₦airaland Forum

Ideyontop:
Did I just read this? : “Let us make it very clear: the gospel of prosperity is a message of hell.“


Pls read the Bible sir. You lied. If you have not come to understand why Jesus came then let’s study more and ask God for revelation. The coming of Jesus to take our place was not just a death drama, it came with real blessings. Let’s study more!

Start with 2 Cor 8:9

Sons and daughters of Biodun Fatoyinbo... the article is written for you

Biodun Fatoyinbo and the Gospel of Prosperity

By: Deji Yesufu

Biodun Fatoyinbo has been largely out of the national news for several years now. The last time I saw a picture of him, he was recovering from a health challenge – a possible stroke. It appears he is fully recovered now and also rebounded back to preaching the faulty, erroneous, and heretical Prosperity Message he has long been known to preach. In my theological tradition, Reformed Baptist, when a person is visited with a hard providence, such as an accident, an illness, or a loss of some kind, it is an opportunity to reflect on one’s life and reform one’s ways and message. It appears to me that Biodun Fatoyinbo learnt nothing from that brush with death.

Nigeria is a nation I like to call “One week, one drama”. We had just recovered from IbomAir-Gate when social media became inundated by a rejoinder from the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) media team. They had a reply for Pastor Fatoyinbo. In a clip that had been circulated on social media, Mr. Fatoyinbo is seen extolling the ministry of the late Evangelist Ayo Babalola. Babalola is a foremost missionary with the CAC, and he is still regarded as one of the greatest influences on Christianity in South-West Nigeria. Fatoyinbo said essentially that despite all the anointing Babalola possessed, he did not have money. He added that if Babalola had money, his children would be prominent people in Nigeria. But because their patriarch left them no money, no one knows them today. The CAC rejoinder made it clear that their church is not a prosperity preaching and seeking a local assembly. They also said that Babalola’s children are well and alive, serving in the various congregations God has put them in. To save face, Fatoyinbo published a statement yesterday, where he apologized for his words.

It is not likely that this generation will appreciate the damage that the message that has rightly been termed the “Prosperity Gospel” is causing in Nigeria. I hope that historians and sociologists will someday document it, and help us to see how much harm this message is doing to the average Nigerian mind. But until this is done, some of us will continue to remind the reading public of the evil of the gospel of prosperity. Occasions like these also afford us the opportunity to tell the public what this message is, and to warn people to separate themselves from it.

The gospel of prosperity is a message that teaches that Jesus Christ died to make Christians healthy and wealthy. The orthodox Christian message teaches that Jesus Christ died to save people from their sins alone (Matthew 1:21, Luke 24:46-47, Ephesians 1:7). The word “alone” is important to this definition because it is the distinguishing mark between sound and false doctrine. My Christian tradition loves to extol the stories of the 16th-century reformers. Martin Luther, a German Monk, while translating the Greek New Testament to German, added the word “alone” to Romans 1:16-17, where scripture had said that “the Just shall live by faith”. Luther concluded that sentence with “alone”, to emphasize the facts emerging from the reformation that right standing with God could not come through fidelity to church traditions and works. In a similar vein, the word “alone” must be employed to separate orthodox Christianity from prosperity Christianity.

As we labor to provide a definition of the Prosperity Gospel, we should also remind readers of the reach of this very perverse message. It is surprising that the Christ Apostolic Church will make a public rebuke of Biodun Fatoyinbo. One would think that the code of silence that many Pentecostals employ in dealing with disagreements would have been employed here. But, alas, it appears that when a revered personality in their tradition was touched, they felt duty-bound to defend him. Because I had always felt that there was little or no difference between what Christ Apostolic Church teaches and what Fatoyinbo espouses. At the root of Pentecostal theology is this: Jesus can make your life better. Ayo Babalola is revered today among CAC folks because of their many testimonies of healing that followed his ministry. Fatoyinbo has only continued this “better life” Christianity, except that he has only chosen to emphasize another aspect of it: wealth. The earlier the better, the Christian churches realize that Jesus Christ did not die to make people healthy and wealthy, the earlier we begin to make a gospel impact upon our land and people.

As we appreciate the errors in the gospel of prosperity, we need to return to examine its overall impact on the Nigerian nation. A few days ago, another video emerged of Rev. Isaac Omolehin, where he was lamenting the fact that of the ten richest pastors in the world, there are five Nigerian men there. But of the ten richest churches in the world, there are no Nigerian churches. In other words, Nigerian pastors, through the false gospel of prosperity, have succeeded in cornering church finances into their pockets. What should belong to the organization, the local churches, these men have succeeded in directing to their bank accounts. It is their sons and daughters who are today telling us that to be a Christian who will make an impact in your day, your bank account must be brimming with money. Another impact that we must keep in mind with regard to the effect of the prosperity gospel in Nigeria is that while the pastors grow richer, the congregation grows poorer. Not just that, the social impact of the gospel of prosperity is not felt on the streets in Nigeria. Nigerians are still poor, and they are still sick. When we point these things out to the prosperity preachers, they tell us that they are not the government. When you ask them how the messages they preach from their pulpit have compelled the government to do the right thing? They become numb with silence.

Let us make it very clear: the gospel of prosperity is a message of hell. When the Reformation hit Europe, it brought about the enlightenment and then the industrial revolution, which has led up to the modern times, with the internet age, etc. The true gospel revolutionizes society. It makes society better. It was the Reformation and the thinking that came with it, that brought an end to monarchies in our world and introduced us to constitutional governments. If a message has been preached in Nigeria for fifty years, and only the preachers get richer, while the people get poorer, that message is not a message from Jesus. Biblically, Christian ministry is not the place to go and make money. Ayo Babalola and other pioneers of Pentecostalism in the mid-20th century understood this. Everything changed with Benson Idahosa, David Oyedepo, and Enoch Adeboye in the late 1970s and 1980s – a discussion for another day. For now, please understand that the message that Biodun Fatoyinbo preaches is not a message from Jesus Christ.

Be blessed.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at newdejix@gmail.com

Source

salem1996:
I read it word to word. So insightful, inspiring and thought provocative.

Thank you 😊

flexyrule:
Let me confess that want of authority and want of humility are all offspring of a want of morality. Yet, I think that the question of a society deficient in morals is still worth talking about.

Very true


Hopefully we can build a society of young people with morals

Lessons from a Scuffle on a Plane (The Wants of Our Time)

by: Deji Yesufu

Nigerians woke up to a spectacle yesterday. Social media was inundated with videos of a young lady being dragged off an airline. In the scuffle, her blouse was torn open, revealing her breasts to the camera. Judging by what we saw and what might have occasioned the debacle, this young lady had assaulted the airline hostess, and she was being prevented from leaving the plane until airport security arrived to arrest her. The security did arrive, and the next thing that greeted the nation was a semi-X-rated play. If that young woman had had the decency of wearing a bra, in the same manner that she wore trousers, perhaps I would not be writing this essay. Other reports emerging from the story reveal that the girl was indeed arrested and has been remanded in Kirikiri prison, where the authorities plan to charge her for public disturbance. Another twist to the story, however, explains that the girl might have been set up by the airline authorities. Someone who was on that flight explained on a social media post that the girl indeed complied with the directive to have her phone switched to “flight mode” and that, for reasons best known to the airline, they decided to prevent her from leaving the plane. It was her protest that led to the drama that greeted the country yesterday.

As a public commentator, I have long been concerned with the way and manner in which Nigerians conduct themselves in public. I have written about the phenomenon I call Nigerian Bigmanism before – the attitude of pride that many Nigerians wear in public, which makes it nearly impossible for us to keep social norms. But besides this, it appears that Nigerians do not understand social etiquette of any kind. Simple things like saying “excuse me”, “please”, or even “I am sorry” appear to be something alien to our vocabulary. A senior friend pointed out to me that when I send emails to international bodies, in the name of an organization I work for, I should use “please” and “kindly” profusely. He told me that no one owes me anything; the mere fact that people will even give you their emails and open a line of communication with you is a favour you should not take for granted. Now, none of us was born to know everything. But as one associates with people, particularly people who are successful, you want to watch how they do things, and you want to imitate them. It is this that has led me to consider writing on some wants in the Nigerian psyche. I am sure there are other wants you can list along with these, but I will be writing on the want of authority, humility, and morality in the average Nigerian.

Want of Authority

My mother of blessed memory will tell my siblings and me: “What you fail to learn at home, you will learn outside”. It is both a positive and a negative remark. Positive in the sense that parents are not likely to know everything, and they can’t teach a child everything that the child should know. Whatever might be lacking in the lessons we learn from home, we learn the rest outside the house. But in a negative context, it means this: if parents have laboured over children, teaching them all that they need to know, and still the children do not learn these social norms, society will teach them. It could be so bad that society will not just teach them, society could snuff life out of them. Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John Kennedy dead in 1964. There have been all kinds of conspiracy theories that have followed that assassination. But a recent documentary by the People’s Profile revealed that the young man was an unstable person whom the mother failed to correct or discipline. Two days after Kennedy was killed, a man called Jack Ruby approached Oswald and shot him dead while he was being paraded before the press. When Ruby was questioned, he explained that he was not sent by anyone; he just could not understand why the earth should still harbour a scum like Oswald.

There is a serious lack of a sense of authority in the average Nigerian mind – particularly our young people. It is an epidemic. I see a lot of young people who have never been under the authority of a father, and who despise authority. I work in the civil service, and I see a total lack of comprehension of order and authority. I see how people despise the concept of seniority in the office, and how they think that they are their own boss within the system. I see young people tear down the structure God has put within a church system; how they people pay little attention to counsel and advice from pastors and elders. I see people launch into life, making very important decisions, while paying very little attention to advice from people with more experience in life. It was the attitude of despising authority that led that young woman in the video yesterday to pay little regard to the instructions coming from the airline hostess for that flight. It plays out in everything our young people do, and I cannot imagine what the future of this country will be with a mass of young people who have no regard for authority.

