FEMI ABBAS
Monologue
The title of this article is a question which only conscientiously guided readers can answer scrupulously. For decades, some Nigerian charlatans with feeble but foxy minds have been duping innocent masses by presenting religion to them, not only as a profession but also as a commodity meant for sale to gullible buyers in the name of evangelism.
Preamble
Judging the above mentioned charlatans (males and females) by their fraudulent claim to be prophets/prophetesses and seers of tomorrow, one cannot but conclude that they are the modern day hoaxers living like vampires on the blood of fools.
By their unbridled mode of operation, it is apparent that those charlatans are not for God but for Satan through money. And, the richer they get in their deceptive trade the poorer the members of their congregations become and the more Nigeria is afflicted by un-foretold calamities.
The Furry of a Virus
The current global furry of an invisible virus codenamed COVID 19 is a typical example of the above cited calamities.
Within just three months or thereabout, that virus has taken the lives of humans in thousands across nations and regions and the count keeps rising.
Yet, the regular advertising slogan with which those charlatans lure innocent people into their satanic dragnets is MIRACLE.
Now, where is that constantly and lousily advertised MIRACLE?
Reminder
It will be recalled that before the adoption of the deceptive word ‘MIRACLE’ by some demonic merchants as a magnetic slogan, Nigeria was never known to be a hub of calamities as she is today.
And, even, at this precarious time, when the country is fiercely confronted by the globally pandemic disease called COVID 19, those disciples of the Lucifer continue to regale in chanting the usual obnoxious slogan of MIRACLE for the purpose of self-enrichment.
Is the so-called MIRACLE in any way dissimilar from the word MAGIC which some vagabonds do audaciously display as a gimmick with which to dupe foolish people? What else is called fraud? And who does not know that only the agents of devil can commit fraud with such unbridled audacity as those Nigerian charlatans do in the name of God?
The Antics of Fraudsters
Fraud, in all its characteristics, is like lightening in the life of a night marauder. Whenever it flashes its dazzling flare from the sky, the marauder feels delighted in self-deception and believes that the needed illumination with which to move ahead has been provided. Thus, the similitude of fraud, especially in the religious sphere, is like that of a spider’s cobweb which provides security for the spider that weaves it but serves as a trap for other mobile objects that want to pass through it.
Like Miracle like Magic
Unknown to many people, miracle without divinity, is to the religious sphere what Magic is to mundane life. In other words, it is a religious hobby for certain greedy and avaricious elements, especially in today’s Nigeria, to masquerade in the cloak of religion and hide behind one finger to dupe gullible people.
Functions of Conscience
Conscience, according to Nigeria’s great scholar of the 19th century, Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio, is an open wound which only the truth can heal. It is also the compass of human life through which the soul of man can find its way towards Allah’s mercy. Whoever loses his conscience to Satan on the journey to Allah’s mercy has automatically lost that divine mercy at a point where it may not be retrievable.
Season of Distinction
This is a season of clear distinction between satanic predictions and fake prophecies in Nigeria. This is one of the seasons in which some obvious fraudsters who are known for basking in an empty euphoria of delusion do parade themselves as prophets in the midst of idiots.
This is the season when such fraudsters give the false impression that prediction and prophecy are one and the same and therefore take undue advantage of some people’s blatant ignorance and fanatical gullibility to dupe them in the name of MIRACLE.
Whereas prediction is about mere imagination sometimes influenced by Satan just as foresight is about intuition based on experience, both are evidently human while prophecy is divine.
The Puzzling Angle of Prophecy
There is something strange about prophecy which continues to puzzle the rightly guided human beings. It is like the night that is invisibly pregnant but which surprisingly delivers wonders in the day. Genuine prophecy is neither by wishful fabrication nor by devilish pretext.
Its roots are firmly planted in the rich soil of divinity while its genuine envoys were divinely chosen and called Messengers of Allah. The last of such messengers was Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who left this world over 1400 years ago. Anybody whoever claimed or is claiming to be a prophet after the demise of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is surely a fraudster and an agent of the Lucifer.
Wealthy Prophets
Ordinarily, religion is a mode of showing gratitude to the immortal Creator and a means of ventilating decency in the society via the rule of law. On the contrary, it is not, an instrument of deceit and self- enrichment.
Except for King Daud (David) and his son, King Sulayman (Solomon), who were divinely guided to show the world how wealth should be legitimately acquired and managed, no Prophet of Allah was ever stupendously rich. This can be compared to the situation of today in which the quality of prophecy is foolishly measured in terms of the material wealth possessed by the fraudsters who are parading themselves as prophets and seers.
Today, mere expression of wishes and satanic prediction have deliberately been tagged prophecy, which in turn, have become a major platform for preaching prosperity rather than posterity at the expense of godliness and humanitarianism.
Genuine Prophecy
It is not by clandestinely predicting the number of Kings or politicians who will die in a locality in the coming year or the governors who will regain or lose their seats to opponents or even occurrences of accidents on the roads that makes a person a prophet. Genuine prophets are known not by fabrication and the amount of wealth accruing from such fabrications but by the exemplary actions that may serve humanity in good stead for many centuries or even millennia after their demise.
Prophets Isa (Jesus) and Muhammad (SAW) are good examples of such genuine Prophets. Both of them had no material wealth while alive and they left no material wealth behind as heritage. Yet, no names compare with theirs today in terms of universal acknowledgement and spiritual glory.
Prophecy, therefore, is not to be judged by certain fraudsters’ annual fraudulent predictions who satanically claim to be ‘prophets’. It is rather a matter of divine guidance towards future events that are genuinely backed up by divine rules of law.
