I AM GRATEFUL TO JEHOVAH (I)

My cake, when I, H.O. Ojewale, clocked 58 on the 17^th of March, 2013.

Reminiscing God’s timely and miraculous intervening involvement in the predicaments of the vicissitudes of my life, I just find myself in such verbal bankruptcy that, all I have left is, “Thank You Jesus!”

I do remember, in my younger days, how through carelessness I had destroyed stuffs, but these days I have, on several occasions, knocked receptacles and I see them roll unbalanced only to come to an erect still with my coffee, or contents of other containers, well intact! You may be very quick to ascribe this to mere fortuity. What I do see is the invisibility of the invincibility of His salvaging hand. The good Lord still cares about these little things.

A needle tiny object falls or gets misplaced and a little, “God, please help me find this thing,” prayer is all I need to say, for God to accord my ocular prowess the capability to beam my visual competence on this otherwise inconsequential thing. Small, inconsequential things do have their ways of needling you to madness. My deep rooted gratitude goes to God for attending to these little things which to You, dear God, “are not just little things in the eyes of Your love, oh! LORD!” as one of Reverend Chris Okotie’s songs says.

Psalm 91:5-6 reads, “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; 6) Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.” I boast of a perfect savvy of what the psalmist is saying here. I encountered a demonically intimidating experience which threw a horrendous scare into my psyche. This was neither a dream nor a trance. It happened in broad daylight, while lying on Dad’s bed, nursing a terrible fever.

Wondering how the drone of a bee could find its audibility inside the bedroom, I just felt a bundle of a thick rope thrown on me. After an involuntary shiver from the impact, try as I did, I could not move any organ, feeling strapped! The natural impulse when thrown into such apprehension is to make the noisiest frantic call for help. The evil doer envisaging that, placed his hand (I truly felt a real hand!) on my neck and lo and behold my vocal chords would not bring forth any audibility. The next outlandish thing was the dragging of my lying body out of the bed! I was not under any hallucination at all, and that is the gospel truth.

In that present predicament I found myself resigning to the prevailing circumstance. I believed that that was how I had lost my two younger brothers to death, some months earlier. Knowing fully well that I was conspicuously at the end of my tethers for: there was nothing I could, personally, do; I began to pray inwardly, saying in my Yoruba language, “Jesu, gbami! Jesu, gbami! (Jesus, save me)” repeatedly. Still being dragged I began to feel an untying process which stopped at the tug of my hair. I thought I could tear myself out of that evil clutch but it was yet quite impossible until it was pulled out like the pop of a cork from a wine bottle. Half of my body was out of the bed when I was finally freed!

                                             The great Usain Bolt

I would have landed with a thud if I had not stretched my right arm and the right leg. Flinging my dad’s the large covering cloth with my left arm, I hurriedly used the other arm to grab the door knob and bolted hotfoot through the door. The legendary Usain Bolt could not have run out faster! It was a hot sunny day about 1:30pm! When I looked to the right I saw my father, about three blocks of houses away, coming home.

I relayed everything to my speechless father.

If not for my Jesus, my Dad would have come home to be traumatized with the death of another son from his loins. Thank You, Jesus! I was just fifteen years old. For the next couple of years I dared not sit anywhere alone, not even at any time of the twenty-four hours of the day. If it should happen, I would be taking sharp looks over my shoulders thinking with apprehension, “they’re here again!” Most of the nights, I must sleep very close to my mum.     (…to be continued…)

             Be wise, get born again. Say this simple prayer: “Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sin. I believe that You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and I receive Him now as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory. Amen!”    (…to be concluded in the 2^nd part)

Get the concluding 2nd part here

 

IS CHRISTIANITY AN IMPORTED RELIGION? (Part three)

 

(Continued from part two)

At best defined religion is simply man’s own way of reaching out to God. You, an individual, will decide how best to stand in obeisance before the God of adoration. The first religious appropriation was the woman of Adam’s attempt when she uttered words of Genesis 3:3, “But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die;” quite independent of divine protocol. Religion is always a total incongruity with God’s tenet. The woman began by quoting God well in that scripture only to perfect the deviation of religion by the addendum of her personal perceptive stance of “neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”

The acceptable Judaism which Jehovah allowed through Moses had, in the days of Jesus, been stained with religion, causing it to assume the four superstitious headed sects of the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and the Zealots. Religion is an atypicality. It is a breeding sty of freethinkers. The seat of man’s thought becomes the architectural workshop of the construction of the relationship between God and mortal man. God has to put in place a most accepted relationship between an errant man and Himself. Christianity.