Want of Humility

My children are thirteen and eleven. I find that the hardest lesson for them to grasp, in all the years their mother and I have raised them, is learning to say “Good Morning” each day to their parent. They simply forget to do it, and every day I remind them. It is an important lesson on humility that I hope they will grasp one day. I am indeed their parent, and it is my responsibility to house, feed, and clothe them. But another fact is that I could choose not to carry out that responsibility. Yes, the world will call me an irresponsible father. So, for choosing to be a responsible father, I deserve a “good morning” each day. It is also an opportunity to teach the children to regard people around them. I did not live with my maternal grandmother that much, but the little time I spent with her on holidays showed me that the woman had regard for her neighbours. Early in the morning, as we headed to some outing, grandma would greet everybody on our street before we hit the road to take public transport. I don’t do that today; I do not have the time and energy. But, perhaps, it is a culture that “civilisation” has stolen from us.

There is a biblical concept that Jesus taught himself. He said that when you come into a public gathering, don’t just go and sit in the place for distinguished guests. Even if you are such a person, humble yourself and sit at a lowly place. Allow the people who think you are worth the seat to invite you to sit there. He said that if you go and sit somewhere that is not meant for you, you will not be able to handle the embarrassment that comes with being told to vacate that seat. It is a lesson in humility that all of us can learn. It means that while you and I know our intrinsic worth, we don’t shove it at people’s faces. It is the reason why I never seek anything for myself. I don’t seek interviews; I don’t seek jobs; I don’t ask people for favours; etc. I understand that I carry intrinsic value, and if people do not see that value today, they will see it tomorrow. And if they never see it, perhaps I need to work on increasing my worth. I must ensure that I never make myself more than what I am. It is better to think lowly of oneself, and to allow others to praise you. Pictures are emerging on social media and revealing that the girl in the video yesterday might be a slot. Many of her pictures were those in which she was wearing revealing outfits. Like they say, the empty things are the ones that make the loudest noise. You lose nothing by being humble.

Want of Morality

Let me confess that want of authority and want of humility are all offspring of a want of morality. Yet, I think that the question of a society deficient in morals is still worth talking about. The big irony with Nigeria is that this country is so religious, and yet its people are so deficient in morals. I watched a video of an older Nigerian man who lives in the United Kingdom. He explained that he had no plans of returning to Nigeria to retire. He said that all his friends who have tried it returned with stories of woe. He said everyone appears to be a thief in Nigeria. It is called “gbajue” – see my video on the same subject in that link. A culture where it appears that everyone is trying to cheat the system. We have exalted money so much that we pay little premium to doing the right thing, contentment, delayed gratification, hard work, and loyalty. Everyone appears to be in a hurry to nowhere. There is a death of a sense of doing the right thing in this country. When you fly in a plane, the first thing that is done is that the air host/hostess will come to the front and explain a few things to you, especially with regards to emergencies on the plane. People who have flown a lot do not pay attention to these instructions because they are used to them. But no matter how many times I have flown in a plane, I pay attention to those instructions – simply because it is the right thing to do.

Life is like taking a path through a maze. At each juncture in life, you are required to decide on issues. A person who is steeped in morals will have a sense of knowing what to do at each juncture. As a pastor, people often come to me with questions of “who should I marry?”; “what job should I take?”; etc. Just two days ago, I was invited to speak on the subject of whether a Christian sister should marry a Muslim man. The truth of the matter is that life is all about decision-making. If you and I have learnt to make decisions to do the right things with regard to simple matters, when the hard questions of life come, you will not find it difficult to make those decisions. And even when you still cannot find the right answers, with prayers and in the multitude of right counsellors, you will make the right decision. If, however, you have lived a life of rebellion, a life where you despise authority, and where you think you are above everyone, the hard questions of life will hit you, and you will have no answers for them.

Conclusion

At the university, we did a course titled “Moral Philosophy”. It was one of those courses I rushed through: where I simply depended on a handout and past questions to prepare for, and then ensure I had a pass mark on. Perhaps it is one of the reasons why our society is so bereft of sound morals – we rush through important points of life, and fail to learn the lessons we ought to learn from them. Before the story of that girl surfaced yesterday, the great Fuji maestro, KWAM 1, was almost run over by a plane, too. He was doing “bigmanism” and refused to surrender a drink he had with him on the plane. He was deboarded, and Nigerians were greeted with that unsaintly sight.

There is a deep lack of social etiquette among Nigerians, and it is the reason why our people are becoming pariahs in other nations. Presently, xenophobia has resumed in South Africa. South Africans are demanding that Nigerians leave their country. They are going to the point of denying Nigerians health care in that country. The same goes with Ghana also. While xenophobia must be condemned, perhaps we have made ourselves odious to other nations because we simply lack social skills. Sincerely, this problem is not the other person; this problem of great want in the social mannerisms of Nigerians is something that all of us are guilty of. The young woman in yesterday’s video only reminded us all of ourselves.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

The Hearts of Men

By: Deji Yesufu

“… The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, and try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings…” – Jeremiah 17:9-10

I am very sure that when the history of the period between 1980 and the year 2000 will be written, two musicians will be mentioned who had a great influence on the minds of young men all around the world – including me. The two of them are Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. Both men were killed in 1996 and 1997, respectively, in the same way – drive-by shootings; and one can look back now and understand that they reaped the reward of the fruit of their mouths and ways. Notorious BIG inspired my article “Ready to Die”; Tupac inspired this one. To write this article, I had to listen to the lyrics of the song “The Heartz of Men” by Tupac, and I cannot fathom the number of expletives I had to endure to listen to it. But I needed to listen to it because I felt there was something he was saying, beyond the expletives, that could explain the point I want to make in this article. He was saying essentially that no one can be trusted. Some people call you their friends, who in real life are your enemies; and some people might look like your enemies, but in real life, they wish the best for you. No one knows the deepest intent of men’s hearts, and since it is impossible not to associate with people in this life, you enter into every association in faith.

As wide apart as their life and ideologies were, Jeremiah the prophet agrees with Tupac Amaru Shakur. Jeremiah wrote that the hearts of men are desperately wicked. Then he asked: “Who can know it?” I have heard a lot of people quote this verse, and I wonder if they understand the point the prophet was trying to make. When you hear a person say “…the hearts of men are desperately wicked…”, it is usually concerning some bad experience that person might have had with other people. He had trusted somebody and had been disappointed, and to explain the situation, he refers to the biblical reference to the wickedness of the hearts of men. If this is the context in which one is making such a reference, they are not wrong.

Except that when Jeremiah wrote those words, he was not thinking of the wickedness of other people’s hearts alone – he was thinking of the wickedness of his own heart, inclusive. He must have thought about situations where he also had to make decisions to justify his ways, even when it was apparent he was betraying the course of someone who had trusted him. He must have been thinking that God would be so kind to entrust him with such a gracious ministry, of being a prophet to a nation, even though his imaginations run wild from time to time. I understand that this would certainly have been Jeremiah’s train of thought because the New Testament tells us that when it comes to the subject of sin and the wickedness of men’s hearts, all of us are guilty.

Therefore, when we enter into association with other men, we must make that little allowance for disappointment. We must understand that people are coming into business with you not because they care a hoot about you, but because they have something in that association to gain from. And that as long as you can give them what they want, they will remain with you. But the moment you cease to be relevant in their lives, they will ditch you. It is usually only one’s parents who give unconditionally to a child. But the children reach a certain age when the parents tell them to go and fend for themselves, too.

I have been thinking more and more about the state and condition of the hearts of men. I find myself between two epochs. The first epoch is the very life that I am living. I am a Nigerian in my middle age, with a sound education and a skill, I am sure that if I export to other countries, I will make a lot more money than I am making now. I confess to you that the Japa phenomenon appeals to me. Nevertheless, I love Nigeria. I know in my heart that I am called to serve this country.

I know that this wilderness situation we have found ourselves in as a nation is only temporary; God will save this country eventually. I will also be happy to be among those who will welcome Nigerians back from the nations where they had gone to seek economic asylum when Nigeria gets better. I must also juxtapose this epoch with another epoch where the hearts of men were revealed, and which forms the foundation on which this country was laid. The time I want to talk about is between 1944 and 1966. It is the story of Obafemi Awolowo, and the points I will be making in this part of the essay are meant to corroborate God’s response to Jeremiah in verse ten of the scripture quoted above.

Sometimes in 1963, Obafemi Awolowo, as brilliant as he was, came to a painful realisation. He said that his biggest undoing in politics was that he trusted Samuel Ladoke Akintola for too long. There was very little reason why Awolowo should not have trusted Akintola. 1944 was the year Obafemi Awolowo left Nigeria to study law in the United Kingdom. Awolowo and Akintola were young men struggling to survive in Nigeria in those colonial times. In 1937, Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to Nigeria from the United States of America with a PhD. Zik was only four years older than Awolowo, yet his social profile was a lot higher than his because he was a lot more educated than he was. Awolowo knew that if he were to gain the social standing to speak in Nigeria and for men to listen to him, he would have to get a law degree. In those days, Awolowo and Akintola were both newspapermen.

Akintola was the editor of the Daily Service. In 1946, Awolowo wrote an article where he analysed the John Macpherson Constitution that had just been published that year. Akintola published that article and got his employers to pay for the bloc that carried Awolowo’s face. That was the first time Awolowo would have his photograph in a newspaper. So, when people kept coming to Awolowo and warning him about the possibility of Akintola betraying his loyalty, Awolowo did not take any action. By the time he sought to deal with the matter, Akintola had grown into a monster. In January 1963, Obafemi Awolowo found himself in prison, and Samuel Akintola was restored to the seat of Premiership of the Western Region by the Tafawa Balewa government. In the days to come, I will tell the public what followed afterwards.

As Jeremiah thought on the state of the hearts of men, God spoke to him. He said: “I the Lord search the heart, and try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings…” God is saying that while all hearts are sinful and wicked, there are degrees of wickedness in men’s hearts. God searches the hearts of men and knows the deepest intent of men’s hearts, and then he returns to reward everyone for the condition of their hearts via the outcomes of their lives. What this means is that the state of every person’s life is a culmination of their thoughts and actions. Rather than going to a prayer meeting and spending all your waking moments in vigils, find time to know the state of your heart. Repent of your sins.

