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Nigeria: God Feeds the Sparrow By: Deji Yesufu If you are not aware of how difficult things have become in Nigeria, it is probably because you live under a rock – or something like that. Those of us in the real world, who must transport to work and school, are having to come face to face with high cost of goods and services. Nigeria’s economy, like most countries in the world, is closely tied to the price of fuel. Fuel is the only means of transporting goods and services around the country, and a slight increase in the cost of fuel, leads inevitably to increase in the cost of goods. The Nigerian government has increased the cost of fuel by 400% since the beginning of this administration, such that we now buy fuel at almost a thousand naira now. The resulting effect is that the value of the naira is perishing. In fact, I have not seen twenty naira around in a long time. Fifty naira is also becoming increasingly worthless. There is no end in sight for all these. Is there any hope for this country? To answer this question, I’ll relay a scenario next. I am a pastor, although I work a secular job full-time. In the course of my ministry I meet with many missionaries. These people are usually supported by friends, family, and churches. There is one common denominator about these people: they don’t live under Nigerian economy. No matter how difficult things get, these people never complain. Why? Because the Lord is their helper and provider. Now this may sound like cliché but for these people it is not. They have tasted and they have seen God practically take care of them. The same way God sent manna to the Israelites over a forty-year period, is the way he sustains these people today. They have gotten so used to this manna-lifestyle that they almost take it for granted. Their rents are paid; their children go to the best schools; they build houses to retire into; etc. They live just like you and me, the only difference is that it is like Christ that pays them. The Lord called these people to ministry, and the Lord, not salary, sustains them. The One who feeds the Sparrow, feeds them. So, what about those of us who don’t live on this heavenly provision? How do we survive Nigeria? We survive Nigeria by also realising that the same God who calls some to full time ministry, calls others to full time secular jobs. Any legitimate work you do is spiritual service to Christ, and if you do it well you will find sustenance in it. It doesn’t matter what happens to the economy. Your work is service to God and God will bring provision through the labours of your hands. Let me lament Nigeria a bit and then bring this article to a close. Nigeria is what she is because our people despise work. This country is incredibly non-productive. What was meant to be a blessing, oil, has today turned out to be a curse. Nigerians learnt very quickly that if you cut corners, if you do gbajue, or, if you know the right people in authority, you can do very little and earn a lot of money. So, a culture of no-work and obscene laziness was instilled in us. I hear someone say, years ago, that for her she will prefer to work little and earn plenty. And that person remains despised in my eyes till today. Naturally speaking the Nigerian economy has dwindled this badly because this country is not productive. We produce crude oil but we watched as our public refineries failed at refining the crude. Government invests large sums in the NNPC yet they have not produced a litre of petrol in decades. They will rather go the long route of exporting crude oil, refining it, and then bringing it back to sell at inflated prices. NNPC is not working because every public institution in this country is near comatose. Nigeria’s public institutions will not work because people know they will earn a salary whether they produce anything there or not. This will never happen in a private entity and that is why the whole country now relies on Dongote. Now, let’s conclude these thoughts. God is the Father of all creation. As a responsible Father, God will provide for you. But he requires something from you. In Genesis, God created Adam and put him in Eden to work the place. As long Adam did his work, Adam found provision. Similarly, every single person has a field of work. For a baby, his duty is to feed on milk faithfully and to learn to walk. For growing children, their field of work is learning at school. For adults with jobs, their field of work is to be faithful stewards of whatever work God has set before them. Even people without jobs still have a duty to do whatever they are doing faithfully – no matter how small or insignificant. When you work at a place, your preoccupation should never be an increase in salary; you shouldn’t be spending your time looking for another job. Your preoccupation should be to do your work so well that it advances the system. Now, if that happens, there is the likelihood that your salary will increase. If they don’t increase your salary, someone will spot you as the brain behind a working system, poach you, and pay you better. But let your work do the talking, not your CV. Sincerely I cannot remember the last time I wrote a CV… I am my own curriculum vitae! One morning in March 2020, I was trapped in a foreign land. I was supposed to take a flight from Berlin to Lagos. When I arrived the Tegel airport in Berlin, I noticed CNN reporting that Donald Trump had banned all flights from Europe into America. I then had an incline that the delay we were experiencing with being checked in was not unconnected with that news item. Eventually Turkish airline told us that we couldn’t fly out of Berlin that morning. Turkey had banned all flight through their country because of the Coronavirus pandemic. They eventually booked me on Air France because France was still open. I was cold and hungry. I had no money. The institution that invited me to train at Berlin had borne all my expenses. I reached my younger brother in Lagos and he sent me N10,000 for breakfast. When I converted the money to Euros, it was almost nothing. I figured that when I arrive Lagos the following day, that money would be useful then. That was 2020. The naira has even worsened in value now and it will continue to get worse unless you and I work and are productive. The magic of the international market system is that a people prosper as other people bring foreign exchange to their country to purchase the goods they are producing. When you produce nothing, you earn nothing and you will be poor as a nation. Things are difficult, yes. But God is on the throne. God will feed those who work – that’s why missionaries without salaries are doing well even within this failed system. If you never knew it before, understand it now: the man that does not work will not eat. God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria! Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. Source: https://textandpublishing.com/nigeria-god-feeds-the-sparrow/
