When you make God out to be different from who he actually is,
he is bound to disappoint. Christians are losing faith in God every day
because preachers are misrepresenting him. And God is not obligated to
live up to the expectations that preachers have set him up to. That’s
why many churches and preachers and theologians have been inadvertent
agents of the devil; not because they necessarily planned for it that
way but because they have presented their distorted version of who God
is to Christians.
Some prominent preachers I know will call Christians, traitors
or weaklings, who have been disappointed by God not living up to their
expectations (expectations often set by these same charismatic,
tongue-talking, sleek used car salesman type pastors). As a result,
people begin to doubt themselves and their faith because they don’t get
the same results that these men of God claimed that God would give them.
Misdirection is the central secret of all magic. It is a form
of deception in which the attention of an audience is focused on one
thing in order to distract its attention from another. When preachers
teach you that a particular way is the will of God while they take
advantage of you in some form, you have fallen victim to misdirection.
Let us examine this thesis further. Have you come across Christian
programs like "Give me a husband or I die” or “Anointing for Financial
Breakthrough”. There are a plethora of conferences, seminars and books
that present topics like these daily, in one form or the other and in
your face all across Nigeria. Making christians feel like they are
somehow inadequate because they are not married or that they must not
have faith because they are not rich is creating a lot of problems and
breeding unrealistic expectations from the God of the Bible. Jesus
talked about those who were born Eunuchs, those who were made Eunuchs
and those who chose to live their lives like Eunuchs for the sake of the
Kingdom. Paul suggested that Christians should be unmarried like him.
Christians marrying out of church pressure are a major contribution to
the growing dissatisfaction, separation and divorce in Christian
marriages. Concerning money, Jesus said, “Be careful to guard against
all forms of greed, because even if someone is rich, his life does not
consist in what he owns.” Apostle Paul said, “I know what it is to be in
need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret
of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry,
whether living in plenty or in want”. These are outdated messages in
the church that have been updated by new ostensibly biblical doctrines.
These seemly innocent doctrines work to the advantage of
preachers by creating an itch that only they are positioned to scratch.
So they make Christians believe that God wants them to be instant
millionaires or that He will make them an instant success in their field
or some other blessing. So by taping into their listener's greed and
showing that God will satisfy it, pastors make themselves the
“drug-dealers" of God’s blessing. So when asked to give sacrificially,
church people give but not for the sake of the Kingdom. How many modern
day Nigerian Pentecostal Charismatic Christians would give sacrificially
if the only reward was that someone else would give their lives to
Christ. Few really care about other people getting saved anymore, but
they give so that God can bless them. Some Christians will go as far as
to borrow to give while being egged on by their preacher, brainwashed
that somehow if the man of God has spoken the blessing, God has spoken
it. Cultivating unrealistic expectations and inspiring false hope
through testimonies while fleecing the congregation on a weekly basis in
the name of God, preachers have enriched themselves immensely. The New
Pentecostal Charismatic christian is no less brainwashed than a Boko
Haram terrorist who believes he’s going to get 70 virgins in heaven
after taking theirs and other innocent lives.
Christianity today is so much about personal desire. And when
God doesn’t answer the prayers of brainwashed church goers, they resort
to lying, stealing and cheating to look the part, living hypocritical
lives so that they appear like they are living up to the expectations
taught by their pastors. Pastors and born again christians in Nigeria
have become some of the worst people to do business with. After scamming
you, they would come to Church to give testimonies. True story: a
friend of mine, Benjamin, was at a church convention in Enugu. There,
Benjamin and his wife saw their friend go up stage to give a testimony
about how God had blessed her with a N163million government contract
after sowing a sacrificial seed of N1million into the ministry the
previous year. Benjamin and his wife met up with their friend after
service and congratulated her heartily for such a great breakthrough. A
few months later, he found that his friend, the woman that gave the
testimony, had impersonated his company to get the contract she
testified about and now the FIRS is asking him to pay N8million in
taxes; taxes for a contract he did not execute. Two years going, with
millions of naira spent on legal fees and sundry, Benjamin is still
fighting for his innocence. Sometimes I feel there’s going to be a
special kind of hell for many of today’s Christians and pastors. God
have mercy on us all.