Christianity is both correctional and salvational. “…Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” [John 1:29]. Only Christianity boasts of an inevitability of the blueprint of celestial citizenry. John 3:3, “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” This is essentially categorical. Romans 10:9-10 teaches how to be part of God’s kingdom: 9) “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10) For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

The word ‘confess’ or ‘confession’ is not devised to unearth your sinful acts by asking you to go into the verbal enumeration thereby throwing you into a public opprobrium. Not at all –as so many Church ministers demand before administering the sinners’ prayer. The Greek word is homologeō (hom-ol-og-eh’-o) Thayer Definition: ‘to say the same thing as another, i.e. to agree with, assent; to concede.’

Strong’s Definition: [From a compound of the base of homou (hom-oo’) ‘the same’ and logos (log’-os) ‘something said –including the thought’]; ‘to assent, that is, covenant, acknowledge.’

This is what the winsomeness of Christianity is all about!

Homologeō, simply put, means to echo in agreement what the word of God says. And what sayeth the Word? 1. Believe in Jesus. 2. Believe that He died for your sin. 3. Believe that He rose from the dead –for your justification. 4. Declare His Lordship over your life (which is the same as “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus”). It is most definitely all about Jesus and His finished work of salvation. Amen! A refusal to embrace this salvation by grace is an open declaration of war against God. No religion has any true provision for this biblical heavenly bliss.

I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life, the Almighty!

It is clear who is behind Christianity and if the Personage happens to be the Lord of glory, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the One who was, is, and to come; and the Almighty, then this way of worship is not imported from Israeli’s Shem or from Europe of Japheth. It is providential: the only available avenue for relationship with the eternal Father of light, the One of the Kingdom of the celestial assizes. Amen!

Get born again to become a Christian. Say this prayer, meaning it: “Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sin. I believe that You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and I receive Him now as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory. Amen!”  (Conclusion)

Read the 2nd part here.

IS CHRISTIANITY AN IMPORTED RELIGION? (Part two)

 

          This is where the Church started –Garden of Eden

 (Continued from part one)

                How I know that the woman is the consummation of the Church, in Eden, is found in Genesis 2:22. But when the Creator was set to bring to fructification, the desire of His heart, the Bible says: “And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man (Genesis 2:22). Interestingly the ‘made’ in this verse is a different banah (baw-naw’) which means ‘to build (literally and figuratively),’ –an architectural term. The Church, figuratively, is a woman, the bride of Christ. Adam’s woman was the consummation of the first church and Christ did fellowship with them every day. Christ, in the midst of the first human couple, every cool of the day, is the assemblage of first Church on earth.

We do know that Israel, Europe and Africa can be genealogically traced to our pristine parents. These three races were sired by the antediluvian saint, Noah. Shem, probably his first son, means ‘name or fame.’ Ham, the progenitor of the coloured, African race, means ‘warmth, heat or hot;’ and Japheth, the father of Europe has the definition of ‘expansion.’ All of them survived the great flood just because they were obedient (the only requirement needed to qualify anyone for the survival of God’s wrath) to the prophetic evangelism of their father. Jesus, being the word of God, is very God of very God. He is the same yesterday, today and forever more. Amen!

To Shem, whose descendants happen to be Israel, was committed the oracular afflatus which birthed the Christian faith. Israel famed Christianity, taking it beyond the shores of its territorial landmass. Japheth did enlarge the gospel of Christian faith: for it was Europe that expanded the gospel of Jesus Christ, and who was forced to invent the printing press so that, “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world…” shall become a reality. Today, look at Africa and its inclined hankering for the gospel of the LORD God, Jesus Christ. Africa is truly ‘hot’ for Christianity. Shem, à la Israel, made the nascent way of eternal life known to the world when Peter, on the day of Pentecost, preached the first Christian sermon of soteriology.

