Nigerian Pastors and their Gross Hypocrisy and Disregard for Rules.

David Oyedepo, Nigerian preacher, Christian author, businessman, architect and the founder and presiding Bishop of the megachurch Faith Tabernacle a.k.a. Winners' Chapel International gave out the hand of his daughter in marriage over the weekend (August 21st and 22nd, 2020).

 

In these pictures, the popular pastor and his wife lead their daughter to the aisle during the wedding ceremony. A wedding day is expected to be a day of joy as two persons come together to become one. But in this case, certain things were seen to be wrong and disappointingly so.
 
The wedding of the Oyedepo's daughter took place in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. And all the COVID-19 protocols were thrown overboard. 

• No masks.
• No social distancing.

This is a gross demonstration of ignorance, stubbornness and nonchalance to public health.
 
And, by the way, it is the usual practice of Oyedepo's church, the Winners' Chapel, to join wedding couples together in a mass ceremony. However, when it came to his daughter's wedding, there were no other wedding couples to share in the limelight. What an hypocrisy!

On Justice and the Kind of Life God Wants.

I recently found this gem the other day and thought to share. While it's particularly important for Christians, I also think it's something everyone should consider. So it is from the book of Isaiah in the Bible. Basically, God told the prophet Isaiah to pass on a message to the Israelites. The Israelites always acted very pious, God said. They would go the Temple every day and even seem happy to learn about God. They carried themselves as though they would never abandon God and like they wanted to be near Him. And when there was silence from him, they would protest: 

we have fasted! 

we have been really hard on ourselves; denied ourselves of life's pleasures just to please you! 

why are you NOT impressed, huh? 

why do you act like you don't notice? 

Sounds familiar? I bet it does. You are fasting and praying. You serve in Church. You can quote the Bible from Genesis to Revelations. You can preach the devil back to hell. So what's up? Why does God not notice it?  

Well that's because while you are fasting, you are exploiting and oppressing your workers. While you are fasting, you are fighting with the whole world, and keeping malice. So you do the rites, and fast for 150 of the 365 days in the year. But God is like, nah, that kind of fasting will get you nowhere. That kind of lifestyle really doesn't please him. What kind of fasting does he want, you ask. 

"No, this is the kind of fasting I want:

Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you.

Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people.

Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless.

Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help." -  Isaiah 58: 6-7. 

If you go on in that passage, it continues to say "THEN..." meaning after you do all of the above, will you experience true healing;

will your godliness lead you forward;

will the glory of God protect you. It is THEN that the Lord will quickly (it specifies) answer your call. 

When you feed the hungry, and help those in trouble, your light will shine out. 

In other words, less of you and more of others. We can see that justice, mercy, and compassion matter to God a lot. And again, we see that hypocrisy really irritates God. I'll give another instance; this time in the new testament. Jesus was dragging the Pharisees and calling them hypocrites and stuff. And then he mentioned how they do everything right, they were careful to tick all the boxes. They would even tithe the tiniest income they earned. BUT, they would ignore the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith. I'm not even kidding, Jesus called those the MORE IMPORTANT [THAN TITHE] aspects of the law. He then reiterated that while tithing was and would always be important, justice, mercy, and faith were more important. 

Coincidentally, I was just joking with my dad and sister recently that while no one person can be angry about all injustices, it's important and dare I say, it's our responsibility to care about justice. There has to be something; one thing you care about. Pick that one thing and run with it, in whatever capacity you can.

Is it giving the less privileged? Maybe this year instead of another useless birthday photo-shoot, you can instead ask your friends to give on your behalf?

Someone on Twitter once suggested calling your local school (board) and asking to offset some lunch debt for kids.

Maybe it's your time you can give: to your own family, your friends. Something...just remember God really cares about it.  Also remember you can't just consistently live for yourself and yourself alone. 

Courtesy: Ifeoluwa Olawole.

The Best Sermons are the Ones Left Unspoken.

