adminMorris Mtisi
NO Christian past and present can ever imagine that God’s engineering or Craftsmanship could be faulty. Or imagine for one moment that like VolksWagon(VW) the company that assembled cars that were recalled to the plant to have faults corrected, God would in the same way create faulty human beings. Emphatic Nooo! Never!
God is, was, ever perfect. He assembled perfect items. So Adam and Eve were created perfect-no blemish, given life, everlasting life, dominion over everything including divine honour and privilege to name things and animals God had created. They were given everything they needed to live and live forever.
Yet they failed the test of obedience. We know the story from A to Z. The question is, ‘If a perfect man and woman failed, what more of us imperfect sinners born to sinful mothers and fathers sinful by reason of inherited sin?” Adam and Eve were our first parents, perfect, sinless. They failed the test. How do we pass it? How can we? People who are born with the carnal sin?
Last Saturday I attended the first Sabbath service of the year 2016 at Sanctuary Church. What a refreshing Sabbath it was! What a peaceful, small church, quiet, tranquil, serene, quintessence of Godliness…friendly and loving people.
Yes, it’s divinely healthy to fellowship with new people sometimes. May be just going away from a source of unfriendly heat.
May be just being away from rapacious marauders who stifle other people’s free will to worship. May be away from natural haters who feel insecure and threatened by their own jealousies and figments of imagination. May be just being away from blabbermouths who throw mud in your water with every word they speak, plunderers who are fond of minding other people’s business, instead of their own, forgetting God is for us all.
May be just meeting new sheep in the flock and joining in divine communion and worship. Who doesn’t like visitors and visiting, especially if they mean well? Someone once said friendly strangers together are better than a family of quarrelsome enemies. Another one said it is better to have one friend than have many who make you feel lonely and isolated in their company. They could all be right. As for me I was at Sanctuary Church that Sabbath day on a search for sincere spiritual fresh air, a sanctuary of peace as the church name suggests.
And there was Hasha Maringe taking Sabbath lesson for the day. He started by describing the war in Heaven between God and angel Lucifer-turned-rebel who became Satan. Was it fair that God threw Satan on earth? Maringe asked. Surely God could have dealt with Lucifer in heaven and be done with him once and for all. Was it therefore God who brought trouble onto earth or was it Adam and Eve? Being a Sabbath lesson, people were free to express their understanding of this scripture. It was as it always is fascinating to hear various insights into the questions the lesson teacher was posing for thought and digestion.
What I saw in the war in Heaven between God and Satan was a God in Heaven who had to deal with a problem in Heaven; a God who had to liberate Heaven first from an angel that was jealous of God’s Son Jesus, a dissident determined to overthrow Christ and replace him. It was a terrible war for the devil was powerful and almost as powerful as God Himself, but being God He finally won and threw the defeated angel on earth. So for me that was a liberation struggle in Heaven. God won it.
There is no question about that. Therefore for me it was God who brought this trouble on earth but not without a manual of victory, the Bible. In it God through his prophets and evangelists, drafted a constitution of salvation from the turmoil he had thrown on earth. And those who followed the constitution would enjoy victory over evil, victory over Satan-simple.
Then Marange asked, ‘If perfect Adam and Eve fell. What more us who are descendants of sinful parents?’ This set me thinking. It was like thinking how cats can walk where lions dread to walk. A friend at church in such quarterly scripture discussions often asks, “Are modern generations of Christians, us today, you and me, better in faith and loyalty to God than the days of Jesus walking on planet Earth; than people written about in the Scriptures?” And every time she asks that question, I am like eich, if they fell big time those who walked and ate with Jesus, what more of us who only read and pray?
Indeed we are human and not saints. We know and understand but we cannot be. We speak and sometimes in tongues, and tithe and give offerings because we know but we cannot be. Churches are full of people who know, know very much, understand everything, every law and every Biblical don’t but people who cannot be. Theologians preach beautifully and eloquently shake church roofs with evangelical fire but they cannot be. They imitate each other and demonstrate impressive television charisma but they too cannot be.
Why? The answer is simple. Because our first parents sinned and fell from perfection to carnal imperfection! We are all broods of vipers, ask John the Baptist,-vana venyoka typical! And we see too many of these snakes and crooks, criminals, liars, adulterers, cheats-in-marriages, stage actors and actresses. Worshipping has become Hollywood or Nollywood entertainment with almost everyone playing God in the theatre performance called Church.
Last week I wrote about Churchism and defined it as simply going to church and enjoying the gregarious nature of mankind to want to belong to a group, nothing of it being the in-depth search for a living Christ who makes us be. Can we be living saints in such Churches?
Where daylight gossipers, liars, plunderers and rapacious marauders, hypocrites, perform on the stage like actors and actresses who perform to a watching and listening audience on Sunday or Sabbath day and then are heard no more? Between Monday and Friday they are Hollywood and Nollywood performers troubling souls with vile gossip and lies.
But let this be known: Because we shall never be saved on account of our identification and knowledge of hypocrites, church-goers so called, who put up Christian faces but wear hearts of stone, my prayer is “God help me not to be an idle gossiper, a liar and plunderer; not to play God but to accept that I am human and a descendant of sinful ancestors. Alone I cannot change myself. Help me to stop religious arrogance publicly boasting I am a living Saint when I know I am not. Heavenly Father, help me not to be a thorn in other people’s flesh. Release me from the bondage of hypocrisy and let only the truth out of my mouth.” Amen.
A genuine Christian’s prayer is short and sweet. Not a long narrative of memorized religious clichés lamenting the fear of Hell; not a long list of petitions of personal wants and desires in which the prayer-giver listens to his or her own beautiful language and fluency; not a long list of kind demands for money, good health and prosperity; not a long religious poem even, recited from the mouth; but an honest and sincere prayer germinating from the heart: simple, short and sweet.
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