THE STRONGHOLD OF LYING VANITIES

There is a difference between the truth and a generally held belief. A people can believe a lie and hold it as sacred or sacrosanct. They can even institutionalize it and sing songs about it but a lie will always be a lie.

I met a man in Ghana, he said he used to be a Catholic but now practices African Traditional Religion. I asked him why he switched and he said, "White man's religion is evil, it encouraged slavery, discrimination, stole Africa’s resources, is imperialist etcetera.

I told him Christianity has nothing to do with the white man. Jesus was not from the west.

It is true that the white man like any other man was greedy and oppressive by nature. Jesus was nothing like that; Jesus was simple. He demonstrated to us a lack of interest in material stuff and an emphasis on spirituality. So, you can be a Christian without indulging in the corrupt ways of the white man. He said it was impossible. I said it was and went on to tell him how the fellowship I belong to came to Ghana to bless the nation and give to communities and widows etcetera without collecting a dime from anyone. Our gospel is a giving gospel.

He realised his argument had become moot and he said, "I wish you well."

When he was talking about the evil of the white man, I reminded him also of the evil of the black man. Black men sold black men to slavery, killed fellow black men for ritual, fought wars among themselves, enslaved women and dabbled deeply into fetishism and the realm of darkness. He couldn't refute that.  I told him that if the black man was the one with the technological advancement and scientific wherewithal it was possible, he would be the one oppressing the white man now or worse.

 Human nature is human nature we must all deal with it. The problems with deep-seated belief systems however are many. Sometimes you can convince a man through superior argument that what he believes is false and he will let go of the old belief system and come to see things from your point of view; at other times a man will see a superior argument and would not be bothered to abandon the lie. He will keep believing and practicing it even though it is a LIE.

I met a pastor in 2017 during my Bible college teaching practise, he said his father was an herbalist and had been one all his life.

One day, his father took him to the house of a reverend and asked the reverend to lead him to Christ. Then his father said, "I know Jesus is the way but I dare not confess that in the open. We have been herbalists in this family for ages and my siblings will kill me if I abandon it but I won't let you get lost by following a lie. I have accepted Jesus Christ in secret, but you must serve him openly. I will persecute you and disown you in public so that my relatives will leave you be but know that you have my support and love."

That was how this man turned out to be a pastor. His father continued to lead the ignorant down the wrong path while he rescued his own son.

You can believe a lie if you want but please don't force it down the throat of others. I don't believe in the #Endsars# movement or the Lekki whatever.

I examined the evidence and I found it unconvincing at every level. I have always stated this and I will always state this- It is a lie. You can hold an anniversary for a lie, build a shrine for it, sing kumbaya to it, burn down businesses for it, cry all day for it, it is still and will be a lie. You can ask the Prophets of Baal when they were challenged by Elijah on Mount Carmel; they believed in Baal as the true God. They proved it by showing up and praying, they even cut their own bodies, the lie didn't change to truth. Elijah gave them all the time in the world to prove their Baal was the truth but they couldn't. It took Elijah only one call and the truth showed up.

That is the nature of the truth; you don't need to use a video from one drama in your church to sell a massacre, or rely on the testimony of ghosts whose families are ghosts to sell the lie. You can claim death but cannot attribute it to those you claimed committed the crime. Ghost bodies floated on rivers and canals. Hospitals were claimed to have a stack of bodies but no relatives came forward to claim them.

Even CNN said this was a lie but you insisted they had been bribed. I don’t like instituted lies; once people believe in them, they are like a house built on spittle, a little dew and the house would crumble. Any Christian who believes in the rock of ages will choose the things he would believe deliberately. You cannot combine Jesus and empty lies.

This is my position on the lies that many will be celebrating today to push an agenda.

Facebook called it a lie. Twitter called it a lie. Wikipedia called it a lie. I still see no evidence whatsoever to convince me it is the truth. Of course, many argued with me with passion and zeal but I am not a novice, I am a skilled debater and I know when an argument deviates from fact into sentiments and crocodile tears. Some will resort to attacking the man (some will read this and start insulting me) that in itself proves it is a lie. The truth needs no defense, it is sufficient to defend itself.

My madam and I are on different pages on this. We had argued about it deeply. She even did a special report investigating it with camera, talking heads and everything; what she came up with were stories of those that died going to the protest (one in a bike accident), one that was robbed and several others that died for various reasons. The one thing she couldn't prove was a "massacre". There simply was no evidence of that whatsoever.

She insisted what happened there was wrong and I agree with her. We both agree however that whatever you call it, it is not a massacre, it is not even close to one.

So, I wish the celebrants happy celebration.

I am happy this is another lie being peddled in the world that I didn't believe because believing in lies has serious spiritual consequences. If you believe this today, you will believe you have cancer tomorrow if a doctor told you so. Even though you may not have it, you have trained your mind to believe and observe lying vanities.

Once a mind is trained to believe lies, it becomes susceptible to accepting other lies to buttress the one it believed.

Not today!

-GSW-