Endeavour to reform your life. Make choices for good and not for evil. Join worthy causes. Separate yourself from evil men and their evil machinations. Defend the poor. Heal the sick. Help the needy. Speak truth to power. Stand by what is right, and separate yourself from what is wrong. You may not know the condition of your neighbour’s heart, but you must know the condition of your own heart. When you see wickedness in your heart, separate yourself from it. You will not be perfect in your ways, but endeavour, as much as you have strength within your will, to do the right things always. The fruit of your heart and your ways will determine whether you will have a good life to enjoy, or you will spend the rest of your life struggling.

When I became a Christian in 1998, I stopped listening to gangster rap. It was not because the songs were no longer appealing to me; I just knew that it was something God would no longer want me to do again. It matters what you watch, read, and listen to. A few years ago, I was watching “Blood Diamond” – a movie starring Leonardo De Caprio. It was the story of how the Sierra Leone crisis of the late 1990s was fueled by white men who pitched communities in that country against themselves, as they tried to mine diamonds illegally. Thousands were killed, and many others were maimed. In one of the scenes in the movie, a group of violent men were going to a community to raid.

As they headed to kill and maim other people, they were playing Tupac Shakur in their trucks. In other words, as they sought to kill people, they needed someone to inspire them towards violence. I then understood why God wanted me to have a clean end to those destructive songs. What you read, watch, or listen to will inspire your thoughts and actions. Your thoughts and actions will inspire the outcomes of your life. If you will have life, you want to work on the content of your heart. You may not be able to determine what is in the heart of other men, but you can ensure that your own heart honours God and wishes the best for people. God, who knows the hearts of all men, will then reward all men according to their ways.

A good man will reap good in this life. And the wicked person will continue to struggle. I hope this inspires you. Thank you for reading.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

MrPresident1:
Eskiss Sah! What is Nigeria's problem?

The Nigerian leadership and its people.

geoworldedu:
Kemi Badenoch is saying the truth and the truth will prevail

Agreed

Truth would prevail is also a worthy prayer

Kemi Badenoch is not Nigeria’s Problem

By: Deji Yesufu

Kemi Badenoch is in the news again. This time it is regarding a statement she made on CNN as a guest of Fareed Zakaria. While trying to explain the immigration policies of her party, the Conservative Party in the UK, which she leads, she stated that in Nigeria, which is her country of birth, she cannot automatically pass on citizen rights to her children because she is a woman. This was a blunder because this is not so. The Nigerian constitution automatically grants citizenship rights to children of all Nigerians, regardless of whether the person is male or female. If Mrs. Badenoch had done her research, she probably would have known this. She may have never even sought to obtain Nigerian citizenship for her children, and this is why she does not know this; it is also possible that maybe she overheard this lurid foreign policy of Nigeria from someone, but never took the time to ascertain its veracity.

After making that statement, Nigerians went for the jugular of Mrs. Badenoch. The Yorubas have a proverb that goes something like this: “… there is that fellow that people wish to burn alive but who makes it his preoccupation to continually douse himself with fuel”. In other words, Kemi Badenoch is not liked by Nigerians, both at home and abroad, but she continually puts herself in a position where she can be attacked by Nigerians. Since Kemi Badenoch became leader of the opposition in the United Kingdom last October, she has continually been at loggerheads with Nigerians. She has made it clear to Nigerians both home and abroad that she did not come into that office to launder the image of Nigeria. Kemi’s perception of Nigeria is that of her late father. Her father, Dr. Femi Adegoke, was an ultra-Yoruba nationalist. He was one of those people who holds the belief that northern Nigeria is a burden to the Nigerian state and that if this country is to move forward, it would have to let go of that dead weight. This is Kemi Badenoch’s position also. Therefore, on a personal level, she is extremely critical of the bad governance in Nigeria, and she continually uses Nigeria as an example of what a country should not be. On this latter note, Kemi Badenoch and I are completely on the same page.

My focus in this essay is to help Nigerians appreciate a few things about Mrs. Badenoch and to point out the fact that her criticism of Nigeria on the international stage might be the best thing that has happened to this country in decades. It is not Kemi Badenoch’s job description to put Nigeria in a positive light in the international sphere. That job belongs to the Nigerian foreign office, her plethora of embassies all around the world, and the way and manner its citizens behave both within the Nigerian nation and overseas. Some people have said that Kemi is not the first foreigner to lead the Conservative Party. They tell us that Rishi Sunak was not only the leader of the party, but he also became Prime Minister. And that throughout his time in office, he did not denigrate India, his country of birth. This is true. Except that we may want to ask: Has India ever been described as a shit-hole country by anyone? Is institutional corruption at the same level in India as we have it in Nigeria? Are Indian youths spending all their time learning Yahoo-Yahoo? Is there Boko Haram in India, and how has India solved the issues of insrugency in their country? Do Indians practice the kind of money politics that Nigeria practices?

Someone suggested that when we make comparisons, we should not compare apples with oranges. Nigeria is not India. In fact, in the committee of nations, without Kemi Badenoch’s commentaries, Nigeria remains a big disappointment. What other nation on earth has earned so much from petroleum exports, yet its people live in abject poverty; its graduates have no jobs; its professionals are fleeing the country in large numbers, etc? Kemi Badenoch is not the problem in Nigeria.

Another criticism of Mrs. Badenoch is that she is trying to burn the bridge that she used to cross into the United Kingdom. Nigerians say Kemi is selfish. I think this is one of the most puerile criticisms one hears of Kemi. First, let us understand how Kemi Badenoch gained English citizenship. Kemi Badenoch was born in 1980. As of that time, Nigeria was just emerging from the false hope that the oil boom of the 1970s had given the country. Things were not that bad for the country then, but her parents could see that Nigeria was not a country they would wish their children to grow up in. In 1979, the country went to the polls and Nigerians chose the simpleton Shehu Shagari over and above the erudite Obafemi Awolowo. Kemi’s mother flew to the United Kingdom and had her in that country, and then Kemi was given citizenship. Birthright citizenship was abolished in 1983 in the United Kingdom. Kemi was brought back to Nigeria and was raised on the University campus of UNILAG. When she concluded her secondary school in 1996, her parents decided to send her back to England – with the hope that she could get a good tertiary education there.

While in the UK, Kemi joined the Conservative Party at the age of twenty-five and became a committed member. She met her husband at that party and married him. He discovered that she was very gifted in politics, and so took a backstep in the party and supported her rise through the ranks until she became leader of the Conservative Party. Now, Kemi Badenoch cannot be a spokesperson for Nigeria because Nigeria did practically nothing for her. Kemi speaks boldly for the Conservative Party’s course because that is what she genuinely believes in. Kemi married a British person, and she is completely committed to helping her nation get better. Unfortunately, because she has Nigerian citizenship, she knows a lot that is wrong with Nigeria, and she never stops warning the British not to take the Nigerian way of descent to hell. Let me conclude by suggesting to Nigerians what our problems are and also proffering a few ways out of them.

First, the Nigerian problem is leadership. Pure and simple. The day this country finds visionary, altruistic, and selfless leadership is the day all our problems will end. Today, Nigerian politics is not dictated by any ideology. At the centre of our politics is money. The person who gains political leverage in this country is the person who can buy up everyone. Politicians come to a community to canvass for votes, and in return, Nigerians begin to ask this person for money. The politicians who have the money simply buy themselves into office. Many of them enter office in their geriatric years; they spend eight years in Aso Rock as a retirement sojourn there; and then die a few years after they have left office. They do not have the youth, vigour, and vitality that leadership in the 21st century should have. The day Nigerians decide to vote in visionary leadership, that day their problems will begin to end.

Second, the Nigerian problem is its people. The same people who spend all their time on social media venting their spleen against Kemi Badenoch – who is labouring to fix her own adopted country – do nothing for Nigeria. Nigerians hate Kemi Badenoch because she is making it increasingly difficult for Nigerians to get British citizenship. The question I ask these people is simple: if your country were good, would you go outside the country and be looking for foreign citizenship? Nigerians rose in the 1940s/50s and asked the British to leave; they said they could govern themselves – they did not want colonial rule. The question is simple: can we govern ourselves? If every Nigerian, particularly those of us who are elites, will make the commitment to better the little corner that he lives in, this country will begin to thrive. Instead, Nigerians cheat the system and then head to the church and mosque and pray that the country will get better. God will not answer stupid prayers. If Japa will stop, and Nigerians realise that life is short and the person who has lived well is the one who has endeavoured to better the lot of society around him, not the person who lives in wealth abroad, the country will begin to get better. When we realise this, we will stay back and help this country grow. Then you will understand that Mrs. Badenoch is your ally and not your enemy. Kemi is pushing policies in the United Kingdom that will make it difficult for foreigners to access different government aids, without adding anything to their society. Kem is saying that those who will be given citizenship should be contributing a healthy sum to the overall productivity of the country – especially through taxes. This makes perfect sense. But since many Nigerians do not even know what it means to pay taxes – everything in this country is done by the government – they cannot understand what the woman is saying.

I pray that Mrs. Kemi Badenoch will not only succeed as the leader of the Conservative Party, but that she will become the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I pray that the conservative movement in the United States of America, through Trump and that of the UK, through Kemi, will gain such a foothold that they will ensure that many Nigerians who are not adding value to those countries will be deported. I pray that it will open the eyes of Nigerians to the realities of life: it is people who make countries great. If you want your children to enjoy a great life, make the sacrifices and commitment today. Kemi’s parents had seen that Nigeria was not a serious country way back in the late 1970s, and through vision, they ensured that their children had foreign citizenship. If you and I make certain decisions and a few sacrifices, we may bequeath a better country to our children. Kemi Badenoch is not Nigeria’s problem.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

Image123:
Deji Deji, asking God for help or blessing is different from redemption and forgiveness of sins.

Ok

ThothHermes:
Mr Deji Yesufu is grossly mistaken. I don't know about Jerry Eze but Arome Osayi does not preach the prosperity gospel. In fact, there is propably no preacher who rails against such teachings as Apostle Arome. He doesn't run a YouTube prayer platform (I challenge you to post a link of his YouTube prayer channel), doesn't preach breakthroughs or testimonies as you have alleged.
I don't want to call you a liar but you've grossly misrepresented Arome Osayi and that is borderline wickedness.
Arome Osayi is among the most sincere and soundest gospel teachers of his generation. Do your own research.

