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HolyBlog

Is 5G the Mark of the Beast?

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April 19, 2020

- Category : HolyBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

To answer this question the logical way, we will have to first find out who or what the Beast is, what it means to acquire its mark, and then expose any connection both may have to the much touted 5th generation wireless communications technologies supporting cellular data networks.

Of course, neither of the constructs mentioned in the question is without controversy. Before Sars-Cov-19 began trying to single-handedly depopulate China and the world, nation-states were already at each other’s throats concerning Huawei’s 5G lead. Lawmakers and intelligence officials in the developed world claimed the telecommunications giant could be exploited by the Chinese government for espionage but failed to provide hard evidence to back the allegations.

This conflict with Huawei provided fodder for all kinds of conspiracy theories, chief of which is the belief that the new network generates radiofrequency radiation that can damage DNA and lead to cancer; cause oxidative damage that can cause premature aging; disrupt cell metabolism; and potentially lead to other diseases through the generation of stress proteins. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that charismatic Christianity would wade into the 5G controversy; but it should be surprising that it links 5G to the creation of a New World Order and the eschatological mark of the Beast.

To do so means one thing: charismatic Christianity is not grounded in the sure word of the Bible where history is concerned. If it were, it would have known that the Beast and his mark have been around since AD 538 and that charismatic Christianity is itself a tool in the hands of the same spirit of antiChrist as the beast, and that new age Christianity exists to support a serious breach in the Christian concept of the authority and jurisdiction of divine law.

Now, before you come after me with the usual fanatic fervor and venom, no doubt punctuated by the unintelligible gibberish of ecstatic tongues, please hear me out.

Who (or what) is the Beast? When Christians use the phrase, “mark of the beast”, they refer to an apocalyptic creature; a Biblical description of a uniquely anti-Christian institution or global power revealed by both the Apostle John in Revelation 13 and the Prophet Daniel in Chapter 7 of his book. While John calls this power a “beast”, Daniel calls it a “little horn” “coming up among” nations with “eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking pompous words”. This power “persecute[s] the saints of the Most High”, “cast[s] truth down to the ground” successfully, “change[s] times and law” and “speak[s] perverse things”. (Daniel 7:8, 25; Acts 20:30). 

Most charismatics apply these prophecies to the future, which explains Pastor Chris Oyakhilome’s attempt to explain 5G technology in prophetic terms. The error on their part is the misinterpretation of scripture, which is still one attribute charismatic Christianity shares with their master the Dragon. They assume the Beast is in the future, but that is not what the scriptures reveal. At the time of writing, John and Daniel were referring to eschatological events, but for serious students of the Bible in the 21st Century, it is to history we must divert our attention in order to understand Bible prophecy.

The 10 horns of Daniel 7:8 refer historically to the 10 divisions of the Roman Empire; they are the only logical explanation of Daniel’s vision of the image whose legs were of iron and had ten toes of iron mixed with clay (Daniel 2). Conscientious students of the Bible know that Daniel 2 and 7, and Revelation 13 are inextricably the same prophecies. The Beast was therefore not going to rise prophetically in AD 2020; to do so would push the second advent too far into the future and will be heavily inconsistent with the entire Bible and the fulfilments of Biblical prophecy since 1798. Historians agree that barbarians hacked at the Roman Empire until it fell into ten key pieces, three of whom were exterminated when the Beast of Revelation 13 came into power. Rather than be consumed by another empire like it did to the Grecian Empire, the Western Roman Empire fractured into ten separate kingdoms, and in the order by which they assumed prominence, these nations were the Alemanni (Germany), Franks (France), Burgundians (Switzerland), Suevi (Portugal), Vandals (exterminated), Visigoths (Spain), Anglo-Saxons (English), Ostrogoths (exterminated), Lombards (Italy), and the Heruli (exterminated).

While these powers were political authorities, the Beast that came out of the same geographic location would be vested with both religious and secular power, and exterminates three nation-states as it rises. In AD 538, the Roman emperor Justinian gave to the bishop of Rome civil and religious authority. With that authority, Papal Rome (or what we today call the Vatican) arose in the territory of Imperial Rome, exterminated the last three of the Arian tribes (the Heruli in AD 493; Vandals in AD 534; and the Ostrogoths in AD 538) and claimed dominion over the souls and the bodies of its inhabitants. Millions perished for questioning and opposing its teachings and actions; science and the arts were heavily persecuted (those 1,260 years are rightly called the Dark Ages), and no one could form an independent thought without the say-so of the Holy See (See Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapters 39, 40).

The beast is the Papal Church of Rome, and 5G did not exist at the prophesied end of the Roman Empire to warrant a tie-in to the mark of the Beast. Eschatological prophecies are consistent with history; any interpretation that alleges that the Beast is to come in a future time is false, unacademic and inconsistent with the scientific method of biblical inquiry. The descriptions of the Beast of Revelation 13 or the Little Horn of Daniel 7 fits one power only, and it is the Papal Church of Rome that enforces the mark of the Beast because it is the originator of the mark.

What then is the Mark of the Beast?

The reason the mark of the Beast is a much talked-about Christian construct is that it appears in the Bible under the most solemn warning ever given to mankind: “And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name” (Revelation 14:9-11).

