2023: Of Prophets, Prophecies And predictions, By Tunde Abatan
“Mine heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath overcome because of the Lord, and because of the words of his holiness.
For the land is full of adulterers; for because of swearing the land mourneth, the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and their course is evil and their force is not right. For both prophet and priest are profane; yeah, in my house have I found their wickedness saith the Lord”- Jeremiah 23: 9-11
Sometime in 1997 barely two years after I gave my life to Christ, an itinerant evangelist in white robes stood in front of my then rented apartment in the bowels of Iju, Ishaga, Lagos and pointedly made a prediction of sort that rattled all.
In their usual way of attracting listening ear,she relayed a prediction, because with my little knowledge of the word,that was what it was..that a little girl child in the house will soon die and the parents should come for prayer having been sent from ‘abroad’ to our area.
Since, my family is the only one with girl child, my wife who was within ear shot rushed to the gate and I quickly dashed towards the gate and ask her to go back inside with my innocent girl.
I declared to the woman ‘prophet’ that my daughter will not die and that she should move away with her prediction of sort to other parts of the community.
My wife and others on our street who witnessed the scenario were fearful at my audacity then but I told her and all those who care to listen that the message is not for my household, as the woman is only celebrating her evil craft and looking for ‘converts’.
Today, twenty five years after, my daughter has never been admitted to hospital and already a working class university graduate with brighter future ahead.
But for my little knowledge of the word of God and confidence in it’s affirmation in my life then,the intinerant ‘prophet’ would have made mince of my family in material and spiritual covetousness.
Since the scripture in Hosea 4:6 says ‘my people perish for lack of knowledge’ , many innocent infertile adults have fallen prey to these merchants of the word who were not really called by God but present predictions covered with sweet tonques to misled ignorant Christains for obvious personal gains.
Ordinarily, as of old, prophets like Elijah,Jeremial and others are men who hear directly from God and deliver direct undiluted message to the low and mighty and without fear of favour.
But unlike Elijah,Jeremiah and other prophets of old,who made declarations and affirmations of the words of God as Elijah did when he declare drought and rain in 1kings 17 and 18, today’s ‘prophets’ merely mouth predictions which runs contrary to Gods affirmative spirit deposited in the prophets of old.
Their victims gullibility becomes the source of living.
This profane prophets stock in trade is to lead the lazy and ignorant baby Christians and others to their ‘slaughter slabs’.
Such are made to understand that their safety lies with them…not knowing that,all powers in heaven and earth belongs to God.
This preamble is necessary for today’s topic which dwells on the ignorance,gullibility and covetousness of our people in high and low places ,professionals of all hues and especially politicians who have made modern day ‘fake and false’ prophets their gods .
By extension the politicians and office holders carry along their followers who with them hinge their life on false prophecies that tends more on predictions and permutations.
Some are even based on human deductions of unfolding events which outcome is clear to all except the wilfully blind
Others even employ sorceries to prove the veracity of their predictions.
Apostle Paul comments on how God works in different ways in different people:
As stated explicitly in 1Cor 12:4, “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.”
Hence,the above injunction presupposes that men of God has different callings and responsibility chosen with the help of the Holy spirit.
But today,with the multiplicity of Prophets of all hues,it is doubtful with the flurry of prophesies’,whether many of our clergy are really called.
For those that are called either they don’t know their calling as stated by Apostle Paul and allow the Holy spirit to lead them or the call of the stomach misled them.
The question still remains,are they truly called by God or the call of the stomach?.
For those called by God,the focus is ever constant and the goals easily defined not by filthy lucre or materialism.
Our society today is bleeding because false and fake prophets in most of the two dominant religious beliefs,Christainity and Islam have created a viable industry out of the desperation and inordinate ambition of office seekers.
With their predictions as a guide, politicians work to the answer in various mundane,covetious and heretic ways.
Our society is thus held captive by politicians and office seekers who devise various means to actualise predictions and human permutations and projections made by these men “in borrowed robes and cassocks”,to borrow Shakespeares language.
Prophesy inherent in declaration and affirmations only belongs to God and his chosen prophets.
In his now controversial Memoirs after leaving office- My Watch, Olusegun Obasanjo,Nigerias two times head of state and later civilian President,describes his former vice President, Abubakar Atiku, as a believer in marabouts who are cousins to so- called prophets and pastors.
As for him,Atikus belief in what marabouts predicted for him pushed him to become desperate to occupy the number one position both at the end of Obasanjos first time and after the second term in 2007. Evidences abound that he really worked for it.
Obasanjos observation cannot be far from the truth as they both served the country together.
What is more, today, sixteen years after leaving power, Atiku is still working feverishly to bring the ‘prophesy’ to pass.
