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Showing posts from January, 2025

CHRISTIANITY ISN’T MYSTICISM (PART II)

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“Enough Already of the Hocus-Pocus Esotericism” By Akin Ojumu In His sovereignty, God does whatever He wants, whenever He wants, wherever He wants, to whomever He wants, and however He wants. As such, God is still very much in the business of doing miracles, even today.  However, you cannot cajole God or twist His arms to do your bidding. Miracles don’t happen simply because you make them happen, or because you want them to happen. They only happen when it pleases God to make them happen. Psalm 115:3 “Our God is in heaven; He does as He pleases.” Psalm 135:6 “Whatever the LORD pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.” Therefore, giving vulnerable people a false hope of miracles is a cruel thing. It’s only a heartless preacher that would sell desperate people the bill of goods of false expectations that by coming to a crusade or attending a prayer vigil, their miracle is guaranteed.  All authority has been given to Jesus, and not to anyone else. T...

CHRISTIANITY ISN’T MYSTICISM (PART I)

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“Hear Me With an Open Bible and Not an Open Mind” By Akin Ojumu This is my earnest appeal to anyone who will read this commentary. I don’t want you to listen to what I’ve got to say with an open mind. No, not at all. All I ask of you is that you listen to me with an open Bible. Like the Bereans, fact check me with the Word of God and not with the opinion of your Pastor. Acts 17:11 “Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true.” Christianity is not mysticism. There are no special breeds or an elite class of Christians who are specially endowed with the power and authority to access hidden secret knowledge of God. Biblical Christianity has no need for super apostles who will, through their dreams, visions, special revelations, and specifically prescribed oblations, acts of self-abasement, and asceticism, reveal to the rest of us the agenda of God....

FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE US SATAN

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By Akin Ojumu Theological errors occur in degrees, some are more bent than others. All flawed doctrines are not made equal, there are some more egregious than others. In the annals of faulty theologies and erroneous doctrines, few compare to this one by Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa. For those who may not have heard about him, Emmanuel Makandiwa is a Zimbabwean televangelist, prophet, pastor, and businessman. He is the founder of the United Family International Church, a nondenominational megachurch network headquartered in Harare, Zimbabwe, and with branches in Botswana, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Australia and Zambia. A few years ago, Makandiwa, who describes himself as “a man whom God has endowed with a unique ministry, a unique voice, a unique character,” decided he was going to reach into his deep well of uniqueness to do a teaching series on demons. To set the stage for the demon teaching, he pulled out a nugget of divine revelation from his wealth of divine knowledge. The pr...

SIGHT & SOUND OF FALSE TEACHERS (PART VI)

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“False Teachers Tasted Christ and Spat Him Out” By Akin Ojumu Duping delight is the thrill, excitement, and exhilaration that con artists experience while perpetrating their con. Almost always, people who experience duping delight want to share their accomplishments with others in order to seek admiration. At the same time, they also feel deep contempt for the victims of their deception. Schadenfreude, another personality disorder quite similar to duping delight, is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another. Like the con artists, false teachers experience duping delight and schadenfreude. They all enjoy a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction for being able to perpetrate their deception and then successfully get away with it. The longer they carry out their con and not get caught, the greater is the degree of contempt they have for their victims and the more profound ...

SIGHT & SOUND OF FALSE TEACHERS (PART V)

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“False Teachers are Slaves to their Cravings” By Akin Ojumu Time and truth go hand in hand. In the fullness of time, the truth will prevail. No matter how cunning false teachers are at hiding their true nature and regardless of how crafty they are at concealing their real identity, in God’s own time, the mask will be yanked off, and the shysters will be revealed for who they really are.  But until such a time when the charlatans and con artists in the Church are unmasked, it’s imperative that those who know the truth continue to blow the trumpet. While we wait for God to uncover the deceivers who have burrowed themselves deep within the Body of Christ, those to whom God has granted the grace to be able to tell truth from error must never cease to sound the alarm. In his second epistle to the Believers who were exiles in the Asia Minor province of the Roman Empire, Apostle Peter did just that. He blew the trumpet and sounded the alarm on false teachers who had infiltrated the congre...

MASS DEPORTATION ORDER STRIKES FEAR AMONG IMMIGRANTS

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By Akin Ojumu Barely a week into the new administration, the Presidential Executive Order authoring mass deportation of undocumented immigrants from the United States is striking fear across immigrant communities in the country. Everyone, everywhere, regardless of immigration status, is terrified of the extent of this order and how far reaching it would go. There are stories of people getting rounded up from schools, grocery stores, workplaces, and even places of worship. For the undocumented immigrants, nowhere is safe. Like an invading foreign army, agents from the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the FBI, DEA, and US Marshalls are all over the immigrant communities looking for people who have been pegged for mass deportation. Many immigrants have stopped going to work or school all together. They ’ ve gone into hiding to escape the clutches of the immigrant body snatchers. Consequently, leaders in the immigrant communities are warning their people to be on high alert. The...

WHAT’S GOING ON WITH PASTOR KUMUYI?

