AFRICAN PLUME

To which of these two churches do you think you belong? The God-centric church that's fiercely uncompromising in pointing sinners to the narrow way that leads to life or the crowd-centric one that draws sinners to the broad way and legitimizes all the cravings, longings, and indulgences of the selfish human heart? And don’t kid yourself, your church is one of these two and you know it.

By Charles H. Spurgeon Dear Brothers and Sisters, Honor the Spirit of God as you would honor Jesus Christ if He were present! If Jesus Christ were dwelling in your house, you would not ignore Him, you would not go about your business as if He were not there! Do not ignore the Presence of the Holy Spirit in your soul!  I beseech you, do not live as if you had not heard whether there were a Holy Spirit. To Him pay your constant adorations. Reverence the august Guest who has been pleased to make your body His sacred abode. Love Him, obey Him, worship Him! Take care never to impute the vain imaginings of your fancy to Him. I have seen the Spirit of God shamefully dishonored by persons – I hope they were insane – who have said that they have had this and that revealed to them. There has not, for some years, passed over my head a single week in which I have not been pestered with the revelations of hypocrites or maniacs. Semi-lunatics are very fond of coming with messages from the Lord to me

“Moderation in Alcohol Intake is a Myth” By Akin Ojumu The point of all this inaugural lecture on alcohol and thesis on the chemistry of fermentation is the fact that you can’t use Scripture to support alcohol drinking in the modern era. Unlike what we drink today, the wine, i.e., Oinos, that was generally recommended and approved for drinking in the Bible was not an alcoholic beverage because the alcoholic content was, depending on the ratio of dilution with water, anywhere from between sub-zero to 2.75 percent which, by today’s standard, does not meet the definition of an alcoholic drink (which is at least 3.2 percent alcohol). Now, some Pastors would tell you that the Bible does not teach that you shouldn’t drink wine. Well, they are right on that point. It’s quite true that the Bible does not forbid wine drinking. But to stop there and interpret that to mean the Bible supports drinking alcohol in the modern era – perhaps, say, in moderation – is a gross misunderstanding and misinte

“Wine is a Mocker, Strong Drink a Brawler” By Akin Ojumu   In everyday life of people in Bible times, the use of wine was mostly limited to syrup based non-intoxicating wine, i.e., OINOS, which is wine that was so diluted with water its intoxication capacity had been lost. In that era, strong drink, i.e., SIKERA, was reserved for, and associated with, idolatrous pagan rites. It was one of the many psychedelics used by the adherents of pagan cults to stimulate altered state of consciousness and to elevate themselves into transcendent states manifested as euphoria, trances, chants, prophesying, glossolalia (speaking in tongues), body mutilations, and engage in all kinds of sexual orgies and perversions.   “For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do – living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.” (1 Peter 4:3).   So, how do the alcoholic content in beer, modern wine, brandy, and liquor that people drink today compare to

“Lost in Translation” By Akin Ojumu In both the Old and the New Testaments, there are several words in Hebrew and Greek, respectively, that were translated into the English word, “Wine”. The most common word in the New Testament translated into wine is the Greek word OINOS. It appears 33 times in the Bible (Matthew 9:17, Mark 2:22, Luke 5:37, John 2, Ephesians 5:18, etc.). Oinos is the general word for wine in the New Testament and it is used very commonly. It simply refers to the juice of grapes. The equivalent Hebrew word for Oinos in the Old Testament is YAYIN. It is used 141 times in the Old Testament. Yayin refers to wine that is usually diluted with water; it literally means mixed wine. The other word translated wine in the New Testament is the Greek word, GLEUKOS – this is the word from which we get the word glucose. Gleukos means new wine. It is the word that was used in Acts 2:13 to describe the experience of the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost when they were said to be “fill

“Let’s Clear the Froth…Oops…the Air” By Akin Ojumu Let’s get this straight. Your attitude towards, or opinion about, alcohol consumption is not in any way shape or form a measure of your spirituality. The depth of someone’s Christian piety should not be judged by whether or not that person drinks alcohol. As a follower of Christ, your Christian spirituality is what you are; your piety is who you really are. What you do, on a daily basis as you live your Christian life for the world to see, is only a manifestation of what you are. Everything you do as a Christian – every habit, every behavior – is simply an outflow, i.e., a reflection of what you are on the inside. Very early in Christianity, the adherents of the new faith confronted the questions swirling around the permissibility of alcohol drinking by Christians. Because many of the Christian converts were heathens who came out of pagan religions where alcohol consumption was not only a social phenomenon but was also intricately wove

