Breaking News:
In Near Total Meltdown.
“The food and drug regulatory agency in a statement…accused a church of falsely using its name to deceive the public - peddling “Miracle Water and Soap.”
“Nigerian clerics from various Christian denominations have staged a protest against the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) saying the agency lacks the right to regulate spiritual products.”
What Theology? What a paradox?How did we get here? And where did we get it wrong? Yes, What? How? Where? And Why? Can you please help to answer these questions?
I am befuddled - weighed down with emotions - sad and sorrowful because of what is happening in my country of birth. I feel pained by the failure of the Church to play its role as light in the darkness of our world.
Where’s the Voice crying in our Wilderness? Who will bell the cat?
My gut tells me we lost it when we left prayer and religious education out of our school curriculum, at the primary and secondary school levels. We nailed all ethical values and morality. We took our eyes off biblical worldviews to fixate on wealth and materialism. Superficially, we copy the American ways out of context - building our house without a foundation, albeit on shifting sand. We went for the superstructure without the infrastructure. What took the Americans over two hundred and forty years to evolve, we want to replicate under sixty years of post-colonial geopolitical experience.
Politics? Yes. We are all political animals, but we cannot all be politicians. The church has its role, we all have our role to build a healthy nation. It seems the church has given up; the salt has lost its saltiness. What we have now, I mean the characters dictating the tune in the corridors of most churches (not all), are charlatans.
We need a John the Baptist in our wilderness to cry out, loud and clear: “Repent, for the Judgement of God is at hand.”
It’s time for concerned Christians to come together and confront the adversary, masquerading under the guise of church and deliverance ministries - to wreak havoc on the body. They are all over the place! The worrying trend must be arrested before we lose it all. We stand on the Lord’s promise: “I will build my church, and the gate of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
House of Prayer:
We have a template in the Scripture:
Matthew 21: 12 -13, states:
“Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all buying and selling there. “It is written, he said to them, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it “a den of robbers.”
The temple, as seen in the Scriptures, is a holy place where God dwells with his people and where offerings are made. It is a rich biblical image of where God and humanity overlap. By the same token, the Tabernacle, set up in the wilderness, served as the place where God’s people received forgiveness from sin by means of the sacrificial system. The temple is divided into three parts - the outercourt, the holy place, and the holy of holies (holiest place), where the Ark of the Covenant is seated.
The temple courts, are open to all; it is where sinners bring their offerings to the priests (Levites). The entire vicinity of the temple is deemed to be holy, set apart for sacred worship. Integral to the sacrificial system are animals and birds used as offering, thus attracting traders in animals, birds, and currency exchange. Soon, the environment was polluted by charlatans and money mongers, as we are now witnessing in some religious assemblies.
Such was the background to the scenario referenced in the above passage.
Sinners confess their sins on the sacrificial animals, and turn them over to the priests. The animals are killed and their blood shed substitutionary to the sinners’ blood. For the soul that sins shall die (Ezekiel 18: 20). The priests from the tribe of Levi were there to serve as mediators between God and the people - the Istraelites. An individual brings his sacrifice to the priest in the outer courts, the priest goes on to offer the sacrifice in the holy place. As a nation, Israel brings the national offering once a year on the Day of Atonement (Yor Kippu). The High Priest offers the sacrifice on behalf of Israel in the Holy of holies, with great fear and trepidation, for one misstep of the High Priest means death for him.
This is what praying — religious rites - meant within the context of the Covenant between God and Israel - Old Covenant. The Temple is the House of prayer.
This is the burden Jesus lifted off believers’ shoulders when He offered himself as the once-and-for-all sacrifice for humanity: For whoever believes in him. His sacrifice on the cross eliminates the role of the priest. No one needs to bring animal sacrifices any more. What’s more, Jesus is now in heaven, where He performs the role of the High Priest, before God His Father and the Father of all believers, pleading the cause of sinful humans. “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let’s hold firmly to our confession…” (Hebrews 4: 14–16).
And there in the heavenly places, we are seated with Christ (Ephesians 2:6).
Temples of the Holy Spirit
Before his sacrifice and departure, Jesus allays the fears of his disciples with the promise that “the Advocate the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” (John 14: 26). This promise was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost when “like a mighty rushing wind” the Holy Spirit came down, and filled the disciples who were waiting in the upper room of the temple in Jerusalem (Acts 2: 1-42).
Henceforth, believers continue to experience the infilling of the Holy Spirit.
Paul, writing to the Corinthian Christians, reminded them of what they are:
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Corinthians 6: 19-20).
God crafts His people into a “building” — a “spiritual house”— which is His dwelling place. This is true of believers in Jesus collectively, and also of individual believers.
Temple of the Living God: that is what you are as a believer - the House of Prayer.
These are the truths the charlatans will not want their followers to know. They are writing their own bibles. Jesus says, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8: 32).
Hebrews 10: 26-27 sounds like the last warning for those who know the truth but have chosen to suppress the truth to satisfy the cravings of the flesh:
“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sin is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.”
Enemies of God? Think about it, and know them for who they are.