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Dear BOLT Driver By: Deji Yesufu Yesterday will be the third time I would be employing your services and it is already clear to me where your deficiencies are. I am writing this public letter to you with the hope that some of you that take up this job can get the best out of it. I suspect that there is nothing I will be writing in this essay that will be new to you because I am aware that the company that employed your services takes the effort to train you very well on customer care and basic work etiquette. After I sent in a poor report on the gentleman that drove me home yesterday, BOLT sent me a letter of apology and said among other things: “… We are sorry that you had to deal with this and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience you may have expereienced as a result of this issue. This is is definitely not the type of services we are aiming to provide our clients. Unfortunately, not all our drivers follow our instructions. This is a one-off situation and we will be investigating what led to this…” So, I will only be reiterating some of the instructions that I know your company has already given to you and I hope that as this is coming directly from a customer, not your bosses, it will further encourage you to do your job well. First, may I begin by reminding you or perhaps informing you that the job of a private company transporter, like the one you are employed with at BOLT, is one of the best jobs in the world. It is true that the pay may not be excellent; it is true there are dangers, along with the usual ups and downs that comes with driving on Nigerian roads; yet it is a job that offers a lot of opportunities that you can leverage on to move forward in life. There is the liberty of time it gives you. One of the guys that drove me told me that he completes his work for the day at 5pm and still earns enough at the end of the week. It is a job you can do along with a 9am to 4pm job. You can shut down your driver’s app, while you pursue some other businesses and put it back on whenever you want. It is simply work and earn as you go – not too many people have such liberties with the job they do. Then there are the opportunities of meeting people. And I do not mean ordinary people. Whoever can afford to charter private vehicles for transportation in Nigeria of today will not be in the lower class of soceity. While a few middle class earners will employ your services, most of the people who will call you are folks in the upper class. Every single person in this world, no matter how rich they are, has a need. God has designed humanity to be in need always. The manner you attend to your customers can be your ticket out of this job into doing something much better, while you also earn much more. The way you drive can tell a customer that you are the best person to meet his/her need. This is not something your employers will tell you because they will not want to loose you to others. The secret words here are: CUSTOMER CARE, COURTESY, RESPECT and being COURTEOUS. For example, you drive into the location where you are to pick up your customer. You see the customer, worn out from the day’s job, sitting under a tree by his children’s school. You can tell he has ordered for your services to ferry his family home. You drive in, park your car – with the engine and air condition still working – you approach him: “… good afternoon sir. Are you Mr. Deji… ah, sorry for keeping waiting. I am your BOLT driver for this trip… please come inside the car (you open the door while you ensure he is well seated). Children I hope you had a great day in school (You offer them sweets that you should have kept in the car for such pursposes)… sir, your trip begins now…” Then you keep your mouth shut from that point and do not initiate a conversation except the customer speaks to you first or asks a question. If you treat your customers like kings, one day one of them is bound to employ you into his royal palace. Again, the customer is the boss; you are not. Right from the moment you make the call to initiate the trip, you should be able to speak courteously to him or her on the phone. Explain why you might delay a bit to reach his location; give him a clear understanding of where you are and how much time it will take to reach him; and please use the word “sir” or “ma” profusely. Customers who do not wish to be referred to in that manner will tell you but always be courteous and respectful. If a customer requests you take a route, take it. If you do not think it will be safe to take that path, explain, very courteosly too, why you do not think you should take it. He is most likely bound to understand. I have mentioned the matter of conversing with the customer in the car but I will wish to elaborate on it here. Understand that not all customers are chatty and not all of them are in a mood to talk. However, I suspect that because human beings are social animals, most people that you pick up will want to initiate a conversation with you. By all means, please, after you are done with the initial welcoming of the customer into the car, do not continue with the conversation. Do not switch on the radio or play a music – except as the customer demands. Then only respond to the customer’s questions or comments; do not try to initiate conversations. Do not even ask him or her how their day was. You may