion and as he deemed fit in a state of mellow madness in deceit and celebrations value, most often times.
SUN
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