AFRICAN PLUME

“Humiliation of Joseph & Jesus” By Akin Ojumu Anonymity is my natural proclivity. My comfort zone is invisibility and obscurity. Unlike a lot of people who derive great pleasure and fulfillment in visibility and prominence, being seen, being heard, and being known, make me queasy and uneasy.  Whenever I find myself in the midst of a crowd, especially a crowd of people I don't consider close friends, I feel unsettled, and panic attacks set in. The feeling I get in such circumstances is the same feeling a fish gets when it’s out of water. I say all that so that the readers of my writings would understand that I find no pleasure pushing out these commentaries. Putting myself out there, by way of my writings, is, to me, tooth extraction without local anesthesia. For me to publicly and openly express my views on sensitive and controversial subjects, like religious doctrines and politics, like I do in my essays, is completely out of character. This is especially true owing to the fac...

“Baker, Cupbearer, and Two Thieves on the Cross” By Akin Ojumu Right from its inception, Christianity has always had to stave off attacks from the enemies of God. From powerful emperors and mighty rulers of nations to the lowliest of the low and the scum of the earth, the adversaries of the faith come in all shapes and sizes. One of the earliest archenemies of the Church was a man by the name, Celsus, a Greek philosopher in the 2nd Century. In 178 A.D., Celsus wrote a treatise titled, The True Word, in which he mounted malicious and loathsome verbal attacks against Christianity with the intention of discrediting the faith. Celsus, in his obnoxious letter, painted an unflattering portrait of the Believers.  He described Christians as being constituted by a bunch of uncultured, uncivilized, and unlearned buffoons. “Let no cultured person draw near. None wise and none sensible. For all that kind of thing we count evil. But if any man is ignorant, if any man is wanting in sense and cul...

“Baker, Cupbearer, & Redemption” By Akin Ojumu In his first letter to the Church at Corinth, Apostle Paul thought it was necessary to remind the recalcitrant Believers of the troubled assembly of the message he preached to them in the eighteen months he was in their midst. 1 Corinthians 2:1- “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Throughout the time he spent establishing the Corinthian Church, Paul’s message was Christ and Him crucified, and nothing else. Paul didn’t preach human philosophy which was in vogue at this time. He didn’t engage in the use of rhetoric, an oratory device preachers and philosophers of this period were known to employ to promote themselves in order to gain popularity, attract huge following, and amass great wealth.  As far as the cultured Greek and the pious Jew were concerned, the Gospel messag...

“Joseph, Baker, Cupbearer, and the Lord’s Supper” By Akin Ojumu In this exciting expedition through Scriptures, we’ve been able to discover up to twenty-two different connections between Joseph and Jesus. Along the way, we find how Joseph’s being one among twelve brothers is similar to Jesus and twelve disciples. We see Joseph, who is Jesus’s biological father namesake, hated by his own brothers because of the love his father had for him the same way Jesus incurred the wrath and hatred of the Jews because He calls YAHWEH His Father. Likewise, just as Joseph was taken to Egypt in order to effectuate the salvation of his family, Jesus, as a baby, was taken to Egypt for safety in order that God’s redemptive plan would not be prematurely aborted.  What’s more, Joseph’s brothers conspired to kill him, a parallel to the plot by the Jews to kill Jesus. We also see that Judah, Joseph’s brother, betrayed Joseph by concocting the scheme to sell Joseph to slavery for twenty pieces of silver. ...

“Joseph and Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness” By Akin Ojumu Repeatedly in this commentary series, the point has been stressed that the entire Scriptures are about Christ. For the most part, stories, events, and characters in the Old Testament are simply types and shadows that point people to future events that would culminate in the Person and life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Earlier in the commentary, we did allude to the fact that of all the Old Testament patriarchs, the man Joseph is one whose life, by far, most parallels that of Christ. When you take a bird’s eye view of Joseph’s life story, what you see is a beloved son who basked in the glory and splendor of his father, lived a cherished and sheltered life, whose life was subsequently upended when he was sold as a slave to a foreign land where false witness was brought against him that landed him in prison, but who later on experienced a change in fortune when he was restored to glory, exalted to the second highest office in the lan...

