SCRIPTURAL SMALL-MINDEDNESS (7)

“…and these three are one” (1John 5:7).

(…continues from part 6…)

7)            Once I posed this question to Pastor S.O.,“Who is truly greater between God the Father and the God the Son?” His answer, which I could not help in creepy observation, was the Yoruba adage, “Kòlè jé ti baba, kó jé t’omo, k’ómó láálà.” The English translation is “It cannot be co-owned by father and son without the drawn line.” This adage is traditionally of family farmland which evidently accords the admittance of superiority of ownership to the father. I believe that most church going Christians believe that the God the Father is more powerful, more knowledgeable and omnipresent while the Son, the Christ, does not possess true stature of divine equality. There is no smidgeon of doubt in my mind that a whole lot of church leaders are scriptural abecedarians. The first living intelligent entity of biblical documentation is in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God”.

                Four is the number of creation, therefore, ‘God’ comes as the fourth of His protocolary couch. The sobriquet ‘God’ is the Hebraic ‘elohiym (el-o-heem’) אֱלֹהֵי ‘elohiy (el-o-hee’) [alternate plural]: ‘1. (literally) supreme ones. 2. (hence, in the ordinary sense) gods. 3. (specifically, in the plural, especially with the article) the Supreme God (i.e. the all supreme).’ If the God of the Bible is triune in essence then Christ did partake in the creationism. If Jesus Christ, in creation, did create ex nihilo – create out of nothing – then He is as Almighty as the Father, which is nothing short of co-equality with His Father. It says of Jesus, “The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:2-3). If He made all things, visible and invisible, He is as Almighty as the Father and the Holy Spirit.

“…two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20)

                God the Father is everywhere; is the Son also everywhere as the Holy Spirit is? The Scripture quotes Jesus in the asseverative “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). How many pray in a second all over the whole globe, and in how many places do church services hold? Millions, no doubt, and Jesus makes it clear that wherever people are gathered in His holy name, He is present before them, in different parts of the world. This is a proof of His ubiquity! In Matthew 28:20 He promised the disciples, “…lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

                Does Jesus know everything just like the Eternal Father? Yes, and the Bible has the answer. “…to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; 3) In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:2-3). It also says in another place, “For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell” (Colossians 1:19). “But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1Corinthians 1:24). How can an entity be said to have containerize in Him all the treasures wisdom and knowledge, have all fullness dwelling in Him and be said to be power and wisdom of God and not possess equality of Omniscience with the Eternal Father? Selah! Human philosophical rationalism cannot truly explain the theology of the Divinity. The Scriptures, and only the Divine protocol, is the only place to look for God’s mind, will and essence. And this I have always told him – Pastor S.O. – how grossly erroneous it is, to explain veridicality of Divinity, making use of the gregariousness of Adamic phenomenality. Human deviation from Scriptural couch has turned the Church of God into a dumping ground for all kinds of thoughts, including Hegelianism.

Pastor D.K. Olukoya, the General Overseer of Mountain of Fire Ministries.

                In his reaction to Pastor S.O.’s question, “Will you not pray for your enemy’s death,” Brother A. was categorical, saying, “I am a serious member of Mountain of Fire Ministries Church.” MFM has indoctrinated its adherence to pray in all seriousness, “My enemy, die, die! Die!!” In the defence of this prayer, “Die, my enemy die. Die, the manager who is working against my promotion, die,” which one often hears from members of MFM Church, Brother A quoted Luke 19:27, believing that if Jesus would love to slay His enemies, then every Christian like him has every scriptural right to kill his enemies. To my chagrin, Pastor S.O. stretched his hand towards Brother A, congratulating him for a well said defence of prayer of imprecation.

                Pastor S.O., who has a whole church to his pastoral care stood firm in his argument, and would not agree with me when I told them that what Brother A quoted is a parable, to start with. Even when I opened the Bible to show them Luke 19:27, “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me;” they still did not agree that this verse does not give anybody the reason to rain imprecatory prayers on a perceived enemy. The infuriating problem with most Bible teachers is this proclivious eisegetical anomaly. The reason for this parable was the words of Jesus, “because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear” in the eleventh verse. This is where scriptural conceptualization comes exegetically in. If Jesus told the Roman governor, “My kingdom is not of this world” in His Incarnational days, then, the period of slaying cannot be of those days and even these days of grace. The day of slaying His enemies will certainly be at His Second Coming of scriptural vaticination.  

                Getting born again is a conscious effort on the part of an individual. Get born again. Say this sinner’s 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 continued…)

Read part 6 here

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