be rousing unpleasant memories and you do not want to receive the butt of their frustrations. The customers who wants to talk will talk to you. Those who wish to be silent and enjoy their own thoughts will do the same. Respect your clients privacies; they own your car space for the duration of that trip. On a final note, remember that the app system has a system of feedback. Your customers can give your employers any feedback they want on you. By all means pursue getting a positive feedback from your customers. Here is the thing: most people in the world are not narcissistic. Most people do not leave their homes or return to it, with the aim of ruining the career of a BOLT driver. The chances that you will offer excellent services to an individual and they will then go on and write a negative report on you is almost nil. If as a driver, the company gets five negative feedback on you in one week – I will recommend that you will be let go off that employment. While I gave the yesterday guy a one star and sent in a poor report on him, I gave the person who picked me two days ago a five star and gave him excellent reportage. I could have not written anything on either of them but the manner they related to me in the car, for the less than fifteen minutes we were together, told me a lot about their personalities. The guy who picked me up two days ago was a fresh graduate and he was also a foreigner (from one of the “Guinea” countries). He was a bit too chatty but I appreciated the spirit of honesty in him and the courteousness in his work. The yesterday guy was behaving as if he was doing me a favor driving me home. I suspect that the problem with him is something that is inherently wrong with many people from South-West Nigeria. It has to do with an air of superiority and the attitude of “…I am better than being a mere driver; do not look down on me…” While it is true a lot of people treat public transporters with a lot of disdain, it is wrong to approach everyone with that presupposition. It does not matter the attitude that a customer brings, reciprocate with respect. This brings me to my final point: I suspect that the best BOLT drivers will not remain in the employment of that company for too long. This is what I mean: It was Pastor Tunde Bakare that told me, many years ago while I was searching for work in Lagos, that “jobs are not scarce, only faithful men are few”. If an individual brings the right spirit into his work and does it well, it does not matter how lowly that job is – he will not remain in that employment for too long. A lot of people are looking for people to do a lot of things for them but the problem is that many people just want to earn money, they do not want to work and add value to a system. The moment somebody discovers that an individual is a value adder, they will receive that person into their employment. BOLT employs the services of graduates from universities because they believe that such persons have been trained in manners and they possess initiative, and that they have the requisite skill to do the job of driving well. Unfortunately the downside of tertiary education in Nigeria is that many graduates cannot even do the mere work of driving well. Dear BOLT driver, there is a lot more I wish I could tell you but I trust that your experience behind the wheel will teach you the rest. The blessing of life is that if we learn fast from our adversities, we will not remain in that situation for too long. Taxi driving is not exactly a job that one can boast about but if it is done well, it can be a springboard to doing something better and earning a lot more. The ball, like they say, is in your court because a few words is enough for the wise. Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. Source
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Oghene86:You're smart like that |
Oghene86:Did every Yoruba person support Tinubu? |
happney65:Deji Yesufu sends his regards |
Difrent:Precisely |
TheWinterBird:Those people are human beings Deji Yesufu is very human too |
Akpaamunsi:OK |
Namaster:I am glad you got the message |
Namaster:My friend, when you grow up, you will understand that one can make up a point without being unnecessarily pugilistic. That way, you can win people with your opinions, and still have the respect of those who disagree with you. When you do things like these, you lose both your supporters and your detractors. Check through all my posts and identify one insulting word I used. You can imitate this. |
Ojiofor:Be'eni |
Ojiofor:Brilliant 👏 |
Namaster:Save for the bile, you made some sense |
Ojiofor:Word! |
Video adaptation of the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJMiVMeI43Q?si=2EgtzOVjuG9nwCn5 Why Kamala Harris Cannot Be President (A Nigerian Perspective) By: Deji Yesufu On 13th July 2024, former President Donald Trump was at Butler, Pennsylvania to campaign towards his re-election bid come November, when he was nearly assassinated. Even without any inquiries into what had happened, it was clear that the American Secret Service, the body in charge of keeping security that day, had bungled many things. First, why were there so many women on the security team that day? How did an assassin climb the roof of a building so close to the stage where Trump was to speak? How did this person get into the venue with arms and nobody could tell? What about the fact that people saw this guy climbing the roof, and were pointing it out to the security, yet nothing was done until the first shot rang out? So many questions stood unanswered until the investigations began. For whatever reason best known to Joe Biden, he appointed Kimberly Cheatle, a woman, in September 2022, to head the Secret Service. The woman is a paragon of leftist ideologies, filled with the deepest woke worldview. Her first mission was to fill the Secret Service with women – “what a man can do, a woman can do better…” nonsense was what nearly killed Trump that July afternoon. The whole incompetence of the security team was glaring to the world. If a 20-year-old could breach the security of America so easily, nations like Russia or China would humble the United States if they ever tried such an American