AFRICAN PLUME

By Akin Ojumu Bethel Church is a Redding, California-based neo-charismatic megachurch best known for its music labels i.e., Bethel Music and Jesus Culture. These two musical groups have released several songs which have topped the Christian music charts. Bethel Music has many songs with tens of millions of views on YouTube. Three of them – Reckless Love, No Longer Slaves, and Way Maker – have garnered over 100 million views so far. Without Bethel Music and Jesus Church, Bethel Church would have been just another Church. The global reach and influence of the Church is a direct result of the popularity of its music labels around the globe.  Besides its music though, Bethel Church is also known for engaging in and promoting certain practices in the Church in the name of Christianity that range from the bizarre to the downright occultic. Take for instance the case of the 2-year-old daughter of one of their singers and music writers who died suddenly about 3 years ago. The Church leader...

By Akin Ojumu So, here is this lady in this video raging and ranting against the LGBTQ agenda. Yet, with her wanton eyes, the prancing and skipping as she goes, with lips painted blinding red, the bandana on her head and the jiggling bracelets on her wrists, I can’t help but ask, “What credibility has this person got to push morality on anyone?” Without credibility, our words mean nothing. There’s nothing about this lady that speaks morality to me. All I see is another bitter culture warrior looking to fan the flame of culture outrage among her social media followers.  If there ever was a case of good message, questionable messenger, this is it. She claims Target stores are pushing homosexual agenda on little babies. Which begs the question, “Do newborn babies and children go to the stores to do their own shopping?” If Target has LGBTQ-themed baby items on display, is it the babies that come to buy them? That this woman is a culture warrior is confirmed by her call to action. What ...

 

 

By Akin Ojumu Apart from God, man is an empty soul devoid of the very essence of life. The heart of a fallen man is a place of severe agony, saturated with guilt and suffused with anguish.  To assuage the pangs of guilt boiling on his inside, fallen humanity invents a set of lies. These lies are the white noise he uses to mute the raging storm in his sinful soul. With these lies, a sinful man attempts to mask the agony in his vacant soul. Grouped together, these lies fall into one of five different categories. And they are: 1. Life is Random  Time and chance are the bane of mankind. Happenstance is the defining characteristic of life. Man is a product of evolutionary chance and an unintended consequence of a galactic Big Bang. There’s no creator, no divine purpose, and no eternal destiny.  Nobody puts you here and you are accountable to no one. Sin is an illusion, and there are no consequences for sinful deeds. You are free to do whatever it is that makes you feel go...

By Akin Ojumu Broadly speaking, the world is made up of two categories of people. There are the Saints and the Ain’ts. These are the redeemed and the unredeemed, the saved and the lost. Whether you like it or not, everybody falls into either one of these two categories. The ultimate eternal destiny of all mankind depends on which of the two classes a man belongs. 1. The Ain’ts When you look at the Ain’ts, you’d find there are two kinds. The first are the irreligious Ain’ts (atheists, agnostics, etc.) who believe that God either doesn’t exist or that His existence is unknowable. These are people who are gods unto themselves.  Then there are the religious Ain’ts who claim to believe in a god, but it’s a god that can only be known through human effort. To reach this god requires human toil and sweat. 1.1. Irreligious Ain’ts These are those who believe there’s no God, no heaven, and no hell. Therefore, there’s no need for God’s favor or salvation. Sin, in their view, is non-existence; ...

“True Living is in Giving” By Akin Ojumu Our world is that of sinful cravings and selfish desires. On a daily basis, we wrestle within ourselves against our inner desire to acquire anything and everything that impinges upon our senses. What we see and hear we want to own, and what we smell, taste, and touch we want to consume.  Life for many has become a gluttonous feeding of their riotous rapaciousness. The more we have, the more our basal urges propel us to want to have. Driven by pure greed, there are those who have sold their soul in exchange for worldly goods. Many have taken to cunning craftiness and shifty subterfuge in order to attain the riches of this world. Confusing wealth for worth, the desire to be somebody in the eyes of an admiring world has driven many to unthinkable deeds. Inordinate greed has become a socially acceptable human trait. Human worth is weighed on the scale of the preponderance of earthly goods. The life of a man is measured in terms of the abundance ...

“The Haves & Have Nots” By Akin Ojumu When Adam, the progenitor of all mankind, was formed from the dust of the ground, the whole earth was his possession. The first man held the key to the treasures of the entire world. With 100 percent ownership of the planet, his was the full controlling interest in the asset of the universe. The land, the sea, the air, and everything in them was his.  From the prime estate of pleasure, the Garden of Eden, the master of the universe managed his immeasurable net worth spread across the whole earth. So blessed was Adam that all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air were brought to him to see what he would name them. Whatever he called each living creature, that was its name; Adam named the cattle, named the birds of the air, named the wild animals, he christened them all because he was the lord of the earth. Adam and Eve were blessed beyond measure. That was the case until a fateful encounter with the devil. They were set for l...

