Unless you want to pretend to be ignorant of what is going on in today´s churches in Nigeria and its message to the many gullible followers of most churches of today, you will agree with me that the word of God has become a sort of merchandise for clergymen and peddlers of the word of God. The word of God has been reduced to mere means to the selfish end of smooth talkers and hypnotizers from what it ought to be, which is redirecting lives from the path leading to eternal destruction to the path leading to eternal life.

The very sad truth is people are now being led by the very people they revered and look up to to the very destruction that the good book (bible) talked about. True, the word of God, according to its message is meant to change lives, but the so called life changing message of toady´s celebrity pastors, especially those in Nigeria, is different from what the bible teaches. I know there was a time when the word of God really changed lives in Nigeria, just like it did in the days of Christ on earth, where people after listening to the word of God, in its pure form, will abandon their wicked ways and follow the path of righteousness wholeheartedly. This was because the message as it was in the bible and as it is to this very day, because the word remain the same, was preached to the people as strictly as a message of salvation from spiritual poverty and not salvation from material poverty, this is the reason why the message of today´s men of God, which they are not for it is better to refer to them in the reverse order, as gods of gullible men and women, is not changing lives at all.

When a drunkard goes to church to listen to a pastor´s sermon and at his sober moments reflects on the teachings he got from the pulpit, and there and then begins to retract from the destructive path of a drunkard: that is when we can say the message from the pulpit is a life changing message. But these days it is not so at all. You will see certain cases where a man, despite going to church regularly, will continue with his drunkenness and that is because the only change he hears from the pulpit and the only change he is directed to pursue is the change of that miraculous transformation from his state of material poverty to a state of material prosperity.

Spiritually, the man is further impoverished and materially his life remain the same and his pastor: not helping matters, aggravates his woes by misdirecting him spiritually, and that is worse. Of course, his pastor´s only interest, as I mentioned at the beginning of my article is to sustain and maintain his material interest at the poor man´s expense and that of other naïve worshipers like him. What informed the establishment of his church: a clear edifice for his mercantile agenda, was money. He does this by fleecing worshipers desiring to fulfil their religious obligations. That's the truth, unless we don't want to say it the way it is.

You might be wondering what inspired my apologia on this matter. I was watching a Tv documentary one Sunday morning. It was a Christian program from the popular 700 Club from the United States of America. In that interesting short documentary, a story was told of a young man who was a member of a deadly gang and how the word of God positively impacted his life; redirecting him from the path leading to destruction to a path of righteousness. I strongly believe the young man's life took a dramatic change for good because the message that inspired the change in his life wasn't the kind of polluted messages the flamboyant preachers of the gospel in this country preaches to their gullible listeners.

When a man cease to be a murderer because of the inspired word of God, that is what I am talking about. If a life of violence like the young man's before he turned a new leaf is inspired by materialism and riches acquired by crooked artifice, which is always the the case, how will the polluted message of the material prosperity preachers in this part of the world change a life like that?

Tell me, how will the sermons of a worshiper of Mammon change the lives of drug dealers and hired assassins? If after listening to the sermons of these flashy pastors, people are not changing from their ill-ways to godly-ways, then we will continue to have high amount of morally bankrupt persons pretending to be Christians in the society. A corrupt politician will continue in his wicked ways as long as the church he attends sees nothing wrong in his wicked ways. Why should he bother to stop stealing from public treasury in the first place when his life, according to the message he is receiving from the pulpit of his church, is a living example of his pastor's message?

As it is with the corrupt politician so it is with people in all walks of life. It is all about the prosperity of the wicked. And when it is so, the society in general becomes the worse for it, making it a place where everything and anything goes. Another fundamental truth about the message of the flamboyant preachers of the gospel in this part of the world is that God's holy spirit will surely not work with their kind of message: the reason why their message hardly change or transform a spiritually and morally bankrupt life to a God-fearing life: the same reason why a young lad, despite having a Christian father and mother and attending a university owned by a church, will butcher his biological father because of one incident of minor misunderstanding he had with the old man.

So we don't need to wonder why the proliferation of churches and all kinds of Christian religious centers in the country has done almost nothing to curb the rampant waywardness in the society. It is the same reason ladies go to church in provocative apparels and the church will not frown against their indecent dressing.[quote][/quote]

At the heart of this same proliferation of churches families with Christian marriages are failing at an alarming rate, even the so called flamboya nt church leaders are not spared of this disgrace. The failure of the church to guide and instruct its members on this important hymeneal matter is indeed one of the cause of the large repository of social ills that are associated with broken homes,e.g, girl child molestation and related misdoings in our society.

No doubt we are living in the time the scriptures pointed out to be the period when the multiplication of societal ills will be out of hand. However, it will be a big slap on the face of the church, i.e, its fellowship and its leadership, if they continue to make themselves the fulfilment of the prophetic statement from the scriptures.

Let us as adherents of the Christian faith begin to manifest the fruit of the spirit of God even in these last days: drawing admonitions from the letter of saint Paul to the Galatians in Gal. 5:19-26, where he says, 'the works of the flesh are clear,[and] they are these: evil desire, unclean things, wrong use of the senses, worship of images, use of strange powers, hates, fighting, desire for what another has, angry feelings, attempts to get the better of others, divisions, false teachings, envy, uncontrolled drinking and feasting, and such things: of which I give you word clearly, even as I did in the past, that they who do such things will have no part in the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, a quiet mind, kind acts, well-doing, faith, gentle behaviour, control over desires: against such there is no law, and those who are Christ's have put to death on the cross the flesh with its passions and its evil desires.
If we are living by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us be guided. Let us not be full of self-glory, making one another angry, having envy of one another'. It is clear that the scriptures is self explanatory on this matter of life changing message. The Spirit and the Word effects the change that bring forth the good in us and suppresses the evil in us. It doesn't matter what side of the divide the change occurs in terms of the person's economic status. If a wealthy merchant changes from his old ways of cheating customers via crooked artifice and becomes a honest trader of merchandise without dishonest scales or measures. That means the trader has truly change. This act of repentance is the true manifestation of the work of the spirit of God in that person that abandon his ways of iniquity to follow a path of godliness. This should be the main message of the Christian faith.

When people whether rich or poor stops dishonesty to be honest, that is when we can say the message has become a life changing message. If the message is truly life changing, then the righteousness that saturates the land will exult the nation. The church leaders of today must begin to play down their preachment of materialism and preach the message that will bring people to the path of righteousness. And to do this they must also repent from the unapproved ways they have chosen. The repentance must start with them before their message will have the approval of God through his holy spirit, else, they will be breeding generations of blatant scapegraces pretending to be Christians.