leader. What I have just recounted is one reason Kamala Harris cannot be president of the United States of America. You will wonder: what business do Nigerians have with American life and politics? I think the answer is everything. Besides the fact that America is the biggest sponsor of gospel preaching all around the world, that nation also provides our world with some stability. Many crises have been stalled because the powers that be fear what America might do to them. So, if America ends up with an incompetent leader, the world will suffer for it. It became increasingly obvious to me that I needed to write on the dangers of having a Harris presidency when I realized that many news outlets in Nigeria are consuming CNN’s lies, woke propaganda and leftist ideologies. I was shocked when I saw even Rufai Useni hoping for a Kamala Harris win in the coming elections. Is it that these people do not understand the dangers of a Democratic Party presidency? Rufai will claim that a Democratic presidency will always be better than a Donald Trump government. People like Rufai Useni will argue that Trump is always bad news at the leadership level in America. For them, Kamala Harris is a lesser evil. I disagree. You should then ask: what is wrong with the Democratic Party? To understand what is wrong with these people, we will have to go back a few centuries. Once upon a time, the Western world was under the powers of a religious leader: The Pope. The invention of the printing press revolutionized thinking and ideas. One of the offshoots of this was the Protestant revolution of the 16th century. The Protestants were the first liberal and progressive thinkers. The problem, however, is that the moment progressivism starts, there is no end to it. So, after five centuries of the invention of the printing press, progressivism and liberal ideologies continue to progress – without an end in view. Today, men are becoming women, and women are turning into men. Our society is regarded as a post-religious society. Besides the laws of the land, people do not have a conscience of keeping the laws of any religious book. Christianity is frowned at as antediluvian. There appears to be a war against anything Christian, Christ, or God. The one party that upholds all of these ideas is the Democratic Party of the United States of America. If and when Kamala Harris comes to power, all of these ideals will come to complete fruition. There will be other developments too. American children will begin to claim to be cats and dogs and will be requesting to be taken to the vet rather than to hospitals. The American military, which at one time was the best and the most feared anywhere in the world, will be replete with women claiming to be men, while the men are shipped off as women. America will go to war with countries that still hold to basic traditional values of life and religion, and be thoroughly vanquished. Those who have predicted the defeat of America did not need a soothsayer to tell them; a little observing of where the American society is today will tell you more of where she is headed. The only thing that can stop these woes from coming to America (or maybe delay it) is if Kamala Harris does not become the president of America. The bad news is that since her installation as the Democratic Party flag bearer (she was never elected but selected), her popularity has been rising. A people deserve the kind of leaders they support, and because most of America is today given off to woke madness, Harris is God’s judgement on them. There remains, however, that little hope that she will not win the coming elections. A lot of Americans are waking up to realize that woke worldviews are destroying their nation. They all stood by as a complete 20-year-old novice shot President Trump’s head, narrowly missing the former president’s head by an inch. If Trump had been killed, America would have plunged into sustained civil war. This was the kind of thing that happened that precipitated the First World War and left the world with close to fifty million people dead – both civilian and combatant. America is today polarized between a nation that believes that certain traditional values, especially religious, should still be preserved, and those who think everything should be overthrown. Donald Trump is not a saint. But he represents a party that still believes in some basic conservative values – values that have made America what it is today. America is known for excellence. Kamala Harris and her cohort will bring that country to the dregs – and nothing better depicts this than the sham that occurred around the near assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life in July. Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. Source Video adaptation of the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJMiVMeI43Q?si=2EgtzOVjuG9nwCn5
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MrPresident1:Very wrong |
The Abel Damina Question By: Deji Yesufu The million-dollar question on Abel Damina’s neck is this: is he a false teacher, a heretic, or a God-sent reformer of our day? When the Protestant Reformation began in earnest in the 16th century, Roman Catholics often referred to them as heretics. The protestants called the Pope the Antichrist. There is never an end to name-calling between religious groups. Nonetheless, as a commentator on religion, I feel that it is incumbent on me to explain to those who read what I write what I think of Abel Damina. I have given a speech on him before on the Reformed Naija TV (RNTV). This essay will be a culmination of my thoughts on this man who has come to be quite divisive in the Nigerian religious space. At the RNTV, we extended a public invitation to Damina to come and speak to us. This is after I had sent him a private email. We got no response. It was following this that the Honest Bunch got him to speak on their podcast. While I still think many questions were left unanswered following Damina’s visit to that show, enough was said on that set for one to draw some healthy conclusions about who Damina is. A lot can be deduced from the background of a man. I learnt that Damina is from Saminaka in Kaduna State. His parent were