When Today Takes Yesterday to Task

It is true that as a person, my most profound memory of Mount Zion Films was the scary Ayamatanga scenes. It became compounded when a preacher said the woman who acted in that scene was attacked with mental illness after the movie was shot (I never bothered to find out if this was true or false). I never watched another movie from that ministry after that one.
From a creative point of view, what made Agbara Nla memorable and scary was the same thing that made it popular in Nigeria. Nigerians have an obsession with darkness and evil spirits. This obsession led to the establishment of many cults and churches under the guise of Pentecostalism or spirituality, with specialization in deliverance ministrations and exorcism of every kind.
In the '70s, '80s, and '90s, the predominant prayer of most churches is binding evil spirits and praying battle prayers. In the 2000s the educated ones who took over from the pastors who led in the 70s simply changed the official languages of their churches from the indigenous language to the English Language but the obsession with evil spirits and the fear-mongering religious message of old still prevailed. It was all they know, except for a few like Rev Tunde Joda, Pastor Olubi Johnson, and Rev. Chris Oyakhilome to name a few preachers who started sharing the true messages and intent of the gospel in the '90s (Darkness was so strong at the time that we were told not to listen to these preachers who were doing American gospel).
The predominant religious posture of Christian churches and messages in Nigeria was focused on the enemy, witchcraft, agents of darkness, faulty foundation, the enemy in the household, and other forms of morbid stories shared to support this prevalent belief system. At the time the crusades featured ex-Ogboni confraternity members, Alawopa cult members, self-confessed witches, and other strange characters which pastors bring as special guests to share their experiences in the kingdom of darkness for hours and then spend the last ten minutes telling us about their salvation encounter with Jesus and how it saved them and made them believers. This was the same story the Ayamatanga movie told, it was a reflection of the prevalent understanding of Christianity and our society in the 90s.

Before the Ayamatanga movie, the makers made other movies that didn’t just sell because the people didn’t have the understanding to relate to the themes. Perilous times was one of such, it was scripted to depict the end times and what happened after the rapture. It was popular but it was not a resounding success like this movie many were talking about. For those of us who were teens at that time, the Ayamatanaga movie was just like Koto Aye, Koto Orun, Yapanyantin, Arelu, Nneka the Pretty Serpent, and other popular Yoruba movies of that time. Rather than Orisabunmi or Abija representing succor for the oppressed, we had Ishawuru and instead of the use of traditional idols as weapons of warfare, Ishawuru met with Jesus, and his traditional weapons of war were incapacitated. The crime here was the Christian theme the movie had which made many Christian parents who switched off their TV or banned their children from watching traditional movies encourage their children to watch this one, not knowing, the harrowing scene of the demonic manifestation of that woman would be so traumatic that some of us did not recover from it till now. As a people, our consciousness at the time was backward-looking. Till now in many churches, all they do is pray battle prayers and tell their members not to go to the village and not to collect sweets from their friends so that they won’t be initiated into witchcraft. Such a consciousness was easy to fleece by Pastors and Preachers who only had to present imaginary enemies to members, get them to pray fervently and in return win their loyalty and own their pockets for a lifetime.
It is true that knowledge has increased and times have seriously changed, the recent discussions by some online regarding one woman pastor who was labelling children as witches in Akwa Ibom and others like her led many to remember what it felt like in those days when the liberating messages of the gospel were abandoned for the fear-mongering religious messages that ruined many good relationships and set children against their parents and village people forever in the name of avoiding the attack of the enemy and all sorts of evil arrows. I am not in any way saying these evil arrows and attacks of the enemy were unreal experiences of those who experienced them, I am saying that the cure was Christ but the church leaders at the time didn’t offer the cure, they offered at best how to manage the work of darkness or how to avoid the work of darkness but not how to become the light and kill the darkness once and for all as the Lord Jesus told them to. They mined these dark stories through their fearful messages and exploited those they were supposed to liberate with the free message of the gospel.
Till today, even in this generation, many young “Christians” are still primarily conscious of family battles, curses, evil trees, evil birds, glory sellers, enemies of father’s house, family patterns, demons, witchcraft, generational and ancestral rubbish and the devil more than the knowledge of Christ and the fullness of the freedom and the power they now have in Christ through the Holy Spirit. It would not be fair to judge the past generation of Christians who met this reality on the ground for their choices at the time. Suppose you listened to the messages of the church leaders of the time and read their books, even till now. In that case, all you will see is a consciousness of evil and prayers reflecting this mindset typed out and prayed over and over by believers who ought to know better but simply refuse to. It is funny how many Christians would rather be fearful as a form of caution than be full of faith and stand firm against the lies that had been made to look like the truth for ages. Books are still being written on how to reclaim glory and how to destroy household enemies and many of us are still buying them. The Son had set us free but many of us have refused to be free indeed! I do not condemn the rants on social media regarding some of these so-called Christian materials that encourage fear and wickedness instead of faith and love. The damages done to the body of Christ as a whole, families and certain individuals are very telling. I know a lady who was branded a witch since childhood and till now she has never really recovered from the trauma. Even now after she had become a born-again Christian, her mother still stylishly avoids her based on the demon-infested mindset of the church leaders who guided her mother the wrong way based on the old belief system. We should be able to criticize any work that has been put in the public domain as content that we ought to pay to consume or that we paid to consume, we can do this without insulting the person who did the work.

Christian leaders in Nigeria should encourage questions and feedback from their members, none should act as if he or she is immune to feedback. Some feedback can be good and some can be unpleasant but they are necessary. Another set of eyes or several other sets of eyes have never failed to make a work better especially if the criticisms are coming from customers who consumed the work and can speak to its effect on their psychological and emotional well-being. The humility to listen and respond without taking an offense or being perceived to have taken an offense is important. Coming out with new works that truly reflect the ineffable truth of who the believer is in Christ is a better response. It is time for the Church in Nigeria to see the scriptures as the true guide of the Christian and base their doctrines upon Christ and His finished work. Only Human experiences before conversion are not the gospel, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. We should no longer sell a defective gospel that teaches that salvation is flawed or incomplete unless a believer does things other than accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour and get filled with the Holy Spirit. We should train the believer to walk in power and boldness, not spend all day cowering in a room claiming he or she is praying or on a retreat instead of exhibiting faith in the corridors of human endeavour all over the world. We should train all believers to know the truth that idols are nothing and demons are powerless over every born-again Christian. We should burn all our demon-conscious and evil-focus books and write books about the Holy Spirit, Christ Consciousness, and the reality of the New Believer. A believer is from above and He is above all in Christ.
-GSW-