Unequivocally, the Bible warns that any kind of doctrinal association with Papal Rome is tantamount to the eviction of a person’s name from the Book of Life: “And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”

These are solemn declarations, and movies of every shade and content have been made on the subject matter from the engraving of 666 on people’s foreheads and right arms to biochips and vaccines and so forth. Nominal Christians are afraid, and having proclaimed that the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation are too mysterious to understand and belong to the unforeseeable future, they are left wandering on the waves of panic and conspiracy, and what better target in these confused times than the new 5G technology that is touted to blow the minds of users where the “internet of things” is concerned? But the scriptures have not left us to conjecture and conspire about what these things mean in the specific themes of biblical doctrine. If the scriptures, working through history, has revealed Papal Rome to be the antiChrist and the Beast, then it should be easy to uncover its mark. The crowning act in the rebellion of the Beast is its power to legislate and enforce compliance of a law that directly contradicts God’s law and strikes a blow to His claim on His creatures as the sole being to be worshipped. Consistently throughout the scriptures, God lays two key truths as the foundation of His claim to our worship. The first is on the the grounds that it is He that created us, and this is buttressed in the 4th precept of the Decalogue in which the Lord declares, “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.” (Exodus 20:8-11).

Here, God lays claim to our worship and specially sets apart a day for us to render that worship on the basis of His creative power. But God does not demand our worship on His creation power alone; He commands it on his redemptive power also. In Ezekiel 20:12, He commands, “Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them.” Emphasis mine.

The sanctification used here refers to the redemptive work wrought for us through the life, death and sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Essentially, by obeying God’s command to set His sabbath day aside for worship and for rest, we affirm that Jehovah is both our Creator and Redeemer. In fact, in verse 12 of Revelation 13’s solemn warning, Jesus reveals who His people are. Revelation 13:12 reads, “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.”

Those whose names are in the Book of Life and who do not worship the Beast and receive his mark are those who obey God’s commandments including the 4th Commandment, and exercise faith in Jesus as the only true one through whom salvation can be acquired. The mark of God’s authority over us is our compliance with His worship requirements, and the sabbath of the 4th commandment is the central point of that requirement. It is the Seal of God, for the seal of God can be found only in God’s law. This is why, in order for the Beast to lay any claim to our worship, Papal Rome needed to “change times and law” (Daniel 7:25); and that change must be a sign, a mark of its ecclesiastical authority to rule over the bodies and souls of its victims.

The mark of the Beast, the opposite of the Seal of God, must therefore be a mark that sets up a day and requirement of worship in opposition to God’s day and requirements. Here is what the historical evidence portrays:

1. “The Catholic Church for over one thousand years before the existence of a Protestant, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday.” – The Catholic Mirror, September 1893.

2. “You are a Protestant, and profess to go by the Bible only; and yet you go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in the place of [the] Sabbath. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of the Ten Commandments; who gave you the authority to tamper with the fourth?” – Library of Christian Doctrine, p.3.

3. “Is not every Christian obliged to sanctify Sunday and to abstain on that day from unnecessary servile work? Is not the observance of this law among the most prominent of our sacred duties? But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify.” James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers (1917 edition), p. 72-73 (16th Edition, p 111; 88th Edition, p. 89).

4. “The observance of Sunday by the Protestants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the [Catholic] Church.” – Louis Gaston Adrien de Ségur, Plain Talk About the Protestantism of Today, p. 213.

5. “If you look to the Bible as an authority for the observance of the day, you will not find it. It is well to remind the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and all other Christians outside the pale of the Mother Church, that the Bible does not support them anywhere in the observance of Sunday. The Seventh-day Adventists are the only ones who properly apply the term ‘Sabbath’ because they do observe the seventh day, and not the first day, as the day of rest”. – Clifton Tracts, Vol. IV, p. 15.

6. “Protestantism, in discarding the authority of the [Catholic] Church, has no good reason for its Sunday theory, and ought, logically, to keep Saturday with the Jews.” – John Gilmary Shea, American Catholic Quarterly Review, January 1883.

7. “Now, every child in school knows that the Sabbath day is Saturday, the seventh day of the week; and yet, with the exception of the Seventh-day Adventists, all Protestants keep Sunday instead of the Sabbath day, because the Catholic Church made this change in the first ages of Christianity”. – Father A. Gerritsma, in the Winniepeg [Manitoba] Free Press, Apr. 21, 1884.

8. “The [Catholic] Church has power to command feasts and holydays by the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of and therefore they fondly contradict themselves by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same church. Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her; she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday the seventh day of the week, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.” – Stephen Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism On the Obedience Due to the Church, 3rd edition, Chapter 2, p. 174 (Imprimatur, John Cardinal McCloskey, Archbishop of New York).

9. “Perhaps the boldest thing, the most revolutionary change the Church ever did, happened in the first century. The holy day, the Sabbath, was changed from Saturday to Sunday. ‘The day of the Lord’ was chosen, not from any direction noted in the Scriptures, but from the [Catholic] Church’s sense of its own power… People who think that the Scriptures should be the sole authority, should logically become 7th Day Adventists, and keep Saturday holy.” – St. Catherine Church Sentinel, Algonac, Michigan, May 21, 1995.

10. “From this we may understand how great is the authority of the church in interpreting or explaining to us the commandments of God – an authority which is acknowledged by the universal practice of the whole Christian world, even of those sects which profess to take the holy Scriptures as their sole rule of faith, since they observe as the day of rest not the seventh day of the week demanded by the Bible, but the first day. Which we know is to be kept holy, only from the tradition and teaching of the Catholic Church.” – Henry Gibson, Catechism Made Easy, #2, 9th edition, vol. 1, p. 341-342.

11. “Sunday is our mark or authority… The church is above the Bible, and this transference of Sabbath observance is proof of that fact.” – Catholic Record of London, Ontario, September 1, 1923.