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By Akin Ojumu When it comes to biblical fidelity and theological purity, there are only a few preachers in Nigeria that have my respect. In fact, I can count on my fingers Nigerian preachers who I believe are qualified to be a shepherd over the flock of God if based solely on biblical standard.  Pastor William F. Kumuyi is one of the few. While I do not agree with many of the doctrinal positions of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry, nonetheless, I respect the pastor for his authenticity and commitment to righteous living. Unlike the vast majority of preachers in Nigeria today, Pastor Kumuyi doesn’t come across to me as someone who sees the work of ministry as a means of gain. He is not in the business of building a temporal empire that his children would inherit.  That preamble is necessitated by what I’m about to say. I want those who would read this to understand that this commentary is not penned out of any malicious intent. Pastor Kumuyi has not offended me, and I most de...

SIGHT & SOUND OF FALSE TEACHERS (PART IV)

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“There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute”  By Akin Ojumu It was Martin Luther, the man who lit the match that sparked the fire of the Protestant Reformation of 1517, who once said:  “For, where God built a Church, there the devil would also build a chapel.” Guess what? The Devil’s chapel is almost always bigger. It is packed with impostors who teach myths and all manners of ear-scratching, people-pleasing, seeker-friendly ponderous platitudes all dressed up as Christian Gospel. The hollowness of this sort of wishy-washy adulterated gospel is manifested in the namby-pamby Christianity that pervades the Church landscape today. Just like conspiracy theorists, false teachers exploit people’s need for certainty in uncertain times. They capitalize on the human tendency to believe instead of to disbelieve as an initial reaction. And they take advantage of people’s tendency towards confirmation bias, i.e., people ’ s tendency to see evidence that support their preconception. False teachers...

SIGHT & SOUND OF FALSE TEACHERS (PART III)

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“False Teachers are Waterless Clouds”  By Akin Ojumu Pop culture tells us that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. If you are unaware of something, they claim, it cannot negatively affect you or cause you harm. They even have a catchy phrase for it, “Ignorance is bliss.”  Now, I don’t know about you, personally, I really don’t see the bliss in not knowing. Intentional cluelessness, as a lifestyle, is a rather reckless way to live in my view. Such an approach to life is not any different from someone who ventures into a six-lane highway while blindfolded. You don ’ t have to be a prophet to know how that ’ s going to turn out. Sadly, this glamorization of cluelessness has been taken to an art form among Church folks. When it comes to discerning between preachers who teach sound doctrine and impostors who propagate error, there are too many Christians who play dumb. They feign ignorance on making a judgment call on sound theology and flawed theology. As far as they are concerned...

SIGHT & SOUND OF FALSE TEACHERS (PART II)

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“The Presumptuousness of Demon Slayers” By Akin Ojumu This commentary is a post-mortem of false teachers. Our proof text is the second letter of Peter, which was written to remind Christians who were under severe persecution by Caesar Nero, who was the Roman Emperor at this time. These Christians had fled their homeland, and they were now in the diaspora scattered all over Asia Minor. In his first letter to these persecuted Christians, Peter had written to encourage them to rejoice in the living hope of eternal glory that awaits them at the end of the age when Christ, their Lord, shall return. 1 Peter 1:3-6 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last ti...

PASTOR KUMUYI’S COMING TO AMERICA

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By Akin Ojumu Giddy does not even begin to describe how members of the Deeper Life Church feel right now. The vanguards of holiness in Nigeria are unnaturally ecstatic. These, otherwise, laconic individuals are in an atypical state of euphoria. And what exactly is the cause of their excitement? Oh well, they believe their Daddy in the Lord came to Washington to attend President Donald John Trump’s inauguration to win souls for Christ. As much as I hate it to burst their inflated bubble of elation, I have no choice but to rain on this boisterous parade to set the record straight. Just so it’s clear, Pastor Kumuyi was not invited to and neither did he attend Donald Trump’s inauguration. What the elderly clergy participated in was one out of hundreds of satellite events that individuals and entities organized in the days leading up to the actual inauguration of the new president.  Those who are conversant with American politics know that organizing satellite inauguration events is a W...

SIGHT & SOUND OF FALSE TEACHERS (PART I)

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“False Teachers Are Highfalutin Empty Vessels” By Akin Ojumu By the time Apostle Peter writes his second Epistle to the Christians in the diaspora, he is already imprisoned in Rome by the emperor Nero who, at this time, is inflicting severe persecution on the Christians. Realizing the end is near and that he’d soon be executed, he decides to write another letter to the believers after the first one he had written to them earlier. This second letter is to confirm what they had been taught about the Lord Jesus. In his first letter, Peter had reassured the suffering Christians, going through persecution under Emperor Nero, about the imminent return of Christ. Now because Christ hasn’t returned, imminently, as promised by Peter in his first letter, false teachers in the Church start to teach the people that Jesus isn’t coming back after all.  Since Christ isn ’ t returning, say the false teachers, there’s not going to be any future repercussions for anyone living immorally. Knowing the...