GOLDEN CALF OF MODERN-DAY CHURCH

By Akin Ojumu

All sorts of people today profess to be operating under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Purporting to be heavily anointed by God, they claim they have the mantle of apostles and prophets, and they carry themselves as though they are the fourth person of the Trinity.

Highly esteemed by their followers, and supremely venerated by their admirers, these people are seen as oracles of God. Whenever they speak, God Himself has spoken. Whatever they say, it is divine. In fearful reverence, their disciples worship the very ground upon which they walk.

So heavy is the presence of the Holy Spirit on them that there’s always a stampede whenever they get up from a seat, as miracle seekers rush to be the first to touch the empty chair in order to tap the residual anointing they might have shed while on the seat. Some of them have even gone as far as to seek anointing in the man of God’s poop.

Yet, when you shine the light of truth on the life of this god in the flesh, all you see is fluff. Strip away the outward charade and peep behind the curtain of the public façade, what you’ll find is anything but godly. His deeds do not match his words and the person he really is on the inside bears no resemblance to anyone who has the Holy Spirit living on his inside.

Nevertheless, modern-day Christians have built for themselves a mighty golden calf whom they worship as though it’s the Holy Spirit. Their rites and rituals are copied and pasted from Mount Sinai. They rise early and sacrifice burnt offerings and present fellowship offerings. Afterward they sit down to eat and drink and get up to indulge in pagan revelry.

Inebriated with the intoxicating brew of highly concentrated hyper-emotionalism, they habitually erupt into ecstatic frenzies which to them is the highest level of transcendental experience. And the wackier the exuberant displays are, the higher you climb in the transcendental totem pole.

Very often, the anointed man of God will stand in front of the audience and wave his hand across a gathered crowd who has been hypnotized to believe in the power of the demigod standing on the raised platform. As the anointed hand moves across the crowd, the people begin to fall to the ground in a metachronal rhythm of a stadium wave.

As they fall, the people will shriek and yell losing complete control of their faculties. Many go into trance-like, convulsive states hitting the ground with loud thuds aka slain in the Spirit.

Particularly important to the worship of the golden calf is for people to speak in euphoric psychobabble. With soft stirring music playing in the background, the crowd goes into a mystic, ineffable condition where they are, supposedly, lost in the spirit. The whole congregation jerks back and forth muttering ecstatic gibberish aka speaking in tongues.

Right at the center of this idolatry is the man of God, trotting and preening on the stage. He’s an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-seeing deity before whom the lowly followers bow down in worship. All eyes are trained on the supreme man of God who regales the audience with tales of mighty spiritual feats and spins fables of great spiritual exploits. As the crowd exalts and hails him, the man of God pumps them up with empty promises of extraordinary miracles.

What’s so disconcerting about all these is the sad fact that this is exactly what you find in Mystery Babylon religion. The psychobabble, the jerking, and the falling under the anointing are all syncretic practices that originated from the Tower of Babel and found in eastern mysticism.

Modesty and humility are the attributes of the Holy Spirit. The exaltation of man that’s prevalent in the modern-day Church is idolatry and not of the Holy Spirit. Wherever the Holy Spirit is in operation, Jesus is magnified and everybody else fades into the background. When the Holy Spirit is at work, you’ll see men humbled and Christ exalted.