Is Satan a candidate in 2015?
The good cardinal wondered why there was still so much evil in the world. Enjoining the worshippers to always strive for holiness, he counselled that if good people did nothing evil would triumph. It was therefore not enough to just condemn evil or even tolerate it; men and women of goodwill must resist it with […]
The good cardinal wondered why there was still so much evil in the world. Enjoining the worshippers to always strive for holiness, he counselled that if good people did nothing evil would triumph. It was therefore not enough to just condemn evil or even tolerate it; men and women of goodwill must resist it with all their might and fight it in whatever situation they found themselves.
As the good cardinal continued preaching my mind went to the mindless statement credited to Chris Okotie, the pop-singer-turned-church-proprietor who publicly advertised his ignorance about Christianity and doctrinal differences when he said all Catholics were destined for hell as they were Satan worshipers.
In his warped thinking, all Catholics in the world will go to hell because they worship Satan and are led by an anti-Christ Pope who is a friend to the devil, adding that the Catholic church was “a counterfeit church set up by Satan” and that Catholics “bow to idols and crucify Jesus every Sunday when they eat bread claiming they are eating Jesus’ body.”
I could not reconcile Oko-tie’s satanic utterances with what I was hearing from Cardinal Onaiyekan. If the Catholic Church was founded by Satan, how come the church is in the fore-front of the fight against Satan and his various manifestations? How come the church preaches holiness instead of blackmailing members to pay tithes if they wanted to go to heaven?
The Americans invented the Pentecostal variant of ‘churching’, but even they would never ever demonise the fount from which all other churches drank before setting up shop. I know there are very good pastors among the Pentecostals; I have listened to quite a number over the years. But there are many in Nigeria who are just businessmen in clerical collars, stealing in the name of the Lord as the inimitable Max Romeo once sang.
My father’s house of worship
Has become a den of thieves
Stealing in the name of the Lord
They fed our mouths with sour grapes
And set our teeth on edge
Stealing in the name of the Lord
Strike the hammer of justice
And set my people free
Strike the hammer of justice
Oh let my people be
They tell us of a heaven
Where milk and honey flow
Stealing in the name of the Lord
They said, this place called heaven
The rich man cannot go
Stealing in the name of the Lord
Yet the reverend drives a fancy car
Buys everything tax free
The people have to sacrifice
To give him charity
My father’s house of worship
Has become a den of thieves
Stealing in the name of the Lord
During the last Valentine’s Day, I heard that one self-styled pastor of the Okotie type told the female members of his church to reject the advances of men who had not paid their tithes in church. He argued that “a man who cheats God by not paying his tithes will cheat you too”. Well, this is what our society has become. Any young man who can afford to buy a jacket, jerry-curl his hair, feign foreign accent and memorise a few verses of the Bible can call himself a pastor. Never mind that they select what they believe in the Bible. Never mind that they are serial divorcees. The cheek of it all, a pastor who himself is divorced doesn’t see any contradiction in presiding over the solemnisation of a church member’s wedding.
Okotie had claimed several years ago that he heard the voice of God telling him to contest the presidential elections. He has contested twice and lost twice. God is never wrong. Okotie should interrogate the voice he claims to be hearing. Satan has many disguises and may actually be intent on contesting Nigeria’s next presidential elections by proxy.
And talking about satanic developments in this season of toxic letters, there is an open letter to President Jonathan written by Concerned Aviation Professionals and titled “Mindless waste of Nigeria’s resources: Who owns this Challenger 850 Aircraft Marked OE-ILA?” The gist of the scandal is that a serving ‘super minister’ maintains a Challenger 850 aircraft for private use with billions of naira from the public till. According to the whistle-blowers, “the incontrovertible evidence we have is that the minister has been committing 500,000 Euros (130 million naira) monthly to maintaining the aircraft in the last two years. Thus, in two years, the minister has committed the sum of N3.120 billion to keeping the jet… Our records show that the amount already wasted by this minister and members of the family on trips that are in no way beneficial to Nigeria runs into not less than N10 billion.”
To show that they are not just a bunch of rabble rousers, the aviation professionals assured the president that they have full documentary evidence to substantiate their claims: “Details in our possession include the series of flights the minister had engaged in with the said plane in the last two years. The details also include the different locations, time and date of the flights as well as the dates the plane returned to Nigeria at each instance…”
Then, they asked some fat questions: Who truly owns the aircraft? Why is one of the prime money-making agencies of government involved in paying the huge bills incurred by the minister to maintain this jet? Which budgetary provision is used to offset the billions of Naira incurred as cost by the minister on this plane?
Satanic revelations! I will not second-guess the president’s reaction. The ball is squarely in his court. But the rate at which the devil or Satan seems to be holding sway, many of us are truly scared that the Father of Lies and Duplicity may just succeed in slipping his name into the ballot paper in 2015. Vigilance, dear compatriots, vigilance! As the homilist said, if good people do nothing, evil will triumph.