pastors, carrying out mission work with the Assemblies of God. Assemblies of God are some of the foremost Pentecostal denominations in the world. He explained that things were very difficult for his missionary parents – and I understand this; not from experience but from hearing stories from missionaries’ children, who were greatly deprived because their parents feared God too much to manipulate church finances and politics to their advantage. Damina also explains how he met the Lord Jesus Christ. He did not see a vision or hear from an angel. Rather, he considered carefully the religion that his parents proposed to him and made an intelligent commitment to follow Jesus Christ. He did not mention this but missionary duties may have taken him to Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. He settled to work there and God blessed his ministry. Having been in missions since 1984, and also associated with the biggest names in Nigerian Pentecostalism, including Archbishop Benson Idahosa, Abel Damina can be said to have seen it all in Christian ministry in Nigeria. Besides this, his hailing from northern Nigeria, a region that is constantly under persecution from Moslems, must have deepened his faith in Jesus Christ. Damina’s eventual renouncing of the Prosperity Message would have come from his understanding of what true Christian practices were, compared to the false Christianity of the Word of Faith movement he eventually imbibed. Another positive that can be gleaned from Damina’s testimony is how he eventually renounced the Prosperity Gospel. When he spoke of being empty, and seeking something other than the wealth, fame, and attention that that kind of ministry brings, it is something a lot of us who were once in that system can testify to. One clear doctrine that Jesus Christ taught was that there are only two gods in our world: mammon and God. It can only take God the Holy Spirit for a man to renounce the god of mammon. When Damina warns against the errors of tithing, it is not so much as to condemn tithing as a practice but to point at the system of mammon that many churches can turn it into. And this spirit of mammon can be found in all denominations – it is not just the Pentecostals that are peddling it. I digress. As a friend has pointed out on Facebook, godly discernment is our ability to point out what is true even within a false system; and also, state what is false within a true system. Whatever else we may hold against Abel Damina, he is pointing at something the Lord of the Church is concerned about: money has become the all-pursuit of many churches today, and it is time that true believers repent and return to the Lord of the Church who has never made mammon the centre his activities among his people. As we rejoice over a few good things about Abel Damina, one must also point at some erroneous doctrines he peddles both on his pulpit and even during that interview. Abel Damina is a modalist and he also espouses hyper-grace. These theological positions are historically heresies in the body of Christ and those who have chosen to call him a heretic stand on these points. During the interview, Damina spoke of God becoming a man in the person of Jesus Christ. This statement is sound doctrine, except that Damina makes these assertions with the worldview of a modalist. Even during the interview, Damina said that God being “Almighty” means that God can become whatever he wants. If he wants to be God the Father, he simply changes to this; if he wants to take up flesh and come to earth in the person of Christ, he does so; and, if he wishes to be Spirit, he becomes the Holy Spirit. “God can do whatever he wants…” Damina asserts. This is modalism. The orthodox position on the person of God is that God is a tri-unity – Trinity. The trinity states that God is one being but three persons. There is the one being of God – which is confirmed by scriptures like Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear O Isreal, the Lord our God is one Lord”. But he is three persons in this one God, and this is especially exemplified in the New Testament, like the occasion of Christ’s Baptism when God the Father spoke from heaven, and God the Holy Spirit came upon God the Son. These were three persons, representing the one God-head. Orthodox Christianity affirms that the tri-unity of God is not a phenomenon we can sufficiently explain on this side of heaven. We however affirm what scripture says – we are loud where scripture is loud, and silent where scripture is silent. Another trouble with Damina is his hyper-grace. While he did not mention it in the interview with the Honest Bunch, it is replete in his sermons. Damina discourages Christians from repentance. He explains that the moment you are saved, you need not repent again. Now, this is hyper-grace. They are the ones who teach an extreme of the love of God and give the impression that there is no wrath with God. Damina mentioned in the interview that it was not God who sent down fire on men through Elijah. He explained that when God became man in Jesus (modalist worldview), he did not tolerate such a perspective from his disciples in Luke 9:55. Why would he now be the one to do it in the Old Testament? Damina confuses the attributes of God here. The same God who is loving is also perfectly just. The Bible teaches that there is a time for everything – the day God brought fire down on men in the time of Elijah was a day of judgment. When Jesus came to the earth, it was a time to save sinners. The same Jesus will return to judge the world and this time, he will be sending sinful men to an eternal hell – judgment. Jesus the same yesterday, today, and forever, means that the same Jesus who judged men in the Old Testament will judge them in the days to come. And, even in the New Testament, we did not have to wait till the end of time to see Christ judge men: Christ killed Ananias and Saphira for lying to the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. That was judgment. When Damina denies the truth of God’s wrath, he espouses hyper-grace and he is teaching false doctrine. What then do we say to all these? My position on Damina is essentially subjective. I put myself in