Ok

MrPresident1:
Daniel 8:11-12
King James Version
11 Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of the sanctuary was cast down.
12 And an host was given him against the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression, and it cast down the truth to the ground; and it practised, and prospered.

Identify Rome and this passage will make sense. Is it not Rome that magnified itself against Jesus Christ? Is it not Rome that took the daily sacrifice away, and cast down the place of the sanctuary in 70AD?

Who gave Christianity to the world? And From whence is Roman Catholicism?

Has the Bible not told us that Rome will practise and prosper until its time is over?

Rome did not disappear, it only morphed.

Yeah

MrPresident1:
Rome will prosper in it's falsehoods until the time alloyed for it is over. Emperor Constantine claimed that he saw a sign in the skoes and some voice told him 'by this sign, conquer'. Then he syncretized roman pagan beliefs with some doctrines of the Bible, and boom, Christianity was created. There is no such thing as Christianity in the Bible, it is a Roman creation.

Daniel 8:11-13
King James Version
11 Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of the sanctuary was cast down.
12 And an host was given him against the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression, and it cast down the truth to the ground; and it practised, and prospered.
13 Then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said unto that certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot?

This is Rome. Rome magnified itself against the prince of the host, Jesus Christ, by Rome, the daily sacrifice in Jerusalem was taken away an Jerusalem was conquered. It was because of Judah's transgressions that Rome was empowered against it, and Rome cast the truth to the ground and has practised and prospered till date!

Then Daniel hears a voice asking how long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden down?

We are still in this epoch, the host is still dispersed and the sanctuary is still being trodden down- by the most grievous of the heathen, where they do regular gay parades.

Always fun reading you

The Damnable Errors of Arome Osayi and Jerry Eze

By: Deji Yesufu

I am a civil servant. For the past fifteen years, my morning revolves around preparing children for school; dropping them off early to make their school assembly; and then reporting to the office before 8 am which is the official resumption date for workers in many Nigerian institutions. This particular morning, I complete the circuit early enough and then I drove into our parking lot around twenty minutes past seven. Because I had forty minutes to spare, I wound down the car glasses and tried to inhale and exhale the morning cold breeze. As I did this, somehow my attention was drawn to the two vehicles to my right and left. There were two ladies in these cars, who had the windows of their vehicles wound up. They were praying. As I watched the motion of their mouths, they were obviously listening to prayer session emitting from their phones. I could tell that they were both listening to the same prayer channel from one of these YouTube prayer pastors – either Jerry Eze or Arome Osayi. I found it strange and fortuitous that in a public place, two women who do not know themselves, will be tuned to the same prayer channel, and will be uttering the same “amen” in the same location thousands of kilometers from the individual leading the prayer. I considered it both the magic of the internet and the deception of the prosperity gospel. It is the errors behind the latter that I wish to shed light on in this article.

I do not know Arome Osayi and Jerry Eze in person and it will be impossible for me to comment on who these men are. I draw my judgement on them simply from the content of their preaching and prayers which is all over the internet. I would also naturally not have responded to these men, except that I find their content in the public space, and since I am a religious public commentator, I felt I should share my thoughts with the public too. It might help one or two persons. I will be writing on three essential points about these men: their false prosperity gospel; their endless and meaningless tales; and their “many” deceived followers.

Theologically, there are a few errors that Christians peddle that one cannot consider as damnable. Some of these errors are products of traditional practices in a place that might have influenced the teaching of the Bible in those places; there are other errors that exhume from a faulty interpretation of the scripture. For example, I consider the practice of “speaking in tongues” among Pentecostals as an error but it is not a damnable error. I think that one can be speaking in tongues and still be a conscientious Christian who does not deny the tenets of the Christian faith. The trouble however with these endless prayer sessions, led by the likes of Arome Osayi and Jerry Eze, is that at the root of it is the damnable heresy of the prosperity gospel. The reason why the adherents of these teaching spend morning, afternoon, and night praying, is so that God might bring them into some prosperity and blessing, and so that they might have some liberation from a health challenge. This is not the Christian gospel.

As I write this, the local church that I am pastoring is looking at the life of Jesus as it is recorded in the gospels of John. In chapter eighteen of that book, Jesus Christ is brough before Pilate and the Jews are recommending to the Roman leader that Jesus should be executed. Pilate is confused. He makes it clear to the Jews that he finds no faults in Jesus. In fact, by the turn of the next chapter, the Jews begin to recommend that Jesus be crucified. And Pilate is wondering why the Jews will recommend a capital punishment to a man who had done no offence. When he enquired further from the Jews who this Jesus really was, they respond and said that Jesus had called himself the Son of God. Pilate, a bullish Roman warrior, was scared. He asked Jesus “who are you?” Jesus did not respond. The heart of my point here is however in the final verses of Chapter eighteen, Pilate gives the Jews an option: take Jesus or take Barrabas – Barrabas was an insurrectionist and a murderer. The Jews took Barrabas. In other words, since Jesus did not have an offence, they took the sins of Barrabas and put it on Jesus, while they declared Barrabas free. That, my friends, is the gospel.

The gospel is about God’s gracious work in Christ Jesus – where he took the sins of the world and put it on his Son. Then God brought the whole gamut of his wrath on his Son, and killed him on the cross because of the weight of the sin of the elect that Christ bore. The story did not end there. Jesus, however, rose from the dead after three days. In other words, while the wages of sin is death – Christ defeated death by rising from the dead. Therefore, whoever believes in Jesus, they can trust that Christ has taken away their sin; Christ have forgiven their sins; and Christ has brought them into newness of life in the Holy Spirit. Our duty as Christians, is not to spend the rest of our lives, looking for breakthroughs of prosperity and deliverance from demonic influences; but to simply repent of our sins, believe in Christ as Saviour, and then live the rest of our lives bringing the positive influences of the gospel on our societies. The pastor continues to remind his community of the gospel, and press gospel demands on sinners to repent; the civil servants bringing the effects of the gospel to his community – serving the civil populace at work; the Christian politician bringing gospel light to leadership – showing the world that there are still Daniels and Josephs in our day and time; etc. There is simply nothing Christian in what Arome Osayi, Jerry Eze, and the likes are doing on the internet!

The doctrine that underlines these men’s preaching is called the prosperity gospel, and I can say with biblical authority that anyone who believes their message will not go to heaven. The prosperity gospel is damnable heresy because it teaches that Jesus Christ died to make us healthy and wealthy. It has gone a little further in the Nigerian animist environment, where there is an ingrained belief that there are forces of good and evil forever at war in the “spiritual realm”. They then teach their followers that those who can pray enough; fast enough; give to church enough; etc, are those who will possess the powers to defeat the devil and all of his evil machinations in the spiritual realm. They reduce Christianity to give and take. The whole element of grace in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is lost. Everything is contingent on what you do. If you want results, do the things that these men are asking you to do and you will see results. This is why these prayer sessions are inundated with “testimony sessions”. The testimonies lend credence to the fact that what the man is preaching is true. Osayi and Eze have simply taken over from the false gospel that their fathers in the faith, the like of Oyedepo, Adeboye, and the late Benson Idahosa have taught for years now. They are the new kids on the Charismatic bloc, and they are reaping a fortune in the process.

Again, these men’s “products” are in the public space and no one is using my money to purchase their rubbish. But the time comes when it becomes necessary to put a word of caution for all to read. There is one word that concerns me when it comes to deception in the religious communities. That word is “many”. Jesus used it in Matthew 24 when he spoke about the signs of the end, and what will happen when he is about to return. He said “many” will be deceived by false teachers and false prophets. Similarly, Peter used the same word in his second epistle – the second chapter. He talked about how many false teachers will deceive many in those days. The days when “many” will be deceived is today. And Nigeria has so cultured the environment to allow for these deceivers to flourish in our day and time.

For those who may still have ears to hear, let me say it again: there is no redemption in what Arome Osayi and Jerry Eze are teaching. They are simply repackaging an old heresy: it is the teaching of Balaam who was deceived by the gains he sought to get from ministry. Jesus Christ did not die for anyone to be healthy and wealthy. Jesus died to save you and I from our sins. When we repent of our sins, and trust Jesus as Lord and Saviour, he begins to bring the fruit of righteousness to bear on all that we do. It might please God to make a Christian wealthy. Such a person should understand that God demands that he uses his wealth to further kingdom purposes. It might please God to give you and I a lengthy and healthy life. We should understand that God will demand from us what we used every moment of our health for. For some other Christian, they may never know wealth or enjoy good health all their days. For such, the Lord has given them little and the Lord will still demand to know what they do with the little that they had. Please renounce the gospel of prosperity. Stop listening to Arome Osayi, Jerry Eze, and their likes. I know that my words will fall on “many” deaf ears. But if one person has ability to hear the warning in these words, the effort in writing all these would have been worth it.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached on naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

izombie:
I said it before the last election that if tinubu were to win that he would do the same thing he did in lagos to Nigeria. Now it's happening. Naija don become his toy

There is sufficient reason to be concerned with the state of democracy in Nigeria

[quote author=Greenback post=136101490][/quote]Dictionary will help

Quandary: noun.

a state of perplexity or uncertainty over what to do in a difficult situation.

"Kate was in a quandary"

^^^ Google

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗡𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗣𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀

By: 𝗗𝗲𝗷𝗶 𝗬𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗳𝘂

It was Edmund Obilo, the Ibadan radio broadcaster, who first drew my attention to the matter of “state capture” within Nigerian politics. Obilo suggested that the Nigerian President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, might be seeking to capture the Nigerian state. What that means is that Tinubu is looking at becoming a maximum ruler, a dictator of some sort, or, at the very least, Tinubu might be looking at possessing more powers in his government beyond what he is constitutionally entitled to. Those who fear Bola Tinubu capturing the Nigerian state point at what is happening in Lagos State. Since he left the seat of the Governorship of that state in 2007, Tinubu has dictated who leads that state and who doesn’t. If that is not “state capture” in its literal sense, then the phrase means nothing.