A member of the church, who previously had been attending services regularly, stopped going. After a few weeks, the pastor decided to visit him. 

It was a chilly evening. The pastor found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing fire. Guessing the reason for his pastor's visit, the man welcomed him, led him to a comfortable chair near the fireplace and waited. 

The pastor made himself at home but said nothing. In the grave silence, he contemplated the dance of the flames around the burning logs. After some minutes, the pastor took the fire tongs, carefully picked up the rightly burning ember and placed it to one side of the hearth all alone then he sat back in his chair, still silent. 

The host watched all this in quiet contemplation. As the one lone ember's flame flickered and diminished, there was a momentary glow and then its fire was no more. Soon it was cold and dead.

Not a word had been spoken since the initial greeting.The pastor glanced at his watch and realized it was time  to leave. He slowly stood up, picked up the cold, dead ember and placed it back in the middle of the fire. Immediately it began to glow, once more with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it.

As the pastor reached the door to leave, his host said with a tear running down his cheek, 'Thank you so much for your visit and especially for the fiery sermon. I will be back in church next Sunday.'

We live in a world today, which tries to say too much with too little. Consequently, few listen. Sometimes the best sermons are the ones left unspoken.

Ponzi Scam in a House of God.

What is this world turning into? I guess it's part of the so-called end-time syndrome when a Ponzi scheme is being openly advertised inside a "house of God" as exhibited in the above picture. The Nigerian church is a parish of the Redeemed Christian Church of God. It probably escaped the memory of the church’s pastor that Jesus once frowned at this type of shameful activity. For, in absolute anger; "…he (Jesus) made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.

To those who sold doves he said, 'Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” - John 2:15-16 (NIV).

My Testimony.

Today, I can’t help sharing the great, wonderful feeling that has enveloped me in the past several months. It’s about my church attendance. For many years in Gods’ own country, I stayed away from churches. In all those years though, it wasn’t like Jesus and I were quarreling. Actually, I remained in constant communication with Him, except that it was just me and my God. And somehow, I felt at ease and at peace with myself. My wife however would not let me be with her preaching on the importance of fellowship…blah…blah.

So, I woke up one Sunday and decided to resume church-attendance in America. From that day though, I discovered that I was not feeling at ease any more in spite of having many smiling faces around me. Soon, going to church was like being dragged to a place I didn’t want to be, until I finally stopped. Then, I began to change churches. Unfortunately, the feeling was the same everywhere I went. I was beginning to think the problem was with me in view of my strange “extra-sensory perception” (ESP). I’m one of the very few individuals that can see and feel beyond smiling faces. And there were times when I wished I was like my wife who could, at will, turn off her “antennae". By so doing, she sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil.

I was about giving up when a friend suggested a church. Skeptically, I went visiting the place one Sunday. And…boom…I did not just feel much at ease, I actually fell in love with the church. For the first time in years, I’m always looking forward to be in church. Now, like a dream, I’m attending a church where the accumulated stress and pressures (from work and life’s tribulations) disappear as soon as I walk in. And after each service, I leave the church feeling exhilarated with a new supply of vigor and freshness. This is amazing.

God's Ways are Beyond Human Understanding.

Somewhere in the late 1980s, there was a mad man that was always loitering around the main bus station in Onitsha, Nigeria. He was not just mad but known to have been in the sad state of insanity for decades.

One day, a luxurious commercial bus was about being boarded by a long line of passengers who were heading to Lagos City. At that moment, the mad man came along. As he did, a couple of armed police officers whose job was to escort the bus on its journey, ordered the mad man to leave the area.

"Hey!" the mad man yelled at the passengers on the line. "If I were you, I would not board this bus."

"Alright, thanks for telling them." the police officers yelled back at the mad man. "Now, you can leave."

"I'm warning you people..."  the mad man yelled again, ignoring the cops. "Do not board this bus...there is danger ahead..."

At this moment, one woman turned to the mad man to ask. "What danger are you talking about?"

