AFRICAN PLUME

“Who Touched Me?” By Akin Ojumu Spiritually hungry folks will chase after anyone who promises them spiritual nourishment. When the soul is famished, people will eat any food they are offered in the hope that it would quench their appetite. In their desperation, folks who find themselves in dire straits are open to accepting any advice from anyone. It’s often the case that when people are at their wits end, they’ll go in any direction they are told to go. Charlatans understand this about desperate people. Impostors have an uncanny ability at sniffing out spiritually hungry people. Being the wolves in sheep’s clothing that they are, they exploit the vulnerabilities of their victims. Capitalizing on their desperation, they fleece their prey for their own gain. False teachers offer spiritually hungry people food that poisons their soul. The road to which charlatans guide the spiritually desperate only leads to eternal destruction. Vulnerable people who seek succor from wolves in sheep’s cl...

By Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.  Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men. You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim ...

“No Selfie in God’s Presence” By Akin Ojumu Of all the charlatans of this world, the frequent flyers to Heaven are most to be pitied. Each time they tell stories about their trips to Heaven and the numerous occasions they’ve been ushered into the Throne Room in Heaven for an audience with God Almighty, my heart breaks for the story tellers. Much more than the indignation that rises up within me, on hearing these cock and bull stories, is the pity I feel for these spinners of fairy tales and those who fall prey to their deception. My empathy for these folks is borne out of genuine concern for their sanity. Anyone who claims they routinely travel to Heaven to pay a visit to God is suffering from self-delusion. Those who believe their urban legend must be out of their minds. Only a self-deluded person would purport to have seen God and be eager to tell the story. It takes a fool to believe in such fantastical whoppers.  Recorded in the Bible are actual stories of people who found them...

“Knees Bow in Jesus’s Name” By Akin Ojumu Apostate religious hierarchies, like all despots, seek to dominate. What power-hungry authoritarians have in common is their crave for absolute obedience and a hunger for total acquiescence on the part of those over whom they exercise control. It’s customary for them to lash out, often viciously, whenever their authority is questioned, or their opinion is challenged. Instinctively, they want to crush anyone they consider a threat to their influence and hold on power. The Jewish religious leaders at the time of Jesus were no different. In their eyes, Jesus was a demon-possessed blasphemous rebel who constituted a threat to their hold over the people. So, they schemed to discredit Him, they set traps to catch Him, and eventually, they plotted to have Him killed. Even though they were eyewitnesses to the extraordinary miracles Jesus performed, the Jewish religious establishment wouldn’t let the good Jesus was doing get in the way of their hatred f...

“Jairus and the Woman with the Issue of Blood” By Akin Ojumu Symbolism is the hallmark of the Old Testament. From Genesis to Malachi, the Book of the Law and the Prophet is rich in types and shadows of things to come. Among these types and shadows are the laws governing the clean and unclean. As symbols, these were meant to demonstrate the corrupting effect of sin. They are types and shadows of how sin stains and defiles. God established the laws of clean and unclean as a constant reminder to the people of their uncleanness and sin. Menstrual discharge is classified as a defilement under the laws of clean and unclean. Like the semen discharge, it’s a type and shadow of the defilement that sin brings upon the sinner. Not only is the woman defiled by her menstrual flow, but anyone and anything she comes in contact with is also considered defiled and unclean. Leviticus 15:19-22 “When a woman has a discharge, and the discharge in her body is blood, she shall be in her menstrual impurity fo...

“Celebrity Preachers & their Bodyguards” By Akin Ojumu Religious leaders of our day go to great lengths to shield themselves from the very people to whom they claim they have been called as ministers of the Gospel. There’s a sense you get that these people who are supposed to be shepherds prefer to keep their distance from the sheep. As soon as they attain a certain level of celebrity status, they immediately seclude themselves in fortified fortresses within gated communities. The moment they become Big Men of God” or rise to the rank of a “God’s General,” they sequester themselves in palatial mansions that are walled off with barbed wire lined tall fences and brightly lit grounds patrolled by security personnel armed to the teeth. When they venture out of their barricaded castles, it’s always in the company of gun-toting, menacing looking, bulky biceped bodyguards whose body language exude an aura that screams at you, “Steer clear! Don’t you dare come near!!” Even when these suppo...

Excerpts From the American Gospel: Christ Alone Euangelion, the Greek word for the Gospel, is taken from the good news that a runner would bring as a messenger coming to announce in the Capital that victory had been achieved on the battlefield. And everyone would cheer, it would transform the lives of everybody in the city to know that they hadn’t lost the war, they had won the war. But of course, they weren’t the ones out there in the trenches. In the same way Jesus says, “I have accomplished salvation.” He didn’t say, “Come help me save the world,” but rather, “I have accomplished it.” The Law, basically, is DO. While the Gospel, basically, is DONE. The Gospel isn’t what would Jesus DO, now go and DO that. The Gospel is what has Jesus DONE, now BELIEVE that. This distinction between the Law and the Gospel really is the most important thing to remember, and it’s one of the things that we are forgetting. The pattern of God is always making sure that we know that relationship comes befo...