My concern in my essays revolves around the question of morality. As a minister of the gospel, one of the outcomes that I hope to see following my preaching is that the moral compass of members of my congregation increases. I do not expect them to become perfect – I am not perfect either. I, however, expect that they are labouring in their little corners to be better people–better husbands; better wives; better children; better workers; better citizens of the country, etc. Since I write for a nation to read, I expect that the moral compass of my readers will improve. I expect Nigerians to be better people. I expect to see less corruption in public office. I expect the fear of God to dictate the motives behind people’s actions, and not money. Unfortunately, I do not see these things. It appears that the moral compass of Nigerians deteriorates each day. The people of this country have succeeded in making good out of evil and turning evil to good. I will explain with some anecdotes.

Someone told me recently that his civil servant friend is looking forward to the 2027 general elections. He explained that this guy, in the last election, 2023, cashed out big time. He happened to have manned some sensitive departments during the elections and was influential in doctoring certain figures. This civil servant guy is now looking forward to the 2027 elections, where he hopes that he can man those offices again and enjoy some pecuniary advantage like he did the last time. I have heard that money changes hands in some of these electoral collection centres, but I did not know that it has become this endemic. One person said that a political party offered his friend $50,000 to change the figures in favour of another party in a recent election in this country. I was in Portharcourt in 2023, a few months after the elections, and I saw that the state government still had police vans manning sensitive facilities around the State INEC office. It is alleged that the voting was so rigged in Rivers State that the government ensured that the police were still on duty long after the elections had been concluded. This was to forestall any possible uprising or protest.

As I think on the moral quandary in Nigerian politics, and how every sense of right and wrong has been exchanged in this country, I remember our founding fathers. I have been reading a lot of Obafemi Awolowo’s essays in recent times, and I cannot help but see two opposing realities in the sage’s writing. Awolowo believed two things: that a people deserve to be at liberty and never to be colonised by a foreign nation. Second. Awolowo believed that Nigerians could govern themselves. I dare to say that the sage was right on one and wrong on the other. Yes, every nation deserves to have liberty, but the testimony that has greeted the Nigerian reality since independence is that it appears Nigerians cannot govern themselves. If we can, I do not know why we are unable to produce worthy leadership in this country.

State capture is possible when two things happen in a society: when money becomes the controlling factor in that society, and one man possesses that money. What will happen is that that man will buy up all the institutions in the country, and the people in those institutions will pave the way for him to capture the state. This man will have the judiciary, the legislators, the police, the army, the press, and all opposition in his payroll, and he will do and undo. He could even champion the process of changing the constitution to allow him to have not just a third term in office, but also for him to be president for life. When money is lord in a society, the man who possesses these resources becomes the one whom everyone worships. There, the state has been captured.

In 1958, Obafemi Awolowo delivered a lecture to a gathering of people in the Nigerian Union of Journalists. There, he traced the history of journalism and explained how journalists began to be called the fourth estate of the nation. He also mentioned in that lecture that Napoleon Bonaparte said that he feared the media way more than the guns his enemies could bring against him at war. What does that mean? It means this: even when a society has been captured by one man using his wealth, men of goodwill can still withstand his hegemony. The way it is done is through public opinion, which is often provided by the media.

When Awolowo made these statements, the main media in those days were the print media. Today, we have social media, electronic media, print media, etc. If anyone captures the Nigerian state today with his money, all of us should blame ourselves for it. We have no excuse for allowing it. Wisdom, carefully written in a text and published for the wider community to read, is sufficient to burst the authoritarian hold of anyone seeking to capture the state. The reason why a military coup is near impossible in Nigeria today is beyond whether the coup could be successful or not; it is mainly because public opinion is heavily against military rule in Nigeria. And if the soldiers dare truncate our democracy again, they will not survive a week in office.

I write all these essays because I am convinced that righteousness can exalt Nigeria. This country is beautiful. We still have people who fear God in this country. There are people in this country who pray for Nigeria daily, and God will answer that prayer. When he does answer that prayer, one of the things that we will see happen to our society is that the moral compass of our people will improve. Money will no longer be the determining factor for how society must run; the rich man will no longer be the one who dictates happenings in our society; wisdom will triumph over wealth; and Nigeria will get better. What gives me hope concerning this country is that God sees this nation; he has preserved this country, and Nigeria will fulfil a great destiny God has prepared for her. Perhaps, the day will come when nations will rush to Nigeria to find out how we have become so successful. Nigeria can be a Singapore – nay, Nigeria can be greater than Singapore.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source: https://textandpublishing.com/the-moral-quandary-in-nigerian-politics/

kpankpangolo:
No summary, no proper comment from me. Miss me with this.

According to ChatGPT

"The author reflects on the pervasive presence of falsehood and dishonesty in Nigerian society, illustrating this through personal experiences and societal observations. They begin with a fictional video highlighting issues of trust and DNA testing, criticizing how societal pressures and international demands—such as DNA verification—dehumanize Nigerians and reflect a deeper problem of societal decay rooted in dishonesty.

The author argues that issues like infidelity and DNA testing are symptoms of a broader moral decline, emphasizing that children’s identity should be based on love and family bonds rather than forensic verification. They criticize Nigeria’s participation in global practices that degrade human dignity, asserting that such measures are a sign of Nigeria’s subordinate status.

Drawing from a personal career setback in the IT field, the author recounts their experience with fraudulent CCNA certification exams in Nigeria, which revealed the widespread corruption and lack of integrity within professional spheres. This disillusionment led them to shift focus from technology to moral and religious reform, recognizing that dishonesty permeates various aspects of Nigerian life—politics, religion, marriage, and business.

The author contends that Nigeria’s high levels of corruption and falsehood are linked to weak law enforcement and societal motivation, contrasting Nigeria’s situation with countries where strict enforcement and values discourage dishonesty. They conclude with a reflection on the futility of dishonest pursuits, noting that those who engage in fraud often do not prosper morally or materially, and that societal integrity depends on fostering a culture of truth and uprightness."

Beautiful


So very well stated. One reason I think AI cannot replace writers

Kobojunkie:
1. I am not a fraudster, and I do not make a living scamming people out of their blood and sweat.

2. You are mistaken! I am not criticizing but calling him and all the others out for what they are...scammers who hide their particular scams behind the many mentions of the name of a god or more. That is what your gods of men are.

I see.


I'm sure there are there who can refute you. I don't have the time.

Kobojunkie:
A fraudster died yesterday and we are already writing essays for what purpose?

And how are you, your own self, not a frusdster?

It is always easy to criticize, till you find yourself in that shoes.

budaatum:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxB6-HnXZEU?si=xJ1zB2MbP9I37D1u

Very sad indeed

Well, we hope that others can learn from his life

Another Perspective on Jimmy Swaggart’s Death

By: Deji Yesufu

Jimmy Swaggart died on the 1st day of July, 2025. He was ninety years old. It is sad that the epitaph that will follow him into the grave will be the headline attached to his death – “Jimmy Swaggart, Disgraced Tele-evangelist, Dies at 90”. Swaggart was a leading television evangelist in the 1980s. However, in 1988, it was discovered that he had a secret sexual liaison with a prostitute and would eventually be exposed, with the American media making a big deal out of it. The image of Swaggart, making a public plea for mercy both to God and his church members, is probably one of the most-watched scenes in television history. Swaggart is seen crying, calling on God to forgive his sins, and saying over and over – “…I have sinned…” Many people did not think Swaggart took his confessions seriously. They regard the “I have sinned” moment as a TV stunt made in a calculated attempt to preserve his place in the ministry and, particularly, donors’ funds. Jimmy Swaggart, a long-time Assemblies of God minister, would eventually be restored to ministry, but he never returned to the height of fame he had before his sins were revealed.

Dr. Tony Costa, a reformed Baptist minister in Canada, wrote a short tribute to Swaggart, saying that regardless of his failures, he owes his conversion, under God, to the ministry of Jimmy Swaggart. That statement was a confirmation of a sentiment that was running through my mind: men like Swaggart, who represent the old-line Pentecostal denominations, had quite some orthodoxy to their ministry and I will be very reluctant to bring an anathema on their ministry because of their professed Pentecostalism, like I might do with a committed Prosperity Gospel preacher. And even the fact that he failed in ministry, and still continued to work as a pastor, does not detract from the legitimacy of his profession to the person of Jesus Christ. Different denominations handle failure in ministry in different ways. Some will regard the minister as having been permanently disqualified from ministry, while others take less drastic steps of sanction. My concern is not with what happened to Swaggart’s ministry after his moral failures; my concern is with the manner in which Christians view this matter of sin.

When Swaggart died, and the newspapers reminded us of his sin of 1988, the following scripture came to my mind: “Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgement; and some men they follow after” (1 Timothy 5:24). One can say that Jimmy Swaggart’s sins went beforehand to God’s judgement. I think what that means is that God exposed that pastor in this life, and he suffered the consequences of his indiscretion throughout his life, and he is even still suffering it in death. However, that is God’s mercy to him. The persons who are truly accursed, and who will wish that they were never born, are those whose sins “follow after”. While some of these people condemned Jimmy Swaggart and made a ministry out of labelling him and his likes false teachers, their sins were successfully concealed on earth, only to be revealed in heaven. Some would be found out to have been as sexually deviant as Swaggart was, if not more deviant. Some will preserve their reputation, and they will die as “great men of God”, “profound miracle workers”, “the greatest reformed thinker of our time”, but their sins will follow them to the throne of God. Their sins will not be exposed on earth, but in heaven, where not only will their reputation be destroyed, but also their bodies and their souls in hell.

