Let us begin this piece from Nairaland. Here’s what a user of the social media platform wrote on January 28: “I taught too…2013 to 2016. Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, English, Agricultural Science, and French.” It isn’t hard to surmise that this teacher must have violated the Abami Eda, Fela Anikulapo’s code, ‘Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense.” I can understand a Biology, Physics and Chemistry teacher taking English Language classes as a stop-gap measure, but to then throw Mathematics, Agricultural Science and French into the mix? Sounds patently fraudulent, but that’s precisely how the apparition called General Overseer (G.O.) frequently sounds these days. A receiver par excellence, the G.O. is adept at the theology of castration that robs the flock of juice and reduces it to a mere skeleton.
Intent on the protection of privilege, the G.O. devises an agbalowomeri (extortioner) doctrine that fleeces the flock of every penny for the comfort of his cassock. In the Yoruba writer J.F. Odunjo’s play, Agbalomeri Baale Jontolo, we encounter the vintage robber of a people whose cardinal misfortune was to enthrone him as chief. Like the ‘Mother Church’ which made its wealth robbing races and continents, the G.O. has a rapacious appetite that cannot be quenched, rooted in the bottomless pit. During the beginnings of Nigerian Christianity, men of God, among them Daniel Orekoya, frowned on the idea of the unconverted offering money and gold. Orekoya’s song: “Gbowo re lo, gbobi re lo; ko gbowo, ko gb’obi.” Gloss: Take your money and kolanut away: He receives no money and no kolanut.” Salvation was free. Today, you can go to hell for all the G.O. cares, just don’t fail/forget to drop your tithe before you do so. Judas does not joke with Mammon. Pay or perish. Period!
Now then, let’s go to our source story, as reported by The Guardian on January 2027: “The Pastor of Salvation Ministries, David Ibiyeomie, has warned people never to collect money from senior pastors… He said, “It may be hard, but never collect money from a senior man of God. You are reducing your blessing. I’ll be the last person to collect a dime from Oyedepo, not because challenges have not come. That’s not how it works… Sow into the senior man to draw virtue for the next level.”
This is garbage theology, but there’s a method to the madness. You see, the G.O. is a smart guy. He knows where his bread is buttered and ‘sauced’ and won’t allow you to dangle your slice anywhere near his broth. How can you harvest goodies in his hood when he’s yet to have his fill? “Ladugbo mi? Ti n ti yo?!” he’s going to ask you in a fit of rage, struck by your temerity. Remember that as Soyinka warns in The trials of Brother Jero, no prophet likes to be frightened.
Shortly before his martyrdom, Apostle Paul of Tarsus warned: “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron.” Long before him, the prophet Micah had condemned the religious jobbers of his day (Micah 3:11-12): “The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? No evil can come upon us. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.” So, how can today’s ‘taking’ pastors escape damnation?
Pray, if, as the Bible says, it is more blessed to give than to receive, how then shall “senior men of God” attain this blessing if they don’t give? The Bible says that The Lord God Himself gave Job much more than he had previously, and further that He is the One who gives us the power to make wealth. If we all collect things (money, houses, etc.) from Almighty God, our Creator, and are not condemned, how is a person condemned for collecting gifts from his G.O./pastor? The Bible says “Give us this day our daily bread,” and so I do not expect Ibiyeomie to argue the point that it is God who feeds us all. The Bible also says that Jesus frequently fed people. Were those people condemned for receiving from a “senior man of God?” Was the Apostle Paul, who refused to live by the Gospel, a false preacher?
It seems that the last thing a G.O. reads is the Bible. That’s why some anoint women’s underwear and make people eat grass. These men are audaciously godless, and church actually makes many people senseless! Going by Ibiyeomie’s theory, the G.O. is to receive, not to give, which scripturally makes him a something else. If you preach garbage, it’s because you are garbage. If the G.O. dares to read Acts 20:34-35, he would find Apostle Paul saying the following: “Yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me. I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.” In 2 Corinthians 12:14, the same apostle said: “I will not be burdensome to you: for I seek not yours, but you: for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children.” Over in 2 Samuel 13:24-25, King David would not accompany his son Absalom on a supposed sheep-shearing trip, because the cost would be too much for the young man to bear.
Consider this news: “The Presiding Pastor of The Master’s Place International Church, Pastor Korede Komaiya, has said poverty is a sign of ungodliness.” To this G.O., “To be poor means there is sin in your life.”
Wow, Lazarus must have been a sinner! And Apostle James must have been wrong for writing that God had “chosen the poor of this world rich in faith.” And Apostle Paul, who wrote that God had chosen mostly the lowly of this world for His Kingdom, must be quartered for falsehood. Here’s a June 20, 2020 testimony on a true man of God, Joseph Ayo Babalola (https://sbmola77.medium.com/apostle-joseph-ayo-babalola-cd540cba322f): “Apostle Joseph Ayo Babalola was a very simple and generous man; he gave all he had to the Lord and the poor. He did not amass wealth. He had just 10 shillings and 6 pence in his bag at the time of his death.”
Apostle Peter had no silver or gold because he frequently gave. But how can a man who claims that “Adam was chased out of the garden of Eden for touching his tithe” know better? His Master is Mammon.
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