Japheth it is, that took Christianity to the next level of operational evangelism. The Bible, God’s protocol, must need be made readily available. It was a herculean task producing just one New Testament, not to talk of the whole corpus of revelation. Necessity truly brought about the natal invention of the printing press to ease the production of copies of the Bible, in its millions. Japheth has played his evangelical role. He brought Christianity to our doorstep.

It is the turn of Ham to show his fervent disposition to God’s business. He has taken the evangelistic baton from Japheth, continuing the glorious proclamation of the gospel. This is what Christianity is unfolding. It must be this phenomenal. Africa must cross every available ‘t’ and ensure the proper dotting of every ‘i’ to actualize Christ’s dream of salvation to mankind. Africa is not hot for Jesus for nothing. It is his turn (of Ham) to preach, the same way Noah did, gave it to his sons, who took turns to deliver this spiritual phenomenon. Where, I ask, is the importation of Christianity to Africa or elsewhere? Selah.

Christianity is not a religion. It is the way of life. It is all about Jesus –the way, truth and the life; the Word of God, the true Light, the power of God, the knowledge of God and who is seated in His rightful right hand of the Majesty in the heavenly assizes– who is the Author and Finisher of the faith that alone leads to God the Father with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

    The Church sinless of Eden

Get born again to become a Christian. Say this prayer, meaning it: “Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sin. I believe that You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and I receive Him now as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory. Amen!”      (…to be concluded…)

click to read part one

Click here to read the concluding 3rd part

IS CHRISTIANITY AN IMPORTED RELIGION? (Part one)

 

In the land of Israel, among the one hundred and twenty Jews, in an upper room, about ten days after His ascension, on the day of Pentecost: that was the genesis of Christianity. Christianity, which is the mystical body of the Second Member of the Godhead, is named after its founder, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Governor of the nations.

Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” He did not build the church upon Peter. Peter cannot hold the Church together neither can he supply every spiritual need of the body of Christ. It is Christ’s outward existence not Peter’s. Two key words here are Peter and rock. ‘Peter’ in the Greek is Petros (pet’-ros): ‘a (piece of) rock (larger than a precious stone); as a name, Petrus, an apostle.’ ‘Rock’ is petra (pet’-ra) ‘Feminine of the same as Petros; a rock, cliff or ledge a projecting rock, crag, rocky ground.’

The petra is actually in reference to Jesus standing before Petros. While petros is ‘a piece of rock, petra is ‘a mountain, mass of rock,’ and that is the difference. John 1:1-10 categorically asseverates the deity of Jesus with: v1)”and the Word was God.” v2)”The same was in the beginning with God.” v3)”All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” v4)”In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” v9) “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” and in v10) “the world was made by him.”

Also credited to the King of kings is: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” [Matthew 24:14]. If the gospel, euaggelion (yoo-ang-ghel’-ee-on): ‘good tidings,’ must go to all the crannies of the world and HE did give the great commission of Mark 16:15, “…Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature;” then He spoke as the Owner of the universe that He truly is. When He told mankind that, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” in Matthew 11:28, He was actually relieving us from the errableness of religion. The word ‘labour,’ kopiao (kop-ee-ah’-o), means: ‘1. to feel fatigue 2. (by implication) to work hard.’ And phortizo (for-tid’-zo), the Greek word for ‘heavy laden’ is defined as, ‘1. (properly) to load up (a vessel or animal) 2. (figuratively) to overburden with ceremony (or spiritual anxiety).’

Christ was always here, every evening, to fellowship with them.

If religion cannot save by the reason of its fallibility why would Jesus build another? The Church, as a matter of fact, had been brought into existence right from the days of the Garden of Eden. The LORD God, Christ, in His pre-incarnate manifestation, said in Genesis 2:18 “…It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him;” where the word ‘make’ is `asah (aw-saw’): ‘to do or make, in the broadest sense and widest application (to create out of an existing material).’ How I know that the woman is the consummation of the Church, in Eden, is found in Genesis 2:22.