By Akin Ojumu As the saying goes, the eyes cannot see what the mind does not know. Knowledge tends to open the eyes of the mind. To not know is akin to walking around with a blindfold. Those who don’t know go about bound with the chains of ignorance. Knowledge is the hammer that breaks the yoke of bondage. The knowledge of the truth is the key to living free. This fact of life is attested to even by the Holy Book. In both the Old Testament (“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” Hosea 4:6) and the New Testament (“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” John 8:32), the Bible makes it clear that the lack of knowledge brings destruction, while the knowledge of the truth is what sets people free. This is particularly important when it comes to knowing the truth about what God says concerning issues pertaining to Christian living. Accurate Scriptural interpretation is the bedrock of the knowledge of the truth of God. Biblical exegesis, as it’s called, is def

“The Giants On Whose Shoulders We Stand” By Akin Ojumu In stark contrast to Peter, Paul, James, and Jude, modern day preachers are known for their propensity for flamboyance. The men of God of our time are characterized by their proclivity for arrogance. Contemporary church leaders are marked by their penchant for preening. We have people in positions of authority in the Church today who, with bloated egos, parade themselves as holy men with direct access to the Almighty God enjoyed only by a select few VIPs. These are big men of God who often measure their “Bigness” in terms of the square feet of the church building, the number of names on the church roster, how many services are held on Sundays, the size of tithe and offering dropped in the collection basket, and the fleet of private jets in their hangar. Yet, the only thing big about these men is the size of their bloated egos. In the history of the Church, few names, other than that of the Lord Jesus Himself, command as much respec

“These are the Real Big Men of God” By Akin Ojumu Stories abound of men of God throwing a fit because they were not addressed as “Pastor So and So” but were instead called by the name their parents gave them at birth. A well sought-after preacher, whose name I will not mention, once refused to preach at a church service to which he was invited as a guest minister because the host church did not pick him up from the airport in a befitting limousine and also failed to lodge him and his entourage in a 5-star hotel. Then there is the case of the gospel artist. Only a few years ago, this person was still a wet behind the ears chorus leader at the local church. Now that he has hit the big time, he thinks he is some Hollywood celebrity. The other day, the guy was invited to minister at a church pastored by someone who knew in his day of small beginning. Lo and behold, he took offense with the host pastor because the church did not provide him the “appropriate protocol” suitable for his megast

By Akin Ojumu In a Friday, September 9th column on the Cleveland website, Nancy Kelsey had the following to say about the passing of Queen Elizabeth. “While many are lamenting the death of a monarch who – though ceremonially and by virtue of pure nepotism – was the head of state for her government, I, instead stand with the Indigenous peoples around the globe, who experienced her death with simultaneous apathy and anger. She was, for many Indigenous people, such as myself, the modern face of colonization. The monarchy has reveled in the privilege of power, title and wealth resulting from lands that forces acting on its behalf have colonized over many centuries. The systems of oppression for Indigenous peoples and, more broadly, people of color that have resulted from colonization by the English, remain today.” I couldn’t agree more. To be honest with you, I’m quite ambivalent, emotionally, about the death of the British monarch. On a purely human level, I sympathize with Prince – oops!

By Akin Ojumu It’ s the silly season in Nigeria. The country is in that period when politicians twist history and their poorly paid mouthpieces say outrageous things.  In a quixotic effort to shore up the not-too-impressive profile of their geriatric principal, hungry looking BAT lackeys are crawling out of the woodworks to make a bonfire of history books and are recreating a past that existed in their own cynical imagination. Here’s the latest from the campaign of BAT, the builder of Lagos. It’s a doozy. Wole Badmus, the Executive Director of the Southwest Grand Alliance for Tinubu-Shettima 2023, went on Channels TV the other day to promote his oga. Brewing a cocktail of hyperbole laced with mendacious bombasts, the man concocted a fabulous story about why the capital of Nigeria was moved from Lagos to Abuja. According to the fabulist, Nigeria’ s government had to relocate the capital to Abuja because Lagos became uninhabitable; the city was in a state of chaos and the infrastructure