12. “Regarding the change from the observance of the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian Sunday, I wish to draw your attention to the facts: 1) That Protestants, who accept the Bible as the only rule of faith and religion, should by all means go back to the observance of the Sabbath. The fact that they do not, but on the contrary observe the Sunday, stultifies them in the eyes of every thinking man. 2) We Catholics do not accept the Bible as the only rule of faith. Besides the Bible we have the living Church, the authority of the Church, as a rule to guide us. We say, this Church, instituted by Christ to teach and guide man through life, has the right to change the… laws of the Old Testament and hence, we accept her change of the Sabbath to Sunday. We frankly say, yes, the Church made this change, made this law, as she made many other laws, for instance, the Friday abstinence, the unmarried priesthood, the laws concerning mixed marriages, the regulation of Catholic marriages and a thousand other laws… It is always somewhat laughable, to see the Protestant churches, in pulpit and legislation, demand the observance of Sunday, of which there is nothing in their Bible.” Peter R. Kraemer, Catholic Church Extension Magazine, USA (1975), Chicago, Illinois, “Under the blessing of the Pope Pius XI”.

5G cannot therefore be said to be the mark of the beast because 5G makes no religious claims and is a woefully inadequate fit for the descriptions of the mark of the beast in scripture. The mark of the Beast is neither technology nor abstract, but is the solemnization of Sunday in place of the Lord’s Day, Saturday. And since charismatic Christians do not ascribe to this correct interpretation of the Scriptures, it is not surprising that they are found succumbing to myths and false conspiracies about a new world order. That order was established long before there was a charismatic Christian, and the mark of the Beast is correctly Sunday worship observance.

Please note this however: while Sunday remains the mark of the Beast, no one to date, except religious leaders who know this but adhere to it all the same, and the Beast itself, has the mark of the Beast. It is therefore erroneous to quote this jungle boy as saying all Churches and Christians who observe Sunday as a solemn day have the mark. But, when Papal Rome unites with secular powers in Europe and the United States to enforce Sunday observance as both a day of mandatory spiritual observance and in direct contradiction to the First Amendment of the US Constitution, for example, then whoever observes the first day of the week, and it doesn’t matter if your leader is Pastor Chris, Mensah Otabil, and Duncan Williams, you and your leaders all will have the mark of the Beast and, as the Bible solemnly warned, will be excluded from the Book of Life. Well will it be for all of us to chew on that and leave 5G well alone.

What About the Virus? Isn’t it Demonic and antiChrist? Is malaria demonic and antiChrist? HIV too? How about CSM, SARS, MERS and all the other abbreviations that cause us to fear and shiver? Pandemics are nothing new, and a few do surface every century or so. And of course, they are all the evil one’s doing. What we are having – this propensity to ascribe religious explanations to physical events – is the results of years of charismatic fanaticism and the fact that none of our religious healers, tongues speakers and charlatans saw this particular one coming. There is no 31st December 2019 service that saw this coming, and having laid to waste the credibility of the visions of these false prophets who number in the thousands, Christians are looking to myths and more ridiculous theories to explain the phenomenon.

Yes, the Bible did predict pestilences. Matthew 24:6-8 reads, “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows”.

The Apostle Mark’s account reads, “And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows” (Mark 13:7-8, emphasis mine).

But while the pestilences and wars and plagues sure do cause even the faithful to quake and fear, Christ warned us not to focus on those. He didn’t ask Christians to worry till the next verse, in which he warned, “But watch out for yourselves, for they will deliver you up to councils, and you will be beaten in the synagogues. You will be brought before rulers and kings for My sake, for a testimony to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations. But when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry beforehand, or premeditate what you will speak. But whatever is given you in that hour, speak that; for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Now brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end shall be saved.” Mark 13:9-13.

The Conclusion

So, to answer the question, 5G is not the mark of the Beast, and neither is the running of 5G technologies the mark either. 5G does not usher in a new world order that does not already exist or has not long been in the works and nearing maturation. The mark of the Beast is the enforcement of the observance of the false sabbath as a mandatory day of worship and rest, and no one can buy or sell in the coming days of trouble except those who have shown and have the technology to so prove, that they observe the false sanctity of Sunday. Until then, it’s important for all Christians to know what God has said in His word about the near future, but the issue isn’t so much what pestilences, plagues and troubles will hit the world, but ultimately where we stand on God’s truth, how we dissociate ourselves from the Dragon (Satan and World Power), the Beast (Papal Rome) and the False Prophet (all churches that preach Sunday worship, speak in tongues and go contrary to any word that has proceeded out of the mouth of God).

Shalom!
8
HolyBlog

The Sons of Eli and Otabil the Chief Priest

By on

August 21, 2018

- Category : HolyBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

I am respectfully privileged to extend my greetings as a Christian jungle boy to Pastor Mensa Otabil. I have never met him and I probably never will. Not to worry, though. These Facebook and Internet streets make anything possible. And since God is good, I have a good feeling that my article will find his good self somehow in these good times. I only hope I don’t look to him like an insult in this introduction. I do watch National Geographic so that should place me far off on the right side of a Likert scale between an insult and a non-insult. All this brouhaha involving his role, executive or non-executive, in these financial sector sarcomas got me worried, not so much about him per se, but about the negative impact it was beginning to exert on Christianity and Christian ministry. Make no mistake. It’s making us all look bad. Every single fornicator, thief or adulterer ever rebuked on any subject to do with sin is insulting Christians because of him. Class One Christians who last attended church from the comfort of their homes when Prince Harry wed Meghan are insulting us because of him. Even the atheists, the sasabonsam people, the arch-rebels are all in on it because of him.