Get born again to become a Christian. Say this prayer, meaning it: “Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sin. I believe that You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and I receive Him now as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory. Amen!”    (…to be continued in the 2^nd part)

Read part two here

THIS EVIL COULD HAVE BEEN JUST

THIS IS LUCIFER, THE LOSER.

He is the consummator of cruelty. He took the game of diabolism to an unprecedented height of scientific piece of art work, becoming the cognoscente of fiendishness (birth of wizardry). His name is Lucifer, Satan the Devil. The malicious dynamics of this angelic, evil incarnate, being is executed with an absolute accuracy. It could have been right for him to be so evil, but for the fact that from a chronologically incalculable eternity past the established normative conduct, even before creationism, is goodness. And there is absolutely nothing he could or can ever do about it. Amen!

I’ll be like God and you’ll rule by my side as my lieutenants, he beguiled fellow angels.

Lucifer was created in a prevailing ambience of goodness, in the paradise of the blissful heaven. Goodness wielded the almighty power, a sweeping power that is beyond the depth of eternity past even unto eternity to come; it defies any form of measurement. Goodness is God Himself, hence, the expressed wrongs by the evil personage cannot argue the validation of its operations with the environmental goodness it had found itself. As globally the monstrosity of the destructiveness of Satan’s power is evidently lucid, he still is the broad space of eternity much less in power, compared to that of goodness. Goodness, the Divine, is totally supreme!

The Devil, the liar and the father of it.

God did make sure that before He created anything at all He is seated on the throne as the King Potentate. All powerful Ruler. Jehovah (i.e. the self-existing One) God. The only Eternal Judge (HE is a God of legality). The all-knowing and the Omnipresent. He had known everything from the everlasting past to the eternity of eternity to come. He decided to assume a tripartite Personages called, in theology, the Trinity. The First Member is to sit on the throne of the celestial assizes, eternally, as God, the Eternal, Father.

Angel of darkness: Lucifer.

The Second Member has the designation of the Saviour, because His faculty of foreknowledge saw that man would be caught in the web of the ruinous sin of eternal consequence. He knew that man could never be able to free himself from this spiritual aberration and that it will take God alone to undo the Divine curse. The Second Member, the Word of God, the True Light that lights the life of every procreation and the only visibility among the Trinity, is very God of very God. He had been before creation, so, He is essentially God. There had to be the Christ, as the Second Member to save those who would decide to come to Him, after the fall, believing Him and be saved. Only God can save, Jesus Christ, the Saviour, for this reason, is God. Amen!

Man would need to be tutored in the way and things of the unseen God. His Spirit, the Third Member, is the only One who can search the hearts of man –a preserve of the Almighty alone. God alone, and none else, can serve as the genuine seal of the One who is seated eternally on the throne. No angel can give any created being an utterance of divine discourse but God. The Holy Spirit endues us with this kind of power, which the Divinity alone is capable of, from above. He teaches us all things which only God can consummate. He is the Director and the Manager of our lives: God eternal.

You cannot be just in this evil game, O Lucifer!

The Devil has the power to destroy and annihilate every life in the universe but he cannot. A paradox that continues to eat him deep into craziness. A prevailing arm is constantly restraining him to do that havoc. He saw the arm of Isaiah 53:1, “Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?” He witnessed the unbelievable power of the most high when Jesus was raised from the dead. It was a mind blowing, incontestable true event. He was hit by the rage of the salvaging arm of the Father such that he is still licking his deteriorating wound.

This evil being is smart enough to find a way of legalizing his malicious escapade by deceiving the woman of Adam to do the unexpected evil. The earth, legally speaking, became his, and for which reason he could parade himself as the ‘god of this world,’ with a tremendous power. But He is not eternal like Jehovah. His days, therefore are very short.

EVIL MUST BE JUDGED, LUCIFER.

There is not a way for him to appeal the sentence of hell handed to him for the disobedience to the course of goodness. There is only One Judge: Jehovah God. Now it is too clear to his chagrin that his evil prurience is not true: an unattainable desideration. It is unreal according to divine operative. It is unrighteous, hence, a deceitful mirage that he did, unfortunately, dream of. His dream clashed, insolently, with Christ’s. His evil stance run antagonistically to the teachings of the Holy Spirit. The end of which no evil can ever justify the satanic means. Selah!