his shoes. There is nobody who learns Bible doctrines by himself: we are all products of our reading and teachers. When Damina explained that his first port of encounter, as he doubted the messages he had been professing, was Andrew Wommack, I understood him perfectly. Wommack is a Pentecostal and a Word of Faither – but he is one that you will regard as “tamed” – not on the extreme at all. I believe that Damina has since graduated from Wommack and has been listening to some hyper-grace teachers, along with some people who teach modalism. When I left the Pentecostal religion, my first port of call was dispensationalism, through the teaching of R. B. Thieme Jr. I have since left dispensationalism and now I am confessionally reformed Baptist. I grew in my understanding based on the teachers God sent my way. This is why I argue that Damina is “Apollos” and not a heretic. Damina needs teachers and not those who will condemn him. The Bible talks about a pastor being “able to teach”. I believe that the ability to teach is not necessarily possessing great Bible knowledge, but being able to carry doctrine in one’s lifestyle with grace, humility, and respect. Preachers are men with very strong opinions. If you are going to convince a man against what he previously holds to be true, you are not going to do it by winning an argument with him. It takes patience, time, and lovingly conveying your views to him. Damina learnt his new-found doctrines from people who spoke respectfully to him in a way he could assimilate their messages. If those of us who are reformed, who condemn Damina as a heretic, will win him to our side, we will have to reach him and his followers with a different modus operandi. There is no doubt the fact that hyper-grace and modalism are heresies, but you will never convince anyone about the errors of their religion by beginning with labelling them heretics. Even when Paul the Apostle was speaking to the Athenians, he did not call them idolaters. He spoke to them with respect: he said that the God they call unknown is the maker of heaven and earth. Let me end this essay by introducing two men that those of us in the reformed community know. They are John MacArthur and Derek Prime (late). MacArthur is well known, and Prime is little known; but both are reformed teachers, however with two different flavours. While MacArthur is the fiery type, Prime is not. And both have been used by our Lord to bring great good to our world of religion. I think we can all learn to speak the truth with love. We can all learn to convey a difficult message with grace and respect. And we can all trust Christ to do a work in men, a lot more than our criticism will do. There is no doubting the fact that calling a man a heretic will protect the sheep of Christ from being deceived by him; there is also the place where you understand that this man is growing in his understanding of the Christian message, and we must convey an already offensive message with a lot less offence from us. I hold the position that Abel Damina is not a heretic. He is a man who Christ is doing a work on, and the true church holds a duty to him to pray for him and his followers and to lovingly convey the truth to them. Damina has a great platform, and the revival of religion that we have all been praying for in our nation can begin with him and his listeners. Those of us who hold to sound doctrine can position ourselves to help these people have a better grasp of the Saviour in the days to come. Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. Source
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Everything is Grace: We Have Been Given So Much... the article referenced in the video: https://textandpublishing.com/everything-is-grace-we-have-been-given-so-much/ |
Deji Yesufu, Pastor, Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan, teaches on contentment in this video. He deplores the widescale corruption borne on covetousness in our society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1U-dA4XMAM?si=qzq7pdipGXqqyBcf |
SEGUN, MY PLUMBER, DIED By: Deji Yesufu I had some plumbing work to do in the house, so I tried to reach him. Segun has a terrible habit of forever changing his phone numbers. I have tried to explain to him in the past that in the modern day, the phone number is our equivalent of an office. “The kind of work you do is not the one that you are required every day, but the day you will be needed, your phone number is the only connecting link to you…” I will advise him. “Daddy, mo ti gbo…” (Daddy, I have heard). I did not particularly like the idea of him calling me “Daddy” but I have since come to grasp with the fact that I am no longer in my twenties and thirties – I am a lot older now, and Segun, who would only have been about twenty-one, could very much be my child. I liked Segun a great deal because he was diligent at his work, and he hardly complained. I promised him that as soon as I had some big plumbing work to do, I will give him the contract. For that reason, I enjoyed a great deal of rebate off his “workmanship” cost. Even though I often felt that he inflated the cost of his materials, but I did not bother to investigate it too much. That is the way things work around here: artisans like Segun integrate their “workmanship” into the cost of material – that is the only way they can get something meaningful for the work they do. So, because I do not have plumbing works to do too many times around the house, I usually will not call Segun for some three to six months period. The last time I saw him must have been sometimes late last year. I had spent the better part of the past three days trying to reach Segun on the phone. He had taken to my correction and had stopped changing his lines whenever he misplaced them. So, I was convinced that he was only unreachable temporarily and would be available soon – perhaps he had been unable to recharge his phone. When I could no longer reach Segun, I called another plumber whose number I had on my phone. I did not even know who this person was but when he arrived, I realized that he was Saheed – a plumber I had used before I began to use Segun. I would learn, in the course of our interaction, that