And his congregants aren’t helping with all the I Stand with Otabil nonsense. Who stands with the widows, the poor carpenters and truck pushers whose mites and coins filled up the treasury of the misbegotten bank he board-chaired? Who stands with Ghana, in these moments of difficulty trying to fund free SHS for the citizenry? Who stands with our sweat-fueled taxes wasted trying to save his and his shareholders from losing the arrogance that comes from wearing $2,000 suits? Who stands with poor Ama Ghana?

The facts of the reports we have all sighted indicate that under Pastor Otabil’s non-executive watch, whatever that means, Mr. W. A. Essien, the majority shareholder, flouted all banking and risk management rules and treated depositers’ and public funds as his personal “piggy bank”, and blew tonnes of Ghana Cedis on dubious acquisitions and well-nigh criminal financial shenanigans, even as far away as Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. At the core of the problem was the weak board oversight rendered of Capital Bank’s risk management oversight functions. That in simple English means Pastor Otabil provided spineless leadership and incompetent oversight of the functions that could have saved poor depositors’ and public funds. This is why the juries in the alleys of Facebook and Twitter find him guilty.

Not because they have proof of his personal, direct contribution to Essien’s remarkable lack of good risk management sense, but because he is the leader and pastor of a church that shows more business sense than all of the consolidated local banks put together. And worse, he is a “man of God”. That title puts him in a better management position than the Chair of the US Federal Reserve Board. We all saw how well Moses executed his executive and non-executive roles leading the Israelites to the Promised Land. They walked through dry land in the Red Sea, for crying out loud. Do you have any idea how hard that is? We haven’t been able to desilt the Korle since I was a kid. This is just how much power and good sense we expect a man of God in a board-Chair position of a bank to exhibit.

Or, failing that, admit his failure in his duties, appeal to his humanness and save all of us other Christians the shame of explaining our God and how He is not responsible for His servant’s failures. This is what a true man of God would do. A true church of God would also suspend Pastor Otabil forthwith. This is why churches with visible one-man founders fall within the ambit of false churches no different from the Obinims of today, but I digress. If for nothing at all, at least for bringing the name of the church and the church’s God into this uncalled-for disrepute, a suspension would have been in order. In a more serious church, this nonsense has little currency.

Take the Church of Pentecost, for example. Those folks don’t play. In that church, the mere sign of fibroid is grounds for suspension for the sins of fornication and of premarital pregnancy. Oversight failures for messing up choir master deposits would have called for outright dismissal. Which is why Dr. Otabil’s “God is Good” response to the financial mess he is alleged to have supervised leaves a sour taste in my jungle Christian mouth.

God is Good sen?

That response is worse than his alleged role and puts him in the same scale as Eli, the High Priest of Israel whose sons, Hophni and Phinehas, stole the best parts of God’s offerings, and had sexual affairs with women right in the church. Amazingly, when all these things were brought to Eli’s attention, his response was the exact same response we have now received from Pastor Otabil – God is Good!

This account is found in the first Book of Samuel, the Prophet of Israel at about 1164 BC. Eli was old, and though the Chief Priest of Israel, probably had a non-executive role in Temple administration in the Church of God, at the time known as the Tabernacle of the Lord, at Shiloh. He had sons, two of whom are described as “corrupt”. They would send their servants around while worshippers offered sacrifices, “with a three-pronged fleshhook… while the meat was boiling”, and have them thrust it into the pot and take for themselves “all that the fleshhook brought up” (1 Samuel 2:12-14). These sons of Eli essentially robbed God, stole from him and engaged in sexual crimes with the worshippers in the House of the Lord. The Bible describes their sins as “very great before the Lord, for men abhorred the offering of the Lord” (1 Sam. 2:17).

In the same way a lot of people are abhorrent of Christians today as a result of the actions and inactions of “men of God” such as Pastor Otabil. The grievousness of their sin was proportional to the disrepute they had inflicted on the cause of justice and righteousness by their evil deeds. The sins of the Sons of Eli got God so angry that he demanded of Eli through a man of God, “Why do you kick at My sacrifice and My offering which I have commanded in My dwelling place, and honour your sons more than Me, to make yourselves fat with the best of all the offerings of Israel My people?” (1 Sam. 2:29).

Considering the wealth, power and influence today’s men of God wield, and how “fat” they have become at the expense of the people who attend their churches, it is no surprise that the account of Eli and his evil sons is an apt description of Christian churches today. Even worse is the appropriation of God’s resources for dubious gains. How do churches, whose funds belong to the service of God for charity, for schools and for hospitals to alleviate human suffering, invest in banks that are involved in all kinds of ungodly deals including money laundering?

God’s declaration against Eli and his sons was that “in one day they shall die, both of them” (1 Sam. 2:34). Any wonder UT Bank and Capital Bank died in one day and were caputed by GCB? But here comes the shocker. After many years of evil-doing by Hophni and Phinehas, Eli somehow believed that he was nothing but a non-executive actor absolved in the whole saga. His behaviour seemed to have irked the Good Lord more, for in a vision to the young boy Samuel, the Lord said, “In that day I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knows, because his sons made themselves vile, and he did not restrain them. And therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.” (1 Sam 3:12-14; emphasis mine)

I believe that the only way Dr. Otabil walks away from all this without prosecution is because we live in an apampamu-store republic. A republic that sponsors Mecca and Jerusalem pilgrimages lack the bold, hairy and audacious gonads required to haul someone like Pastor Otabil before the Courts.

Tweaaa.

Ain’t gonna happen la.

Notice that in the Courts of Heaven, Eli didn’t get of that easily. But the worse thing in the biblical account equitable to Pastor Otabil’s miserable apology of a response happened when Samuel fearfully told High Priest Eli what the Lord had revealed to him.