Christians must understand that God does not see sexual scandals in the same manner the world sees them. The world may make it into headlines, news, and epitaphs – that is their business. Sexual scandals are all within the gracious outworking of God’s providence in reforming and sanctifying the Christian Church. The minister in the middle of a sexual scandal is a man whom God deeply loves. If God hates that man, God will help that man conceal his sins until it is way too late for him to repent of them. So, when a pastor “falls”, the Church must begin to see the incident from God’s perspective. We must understand that a destroyed reputation and even disqualification from ministry or a failed marriage that result from all these are all part of God’s way of sanctifying the person involved. It is also a careful reminder to those in ministry that none of us is immune to sin. It is a time to “take heed to oneself” lest we fall. It is a time to destroy every form of pride and self-righteousness within us, and to both thank God and plead with him to help us stand. When it comes to sexual sins, those who are not guilty of it should never take up a Pharisaical mindset, but should thank God daily for preservation.

A minister falling into sexual sins should also remind the Church about the gospel of Jesus Christ. We should thank God that Jesus said he had not come to save the righteous, but sinners. We should thank God that we have the account of David, and Solomon, and Samson, and Peter right there in the Bible. We should thank God for Psalm 51, and we should remind ourselves that both those who have sinned sexually and those who have done it in their hearts are in the same category as far as a righteous God is concerned. We should look closely at Matthew 1:21 and celebrate the fact that the Son of God came into this world to save sinners, for which you and I are chief. The fall of a minister should be a time to apply the blessing of the blood on the church. This will not detract from the administrative decision of the local church to either disqualify the minister, demote him, or even forgive him. Whatever the Church does must be in view of God’s gracious work to us all who are sinners ourselves.

Jimmy Swaggart lived a very long time. I get the impression that God wanted him to feel the full weight of his misdemeanour, and I think that the disgrace is sufficient punishment for him. Just before his sexual misdemeanour was discovered, Swaggart was at the forefront of revealing the sexual misadventures of his fellow pastors. He was one of the few people who cast the greatest aspersion on Jim Bakker, another televangelist who was discovered to be having an affair with his secretary. Swaggart saw Bakker as a competitor and was too happy to pull him down. The year did not end before his own sins were discovered. These things happen for our own learning. When pastors’ sins are found out, it is not the time to rush to Facebook or help the worldly media propagate the news. It rather should be a time for careful introspection because we very well could be at the receiving end of it all, too. When we write like this, some tell us we are lowering the standards of God’s righteous judgment. The truth is that none of us wants to come face to face with God’s righteous judgement. God’s holiness will condemn all sins equally. What we should celebrate is that God has very graciously given us a way out of sin through the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ. He has also given us His Holy Spirit to sanctify us through life. If these two things become the pursuit of the churches, we will have very little time left to bother with ministers who have fallen.

Jimmy Swaggart knew the Lord Jesus Christ. He has today gone to rest from his labours. He has handed the baton to us. Let us run our race circumspectly: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted” (Galatians 6:1).

Amen.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

How I Ended a Career in Information Technology

By: Deji Yesufu

I saw a video yesterday that brought back a flood of memories to me. The video was obviously a make-believe to pass the lesson that society should be founded on truth and that when lies become endemic among a people, we have a really big problem on our hands. The lady introduces herself as laboratory personnel in a DNA testing centre. She explains that many women cannot be trusted because on so many occasions she had had to change the results of DNA testing to read something other than what it truly says so as to save a marriage. She concludes the narration by saying that her own world has come crashing because she made the mistake of checking the DNA of herself and those of her siblings, and has now found out that their loving Dad is not their biological father. She ended the video with a lamentation: “Fear women!”

My position on DNA testing is that it puts women in an uneven position with men. I hold the theory that if women are ten-fold unfaithful in their marriages, it is because men are 70-fold unfaithful to their marriage vows. If men were the ones who get pregnant when there is infidelity in a marriage, marital scandals would be more pronounced than they are now. The second point I usually propound for this DNA matter is this: children are too precious to be put into the stigma and trouble of DNA testing. While a man may have donated the sperm that made the child, the real father is the one the child calls “Daddy” and the debate should end there. Now, I understand that the issue has become more pronounced now with embassies requesting the true identity of children before they leave the country with the man or the woman. The question that you and I should ask is this: which other country in the world demands this kind of dehumanizing thing from their people? Does Nigeria conduct DNA testing on Americans before they bring their children into our country? If we make our country great, the international world will respect us. The whole idea of asking Nigerians for DNA tests on their children is part of the servile state the world has relegated Nigeria to. That is what should concern us – not infidelity in marriages. Having made this point, I now come to the subject of how I ended a career in information technology. I hope to be able to tie it to the question of truth and lies in our society.

Between 2006 and 2010, the only job I could lay my hands on to do was teaching. Even as a graduate with a degree in Electrical Engineering, I taught in a primary school and then a secondary school, before I went to teach Physics in an A-level institution. In this four-year period, I was looking for every way to find a way out of the teaching profession because teachers are generally poorly paid in Nigeria. Someone introduced me to the whole idea of becoming a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA). I bought the books, attended some classes, and got myself ready to write the examinations. There was a beginner’s module I was meant to cross, and then I could move up to higher qualifications – all in CCNA. I dreamed of getting the qualification then getting a good job, and then becoming rich. It was not easy to find the money to pay for my examinations but I eventually eked out the sum and went to write the exam.

The centre I used was a facility run by one gentleman who had his office in one of the buildings in the Agbowo shopping complex – opposite the University of Ibadan. I remembered walking up to the place situated on one of the topmost floors, through a dingy dark and scary staircase. The elevator in the building was not functional. When I entered the office, it was agog with activities. The exam centre looked like a business office that people would go to browse the internet in the early days when internet facilities arrived in Nigeria. I gave my exam details to the guys in charge and I was asked to take a seat with a computer. I had the opportunity also to do some practice questions – while waiting for the examination to commence. I had studied hard, and I was confident that I would pass the examination – which was going to be an e-examination. I had taken examinations like these before with the American SATs and GRE college examinations – so nothing was new to me here. But I noticed that while I was focused on practising the questions, the other people who came for the examination were very carefree. There was a lot of talking; there was no external invigilator; the whole place was like a marketplace.

Eventually, we were told that the exam was about to start. Everyone manned their system, and then we commenced. The moment we started, I did not pay much attention to happenings around me anymore. The paper was to last an hour; the exam questions were multiple choices; and I simply sped through it all, as I tried to beat the allotted time for the test. As I was concluding, I noticed that every other person in that hall with me was receiving assistance from the guys running the place. I could not understand; I thought we were in an examination centre. The moment I pressed submit, my result was posted back to me. I failed; falling just a few marks below the cut-off. I had the opportunity to retake the examination though in another week or so. So, I immediately set my mind to reseat the whole thing. But when I reported my scores to the owner of the place, he appeared shocked. He told me that every other person in the examination centre passed. He then said that he thought I knew what I was doing and that was why they did not volunteer to offer me any help. He said everyone had support. Now, when I heard that news, I became depressed.

The problem was not failing the CCNA examination; the problem was that I knew that in no time CCNA certifications from Nigeria would be rendered useless and that it is people like these that would spoil the market for all of us. There was no point retaking the exams; there was no future for CCNA examinations in Nigeria. That was 2009. A few years later, when a friend was going to take a similar examination, his examination centre was scheduled to be in Ghana. He said that at that time no one did any serious professional examination in Nigeria again. The CCNA course is a very practical profession. The stage one exam is the least practical and thus the reason why we could write the examination on the computer. How will you prove to an employer that you are a certified CCNA professional, if people wrote your exams for you? Will they also do your job for you? I remember walking out of that place and heading to my fiancé’s house (now my wife). I told her point-blank: I am no longer pursuing a career in information technology. The fact that fraud had invaded that profession will render it useless in Nigeria with time. As I write this, which is sixteen years after that event, I have yet to meet one CCNA-qualified person who got his qualification in this country and now works here. Most people who will get any of these professional certifications must leave the shores of this country to get it.

It brings me back to the point the lady in the video was making: truth and lies. Eventually, I switched my focus in life from becoming an IT professional to helping our society revamp its moral fabric by adopting religion. Of course, with time, I will realize that the tendency towards lies and falsehood is not just in the Nigerian IT market alone. Wives lie to their husbands about the fatherhood of their children; husbands lie to their wives about the relationships they keep outside the home; pastors lie to congregants about church finances, while the congregations have devised means to give to the churches without running into debt. Politicians lie to the people at campaigns; the people lie to the politicians – they collect money from them and do not vote for them; etc. The country is built almost entirely on falsehood.

Nigeria cannot be the only country in the world where sinners reside. Why is it that corruption is rife in this country, but we do not have it to the same degree as in Ghana, the United States of America, or Saudi Arabia? I think it might boil down to law enforcement and the general motivation of the civil populace. In many countries, lies and corruption are heavily clamped down on and this discourages its occurrences. Besides, many people have devised ways of enacting contracts and agreements before they embark on businesses between persons. And there are systems that blacklist individuals that are known to be fraudulent. So, when people realize that they can make it via the straight path of truth, they do not need to cut corners with lies. And generally, the motivation within many people in these countries is a lot more than just immediate riches and success. Some people are concerned about helping others; others are concerned with establishing a legacy; while others just take joy from seeing society get better. When money is the only motivation for people in a society, we usually end up with lies and fraudulent practices.

Today, whenever I pass by Agbowo Shopping Complex, I remember the experience I had with that CCNA examination centre. Their main office which was very close to Adamisingba has since closed down. The building is even being reconstructed. I am sure the guys behind that business have since moved on to other deals – still defrauding Nigerians. Such people can not live well; neither will they end well – and that is not a curse.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱 𝗔𝘆𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗵(𝘀)

By: 𝗗𝗲𝗷𝗶 𝗬𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗳𝘂

In September 2024, Alistair Begg, pastor at Parkside Church, Cleveland, USA, announced that he would be retiring from ministry in September 2025. He was giving the church a full year to consider the matter and to find a replacement for him. This month, June 2025, Alistair Begg preached his last sermon at Parkside Church. He had moved his retirement three months forward – perhaps the church had found a replacement for him. Begg will not be retiring from ministry but he will cease from carrying out active pastoral duties. Someone commented on a video on the subject on YouTube and explained that she was convinced that Alistair Begg had never gotten over the reaction that many in the Church had over his comment to a grandmother on the subject of homosexuality. He felt betrayed – especially by many of his friends who he believed were quite uncharitable to him in their comments about the subject. I agree with that lady’s comment. I would even go further to say that there is a militancy among reformed Christians that is not Christlike. In light of the current crisis between Israel and Iran, I think it is even possible to compare some in the leadership of Reformed Churches to something of an Ayatollah. I will explain more.