“The Woman with the Issue of Blood” By Akin Ojumu Distinctively poignant and spectacularly surreal, the story of the woman with the issue of blood is the fateful encounter between a bruised and battered woman who had spent twelve years of her life battling a debilitating plague of chronic menstrual disorder and our compassionate Great Physician who has power over sicknesses and diseases. The 12-year ordeal that led this desperate woman to this point was marked with agony, anguish, rejection, and ostracization. Under the provision of the Mosaic Law, the menorrhagic woman was condemned to the fringes of society as an outcast. Everything and everyone she touched was automatically unclean, requiring sin offering and burnt offering. They avoided her like a plague so that she would not infect them with her impurity and sin. When people saw her coming at a distance, they fled in the opposite direction. Leviticus 15:25-28 “If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of h...

“Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” By Akin Ojumu Modern-day preachers have a lot in common with the false prophets in Israel who were contemporaries of Prophet Jeremiah. They are adept at building pie in the sky and proficient at painting a rosy picture of the future. Instead of telling their followers the truth and letting them know the reality of living in a fallen world, all they do is feed them with man-centered, seeker-sensitive, people-pleasing, ear-scratching, ponderous platitudes that tickle the ear, excite the mind, but leave the soul totally unchanged. Apostle Paul is nothing like the preachers of our day. He says it as it is, let the chips fall where they may. At no time did Paul ever serve ponderous platitudes for his followers to consume. What’s more important to him is to adequately prepare those under his care for the suffering and hardship that’s bound to befall them in this world. Without sugarcoating anything, he makes them understand that, as long as they are in this...

“Our Present Sufferings Don’t Compare with Our Future Glory” By Akin Ojumu As we noted last time, the aim of this commentary series is to set the record straight on popular Bible texts that are subject of abuse, misuse, and misinterpretation. The goal is to shed light on the true meaning of these well-known Bible passages by applying the principles of hermeneutics and exegesis. Using Romans 8:32 as an illustration, we demonstrated the way false teachers distort Bible texts in order to promote preconceived narratives and predetermined doctrinal positions. Romans 8:32 is a cornerstone of the prosperity gospel. It’s used as proof text to support the false belief that God has promised Believers every temporal thing they want in this world. Romans 8:32 “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? ” Upon exegetically examining Romans 8:32, however, it becomes apparent that this text does not support the idea that G...

By Akin Ojumu There are those who ask for my opinion on the reactions of some of our Christian friends to the seismic political turmoil unfolding in Washington. They ask me what I think about people they respected and trusted as fellow Believers in Christ who appear to revel at the ongoing destruction to the fabric of American society all in the Name of Christ. There in this commentary is my opinion about these individuals who profess to be lovers of God but are deliriously happy about the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, senseless destruction of governmental agencies, and the indiscriminate decapitation of the US federal workforce. There is a gaping hole, I believe, in your soul if you call yourself a Christian and you are an immigrant to this country yourself but now you do not see anything wrong in the hounding and the hunting down of undocumented immigrants all across the country. I mean hardworking people who would do any job you give them, whose only offense is that t...

“Did God Promise to Give Us All Things?” By Akin Ojumu Heretical teachings don’t exist in a vacuum; they are fruits of a poisonous tree. Erroneous teachings don’t subsist in the cosmic ether; they are the yield of a venomous harvest. These soul-wrecking fruits grow on the tree of twisted Bible texts. The life-destroying yields are nurtured in the soil of Bible passages that have been distorted beyond recognition. Given their proclivity for cliches, propensity for maxims, and penchant for bywords, modern-day Christians have fondness for certain Bible passages. Because these Bible texts form the Scriptural pillars on which their doctrinal worldview stands, they are widely popular, well-known, quite often quoted. Just as it is with everything else in the Church of our day, the vast majority of these popular Bible texts are the subjects of abuse, misuse, and misinterpretation. They are often used as proof texts to promote erroneous doctrines and push all manners of false teachings. As the ...

By Akin Ojumu A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text. Anyone can quote a Bible verse, out of context, and make a case for a particular viewpoint or doctrine. This is known as proof texting.  Proof texting is the practice of using a Bible verse or passage, which has been scrubbed of its proper context, to promote a preconceived theological notion and to push a predetermined doctrinal opinion.  Essentially, proof texting is taking a single verse as “proof” without considering the surrounding text, intended meaning, or wider biblical teachings, often leading to misinterpretations of the Scripture. This method of biblical interpretation is flawed and extremely dangerous. The vast majority of people who pastor the Churches today are stark biblical illiterates who never went to a Bible school or received formal training in theology. Even those who claim to have attended a Bible school, in nearly all cases, attended unaccredited third-rate diploma mills that provide w...