After much coaxing, the boy opened up to the priest and declared the judgements of the Lord. Guess what Eli the priest said: “It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him.” (1 Sam. 3:18) Clearly we have a more contemporary rendition of Eli’s words in the face of God’s imminent judgment in the response suggestions offered by Pastor Otabil to his congregation who clearly idolize, adore and worship him.

“God is Good!”

In Eli’s response, he seemed lackadaisical, uncaring of, and unimpressed with God’s declared judgment. A concerned priest would have done all in his power to put his house in order like the people of Nineveh, to avert God’s wrath. The man of God seemed completely unconcerned in his response, “It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him”. Pastor Otabil goes a step further beyond uncaring to presumption. To declare presumptuously in the face of damning allegations that “God is Good” is (1) to pretend that the loss of almost 10-percent of our GDP under his spineless board leadership is an easy thing to sweep under ICGC’s Christ Temple altar; (2) to act like the rest of us interrogating the issue are as gullible, bereft of independent thought and in awe of him as are his ICGC congregants; and (3) to theologize that our Father in Heaven, whose benevolence feeds the little sparrow and sustains the leviathans of the deep seas; who notices every injustice done to the widow and the orphan, and excuses not the thieving, corrupt under dealings of politicians and judges, supports the criminal and nation-wrecking allegations of financial impropriety discovered under Otabil’s so-called non-executive chairmanship.

How blasphemous!

Now, I do not wish any evil on Dr. Mensa Otabil. I wish him long life and personal prosperity, although I wish his prosperity would spare us losses to our GDP. But in the Biblical account of Eli and his evil Sons, the High Priest and his sons died horribly. And the two devils – Hophni and Phinehas – died before their high priest father. As we speak, Capital and UT have died horribly (and may the CEOs whose foolishness caused their demise grow boils on their behinds while the state seeks to prosecute). It therefore stands to reasonable expectations that the real culprit – their high priest mentor whose silence led to the festering of their moral rots  – follows suit.

The “God is Good” response is unfortunate, to say the least, and despicable in both Biblical and moral examination. Watching the video, I had no doubt that I was looking at a man who believes himself untouchable where his role in the on-going scandal is concerned. Even worse is the insult delivered to those of us asking the questions for which his misguided answer seeks to respond.

Please keep us non-ICGC Christians out of this nonsense. Pastor Otabil’s latest response neither makes sense in the light of the issues or in the light of the Bible, and not all of us are dumb enough to offer “God is Good” as a legitimate Christian response to a report that alleges nation-wrecking infractions. We dissociate ourselves from such behaviour and demand full scale prosecutions of everyone, executive or otherwise, whose actions led to these gargantuan losses.

Only then can we all agree to a resounding “God is Good!”
23
HolyBlog

What if there indeed were No God?

By on

January 19, 2018

- Category : HolyBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

You’re right. I am definitely a what-iffer. Life would be intrinsically more boring for me if I wasn’t. Being a what-iffer doesn’t mean that I am exactly insane but, all the same, let’s agree I am a what-iffer. Some of my what-iffs are productive.

Examples: What if Ghana had the longest zip line across the largest man-made lake? What if free SHS was possible? What if the ecstatic, unintelligible gibberish of today’s churches wasn’t the tongues of the Bible? What if I could change Ghanaian culture in favour of outdoor adventure activities? What if Sunday worship was the Mark of the Beast? What if America was truly racist? What if I could reconnect with my first love in ways that could build the best friendship I had ever wanted?

These what-ifs are productive in the sense that they cause me to bend my mental, physical, intellectual and financial resources to seeing some happen, discovering many to be true, lambasting false Christian theories and building better relationships. Then there are the totally useless what-iffs; the ones I call modin-Sane: What if, instead of having an abortion it was possible to extract an embryo alive from the womb of a woman who didn’t want it, and move it into a lab that could sustain it to babyhood for nine months? What if we could have shitholian African Parliamentarians taken out and shot? What if Ghana could launch a real space ship into orbit (I knew I shouldn’t have eaten too much pepper the night I had this what-if)? What if we could rid Africa of corrupt leaders by May 26, 2018?

As you can see, not all what-ifs are positively whatifiable. So, when I what-iffed the possibility of a non-existing God, I immediately filed it under modin-Sane.

But the thought wouldn’t be so easily discarded. My mind actually thought it would benefit from considering the possibility that there was no God. This had come about because many unbelieving friends of mine had that week put up spirited denunciations and ridiculed the concept of the existence of God. I faced them fair and square of course (no one I know of has ever accused me of running away from an intellectual fight), and floored the archeologists and humanists among them (let’s hope they don’t read this and write rejoinders ;-)).

So I gathered my puny human intellect, picked up a glass of aluguntugun juice, sat on a camp chair on an island in the Akwamu Gorge one evening, raised my eyes to the starry skies and bent the forces of my mind to contemplate the possibility that God did not exist. Before this exercise, I had availed myself of all the still-unrefuted scientific evidence that had been discovered and widely published in some of the world’s leading science journals. Some of them had for 40 years supported the Genesis Creation record that God made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. By embarking on this what-iffer, I was essentially about to suspend what I had believed for 35+ years and consider alternatives.

Make no mistake. The only way to declare that God does not exist is to attack the first book of the Bible – Genesis. But since Genesis had done me no wrong (I like Moses actually. His meekness is one I aspire to, just as soon as I get rid of my Kalashnikov), I could not bring it up in my what-iffing. If a person is willing to consider that there is no God, that person has no business bringing a book of God into his or her enterprise. If God does not exist, then Genesis does not exist. Therefore, I had to turn to something that wasn’t godly – the big bang theory of relativistic cosmology – earlier deduced by an “army of data” to have occurred 5.5 billion years ago and was later amended to some 13.8 billion years.