Preachers now teach Christians different formulas to receive
from God: 5 steps to walking in your divine inheritance; 7 Mysteries for
getting God to answer your prayers and so on. It is weird because these
are not the examples Jesus gave us, neither are they the examples shown
to us by the Apostles of God in the Bible. It's as if God is a genie in
the lamp and His sole purpose of existence to grant us our wishes.
Contrary to this, Jesus was actually setup by God to be tempted of the
devil in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1). After being hungry for 40 days
and nights, his first temptation was to turn stone to bread. Apparently,
having the spirit without measure, he could do this but did not. He did
not let his appetite get the better of him. And even though he had the
power to change his situation, he was not going to be led by the devil
but by God. The Spirit of God does not always lead you into financial
breakthrough or plenty, preachers who tell you otherwise are charlatans.
Some clever theologians who have re-framed the gospel make it
difficult for people to argue against them. This, because they use the
claim to the blessings of God as the basis of fleecing their audience.
Because they are specially anointed to heal, bless, prophecy etc, if you
give them an offering, God will release the blessings in his hands for
you. Thief! To argue against them like I have done would seem to suggest
that God cannot or does not heal, or cannot or does not provide, or
cannot or does not bless. And these will be untrue, because God does
heal, provide and protect, gives spouses and a whole range of other
blessings. However, the level of importance or sometimes relevance of
these blessings is highly misplaced. We have put the cart before the
horse and have begun seeking blessings before the Kingdom of God, with
many churches foolishly ratifying this un-Christlike approach.
Furthermore, the ways in which many popular preachers say God blesses
and many of the methods by which they say he does it are unbiblical at
least and sometimes downright diabolical. On one end of the spectrum you
have the really prideful preacher who speaks with an outstanding level
of cockiness which he calls boldness. His words are law; God spoke it
himself and therefore cannot be refuted. On the other end, there’s the
soft spoken but equally dangerous preacher who convinces you by his
seeming humility. Selling poison loudly or softly doesn’t make it less
poisonous is all I’m saying. "Godliness with contentment is great gain"
has been changed to “pride and financial success is great gain". Church
is also where you get the “Do you know who I am ?" syndrome. I am Bishop
so and so. I am deaconess so and so. I am chief so and so. God spoke to
me in an 18-hour long vision, therefore I am something special. What
remarkable humility? What outstanding meekness, right?
Unfortunately, Pentecostal Charismatic preachers are the
biggest quasi-legal scammers I know. These days, I am personally wary of
any person who introduces himself to me by any Christian title such as
Deacon, Deaconess, Pastor, Bishop, Prophet etc, especially among the
Nigerian community in America. Immediately my mind thinks thief and
untrustworthy. Sadly, I have been proven right too many times. I have
stories and I know that I am not the only one but I gain nothing by
publicly discrediting these people. There are obviously good, honest and
godly Christian leaders out there too but all I am saying is, be
alert.
A successful pastor in the capital city of Nigeria once wrote
me and said, it’s church people that are forcing pastors to act like big
men because if they don’t behave like that, church members will
disrespect them and grace will not flow. First of all, that’s a load of
bull. This puts those pastors in the company of King Saul, who disobeyed
God and blamed it on the people, and Adam who ate the forbidden fruit
and blamed it on the woman. This is not good company to be categorized
with. I implore preachers to go back to the Bible, to first of all live
by it and then preach what it actually says and stop this gospel that
makes them out to be superstar celebrities of some sort. They should
stop setting God up to disappoint his people because in many cases, he
is not who, what or how they say he is.
Everyone who wishes to serve God and is not benefitting from
the on-going global scam of false christianity should go and read their
Bibles, especially the New Testament as it pertains to the followers of
Christ. Some of you are swayed by my argument but I hope rather that
many more of you will be skeptical. Because if you are, it should make
you search out the truth from the Bible by yourself and then you’ll know
the truth for yourself and not some misguided misinterpretation. If you
don’t, somebody else, most probably the preacher who is currently
scamming you in your church is going to give you another seemingly sound
argument. This may cause you to be confused or fall into their
deception all over again. There are no spiritual grandchildren in Christ
Jesus, we all are joint heirs in Christ and have direct access to God.
Don’t believe me? Read your Bible.
I believe in Christ and I believe there is a real God of the
Bible; He has just stopped attending church service because many of the
people who claim to represent Him have replaced Him with themselves.
By Adetoye Oremosu
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