Typically of the insane, the mad man laughed hysterically in reaction to this question.

"Because..." he continued to laugh. "Among you passengers are some notorious armed robbers who intend to rob you along the way."

Initially, no one took the mad man seriously. But as he kept on saying the same thing over and over, some of the passengers finally began to feel wary about boarding the bus. In a bid not to lose passengers however, the bus driver pleaded with the police officers to do something. And so, at gun point, the officers decided to conduct a body search of all male passengers. It was soon discovered that six men had pistols tucked under their shirts and they confessed that they had intended to rob all the passengers whenever the bus took off. This was a phenomenon that baffled everyone at the bus station.   

About 16 years ago, I got a job with Shell Petroleum in Warri, Nigeria. It was a culture shock. Unlike the long hours I was used to at my previous bank job, I soon realized that the Shell premises would become a ghost town as early as 5pm.

With no friends to visit and not being interested in the bar scene, I would usually return to my gloomy, empty apartment after each day’s job and retire to bed as early as 6pm instead of the midnight I'd been sleeping while in Lagos.

Although a Christian, church thing was a weekly affair for me. But now that I was getting bored to death, I resolved to start visiting a church.

I was in the church one Sunday when my name was announced among the church’s new marriage counselors. Stunned, I met the pastor after service to correct what I believed was a mistake. But the pastor said that it was no mistake. He went on to explain that my audience would consist of couples who were about to get married and those who were already married.

“Uh...uh, no way!” I shook my head indignantly. “Excuse me, I don't think I can do it."

"Why not?" he asked.

"First of all..." I began to explain. "I’m not much of a Christian…”

The Pastor smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “Brother Olawole...don't worry about that...”

I shrugged my shoulders nonchalantly. “Seriously, I'm saying it now! I'm not much of a Christian…"

"And I say don't worry about that?" he stated.

"Well..." I stared at the man and then whispered. "You know...I drink beer and I do a lot of orisi-risi that a Christian is not supposed to do…”

The man smiled and shook his head. “Fine...but why don't you leave that aspect to God?”

He went on to explain that an ad hoc committee of the church, which he headed, did the selection and it was the Holy Spirit that directed them.

“Great!" I said in exasperation. "But seriously speaking...I don’t think I can do it.”

The pastor stared at me in disappointment. “But why do you think you can’t do it?”

I shook my head again. “I mean...how can I counsel anyone when I can’t even quote from the Bible?”

Now laughing, the pastor said "You are a very funny man. Okay then, don't quote the Bible...do it any way you can...how about that?"

On this note, I returned home bewildered by the encounter and angry with the pastor for being so unreasonable.

On my first day as a marriage counselor of the church, I sat down with trepidation and almost freaked out when the first couple was ushered into the provided office. Brief pleasantries were exchanged and the session had started before it suddenly occurred to me that we had to start with a prayer. Did I feel terrible!

About an hour later, I nodded in satisfaction as the couple thanked me profusely on their way out, feeling elated .

By the third time I got to the church to perform my role as a counselor, almost all the couples who came to the church for counseling insisted on seeing me...and me alone. It took the intervention of the church pastor to persuade some of them to go see the other counselors.

“Brethren.” the pastor pleaded. “This brother will not be able to go home on time if you all choose to meet with him. And don’t forget that all the counselors just got off their regular jobs…please be fair to them…”

After his address to the couples, the pastor walked into my office. "And what is it that you, a rookie counselor, is doing that the seasoned counselors are not doing?"

"I don't know..." I said, shaking my head in disbelief. "I really don't understand..."

The man nodded his head, smiled and said "God works in wondrous ways...do you know several people in the church have been coming to me to praise you for what you're doing in their lives...not knowing that you're a reluctant counselor?"

He went on to tease me about the day I came to reject my appointment. "I knew you had a point but something kept telling me not to accept your withdrawal. And now I thank God I didn't...this is a clear confirmation that God's ways are far beyond human understanding."