Today’s Fake ‘Prophets’
In contrast to the above definition of genuine prophecy, however, fake prophecy is, today, a fabricated commodity which finds a large market in Nigeria for which gullible people queue up in multitudes before fraudsters with the intention of gaining illegitimately from those fraudsters, through the back door, what they are not divinely destined to gain in life legitimately.
And, in the process, they are forced to carry out satanic instructions that may eventually bring ruins to them and pave ways for those fraudsters to zoom stupendously into material fortune without any regard for conscience.
Read Also: COVID 19: FG creates Digital Platforms for interaction among MDAs
How Charlatans aid Crimes
Most criminal activities in Nigeria today, particularly, corruption and other social crimes are products of fake prophecies and insensitive display of wealth by some fraudsters called religious leaders. It is evident that most stolen funds by bank Executives and Public Servants end up in the pockets of some the so-called overseers of certain religious denominations who are desperately competing to be listed among the richest people in the world. At least we have not forgotten the episode of a $15 million ammunition contract involving the private jet of a so-called religious leader which was seized in South Africa in 2014. Is that a duty of an evangelist?
Ownership of Sanctuaries
Perhaps, one of the most satanic crimes in Nigeria today emanates from heartless preaching of prosperity at all costs by some so called religious leaders who are so desperate to be rich at all costs. It is a well-known fact that the common bragging in vogue among those charlatans in Nigeria today is about the number of sanctuaries that each of them owns in the country as well as the number of branches their sanctuaries have in outside the country.
Thus, the richer those overseers become, the deeper the members of their congregations sink into the abyss of poverty. And the reason for this is not far-fetched. The poor worshippers are cajoled or hypnotized into paying the pittance in their pockets into the ever demanding purses of their satanic preachers called ‘prophets’.
A Prophetic Warning
Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had forewarned the Muslim Ummah, over 1400 years ago, against the calamity that false prophecy could bring to mankind. Addressing his companions on a particular occasion at that time, he said:
“There will be calamity!” He repeated this three times. But rather than asking him of its cause, his Companions simply asked for the solution. They had no cause to doubt him. And he told them to look for the solution in the legacy he was leaving behind. That legacy is the rule of law as contained in the Qur’an and Sunnah.
Rule of Law
Prophet Muhammad (SAW) emphasized to his Companions that nothing besides the rule of law would ever bring the needed harmony to the world. He described the Qur’an as the all-time permanent solution to the various problems of all people and concluded that only individuals, groups or nations that hold it (the Qur’an) tenaciously would escape the mentioned calamity.
The Qur’an, according to Prophet Muhammad (SAW), is the mirror with which to view the past retrospectively and draw a lesson from its experience. It is the effective compass with which to find the way in the hazy wilderness of the present. It is also the impeccable telescope with which to view the future and escape its satanic dragnet. In other words, the Qur’an is an everlasting prophecy recalling the occurrences of the past, serving as the guiding law of the present and turning focus on the future expectations with a view to clearing the way for the pious ones.
The Prophet’s Objective
By asking the world to follow the rule of law in all their actions, the Prophet never thought of rising from his grave one day to usurp the governance of any particular nation or region of the world. Neither did he leave any heir behind who could inherit the governance of this ephemeral world. His objective, according to the mission he bore, was for the world to be in harmony through divine guidance.
And, it is only in the interest of mankind to uphold the rule of law for the sake of their harmonious co-existence. Today, is there any individual, group or nation not affected negatively by discarding the rule of law as divinely provided? Every aspect of life has its rule of law.
We work in the day and rest in the night not by our own volition but in accordance with the natural rule of law that guide our existence as human beings. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West to obey the rule of law that controls its operations. Fishes live in water.
Plants grow generically from the soil and are fed through their roots in accordance with the natural rule of law that governs them. Disharmony prevails only when deviation from the rule of law occurs. And such is often caused by human beings.
Carnivores like lions, vipers and eagles never voluntarily feed on plants. Herbivores like elephants, camels and goats never feed on flesh. To force them to do otherwise, in the name of experiment, is to cause disharmony in the animal kingdom.
Causes of Disharmony
The world is in total disharmony today not because of innocent mistakes but because of deliberate deviation from the rule of law by those who are supposed to uphold it. Stronger nations want to usurp or dominate weaker nations as in the case of America in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
Governments want to enslave the governed as in the case of Nigeria since independence in 1960. It is all an evidence of dogs eating dogs in the stable of greed. Why won’t disharmony prevail?
But Allah so much loves mankind that He does not leave them permanently in the hands of devilish predators. From time to time, Allah sends conscientious individuals either as rulers or as counselors to rescue the oppressed.
Rule of law is the first sign of sanity in a society. It is an evidence of decency in a people. It is a thorn on the way of certain fraudsters who claim to be Prophets.
What the Qur’an teaches which Prophet Muhammad (SAW) emphasized is for everybody to follow the rule of law by which he or she is governed. To do this is to follow the guidance of the Qur’an (as Muslims) or that of the Bible (as Christians).
Authenticity
Prophet Muhammad (SAW) never spoke in a vacuum. His utterances were divinely guided. And the Qur’an confirms this as follows: “He (Muhammad) never speaks out of sheer whim; his expressions are no other than inspired revelations; he is taught by the One who is mighty in power…” Q. 15:3-4
Warning
The fraudsters of today who are parading themselves as ‘Prophets’ and Custodians of MIRACLE should repent and refrain from fraudulent act. Otherwise, they will end up like those of the past who were eventually consigned to a rubles of historical oblivion. Let those who have ears heed this axiomatic warning. Materialism is a mere vanity which has a limited time.
“Allah does not change a people’s lot unless they change the evil conception in their hearts. If He seeks to afflict them with a misfortune, no one else can ward it off. Besides Him, there is no protector (for any rational being).” Q.13:11.
God save Nigeria from the evil antics of fraudsters who are masquerading deceptively in the cloak of religion. Amin!