In order words, those who made prediction are not sent by God because God doesn’t prophesy, rather he declares and his true prophets affirm of things to happen without mincing words.
Our modern day prophets of all hues in the Orthodox and more of white garment churches; mixture of pentecostalism and Islamic clerics of all hues, have traders,career men,professionals and especially politicians as their biggest clients.
During the prelude to the second republic 1983 general elections, the late self- style astrologer, Professor Godspower Oyewole used the Bible and ‘prophesy’ emanating from his ‘temple’ near Ojota in Lagos, to justify his prediction that a politician who shared the same name of Shamgar in the Bible will emerge victorious in the then controversial election.
Oyewole, who drew clientele from notable politicians across the board,had his prediction used as a justification for Umaru Dikkos landslide victory of the highly rigged 1983 re-election of Alhaji Shehu Shahari,then civilian president.
However,his forceful overthrow after barely three months in office in December of same year is a clear testimony to the rigged victory earlier predicted by Oyewole using the name of God.
In 1993, the late Primate Theophilus Olabayo of Evangelical Church of Yahweh, told a listening audience and media that he saw Bush winning the United States presidential election.
At the end of the day,when the prediction went awry,he hurriedly turn arround to excuse the false prediction when he retorted..I saw Clinton not Bush..after the later had lost the election.
The result was that most of his ardent parishioners moved away like droves the way they came in.
Since the beginning of the fourth republic, and the elections period,Prophets,Pastors,Cleric of all hues have made an industry of prophesy to entice the innocent but desperate among the politicians and office seekers.
They fall into three categories..first those who combine occultism with spirituality to help politicians with their ambition,the second are those who turn their prayer mountains into spiritual centres and those who use the media often to announce the potency of their predictions for public attention.
The last category are very few and are made up of respected clergy who in and out of season warn occasionally about state of the nation.
But the flury of predictions, permutators and god sent prophets have multiply just as their clientele too had.
Of recent, three of our leading presidential candidates,Asiwaju Bola Tinubu,Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr Peter Obi of the All Progressives Congress,APC, Peoples Democratic Party,PDP, had become the object of predictions by the ‘men of God’, such that some of the so called prophets have become full time star gazers for the gullible.
One of them like Primate Elijah Ayodele now had weekly “prophesies’ and predictions depending of course on the level of activity of the leading candidates and happenings in the polity.
One of such prophets even turn the whole spiritual thing into guess work of pool stakers when he ‘predicted’ what will happen if either of Atiku,Tinubu and Obi emerge victorious in the elections.
In other words, he was not sure of who exactly will emerge victorious but still call it prophesy.
Is God an author of confusion?The answer is a capital No .
For them, prophesy is no longer of the spirit but by sight, all for attention seeking towards personal and material gains.
For Pastor Enoch Adeboye,the General Overseer of the, The Redeemed Christain Church of God,RCCG, the flurry of predictions is an indication of the level of descent into lies of the ‘prophets’.
Thrice last year,Adeboye had declared that God is yet to say whether election will hold and who the winner is unlike what happened in 1999 and even 2015.
The reknown clergy who claim neither to be a prophet nor a seer who often hear from God, declared to his congregation last Friday at the RCCG camp, apparently on inquisitions, that all those making prophesies’ about who will win ‘are on their own’ .
Hence to him, prophets of winner of next months election are liars and should be seen as such.
He however advised electorate to collect their voters cards in case of anything adding,’God has not told me of who the next President is and he may not tell me and if he tells me I may or may not tell you’.
Like Adeboye,while both Tinubu,Atiku are running all over the country to canvass for votes, Obasanjo with his preferred candidate,Obi, is also busy consulting and widening the scope of his reach as February 25 draws near.
Though Obasanjo has never told anyone of his having heard from God or told by men of God,Obi his protege, has been moving from one church to the other,from pentecostal to Anglican and Catholic asking his brethren to take power back .It is obvious he is also attempting to use the Church to achieve whatever his prophets must have told him.
Will there be or no election even when we had only 47 days to go?
Adeboye who last week said he is wary of making any forecast or prophesy as some are doing because of a law passed by neighbouring Ghana. The country he said recently rolled out stiff punishment for prophets of doom.
He said he wont talk even if he sees any winner in order to avoid government clampdown.
He justifies his preference not to join ‘prophets’ to a saying in Yoruba, Awolumate, o mo iwon ara re ni” meaning an elder who commands respect of a community does so because he kept his boundary .
Should Nigerians continue to allow so called prophets to use them to work to the answer of their prophesies’ to satisfy their clients or get their voters card to do the needful as advised by Adeboye?
Only time will tell.