The Ayatollah is the supreme religious leader of Shia Islam in the nation of Iran. In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led an Islamic revolution that overturned the government of that country and established an Islamic theocracy over the country. Ruhollah Khomeini died in 1989 and was succeeded by the present Ayatollah – Ali Khamenei. Ruhollah Khomeini was an extremely religious individual and those who know something of his private life testified to his moral purity. He is one of the few Muslim leaders who married only one wife and remained committed to her all his life. The People’s Profile documentary on his is worth the time to watch. So, when Khomeini declared a fatwa on Salman Rushdie in 1988, he was speaking with an authority that is only second to the voice of Allah. Khomeini died in 1989, but the fatwa hung on Rushdie’s head until August 2022, when he was attacked with a knife in New York and lost an eye.

The Ayatollah’s authority does not only exhume from the office he occupies; it is also something that exhumes from the false sense of righteousness that his moral uprightness gives him. The Ayatollah is not only the religious leader of Iran; he is also their political head. He is the supreme leader. I will now turn my attention to the subject of the “false sense of righteousness” that fundamentalist leaders could possess that can make them into something of an Ayatollah. A phenomenon we could find even in churches – including reformed churches.

If religion will produce anything at all, the minimum we should see in anyone who professes religious beliefs is some moral rectitude. All religions come with their standards of righteousness and holiness; all religions propound laws that a deity enumerate to the people. The religion that gave rise to Christianity was Judaism – the religion of the Jews. The Jews received laws directly from God – the maker of the heavens and the earth, and the overall testimony of the Old Testament was that the Jews were unable to keep God’s holy laws. God enacted a New Covenant in the person of his Son Jesus Christ mainly because the end of every religious pursuit is always a false righteousness.

False righteousness is a sense of moral purity that a man may have because of the belief that he has succeeded at gaining moral ground mostly above his peers. Nothing depicts this more than the prayer of the Pharisee in Luke 18, where he approached God in the confidence of what he has succeeded at doing in religion; while the publican is weighed down heavily by his failures. Suffice it to say here that Jesus commended the publican’s prayer instead, and pointed out that that man went away justified.

Therefore, the place Christianity triumphs over other religious professions is never in how well God’s people keep religious laws; rather, Christianity triumphs in a solid comprehension of the concept of grace. The whole idea is that God has saved a sinner; God forgives our sins; God gives us the space to triumph over our sins; God commands that we show the same mercy to others that we have received from him; etc. Christianity brought grace, love, forgiveness, freedom, and joy to our world through Jesus Christ. On the other hand, fundamentalism is replete with hate, retribution, bondage, and depression. That, my friends, is a description of fundamentalist Islam. It is what informs the violence that they carry out on Christians and Jews. What we fail to realize, however, is that fundamentalism can also be found among Christians who carry the same spirit of hate, retribution, bondage, and depression.

The United States of America can no longer be regarded as a Christian nation. However, the Christian worldview that informed the birthing of that great country has benefitted the whole world. Before the coming of America, the concept of freedom and religious tolerance was almost non-existent in our world. America taught the world freedom – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of commerce, freedom of ideas, etc. The downside of religious freedom in the United States of America is that the country is replete with cults of all kinds. Anyone can just rise and preach whatever he likes, gather a following and influence people – the American authorities will not do anything to him. As long as such an individual keeps to the law of the land, America will never infringe on the religious profession of a people. The upside of American freedom is the proliferation of ideas. It is what informs commerce and productivity in that country that has made it super wealthy today.

On Saturday, the 21st of June, 2025, American B-2 stealth bombers invaded Iranian airspace and destroyed the nuclear weapon facility that the Iranians had been developing for more than two decades now. That operation was based on the work of one individual in the American military who had discovered in 2009 that Iran was building underground facilities in Fordow and had advised his superiors on developing a unique bomb that could destroy such a facility when the need arose. The American versatility is based largely on the freedom of ideas they give their people, and the resources they use to support the realization of those ideas. Fundamentalist societies will not give liberty to their people; they will not permit freedom of ideas; and they will not encourage economic prosperity among their people. Anything the people must do will revolve around the narrow mindset of the fundamentalist leader.

My concern in this essay is the need to discourage every kind of religious fundamentalist in Christian circles. We must remind ourselves of the bedrock of our religion – grace. We must remind ourselves that we are sinners who have been freely forgiven by our Lord. We must enjoy the grace of the gospel, and we must allow this grace to extend to others also. We must not reach that point in our religious profession where we think that the standard of religion stands and falls by what we do. We must thank God daily for the progress we have made in sanctification, but we must never have that sense that we are the only standard of religion for all people. We must accept that Jesus Christ is working in all men who are professing his name.

We should maintain our denominational peculiarities but we must never have an exclusive bent to our denominational profession. We must accept that Christ is working in every denomination and that there is something we all can learn from other Christian groups. We must commend our religious beliefs through charity – and never by force. We must understand that the most acceptable religious actions are not those that are dictated by a religious leader, but those that exhume from a heart that has come to accept the grace of God – especially as it is found in Christ Jesus. We must allow God to freely motivate his people towards sanctification. We must wait for God to do a miracle of grace in the hearts of men – just as he has done to us via his profound patience. As we do this, we get a glimpse of how Christ works through diversity in our world to bring to pass his good purposes.

It has been eighteen months since the Alistair Begg controversy erupted, and I have no regrets at all in standing with that good man in that debacle. Since that time many religious leaders who criticized Begg have themselves failed woefully in Christian ministry. I had warned that the danger of condemning Begg during that controversy was that we would encourage a religion of Phariseeism. What Pharisees do well is that they cover their sins, while they rejoice over the failures of others. Pharisees also love hierarchy. They enact religious leaders that become the face of their sect – their own Ayatollah. If there is one thing the Protestant Reformation gave Christianity, it is the idea that one man can no longer rule the Christian Church – there are no Popes among believers today. Christ alone is the head of the Church. The Ayatollah is as much a sinner as the least person in the church. Where these ideas are rejected, we find the rise of fundamentalism in the churches and the coming of Christian Ayatollahs – even Reformed Ayatollahs.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲: https://textandpublishing.com/reformed-ayatollahs/

Attached photo: Pastor Alistair Begg, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

columbus007:
The man who eventually took poi.. son afterwards he truly died for Nigeria 😏😏.

What is poi?

Folks like you could read the article and more to the subject

Obafemi Awolowo is not Dead

by: Deji Yesufu

Obafemi Awolowo had a robust belief in the human being. His comprehension of what constitutes a man is very much in line with the biblical worldview that men have divinity residing in them. The Bible says that man is created a little lower than God but of greater essence than angels. It is this worldview that informed the sage’s position that human beings can be and must be developed to the highest possible form. It is the reason why he had a fanatical commitment to education. The Action Group, the party that Awolowo led in the 1950s, that led the Western Region at that time, promised to ensure that every child living in the Western Region had access to primary education at no cost. By the time the finances of the country were improving after the oil boom of the early 1970s, Obafemi Awolowo argued that Nigeria could now afford to provide free education at all levels to all its citizenry. What education does to the overall populace is that it raises the bar of discussion at all levels in the country. The country becomes a leading exporter of knowledge; technological advancements become the order of the day; the political system will shore up great thinkers, whose political theories can be shared on the world stage; etc. The United States of America is what it is today because many of its citizens are educated. Nigeria still grapples with underdevelopment because, on average, Nigerians are poorly educated. When you consider that the Action Group brought television broadcasting to the Western Region long before many countries in Eastern Europe had one, you then appreciate why Awolowo’s belief in the inherent worth of the human being was way beyond his time.

My publishers and I are in the middle of a work on Obafemi Awolowo, and I had the immense privilege of talking with a member of the sage’s family recently. I asked this person what happened to the “DSH”. The DSH is “Dideolu Specialist Hospital” which is located at Ikenne. As the sage drew to his final days, he immersed himself in a project of building a world-class hospital, where people could get treated for all kinds of ailments here in Nigeria. He named it after his wife – the person who had been his biggest supporter all his life. The hospital was planned to look like the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, United States of America, where Awolowo and his wife would usually undergo annual medical checkups. Awolowo was convinced there was no reason why such a vision could not be replicated in Nigeria. In response to my question, this member of the Awolowo family told me that there is no practical possibility of finishing that vision today because even if the building is finished, the mass exodus of Nigerian doctors from the country will still render the place non-functional. Obafemi Awolowo envisioned the DSH because he believed so much that no one need die in their youth from disease; and that every Nigerian should have access to the best and most affordable health care. A week ago, I received a report that the young man who is in charge of disposing of refuse in my estate had suddenly died at 46. Another one, my plumber, died at 27 – all because our country has a nonfunctioning health system. But why did I title this article “Obafemi Awolowo is not Dead”? Well, it is again the offshoot of my discussion with this member of the sage’s family. This person said that since Awolowo died, the family have come to reconcile with the fact that their patriarch is no more. If he was alive, he would have used his influence to actualize many of the visions he still had. But now that he is dead, very few people wish to continue with his visions. The rest of this article will be used to argue against this position.

In the final year of Obafemi Awolowo’s life, the sage told those who were close to him that that year would be his last on earth. He explained, however, that he would still be serving Nigeria even in death. What could the man have meant? It is simple. Worthy, beneficial, godly, and influential ideas are not from human beings – they are from God. Our societies today are the product of ideas from influential persons from times past. What you and I do today, are mostly dictated by the counsels of our fathers, many of them who are dead today. Those godly counsels were the product of experiences that emerged from the deep suffering of some of them. Those experiences and the ideas that emerged from them, which they pass to us, are all the providential workings of God in the lives of these men. Therefore, Obafemi Awolowo is still serving Nigeria mostly through his writings and ideas. It was only after reading his autobiography, Awo, that I learnt that it was Awolowo who brought the idea of “federalism” to Nigeria. Awolowo learnt the concept of federalism from the politics of Mahatma Ghandi and the scenario around Indian politics of the 1930s/40s. He saw how the desperate nations of India were wielded together through federalism, and he argued earnestly for it – against the feudalism of northern Nigeria and the unitarianism of Eastern Nigeria. It was the concept of federalism that Awolowo sold to Yakubu Gowon that led that administration to divide the one monolithic North into six different states on 27th May 1967. Although that action was the final straw that brought the country eventually to civil war, it was clearly an idea from God and has served the country well. It can be argued that Nigeria is not practicing true federalism. But the mere fact that this country is practicing some federalism is owing largely to the political sagacity of Obafemi Awolowo. In that regard, the man is still serving Nigeria.