“ Who Wants to be a Billionaire?” By Akin Ojumu Forbes Magazine is famous for its eponymous lists, the Forbes Lists. Each year, the business periodical publishes various world rankings in categories such as sport, entertainment, political power, and wealth. The Forbes Lists chronicle, among other things, the World’s Highest-Paid Athletes, the World’s Highest-Paid Entertainers, and the World’s Most Powerful People. Each list is a Mount Rushmore of vainglory, and the catalogs are a golden statue of vanity. The most reputable of these compendia of bloated egos is the List of the World’s Billionaires. To appear on the List of World’s Billionaires, you must be mega wealthy. For anyone to get on this exclusive list of the ultrarich, such an individual must have a net worth that runs in the billions, determined by real time estimates of the wealth and assets of the individual, and a nest egg that is sky high. Because of the prestige this directory of hubris confers, many go to great lengths t...

By Akin Ojumu This is David E. Taylor. Over the years, he has gone by many titles which have evolved, getting progressively wackier with each new one. First, he was a prophet. Then he became an apostle. He has also called himself a king and emperor. Lately, he has come up with a new one. He’s now the pope.  In his telling, it was God who gave him the power to become the pope. One day, Jesus appeared to him, and suddenly he realized he is now the pope. He is the pontiff, and he doesn’t need a robe to be one, for God Himself has chosen him to hold the highest office of the preacher in the world. As the supreme head of all clergies in the world, his word must be obeyed. To disobey him is to disrespect the highest spiritual office in the land. Now, you can’t hear what this charlatan has to say about himself and not come to the conclusion that some kind of madness has taken over the Body of Christ. I say that because David E. Taylor is part of a larger pattern. He is a symptom of a dise...

By Akin Ojumu Ever since Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together to cover up the guilt and shame of their sin, mankind has learned to do the exact same thing throughout the ages. Nowadays, people go to great lengths to tamp down the agony and turmoil of the soul that stem from their iniquitous ways of life. In these contemporary times, instead of actual “fig leaves,” transgressors often take to alcohol, intoxicants, and other proclivities to dull the pain of sin. Just as the fig leave strategy failed Adam and Eve, so are the modern-day attempts to kill the terror of the soul that arises as a result of sins. Sooner or later, the numbing effects of the alcohol and intoxicants wear off, and then the anguish that emanates from sinful behaviors roars back with vengeance. Regardless of what man does, the torment of sin cannot be quenched. Notwithstanding the remedy, the torture that flows from iniquity continues unabated. Yet, none of these has stopped reprobate minds from trying to suppress ...

By Akin Ojumu For many years many in the Church were fooled by Kirk Franklin ’ s professed Christianity. As much as I hate to admit it, I was one of the millions of believers who were duped into believing the guy was  born again. In our haste to embrace the man as a contemporary Gospel artist whose style of music is a breath of fresh air from the dull and stale style of Gospel music we were raised with, we all were lured into the bait of Kirk Franklin ’s  “sufe ntaka” modern-day Gospel music i.e., his up-tempo so-called radical music. Well, after his “Lion and the Lamb will bow down to the goat” debacle, his willingness to sacrifice the Gospel message on the altar of worldly acceptance, and  his recent penchant for wearing pink lipsticks and female attire,  there’s no doubt in my mind that Kirk Franklin is not and never has been a Christian musician. The guy is just another fame-obsessed and mammon-possessed gifted singer who has carved out Gospel music as a money-ma...

By Akin Ojumu Privilege has its privileges. Being a true follower of Christ comes with a benefit package that no Fortune 500 company with the highest valued blue-chip stocks can offer. And here are a few of them. Adoption into God’s Family First and foremost, the day you come to Christ is the day you become adopted into God’s family; a closely knit family consisting of only those whom God Himself has personally chosen even before the foundation of the world. As a member of God’s elect, the Creator of all things becomes your Father, and you, His child.  Beneficiary of a Living Hope As a child of God, you become a rightful heir of an imperishable, undefiled, and unfading inheritance reserved for you in Heaven. When you get born again, you become a beneficiary of a living hope that the world longed for but never had. Divine Fortification Also, when you accept Christ, you enjoy the benefit of having your entire life garrisoned, i.e., come under the Divine Protective Services, by God's ...

By Akin Ojumu Five people, including an 8-year-old boy, were murdered, execution style, by an AR-15 wielding drunk maniac in Texas last Sunday. These were innocent souls who were in their own home and minding their own business. Their only crime was for the misfortune of being next door neighbors to a man possessed of evil and armed with a military-style assault rifle. As the Governor of the State, you’d expect compassion, empathy, and kindness to be shown to the family of the victims. Instead, Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, prioritized political expediency over human decency. The Conservative Christian chose to dehumanize the victims rather than sympathize with them.  In a statement posted on Abbott’s official twitter handle, the Republican Governor announced a reward for information regarding the shooter. Then, he called attention to the immigration status of the shooting victims. “I’ve announced a $50K reward for info on the criminal who killed 5 illegal immigrants Friday. ...