What helps some of us to keep our sanity these days is the prophecy by sages long ago that there shall come a time in human history that so many strange things will be witnessed. Such a time is called the End Time. From some of what has begun to unfold, it is clear that we are in it already. The sages said that at such a time, there will be children who will not have respect or any filial feeling for their parents, there will be many who will love themselves and amass all the resources of the many for themselves alone; there will be many who will lack respect for anyone not even dignitaries that some men fear and respect verging on veneration and there will also be deceivers who will claim they are out to fight for the poor masses but whose motives are very far from noble.
What the sages did not quite put like that is that some wretched, wicked, foolish, ignorant, arrogant and vengeful and envious souls will emerge on the scene and claim to be do-gooders out to fight on behalf of foolish and ignorant people who are exploited by their spiritual guardians. No one will commission them but they will fight so doggedly that you will wonder what really is their motive.
Some of them are not known to have done something very useful for themselves or for humanity but they will take up the cause of fighting the church with a vengeance. Now the brouhaha about certain aspects of the CAMA law which seems targeted at the church has come and gone. Now, what we are seeing is that the whole battalion of this End Time army of Satanism to be up in arms to fight the church with spirited disinformation, misinformation and outright lies
My question is: if you hate the church or their pastors do you also hate other groups that are complaining about some other provisions of the CAMA law which will harm their organisations? The government that you seem to be supporting because they have the power to cut the pastors to size, are they better than the church leaders whose ‘’excesses’’ you are complaining about? One single department of government is stealing trillions of Naira meant for the development of a region. What are pastors doing compared to this? Yet, you think it is this type of government that should wreak vengeance on the pastors you hate so much.
If you think people like Bishop Oyedepo can be pressured not to fly in jets, how will that benefit you? Will you now be flying in jets? You jealous soul, stay there and be counting someone else’s blessings. You will miss yours forever, miserable soul.
In all of my life I have never seen a person who is so determined to spread misery like these ones. If you think that a friend, a relative, an acquaintance and fellow citizens are being exploited by pastors and you have drawn their attention to it and they pay you no heed; they continue to go to church to be further exploited, why don’t you leave them alone and give your counsel to someone else? Or do something more beneficial to them or to yourself?
When Pastor Paul Enenche of the Dunamis Church built his church, The Dome, the biggest church building in the world, instead of rolling out the drums to celebrate this feat, these Far-to-see (Pharisees) and Sad-to-see (Sadducees) said it was way too big and that he ought to have used the money to build hospitals for sick people instead. You, who stopped you from building hospitals? Will Dangote refuse to sell cement to you? Will other building materials merchants refuse to sell their products to you? Why do you wait to tell others what to do with their money if they choose not to build hospitals? Must it be Enenche who should build a medicare facility? Have you ever thought of building a health centre for people in your village? Who made you a judge over what someone else is doing that is not in any way a threat to your life or living?
If one sits down and quietly reflects on the utterances of some of these miserable souls one will realize that they are fueled by no higher motivation than envy masquerading as high mindedness.
An army of activists, consisting mainly of journalists and idle public commentators, have arisen on the public scene with a mission to descend on pastors and complain endlessly about how they look fine, fashionable and rich, how they con ignorant church members to pat with their money and make them rich to live such a lifestyle. Yet, I, Mr. Idang Alibi, Iam one of those who help to make pastors ‘rich’ in the sense that I pay my offerings, tithes, first fruit offering, voluntary prophets’ offering and the likes. Yet, I am not in any way diminished. Rather, I keep growing in wisdom, wealth and riches.
To the best of my knowledge all of us church members who make pastors ride in jets we are not complaining. Yet, people who think they know better than us; who think we are such miserable fools because we know not what we are doing, daily abuse our pastors, our spiritual guides and mentors. Please, leave us to our foolishness. We are entitled to our idiocy, if idiocy, it is. In a democracy. If you cannot champion our rights to be better governed by our governments, please leave us alone to continue to relate with those we think will champion our cause better.
Oyedepo has founded two universities that you say charge too much fees, how many crèches have you founded in your life that you run saint Judas for free to help the poor? While I think that many of you are scoundrels is because your patron saint, Judas Iscariot, pleaded this argument purportedly in favour of the poor hundreds of years ago. He said that’s jar of alabaster perfume which a Jesus devotee thought was the right thing to show her love and devotion to the Lord was too expensive to have been poured on Jesus; that it should have been sold and the money spent to help the poor. It turned out later in the course of time that the man was a thief and what he really wanted was plenty of money in the purse which he was the keeper so he could steal from it.
All ye critics of pastor and the church, please remember that no statue is ever erected in the memory of a critic. Please find something to do to add value to humanity and leave people like Oyedepo to the God he says he is serving and which some of us think he is serving so ably. Do not judge another’s servant.
We the church members you claim you pity and are fighting for are not complaining. Leave us to our stupidity, please and seek to take reasonable actions to take care of yourself. Your ministry of fighting for us is not profiting you in any form. Have a re-think, please.