Saheed had actually trained Segun in plumbing. As we debated the cost of materials, I told Saheed that I could not understand why Segun was unreachable. Saheed looked at me with some incredulity: “Segun is dead…”, he replied. “What? What killed him.” Saheed explained that Segun had battled a certain illness for years. It might have been something related to his liver because it often left him swollen all over his body. He explained that the family had spent a lot of money on Segun’s health, and for a while it appeared that he was actually getting better. One day, some three months ago, he woke up gravely ill. He was taken to the hospital, but he could not be saved. One of the downturns of a failing state is its inability to provide health care for its people. Health care institutions are usually at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels in society. Things like headaches, malaria, and even child births are taken care of at the primary level. While the secondary level hospitals cater to conditions that are more severe. The tertiary hospitals, like the University College Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan, should cater to very severe health conditions that the primary and secondary health institutions cannot deal with. The situation that we find ourselves in Nigeria, however, is that the primary and secondary health institutions are almost comatose. So that hospitals like UCH are overburdened and are having to care for health situations that lower health institutions should be able to deal with. The Nigerian federal government must be commended for keeping tertiary health institutions functioning till now; if not for this there will be no health institutions for the ordinary people to go to. Even at present, people still patronize medicine men and other local and unorthodox health places – because they find government hospitals too expensive to go to. When we realize that the strength of a nation are her human resources, we will understand that catering for the health of our people is a duty we must do at all cost. Anyone can get sick, and when accessible and affordable health care is available, such people will get well with time. We owe our people the duty of ensuring that they get well. The late Nigerian sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in his book: “The Strategy and Tactics of the People’s Republic of Nigeria” wrote: “Health is the foundation and fountain of a full and happy life. It is indispensable to every truly successful venture or enterprise. Other things being equal, the healthier a person is, the more productive and more useful he is as an economic agent and as a member of society. Indeed, we regard health as so paramount that we are prepared to give and do anything to secure it, whenever its loss is threatened… In order to enjoy full health at all times, we must do certain things habitually. That is to say, we must breathe fresh air; drink good water; eat food which is adequate in quantity and quality, and appropriate to our individual vocation… The government has a duty to every citizen to assist him or her to do all these things…” Awolowo wrote this book in the closing months of the Nigerian civil war. He understood that soon the military would be out of government, and he was positioning his ideas for a working Nigerian society through that book. What Awolowo wrote in 1969, he had practiced in earnest when he was in office as the Premiere of the Western Region between 1952 and 1959. The Action Group ensured that two things was free to their people: education and health care. The point they were trying to make was that the strength of a nation lies on its human resources. A child who is born within the Nigerian geographical space, should not have to rely on the resources that his or her parents to get an education or to have access to good health care. Awo, who himself had risen from very humble beginnings, understood that Providence gifts a nation with human beings and instils wisdom within them. Education hones this wisdom, while health care protects the vessel holding this wisdom. When, as the case is now, people have to preserve their health based on the resources they have, and also get an education in a similar way, the country loses human resources because the children of the poor will not have access to health care and education. While I am not totally open to a socialist ideology, as Awolowo championed in that book (because I believe that government should not be all-in-all in society – that is recipe for totalitarianism), I believe that no country can run away from some kind of welfarism for its people – particularly for the poor. At the worst, there should be a place for people like Segun to get an education and to get care for their health. It was probably because he could not get free education that he learnt plumbing; and while at his duties, his health failed and he did not have the resources to access the best health care. In 2004, I wrote my mother a long letter, where I explained a lot of my challenges to her. Mother lived in the United States and she appeared to be able to read more into my letters than I wrote down. I think I took the art of writing from her – and those who write also know how to read. As I closed my letter, I explained a certain health challenge I had. I told her that I was trusting God for healing. My mother was alarmed after reading that letter. She told me to abandon all my search for a job in Lagos then, and head to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) for care. She sent me all the money I needed. I followed her instructions. I had developed osteomyelitis somewhere on the surface of my skull, and the wound around there had not healed in ten years. The doctors took me through a very minor surgical procedure – where they removed the surface of the infected skull and took it for testing. They wanted to eradicate every possibility of cancer infection. Thankfully, the result returned that it was not cancer. In the process of treating the surgical wounds with antibiotics, a ten-year old wound disappeared. If not for the quick thinking of a mother and the resources she provided, and the availability of a