EVIL IS DOOMED TO FAIL & FALL

IS IT WRONG TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS ON THE 25TH DECEMBER? (part two)

       And God spoke, “LET THERE BE….” ten times, without any opposition.

 

(…continued from the first part)

There was not even an effete objection to all His ten commands of “and God said” from day one to the seventh day of His rest. The day after His Sabbath rest happened to be the new beginning of the second week which had continued to be replicated ever since. Every day, ergo, is Christ’s, the Creator. When He died, to save the world, He rose the third day because He is the One “Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it“ [Act 2:24]. Amen!

The word ‘loosed’ is luo (loo’-o) in the Greek, meaning: ‘1. to “loosen” 2. (by usage) to break, destroy, or dissolve 3. (maritally) to divorce.’ He was the first to establish, and to join in holy matrimony of our pristine parents. When sin entered our world, we got illicitly married to Lucifer. He that had power to lay down His life and take it back (John 10:17-18) cannot be an ordinary person. He must be Jehovah God. This Personage is found in Jeremiah 23:6, “In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” This is the prophetic pronouncement of the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ. Is He Jehovah? Yes! The title ‘LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS,’ in the Hebrew is Yhovah tsidqenuw (ye-ho-vaw’ tsid-kay’-noo) which means: ‘1. Jehovah (is) our right 2. Jehovah-Tsidkenu, a symbolical epithet of the Messiah and of Jerusalem.’

                 He rose to save this sinful world from a calamitous end. Some wise people decided to receive Him, JESUS, as LORD and Saviour. These are followers of the risen Christ, who is coming back for them. He clothed them in His righteousness and they, the Christians, became the body of Christ on earth, waiting for His magnificently grand appearance. Amen!

If the mystical body of Christ, the Church, decides to make use of one out of the whole three hundred and sixty-five or the leap year days, in commemoration of His Incarnation, what is the big deal? Does He not own it all? Is the first day of the week, Sunday, not named after Nimrod, the sun deity? Did Nimrod create anything? Should we refuse to go to Church on Sundays just because Satan has hijacked the day for his global worship? Which of the days of the week is not named after idolatrous worship?

Sunday is of the sun god. Monday is that of the moon: this is none other than the moon goddess, Semiramis. (Following definitions credited to Collins Dictionary) Tuesday is Martis day of Mars; (in Anglo-Saxon mythology) the god of war and the sky. Wednesday in old English is Wōdnes dæg Woden’s day, translation of Latin mercurii dies Mercury’s day; related to Old Frisian wōnsdei, Middle Dutch wōdensdach. Woden or Wodan the foremost Anglo-Saxon god. Norse counterpart: Odin. Thursday: Old English Thursdæg, literally: Thor’s day; thunder, day –Thor is the god of thunder. Friday: Old English Frīgedæg, literally: Freya’s day; related to Old Frisian frīadei, Old High German frīatag. Freya or Freyja [ˈfreɪə] Norse myth the goddess of love and fecundity, sister of Frey (the Norse god of fertility, crops, peace, and prosperity). Saturday is from old English sæternes dæg, translation of Latin Sāturnī diēs day of Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and vegetation; Greek counterpart: Cronus

January is the Latin Janus the Roman god of doorways, passages, and bridges. In art he is depicted with two heads facing opposite ways. February: Latin Februārius mēnsis month of expiation, from februa Roman festival of purification held on February 15, from plural of februum a purgation. March is from Latin Martius (month) of Mars (they worshipped heavenly bodies). May: Latin Maius, probably from Maia, Roman goddess, identified with the Greek goddess Maia. Maia [ˈmaɪə] Greek myth the eldest of the seven Pleiades, mother by Zeus of Hermes. July is from Gaius Julius Caesar, in whose honour it was named; while August was named after the emperor Augustus. Romans were hero worshippers.

Oh come, let us adore HIM!

Would it not be so puerile to deny Jehovah His true worship on these days and months simply because Satan has shown interest in, and has polluted by hijacking, them? Selah. Jesus is Lord! Amen!        (The Conclusion)

CLICK here to read part one

It’s all about JESUS!