Obafemi Awolowo still serves Nigeria by continually challenging South-west Nigeria to remain the pacesetter in the country. The Cocoa House, which stands as a monument to a time in Western Nigeria, when this region of the country was forward-thinking and productive, still challenges people of my day to keep the flag of the sage flying by ensuring that this part of the country continues to be the leading thinkers and producers in the nation. It is true that a lot of things are not working, but it is also true that south-west Nigeria has such potential for greatness, and Obafemi Awolowo is always reminding us about this. Recently the Awolowo Foundation (obafemiawolowofoundation.org) brought the sage alive by publishing all his written works. It has become the favorite pastime of half-baked publishers, unseasoned YouTubers, and unscrupulous bloggers, to continue spewing mistruths about the sage. Obafemi Awolowo envisioned that this was going to happen to his legacy and that is why one of the reasons he left the Gowon administration in July 1971, was so that he could write his memoirs – carefully documenting all that happened to him. It is surprising that some people still mention the Coker Commission as a stain on the legacy of Awolowo when it is a historical fact that the Coker Commission was a politically motivated machinery to destroy the good works of Awolowo and his administration. In fact, that action ultimately led to a civil war in the country.

I do not share the idea that Obafemi Awolowo is no more. I believe that like all righteous men, who left worthy causes behind, the man is still serving Nigeria even as he said he would in his final years. As I grew up in northern Nigeria, the only literature of Awolowo that I read were the three booklet volumes my father had in his library: The Voice of Wisdom, Courage and Reason. In one of these books, Awolowo mentioned that as far back as the 1970s, northern Nigeria was behind the southern parts by 150 years by educational standards. He said his foray into politics was to try to bridge the gap. All the problems Nigeria has today with the insurgency in northern Nigeria must be traced to the fact that the leaders of the north have restricted Western education to only children of the elite – while making Quranic education compulsory for all children. Now that we have a generation of northern youths saying that Western education is haram, you can understand what the sage was complaining about then. Awolowo, like many worthy sons of Nigeria, cannot die. Their ideas and ideals will continue to form the basis on which our society will stand. Things may not be where they are supposed to be today. But things will improve in the days to come. The sons and daughters of Obafemi Awolowo will rise up one day; they will bring the sage back to life through his ideas, and they will help actualize a better, functional, and progressive Nigeria.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

MrPresident1:
This article is full of spiritual and historical errors.

We make our arguments public because we invite scholarly criticism of our work. Please provide the errors. Thanks.

Mighty Sparrow,

Amen... send me an email, Mighty

What You Should Know of the Israel/Iran War

By: Deji Yesufu

Our generation takes a lot of things for granted and one of those things is the subject of war and peace. Any careful study of history will reveal that one common factor among nations is the subject of war. Long before the coming of Western liberal thoughts, that promote freedom and democracy, and the idea that sovereign boundaries of nations should not be exceeded, the one common factor in the relationship of man with man is that there is always one strong man somewhere who is convinced he can overrun the rest of his neighbours, subjugate them, and bring all people under his rule. It is because nations fear the rise of this strong man that we have things like international relations and diplomacy. When these fail, the next thing that we will have in our hands is war – and the conflict that we see between Russia and Ukraine is an example.

What has occasioned this article is the recent rise in hostilities between Israel and Iran. What is going on between these two countries is a lot more than hostilities: these two sovereign nations are at war. Israel targeted Iranian nuclear facilities a few days ago and did not only destroy them, they also killed top leading Iranian nuclear scientists. In the last count, Israel has killed seven of their thirteen leading scientists and they have also taken out a couple of their military commanders. In response, Tehran, the capital of Iran, yesterday, sent hundreds of missiles into Israel. Israel has a dome system that it uses to shield itself against missile attacks. However, a few of these missiles leak through this dome defense and reach Israeli settlements – destroying homes and killing people there. Why is Israel attacking Iran?

The animosity between the two countries is historic. It dates back to the writing and theology of the Quran – the Muslims’ divine revelation. The Quran regards the Jews as enemies of civilization and that there will be no peace in our world until all Jews are annihilated. When the Quran was written, Jews had been dispersed from their land of origin – which the British named Palestine in the 18th century. After the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, one of God’s judgements on the Jews was that they were going to be dispersed from their land of origin. In AD70, the Romans moved into Judea and while trying to quell an insurrection, they levelled Jerusalem, slaughtered thousands of Jews, and sent them all into exile. So, by the time the Quran was written, the Jews were everywhere in the Middle East and Europe. Now, though they had no land of their own, they possessed a unique culture that was influenced by the Bible, the Old Testament, that made them stand out anywhere they found themselves. This is besides the fact that the Jews are so uniquely gifted by God that they excel in anything they lay their hands to do.

Now, even though they had been dispersed from their land, they could read from the Old Testament and see that God often shows mercy to them and restores them to their land. So, in the 19th century, a movement called Zionism began to rise in Europe, where the idea of Jews returning to their fatherland was championed. At this time, Palestine was not occupied by anyone – except for a few Arabs. With time, the Jews began to return to their homeland. But there was a greater exodus to Palestine following the genocide against the Jews by Hitler’s Nazi regime. In 1948, the United Nations recognized Israel as a sovereign nation, and the Jews felt they now had their own country. Except that now they must deal with their Arab neighbors – who are mostly Muslims. While the Jews had overcome one problem, returning home they encountered another. The story of the Jews since 1948 up till date is how they must survive in a Muslim-dominated region, whose scripture teaches that Jews must be annihilated.

The conflict we are witnessing between Israel and Iran has also been elicited by October 7. This was when Hamas, a confirmed terrorist group, moved into Israel and killed 1,400 Israelis. Israel discovered that Iran was behind these terrorist attacks, and they have since launched attacks on not only Hamas strongholds in Gaza but also Hezbollah, which is another terrorist group in Lebanon. Israel succeeded in destroying all the men at the helm of affairs in Hezbollah and the group is non-functional today. Now, if Israel has succeeded so far, what are the issues on the ground?

At the heart of Israel’s challenge is Islam. Islam has two big problems: there are Muslims who have been exposed to Western civilization and who can see that there is a deep conflict between Islamic ideals and Western values. They understand that they can’t function in the modern world, while at the same time holding to age-old Islamic fundamentalist beliefs. Some of these Muslims include Muslims in nations like Saudi Arabia and the UAE countries. What such Muslims do, therefore, is that they try to enjoy the benefits of two worlds. They live within a Western world; enjoy western scientific developments; adopt western values – like education and monogamy; etc. At the same time, they keep some Muslim values. These Muslims are the ones that some of us have come to call “peaceful” Muslims.

The second problem is that there are Muslim groups that do not have the patience that these peaceful Muslims have. They have read the Quran; they have followed Muslim histories and have reached that comfortable position that the true Muslim is the one who will establish the kingdom of God on earth with the power of the sword. They will have an Islamic society now or they will die trying to establish one. Some of these groups are Boko Haram, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, and a host of others around the world. The world has succeeded in labelling these groups terrorist groups; although even that label is being contested by many groups and faulty ideologies.

One such faulty ideology is the rise of the Left in the West. What is very clear is that Western civilization is founded on a Christian worldview. What informs the laws of many nations are the pronouncements of God in the Judeo-Christian scriptures, the Bible. The Ten Commandments and the laws that God gave Moses to establish a civil society for Israel are still many of the laws that are in our constitutions today. This is why when the British established the nation called Nigeria, they simply transposed many of these Judeo-Christian values into our laws. On the other hand, for three hundred years there has been a rise in Western societies of a Leftist worldview that espouses ideas that are against the biblical worldview. This is what has led to the homosexual revolution of the West. These people are enemies of Christians. When you discover that Islam has historically never been a friend of Christianity, you understand why many Muslims are finding comradeship with the left. It is these leftists that are joining Muslims around the world to scream “death to Israel”. Is there a way forward?

I will end the way I began this article: all of us have taken the peace that we enjoy in our world for granted. Lasting peace is the result of conquering. Even after nations have conquered others, laws and justice must still form the undergirding principle of a society – or else the society will return to war. Functional societies are led by strong men and proven institutions. Strong men are established via military prowess. Military actions in our days have gone beyond field battles – most of the terrorists Israel took out in their recent campaigns were killed remotely. Modern warfare is waged with a sound mind. It means that the countries with the best and most modern military armaments are the ones that will win a military conflict. I predict that Israel will defeat Tehran and that the murderous regime in that country that has been ruining that land since the 1970s will be replaced. Terrorist Islam will be defeated in our world. But that will not be the end.

Every one of us has to realize that the future of our world is education. We must begin to learn and gain understanding of issues. Islam must jettison its antediluvian ideology that believes that might is right. In our world today, it is the people who can champion the best ideas and show that those ideas are workable, that will gain the upper hand. Islam is coming of off age, and those who have refused to learn, are learning their lessons the hard way. Those who love peace should pray for America and Israel that God will grant them the ability to neutralize all forces of evil in our day and time and grant peace to our world. The alternative is militant Islam; or, China’s socialist regime; or, Russia’s fascist dictatorship; or, North Korea’s atheism. The choice is ours to make. As for me and my household – we choose life: we choose the Judeo-Christian worldview that has given our time workable societies and modern technological advancements.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com.

CreatedtwoRule:
Heart lifting piece. He is in heaven. May God use his death to bring those mocking his death to eternal hope in Christ. We should know too that we are not sinners rather we were sinners saved by grace! Thanks

Amen