AFRICAN PLUME

“Mosaic of the King of kings” By Akin Ojumu Fire drills at schools and in the workplaces are pivotal for safety and preparation. These exercises help students and employees understand and practice established emergency evacuation procedures. The objective is to reduce panic and ensure swift evacuation in the event of a real fire. One of the main features of a fire drill exercise is the fire alarm. It’s the loud, high-pitched, and continuous ringing of the fire alarm that alerts students and employees to commence on the evacuation protocol. What fire alarm is to people in modern times is what the trumpet was to the ancient people of biblical times. The trumpet was a powerful instrument used in the Old Testament as a means of warning and summoning the people. It was used to alert people to danger, call them to gather for assembly, or to announce a solemn occasion.  Joel 2:1-2 “Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for...

“Come! All Who Labor and are Heavy Laden” By Akin Ojumu This commentary series is a reminder to anyone who cares to pay attention that paramount to any accurate interpretation of Scriptures is the realization that all Scriptures are about Christ. The Law and the Prophets prophesied of His Coming. In the Gospel we read about His life, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. The Epistles are roadmaps on how to follow Christ. Today’s installment of the series will examine the connection between Joseph and Jesus as givers of bread to the hungry. Connection 34: The whole world came to buy grain When the seven years of famine hit, it was pretty severe. The extreme food scarcity not only affected Egypt, but it was also felt across the entire known world of that time. The whole world was seized with a paroxysm of excruciating starvation. Barrenness and drought filled the whole earth. Severe emptiness blighted barns and storehouses everywhere. No nation was spared of the food shorta...

“When Self Becomes an Idol” By Akin Ojumu Idolatry is the worship of someone or something other than God as if they were God. In the typical polytheistic fashion, there are as many gods of men as there are men of gods, and there are varieties of something or someone that people worship. Some worship deities, nature, and ancestors. Others worship tangible and intangible things such as success, fame, fortune, food, and freedom. Of all the objects of man’s devotion, the worship of self tops them all. Self-worship, aka autolatry or self-idolatry, is the excessive admiration or devotion to oneself, often to the point of making oneself the object of worship. Autolatry manifests in different forms. One of its most insidious forms is narcissistic eisegesis, aka narcigesis.  Coined from Narcissism (i.e., self-absorption and an overinflated sense of self-importance) and Eisegesis (i.e., to read one’s opinion into a Bible passage), narcigesis is reading oneself into a Bible passage and making...

“On the Road to Emmaus” By Akin Ojumu For those of you who read my commentaries, if there’s anything at all that you could point to as a key takeaway, I wish above all things that it would be the fact that Christ is the focus of all Scriptures. It ’ s my hope that I ’ ve not failed to make it crystal clear to you that Christ is not only the Key that opens the door to understanding the content and context of Scriptures, but also that Christ is the central theme and the subject of the entire Bible. From Genesis to Revelations, all of Scriptures are about Christ. While the Old Testament prophesied about His coming, the New Testament testified about Him living among us and His eventual return at the end of the age when He comes back in glory and power to establish His everlasting Kingdom. In the Law, we see types and shadows of Christ as the Lamb of God who gave Himself as an offering for sin. Meanwhile, the Prophets tell us of His birth, rejection, suffering, and crucifixion. We read in t...

“Humiliation of Joseph & Jesus” By Akin Ojumu Anonymity is my natural proclivity. My comfort zone is invisibility and obscurity. Unlike a lot of people who derive great pleasure and fulfillment in visibility and prominence, being seen, being heard, and being known, make me queasy and uneasy.  Whenever I find myself in the midst of a crowd, especially a crowd of people I don't consider close friends, I feel unsettled, and panic attacks set in. The feeling I get in such circumstances is the same feeling a fish gets when it’s out of water. I say all that so that the readers of my writings would understand that I find no pleasure pushing out these commentaries. Putting myself out there, by way of my writings, is, to me, tooth extraction without local anesthesia. For me to publicly and openly express my views on sensitive and controversial subjects, like religious doctrines and politics, like I do in my essays, is completely out of character. This is especially true owing to the fac...

“Baker, Cupbearer, and Two Thieves on the Cross” By Akin Ojumu Right from its inception, Christianity has always had to stave off attacks from the enemies of God. From powerful emperors and mighty rulers of nations to the lowliest of the low and the scum of the earth, the adversaries of the faith come in all shapes and sizes. One of the earliest archenemies of the Church was a man by the name, Celsus, a Greek philosopher in the 2nd Century. In 178 A.D., Celsus wrote a treatise titled, The True Word, in which he mounted malicious and loathsome verbal attacks against Christianity with the intention of discrediting the faith. Celsus, in his obnoxious letter, painted an unflattering portrait of the Believers.  He described Christians as being constituted by a bunch of uncultured, uncivilized, and unlearned buffoons. “Let no cultured person draw near. None wise and none sensible. For all that kind of thing we count evil. But if any man is ignorant, if any man is wanting in sense and cul...

“Baker, Cupbearer, & Redemption” By Akin Ojumu In his first letter to the Church at Corinth, Apostle Paul thought it was necessary to remind the recalcitrant Believers of the troubled assembly of the message he preached to them in the eighteen months he was in their midst. 1 Corinthians 2:1- “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Throughout the time he spent establishing the Corinthian Church, Paul’s message was Christ and Him crucified, and nothing else. Paul didn’t preach human philosophy which was in vogue at this time. He didn’t engage in the use of rhetoric, an oratory device preachers and philosophers of this period were known to employ to promote themselves in order to gain popularity, attract huge following, and amass great wealth.  As far as the cultured Greek and the pious Jew were concerned, the Gospel messag...

“Joseph, Baker, Cupbearer, and the Lord’s Supper” By Akin Ojumu In this exciting expedition through Scriptures, we’ve been able to discover up to twenty-two different connections between Joseph and Jesus. Along the way, we find how Joseph’s being one among twelve brothers is similar to Jesus and twelve disciples. We see Joseph, who is Jesus’s biological father namesake, hated by his own brothers because of the love his father had for him the same way Jesus incurred the wrath and hatred of the Jews because He calls YAHWEH His Father. Likewise, just as Joseph was taken to Egypt in order to effectuate the salvation of his family, Jesus, as a baby, was taken to Egypt for safety in order that God’s redemptive plan would not be prematurely aborted.  What’s more, Joseph’s brothers conspired to kill him, a parallel to the plot by the Jews to kill Jesus. We also see that Judah, Joseph’s brother, betrayed Joseph by concocting the scheme to sell Joseph to slavery for twenty pieces of silver. ...

“Joseph and Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness” By Akin Ojumu Repeatedly in this commentary series, the point has been stressed that the entire Scriptures are about Christ. For the most part, stories, events, and characters in the Old Testament are simply types and shadows that point people to future events that would culminate in the Person and life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Earlier in the commentary, we did allude to the fact that of all the Old Testament patriarchs, the man Joseph is one whose life, by far, most parallels that of Christ. When you take a bird’s eye view of Joseph’s life story, what you see is a beloved son who basked in the glory and splendor of his father, lived a cherished and sheltered life, whose life was subsequently upended when he was sold as a slave to a foreign land where false witness was brought against him that landed him in prison, but who later on experienced a change in fortune when he was restored to glory, exalted to the second highest office in the lan...