The theory essentially claimed the universe as we know it started with a small singularity, then inflated (bang!) over the next 13.8 billion years to the cosmos that we know today. What commends the big bang theory to itself is its reliance on what seems to be overwhelming experimental evidence for an ancient age of the earth and its unquestionable laws of radioactive decay, also called radiometric dating.

Christians claim that God created the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything else that exists. They cite the Bible as the source, and the basis, of that belief. If one wants to refute that, then one has to refute the Bible’s authenticity, and as the world knows, there is no end to the relentless pursuits on a daily basis to discredit the Bible.

But for the Christian, there really isn’t much work to do to prove anything beyond what the Bible has said. God created the heavens and the earth. Enough said. Since Science claimed to be above faith and the Bible, I began to ponder whether Science had any real evidence from among the “overwhelming scientific data” for the claim that the earth had banged itself into existence over billions of years.

What physical element, substance or property was scientifically credited to be the evidence of the big bang? I was informed by the documentation I assessed that pleochroic halos were deemed to be the phenomenon, which supposedly established the constancy of the decay rate of radioactive matter over geologic time, and threw out the ananse story of a God who had power to create. If there were no God, then the scientific evidence should support no claim of a fast-solidifying foundation of granite rock – known as Precambrian rock. Science holds that these rocks were formed (excruciatingly) slowly as molten magma cooled down. The Bible holds that these rocks were formed instantly in one day when the Spirit of God moved over a formless earth and caused the dry land to appear from nothing. These pleochroic halos are apparently formed by radioactivity in various rocks and are most easily observed in mica under a microscope. Uranium forms the rings of a certain type of one of these halos, which is the key for scientists as to whether the rate of decay was constant. But uranium is not the only element that forms these halos. Polonium does that too but, unlike uranium, polonium has only a fleeting existence, leading scientists to only credit uranium with the production of the halos.

As a what-iffer my interest, while sipping my aluguntugun juice, and trying to make sense of tons of scientific gobbledygook, was knowing when the Earth was formed. If the evidence proved that it took billions of years, God would cease to exist in my eyes because a God of truth would not have us believe that it took Him six days only to create the heavens and the earth when it took Him billions of years. But if science could not prove when the earth banged into existence, then it simply would become charlatan and false, and God would be true.

Essentially in big bang cosmology, all of Earth’s chemical elements formed hundreds of millions or billions of years before the time matter finally began to condense to form the proto-Earth as a molten ball of matter. Geologists generally believe that these are Precambrian rocks because they contain no fossils and have no evidence of life in them. These are the rocks that underlie the continents – the foundational rocks – and are the ones that contain the uranium and polonium halos. The evidence I studied, while the harmattan winds whipped Lake Volta into a frenzy, suggested that the polonium halos could not have emerged from uranium. Granite cooling from a molten state would have taken so long that there would have been, in the heat and all that turmoil, no traces whatsoever of polonium. In fact, polonium would have been incinerated in minutes.

The answer to how polonium could have been around in the long time it would have taken the granite to cool was the answer to my musings. Basically, a speck of polonium in molten rock could be compared to a tablet of Andrews Liver Salt in a glass of water. The beginning of effervescence is equated to the moment that polonium atoms began to emit radioactive particles. In molten rock the traces of those radioactive particles would disappear as quickly as the Martin Liver Salt crystals in water. The only way the crystals would be preserved is if the water were instantly frozen. Polonium halos could only have formed if the rapidly “effervescing” specks of polonium had been instantly encased in solid rock.

The truth, of course is this: there are immeasurably large number of polonium halos embedded in granites around the world. Just as frozen Martin Liver Salt crystals would be clear evidence of the quick-freezing of the water, these many polonium halos undeniably give evidence that a sea of primordial matter quickly “froze” into solid granite. The occurrence of these polonium halos, then, distinctly implies that our earth was formed in a very short time (in six days actually), and not over a long, drawn out period of billions of years.

The most credible source of that information is the Bible, which speaks unimpressed with scientific gobbledygook about the foundation rocks, “And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands.” “Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands.” “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. … For He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” (Hebrews 1:10; Psalm 102:25; Psalm 33:6,9).

Before the alunguntugun juice ran out, my belief was strongly reaffirmed that God exists. He is. He was. And always will be. Scientists, not unexpectedly, believe the polonium-halo evidence for Creation is, at best, a tiny mystery, in spite of the fact that they haven’t been able to refute the evidence in close to 50 years. “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” 1 Corinthians 1:27.

Polonium halos may be insignificant in the discussions of a big bang theory, but they clearly offer a big challenge to the science of evolution and totally flaws the theory of the big bang, and until that challenge is proven beyond reasonable doubt, I believe in God!

So, with that resolved, I bent what was left of my what-iffing over a long night to what social evidence we would see if there were no God. And I realized that people would have us believe God does not exist as a way of shaking off His moral restraints. Evidence abound that the increasing rise in divorce, fornication, licentiousness, homosexuality, vice and all the putrefying sins of the world is linked to the removal of God’s moral restraints. Other than His law, what else would make stealing another person’s wife abhorrent (unless you were the victim-husband)? Human laws have not been enough to curb society’s hurtful tendencies, and neither has the proliferation of churches in every available street corner of Accra where I live. It is God’s word and His law – not the false churches that create economic opportunity for themselves in His name, nor the false humanists who would have every allusion to God’s power and grace to save removed from all mention, nor the false scientists who move from their failure to ground the theory of evolution to declaring vile homosexuality a hereditary tendency over which its adherents have no control – that would make the world a better place.