“On the Side of Truth” By Akin Ojumu We are at the End of the Age. The End Times are upon us. Mankind is on a collision course with destiny. As the days turn into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years, we all are witnesses to, as well as characters in, the unfolding drama set in motion even before the foundation of the world. Deception and dissimulation, we’ve been warned, will be defining features of this period of human history. This epoch, the Scriptures warn, will be marked by duplicity and dissembling. Knowing the end is near, Satan and the forces aligned with him will let loose a barrage of dissimulation to lead many astray. Matthew 24:3-5 “As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.”...

“Types and Symbols are Breadcrumbs Leading to Christ” By Akin Ojumu Typology, aka symbolism, is the use of symbols or imageries to communicate ideas. Within the context of theology, types and symbols refer to Old Testament pictures that point to Christ and His work of redemption. A good example of types and symbols is the bronze serpent that God directed Moses to set on a pole as an antidote to the bites suffered by the children of Israel from the fiery serpents the LORD had sent among the people as punishment for their rebellion. Anyone bitten by the fiery serpent who looked up on the serpent would live. Numbers 21:6-9 “Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set ...

“The Two Josephs” By Akin Ojumu It’s another Sunday, the Day of the Lord, as it’s popularly known. All roads, packed with bumper-to-bumper traffic, lead to the various places where God is supposedly worshipped by people who are purportedly God followers. On this holy day, the masses of souls who flock to the houses of worship are an odd mixture. On the one hand are spiritually hungry souls looking to be fed with healthy spiritual food. Then there are the spiritual tourists looking to have their itching ears tickled with ponderous platitudes.  Due to the sad reality that the spiritual tourists in attendance in these places often outnumber the spiritually hungry by a factor of 9 to 1, the presiding preachers feel compelled by the laws of demand and supply to serve the audience meticulously garnished ear-scratching sermons which are of highest demand. There’s hardly any Church you go to today where the sermon wouldn’t be everything but the true Gospel. You are going to hear the preach...

“Jacob & Mary Kept these Sayings in Mind” By Akin Ojumu Preachers who twist Bible stories to make them all about themselves and their audience engage in what’s described as Narcigesis. This is a word coined from Narcissism (i.e., self-absorption and an overinflated sense of self-importance) and Eisegesis (i.e., to read one ’ s opinion into a Bible passage). Narcigesis, therefore, is when people read themselves into a Bible passage and make themselves the hero of the story. Instead of a God-centered view of Scripture that’s focused solely on Christ and His work, which is what actually edifies, these preachers inflame the sinful passions of their listeners with man-centered, seeker-sensitive, people-pleasing, ear-scratching ponderous platitudes that tickle the ears but leave the soul unscathed.  Invariably, these folks turn the Bible into just another self-help book to be used to teach eager and willing audiences New Age concepts such as self-realization, self-actualization, self...

“In Joseph We See God’s Redemptive Plan” By Akin Ojumu I’d probably be a multi-millionaire by now, if I saved up a dime every time I heard a preacher use the story of Joseph to sermonize on how people should have God-sized dreams and not share their dreams with people. Enough ink has been spilled to turn the Atlantic Ocean black in the number of books based on Joseph’s dreams that have been written to teach the importance of dreams, and the roles dream helpers and dream killers play in the actualization of dreams. This commentary aims to redirect people back to the true essence of Scriptures. Using the story of Joseph as illustration, we hope to show the reader that Christ is the center of Scriptures. The Bible is an autobiographical compendium of the prophecies that spoke of His coming, the Gospels that tell us about His life, ministry, and death, resurrection, and ascension, and the Epistles that show us how to live to His glory. A thorough exegetical study of the story of Joseph wil...