Everyone took a swig at the bottle and was sufficiently inebriated after that little indulgence. This was an age of miracles when people had powers to part seas and walk through them.
Nowadays people believe the miracle boat has sailed, that nobody is capable of such magical biblical feats. But how wrong they are seemingly! The new age pastors of today are apparently capable of conjuring up miracles.
That is what the pastors say to the gullible masses. Let me not call them pastors because they trade with the handle ‘prophets’. Somehow the miracles are back. If you want to be rich you leave your church and join the one where the pastors can talk to God directly. When you want to be blessed with marriage you go join a church where octogenarians call a 35-year old prophet ‘papa’. When you want to be prosperous you join a church where pastors sell tickets to heaven for a hefty sum of P5,000. In my life I have seen a pastor ‘walking’ on air.
I have also seen a prophet ‘wake from the dead’ a very hungry man. This last episode of a ‘miracle’ had different lessons for everyone. His flock saw him as a powerful man who will make them live forever if they kept tithing. For me the lesson, however, was do not die hungry. Just in case a prophet with special powers resurrects you! Only recently a Zim prophet or Man of God was exposed as a Man of Gold by Al Jazeera when he tried to sell Zimbabwean gold for himself in a scandal that will soon be spin-doctored by the state and his followers.
The ‘Touch Not My Anointed’ and ‘He Didn’t Dun It’ signs will soon go up. I remember once I mentioned on this very column about fake prophets and I got fierce backlash from the followers. ‘You always were a Judas’ was probably the kindest of all the darts that were thrown at me. Today’s instalment - unlike the last one where the prophets were only mentioned in a sentence – is a bit long. That means the backlash might be more vicious.
So the next time you see me with a long face just know that I could well be dealing with curses and threats like ‘you will not go to heaven’ from the prophets’ flock. Like many career prophets, a friend of mine who caught the prophet bug insisted that becoming a prophet would not change him. He was going to be the same person, darn it! He was NOT going to turn into one of those prophets who babble obsessively about tithing and tithing amounts and all the other tithing issues. Above all, he was NEVER going to wear pointed shoes. But it did not last, could not last. Very soon he had all the trappings of a new age prophet – designer suits, pointed shoes, voice pitched to stadium mode and all the paraphernalia that comes with being a prophet. Some snide people have called them prophet and loss pastors, perhaps taking a cue from the accountant jargon. Basically this means the prophet gets the profit and there’s a whole loss of money from the followers.
Outside of church we do also experience miracles now and then that have nothing to do with suavely-dressed prophets with black and white pointed shoes spewing fire and brimstone and tithes. For example, my friend’s niece is a miracle teenager who once survived six hours without WiFi. Everyone knows that WiFi is oxygen to today’s youth and surviving without it for so long is the height of miracles. The only difference is no one can claim this miracle came from their God-given abilities.
(For comments, feedback and insults email [email protected]) Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email [email protected].
