HOT CROSS BUNS FROM MY BOOKSHELF

By Akin Ojumu

I have a bakery at home. From it comes mouth-watering delicious pastries enriched with sweet and savory ingredients. Among the various assortments of richly fattening delicacies churned out of the hot oven you’ll find chin-chin, puff-puff, hot cross buns, hot Agege bread, scotch egg, egg roll, fish roll, fish pie, meat pie, doughnuts, and so much more.

Those of you already drooling at the mere mention of hot Agege bread, I’d have to disappoint you. My bakery is my bookshelf. It’s where I indulge myself with sugar-coated mental puff-puff and honey-crusted spiritual doughnuts. From there, I clog the arteries of my mind with calories of rich spiritual knowledge. These appetizing mental pastries are my vice.

There’s no way a man would consume that amount of mental calories and not observe a noticeable difference in the waistline of their mind. Each time I climb on the weighing scale of spiritual understanding, it tells me that I have gained a fraction of knowledge since last time.

To keep the bakery real cooking, I keep looking for new recipes to add to the menu. One of the recipes recently added is one titled “The Seduction of Christianity.” Written by Dave Hunt and T.A. McMahon and published in 1985, the book is a prescient analysis of the invasion of the church by New Age philosophies and how church folks have wittingly and unwittingly fallen for the seduction of sorcery. The frontal assault that the authors feared the Church was starting to experience forty years ago has now become a full-blown onslaught.

New Age ideas such as psychotherapy, visualization, meditation, positive confession, positive/possibility thinking, hypnosis, holistic medicine, self-improvement strategies, success/motivational methodologies are now firmly entrenched within the Christian Church. Pastors who are commanded to preach the whole counsel of God from the Bible now devote themselves to teaching and promoting Eastern mysticism.

Intent on taking control of their lives and becoming the captain of the ship of their destinies, undiscerning Christians take the bait of Satan hook, line, and sinker. Believing they could become like God, they embrace sorcery and learn the tricks of how to manipulate and shape reality using various mind-over-matter techniques of positive mental attitude, positive/possibility thinking, and positive confession. 

Today, the Church has adopted the “mind power” concept of the New Age and rechristened it as faith. Similarly, the impersonal “Force” of the occult and transcendental metaphysics movement is now naively accepted by the vast majority of church folks as their “God.” Also, it’s now common for Christians to confuse the “mind-power” of psychics with the “power of the Holy Spirit.” This is the reason why the most common manifestation of this new unholy spirit is people falling, rapturous singing, ecstatic dancing, gibberish speaking (aka “speaking in tongues”), uncontrollable shaking, wild jerking, and writhing or lying dead-still on the floor.

The Church of our day no longer teaches humility, carrying the cross, enduring suffering, or contentment in poverty. Instead, wealth and success are the name of the game. Everybody wants to be rich and being poor is considered old fashioned. The Biblical command that we should esteem other greater than ourselves has been jettisoned for self-esteem.

Philippians 2:3

“Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.”

Whereas the Bible tells us that pride is a human problem, modern-day preachers now tell us that the people who wrote the Bible got it totally wrong. As far as they are concerned, the human problem is not pride, rather is the poor self-image. In their minds, what really bedevils humanity is the fact that we think too lowly of ourselves and not the other way round. Low-self-esteem and not high-esteem, is the real issue, they say.

Success, self-improvement, and self-motivation are so popular in the Church today that a whole cottage industry has been built around it. There are pastors who prefer to be known as life coach, global speaker, leadership experts, and entrepreneurial gurus than being called pastors. 

The following individuals are just a sample of the current trend:

SAM ADEYEMI

A global speaker, strategic leadership expert and author, who is focused on shifting people’s mindsets so they can see possibilities and become those possibilities.

POJU OYEMADE

Founder of The Covenant Nation, convener of events like The Platform, and a bridge-builder connecting professionals and believers.

OLUMIDE EMMANUEL

A widely celebrated Common Sense Guru, transformational leader, wealth coach, prolific author, global speaker, and kingdom influencer. His impact transcends industries – from ministry and leadership development to business, entrepreneurship, and philanthropy – all driven by a deep passion for empowerment, excellence, and legacy-building. 

GODMAN AKINLABI

A sought-after speaker, consultant, and mentor to individuals, organizations, and governments across the globe with a passion for helping people discover their purpose and develop their leadership potential. As a skilled coach, a seasoned trainer, and an internationally recognized leadership expert, he provides the scaffolding and the tools to build leadership skills brick by brick.

To the reader of this commentary, here are a few questions you must ponder upon:

1) Why is it so difficult for self-professing Christians to discern truth from error? 

2) How come believers in Christ are so brazenly receptive to doctrines of demons dressed up as sound doctrines? 

3) What makes it so difficult for church folks to identify the wolves in sheep’s clothing who are poisoning the body of Christ with satanic lies? 

4) Why have so many Christians embraced beliefs and practices with origins in sorcery and have integrated this evil into Christian worship?

5) What makes the mind-over-matter techniques of new age mysticism so alluring to Christians?

6) When and how did positive/possibility thinking, positive speaking, positive visualization find root deep within the church?

7) How did Napoleon Hill, a satanist and an occultist who got his ideas from disembodied spirit entities, become an inspiration and role model for so many Christians?

If you want to know the answers to the above questions, I highly recommend you read The Seduction of Christianity. Those interested in understanding the battle we are in and who want to learn about how the Church fell for the seduction of Satan you must get this book. Your mind is going to be blown when you realize that what many call Christianity today is a counterfeit religion that bears no resemblance to the true Christian faith of the Bible.