This jungle boy believes God through Christ will come soon to clean the mess we have made of His earth and restore us into His image and His original plan for all His created beings – joy, untold happiness, and the realization and achievement of our sanctified dreams and aspirations higher than our present senses of self-actualization.
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HolyBlog

Filling GW17’s Treasury: An Unchristian & Unhallowed Method of Church Giving

By on

July 29, 2017

- Category : HolyBlog

- Tags : 5G, Adventure, Chieftaincy, Coronavirus

It has been an interesting week on social media in the wake of the discovery of what is purported to be the Special Offering memorandum of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC)’s Greater Works event. The annual programme – which is hard to categorize except to respectfully propose that it be called a Season of Motivational Speaking – brings in renowned charismatic leaders from across the continent to speak to, empower and motivate members of ICGC.

For example: On his Facebook page, the leader and founder posited, “Don’t miss this year’s Greater Works Conference. It promises to be a heaven-on-earth experience. Come expecting to hear life-transforming words that will push you to your God-given destiny.” Remembering that our God-given destiny is to “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord,” (Hebrews 12:14), it is up to us to judge for ourselves whether Greater Works serves any purpose other than to bind a church and its members together, market its own greatness and event-management prowess, and raise funds.

Before I go any further, let me say that this jungle boy is a staunch believer in God and the Bible.

Shocking, isn’t it?

But yes. No man can live as close to nature as I live, feel the seasons turn in his very veins as they do in mine and not be impressed to pursue after nature’s God and seek after His righteousness. And while I lay no claims whatsoever to any Theological expertise or credentials, I know my Bible paaa. I have read it from cover to cover, top to down and sometimes backwards and upside down. And methinks this on-going debate about whether it is right – or Biblical – for ICGC to demand donations between $70 and $5,000 in exchange for blessings that range from improving the life of the donor to surpassing Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos in the Millionaires Club is an opportunity to interrogate something non-Christians (and even some Christians) fail to grasp about Church-Giving.

Social Media Ridicule

I was intrigued about how those who were hardly fit to untie the shoelaces of the weakest, genuine Christian took to social media to ridicule the Christian faith in the giving of offerings, donations and tithes. Folks who hadn’t applied a single Bible principle to their entire lives suddenly had some nerve to make such gleeful fun of Christians and their culture of giving. But even more disappointing to me was the responses of Christians and members of ICGC.

“Is it your money?” seemed to be the standard refrain of defense. No intelligent, biblical response was offered, which went to prove what I have always suspected – most Charismatics don’t know much Bible. Of the ones I have ever engaged in any meaningful biblical discourse, over 85 percent are Biblical illiterates. Which isn’t surprising since most are under the quite laughable impression that only New Testament books of the Bible matter, never mind that 59-percent of the Bible is Old Testament. No wonder they were found fumbling in responding to the unfortunate ridiculing of the Greater Works donations memo.

The issue of Christian giving is clearest in the Old Testament. It is confirmed by Christ and the Apostles in the New, of course, but its Divine origins, purposes and continuing necessity is grounded in Old Testament Theology – just like the issue of God’s holy Sabbath. But having satanically declared the Law of God to be null and void, and falsely branding God’s Sabbath no more as the memorial of Christ but as an outdated culture of the Jews that have no bearing in modern-day Christianity, most Charismatics are at their wits’ end when it comes to biblically defending tithing. And it’s not difficult to see why. You cannot bastardize the Sabbath, the prohibition against eating pork, shrimps and cockroaches, and the prohibition against alcohol use, and then turn around to defend Old Testament-originating tithing simply because you find that’s the only sure way to fill church treasury.

Tithes & Offerings

A certain Femi Aribisala, in this article reproduced by Ghana’s Daily Graphic, makes some biblically erroneous points on tithing and offering. In it he opines that (1) the only time Jesus referred to tithing, He pointed out it “was not a weighty matter of the law”, (2) that Abraham and Jacob paid tithe only once, (3) that the Biblical tithe has no application to Christians, (4) that tithing was only applicable to Jews and to Israel and concluded (5) that every pastor who collected tithes was nothing but “a thief and a robber.”

Before I respond to this writer, let me move straight into the Source of Tithing – the Word of God. “And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord’s: it is holy unto the Lord.” “And concerning the tithe of the herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the Lord.” Leviticus 27:30, 32. This is the first written law we know about tithing, but it is faulty biblical logic that leads Christians to believing that tithing originated with only the Hebrews. Abraham (who was no Jew) paid his tithes to Melchizedek (Genesis 14:20) and Jacob (another non-Jew) promised to pay his tithes at Bethel (Genesis 28:22). Jacob’s promise is, perhaps, even more instructive:

“Of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.” Emphasis mine. Jacob’s declaration and his expression is not indicative of a deal he’s making with God, like Aribisala would have us believe. Rather, it is an assurance that He will do for all his possessions what is rightful by God to so do; that he will honour God in an already existing understanding. This understanding was only simply reaffirmed as “one of the divinely ordained statutes upon obedience to which their prosperity depended.” – E. G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 525.

“The system of tithes and offerings was intended to impress the minds of men with a great truth – that God is the source of every blessing to His creatures, and that to Him man’s gratitude is due for the good gifts of His providence.” – Ibid., p. 525. For the Biblical Christian, there’s no question to the truth that God gives life to all things (Acts 17:25), is the true owner of all things (Psalm 50:10), including all our money (Haggai 2:8), and it is God who gives men power to get wealth (Deuteronomy 8:18). It is therefore no cruelty on the Lord’s part that, as an acknowledgment that all things came from Him, a portion of His bounty be returned to Him in gifts and offerings to sustain His worship. This is not only biblical, it is just and right.

