CHURCH & ITS SNAKE OIL SALESMEN

By Akin Ojumu

Here we go again. Another silly season of spurious predictions is upon us. Once again, the Church suckers are lining up, they are being made ready for the annual slaughter. Even with their notorious track record of being widely off the mark, the fortune tellers continue to capture the imagination of simple-minded Church folks.

Having abandoned sound reasoning, gullible people continue to succumb to fascinating fantasies and fantastic fairy tales. Instead of being encumbered with sound mental judgment, the consumers of hocus-pocus conjuring choose to surrender themselves to wishy-washy wishful thinking.

O foolish Church goers! Who has bewitched you? Haven’t you had enough? When are you going to wisen up, summon up courage, and tune out the presumptuous soothsayers and their supercilious soothsayings? Do you not realize that it’s in your best interest to pay attention to the admonition of Paul to the Christians at Colossae?

Colossians 2:18-19

“Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.”

If the wellbeing of your soul matters to you, you will make up your mind to stop patronizing the esoteric General Overseers who boast of having a special relationship with God that grants them VIP access to the presence of God that no one else enjoys but themselves. 

These are the deceivers who are fond of keeping their deceived followers captive by statements such as: 

“Daddy asks me to tell you so, so, and so…”

You must mark and avoid General Overseers who tell you that God is a frequent tea-time guest at their homes where he comes to drink tea with themselves and their wives. Such individuals have traded the true Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ for the myth and mysticism of the Gnostics. They are puffed up without reason by their sensuous minds. These are agents of Satan sent to oversee your spiritual ruin.

1 Corinthians 4:6-7

“I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”

If making heaven is indeed the most important thing in your life, you will stop frequenting the frequent-flying self-appointed apostles who travel to heaven on a routine basis. You will flee from apostles who purportedly go on regular 30-day visits to heaven to receive lectures on the deep things of God. Such people are deluded in their minds. These are the impostors who have secretly crept into the Church to corrupt the true Gospel with their demon-spurned ideas.

Jude 1:4

“For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

Jude 1:10-13

“These are…waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.”

If you really fear the LORD, you will stop following prophets who are nothing but fortune tellers who bewitch their adoring fans with false assertions of special insights into the plans and purposes of God that their adherents don’t have and can’t have.

You must have nothing to do with Prophets who profess to make prophetic declarations or utterances in the name of God outside of what is written in the Bible. Such individuals are presumptuous blasphemers of the Word of God. In their greed, they exploit the biblically-illiterates with their carefully fabricated stories.

2 Peter 2:1-3

“But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.”

If you really want to grow in your faith and in the knowledge of God, you will turn back from Pastors who regale the congregation with fantastical tales about angelic encounters. You will never entrust the care of your soul to wolves in sheep’s clothing who inundate the audience with claims of supernatural occurrences. 

Pastors who boast of miraculous power and divine revelation which they attribute to visiting angels have forsaken the Gospel and have wandered off into myth. Do not partake in their demonic deception.

2 Timothy 4:3-4

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

Evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. Let that not be your testimony.