tertiary health institution, I would have been dead at a little over twenty years of age – about the same age Segun died. Socialism is based on the idea that all human beings are equal – regardless of the station in life that we find ourselves. So that the resources of a land should be equally distributed to the citizens of that country. It then posits that government should be vested with powers to equitably distribute these resources. Most governments in the world are based on one kind of socialist ideology or the other. The problem is never at positing ideas; the problem is always successfully implementing these ideas. Nigeria is reverting to an age-old system where the rich and the privileged hold to power and reserved all the opportunities that society provides for themselves, their children, and their cronies alone. The problem with systems like these is that it is usually not meritorious, and the ordinary man would hardly be able to emerge from it to become somebody in life. This kind of system eventually precipitate violent revolutions that leads to the overthrow of the privileged and the installing of a leadership that will cater to the need of the people. Some of us are writing these things because we are convinced that society need not burn down before it can embark on necessary changes. The government that we have on ground only need to be faithful to the promises they make to the people. The least a government can do, both at local, state, and federal level, is to make basic education and health care available to her citizens. Adieu, Segun, my plumber. Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. Source
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CC: Seun, Lalasticlala, Mynd44, condider for front page |
BALLOSKI:I agree |
Praxis758:Yes. No government has political will to do the right things any where in the world. The people compell governments to doing the right thing. We do it through public opinion and Adekunle James has started the conversation. |
Electronic Voting: University of Ibadan as a Case in Point by Adekunle JamesSource: https://fij.ng/article/electronic-voting-in-nigeria-the-university-of-ibadan-as-a-case-in-point/
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In this video, Pastor Deji Yesufu calls out NEPA. It is simple: if this country has power supply, 90% of her problems will be solved! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx23-257yjs?si=GykTn3FOHPG7-X-V |
Features offered: 1. A fully equipped three bedroom house. 2. The three bedroom can be modified to two or one room outfit. 3. Has guest toilet, one toilet facility for two rooms, and fully insuit room. 4. Fully air-conditioned. 5. Situated in a band A area of Ikorodu with 24 hour power supply. 6. Has solar power installed that works. 7. Internet TV fully paid for. 8. Within a secured estate of B. O. Benson Estate at Ibeshe, Ikorodu. See the attached video for more. Contact us via WhatsApp: 07065254425. |
The Story Behind a 24-Year-Old Photo By: Deji Yesufu I will begin to tell this story from a courtroom in the United States of America. My mother, Henrietta Temilola Yesufu (nee Williams), stands before a judge. My baby sister, Adewumi Yesufu, is about eight years old and standing beside her mother. The prosecuting team, acting on behalf of the State, are threatening to deport my mother back to Nigeria because she had overstayed her study visa to the USA. The Judge, a particularly mean man (mother said that his handicap might have contributed to his mean spirit), explains that there is no reason why he would not grant the prosecution their wish to send mother back to Nigeria. The year would be around 1993. Mother tells the judge that she has been a good citizen, and contributes immensely to the community as a teacher, handling a particularly difficult aspect of the State of California – Compton (those who know that this is where Dr. Dre came from, understand mother’s point). My mother then goes ahead to add that she even wishes that her four sons, who are still in Nigeria, join her in the USA. The judge was not going to have this line of thinking. He shot back: “… if war were to break out in Nigeria today, those boys should be fighting to preserve their country…” Mother told me later that she replied to the man under her breath: “My sons would not fight Nigerian wars”. Mother was wrong. Facebook has this thing where people try to recreate photos of themselves after many years. When my brothers and I took this photo yesterday, nobody was thinking of recreating anything. My sister-in-law, Comfort Yesufu, was the person who continued to press us to take photographs. The truth of the matter was that I was not in the mood for taking photographs, and if ever one has taken a photo reluctantly, this is one. My niece, Divine Yesufu, had to plead with us to smile after the first shot she took appeared like men heading to a mourning house. But one should thank God for family. Everybody is wired differently in a family setting. While the men are thinking about preserving and providing, the women are thinking of feeding and merry-making. That was the mood that we all were in when we visited my father in his house, here in Ibadan... There story is concluded: https://textandpublishing.com/the-story-behind-a-24-year-old-photo/ Deji Yesufu is the Pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. Source
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Pastor Deji Yesufu speaks on the matter of purpose and nation building in this new video. He extrapolates from the story of his own family and extends lessons to nation like Nigeria undergoing nascent development. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aEyBHR6HYU&t=727s |
The facility is only a few minutes drive to the Ikorodu Ferry Terminal, where you can take a boat to Lagos Island. Many prefer this option because this bypasses the large traffic between Ikorodu and Island Lagos. Also, the cost of renting an apartment in Ikorodu is a lot cheaper than the Island. You can have the best of two worlds: quick access to the Island, and relatively cheap acccomodation. WhatsApp 07065254425 for more details. |
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