As to Aribisala’s misguided argument that tithing has no basis in the New Testament, this is what Jesus actually said of the matter in Matthew 23:23: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” Emphasis mine. How anyone interprets the above scripture to mean an end to tithing beats my jungle mind. Not to leave the other undone does not mean an end to tithing. Christ marveled about how the Jews could do so well in tithing and yet lose sight of what was most important. Christ was not, by pointing out what was most important, annulling tithing. To jump to that conclusion is a fatal biblical error, because the verse doesn’t even say what non-Christians would have us believe it does.

The Jewish Economy

While we are on the subject of what applied to Jews and what did not (I have a hard time believing that there are Christians who get confused over this matter), “the contributions required of the Hebrews for religious and charitable purposes amounted to fully one fourth of their income. So heavy a tax upon the resources of the people might be expected to reduce them to poverty; but, on the contrary, the faithful observance of these regulations was one of the conditions of their prosperity. On condition of their obedience God made them this promise: “I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field. . . . And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts.” Malachi 3:11. – Ibid., p.527.

Many scholars agree that few economies came close to the Jewish economy in bible times, and in contemporary economies, 11.6 percent of the world’s billionaires are Jews. Forbes further acknowledges that 48 percent of all America’s billionaires are Jewish. Clearly, the Jews practiced the principles of an economy where parting with a quarter of one’s earnings someway, somehow, ensured that one came up on top, and not at the bottom, of the economic independence ladder. This can’t be explained by half-baked human logic. It is God that gives wealth, and the more a person is inclined to honour His worship in the faithful giving of tithes and offerings, the more blessed the person becomes.

Wise King Solomon declares, “There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.” Proverbs 11:24. And the same lesson is taught in the New Testament by the apostle Paul: “He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.” “God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.” 2 Corinthians 9:6, 8.

These are the quotations I expected from my Charismatic cousins. This was an opportunity to raise the banner of Christ high on tithing and the will of God. But, as usual devoid of deep, analytical bible knowledge, and ever pandering to the popular sayings and meaningless quotes of Charismatic leaders, they were found lacking in defense of an article of Christian faith and practice that could have shut non-Christians up once and for all better than saying, “Is it your money?” What kind of answer too is that?

The ICGC Debacle

Having said all the above, let there also be no doubt that there is something inherently wrong – abysmally unbiblical – with what ICGC did in order to raise money from Greater Works 2017. The Greater Works donation memo is too close to the Catholic sale of indulgences that Protestants and our John Huss, Martin Luther, John Calvin and William Miller forebears fought and railed against in the Dark Ages when apostate Roman Catholicism held sway over money-making doctrines that could only have been hatched in hell itself. As my favourite Christian author puts it, “The work of the gospel, as it widens, requires greater provision to sustain it than was called for anciently; and this makes the law of tithes and offerings of even more urgent necessity now than under the Hebrew economy. If His people were liberally to sustain His cause by their voluntary gifts, instead of resorting to unchristian and unhallowed methods to fill the treasury, God would be honored, and many more souls would be won to Christ.

“The plan of Moses to raise means for the building of the tabernacle was highly successful. No urging was necessary. Nor did he employ any of the devices to which churches in our day so often resort. He made no grand feast. He did not invite the people to scenes of gaiety, dancing, and general amusement; neither did he institute lotteries, nor anything of this profane order, to obtain means to erect the tabernacle for God. The Lord directed Moses to invite the children of Israel to bring their offerings. He was to accept gifts from everyone that gave willingly, from his heart. And the offerings came in so great abundance that Moses bade the people cease bringing, for they had supplied more than could be used.” Ibid. p. 529.

And this is what earned ICGC the ridicule of this country. The sale of blessings to the highest bidder. And that is exactly what that memo was. Donations in exchange for time-lined blessings. Not even the donors in the building of the Tabernacle were promised as much as the ridiculous promises in the ICGC memo. The blessings of God from tithing and offering are the results that accrue from the offerings of grateful, willing, voluntary hearts who do it more because they love the Lord than for any real desire to be richer than Bezos. To promise a miracle in 24 hours of a $240 donation is not only presumptuous, it is pagan and unchristian.

The prophet Elijah was one of a few prophets through whom God made 24-hour guarantees. The widow at Zarephath (1 Kings 17:7-16) was told to first make a meal for Elijah before making one for herself. As she, by faith, trusted that God knew what He was doing and carried out the prophet’s instructions, her faith – based on belief on God and His word – was rewarded. The reward was and is never exactly promised until faith is exercised. But the demand on her was commensurate with her means. She was not asked for anything beyond what was at that moment within her means to provide. That ICGC memo is far in excess of the minimum wage of Ghana, and in dollars! What widow of Korle Gonno, Mamprobi or Sakaman can afford to sow a $70 seed of perfection? Eish. One big question to ponder over the GW17 Memo is this: how many souls are proven to be won by the event?

Conclusion

Putting it all together, there’s no biblical condemnations whatsoever of tithing and offering, and Prince Amoabeng and Aribisala are no credible authorities on the matter.

God is.

And He enjoins us all to pay our tithes. This jungle boy pays his tithes, and so should you, if you know what is good for you. In the same vein, GW17’s donation memo is unbiblical, and presumptuous, as is charismaticism itself, but what do I know?

I am a mere jungle boy with a mouth.

😉
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