‘Reverendus’, Latin for ‘Reverend’, is one who is to be respected or is deserving of reverence. We see them in colourful suits and designer shoes, often showing forth material gains from the labour of ministry, disguised as Grace from above.
They hear voices carnal minds cannot fathom, which they dish out as prophecies from God.
They court influence, chase wealth and gamble for power. We clothe them with the authority to validate our actions and tell us how to be good men and women.
Prophetic giveaways
We do not have equal authority to tell men of God what to say or how to live their lives, not even when they have failed at the only vocation they were called to do.
They explain their failures with suitable Bible parables or simply parry away our queries as men of God, not God men, until another scandal is born.
That, perhaps, is the only time they are prepared to shirk off a bit of their ‘reverendus’ and pretend to share in our vulnerabilities and insecurities as mere mortals.
Last week, we were treated to one of the parables from the stables of Emmanuel Badu Kobi, a popular and controversial prophet.
He retold the sad story of Job, the biblical character whose grace-to-grass-to grace portrait of life, continues to remind us about the stormy weathers that confront all of us.
Badu Kobi, the wealthy prophet who once gifted 269 cars to some lucky Ghanaians on God’s orders, is today a poor man who has no car, struggling to survive another day.
The beneficiaries include legendary musician Daddy Lumba, whom the prophet alleges, immediately received healing to his spinal cord when he sat in the car.
When life was good, the prophet gave away houses, money and other gifts to his followers.
Today, things are so bad it is alleged the man of God is selling his Sakomono church, to settle some personal debts. Court documents have surfaced, linking his wife to suits challenging the sale of the church.
The prophet has since clarified that he is not selling the Glorious Wave International Church; he is only following strict instructions from God to relocate the church.
Like Job, he has assured the Christian community that he would bounce back to bigger glory when God perfects His plans for his life and ministry.
The contention for Badu Kobi’s glory are three pronged: Lucifer, a wife asking for divorce and ungrateful politicians.
Prophecies and libidos
Prophet Badu Kobi is only a poster project of the vicissitudes of the charismatic religious experience and the excesses we have been dealing with for the last fifty years.
From the journalist who complained that one of our TV-friendly prophets snatched his girlfriend, to the shameless victims who fell prey to Agradaa’s sika gari schemes, we are treated to a daily cocktail of the diabolic and money-grabbing antics of suspicious characters who have annexed the title ‘reverendus’ to buy time before perdition, and tame our anger when they fall below our expectations.
Before NPP politician Kennedy Ohene Agyapong wreaked armageddon on some prophets in the charismatic Christian community, including Badu Kobi, most of us kept a dossier of the strangest happenings in some churches.
We made fun of the prophecies that made God look like a joker who double speaks when he is unsure what to say, and laughed away when the prophets produced strange explanations for their prophetic misadventures.
They told us who will win our presidential elections and predicted scores of popular football matches.
They foretold celebrities who will die before Christmas and those who would have died but for their prayers.
We tolerated prophets who have more than one date of birth and two sets of biological mothers.
We played dumb when others threatened to change into any animals of their choice to haunt us in our dreams.
We blamed vulnerable women who fell for the libidinous allures of the most stylish pretenders among them.
Yet we have always known that one day those cans of religious worms will explode in our faces and make all of us look pretty foolish for believing every gospel as truth.
Message of the cross
Has perdition come too soon for Prophet Badu Kobi? How does God instruct a man to give away hundreds of cars to just anybody and doesn’t tell him to save one for himself?
This makes nonsense of many of the popular parables in the Bible, especially the parable of the talents, where Jesus admonished us to invest and multiply what we have.
The foolish virgins in the Jesus parable, who failed to save oil for their lamps, suddenly look wiser than a wealthy prophet who is struggling to save his church building.
And for a prophet who sees ahead and conveys the speakings of God, he should listen carefully whenever God says anything.
The other day, he launched into tribal bigotry when he called women from the Asante tribe greedy property grabbers, and Fante women foolish.
He also described women from the Ewe extraction as doormats, swearing that he will not advise any man to marry from the Asante tribe if they want peace on earth.
When his wife took him to court to contest the sale of his church and other properties as a shareholder, people wondered which tribe the prophet married from.
What kind of gospel makes stereotypes of some tribes as unfit for marriage? Where is the saving message of Christ in all of this?
Like Dr Mensa Otabil and Apostle Abel Damina, I worry about transactional Christianity and pulpits that have made altars of things that are not central to the message of the cross.
Beyond losing his church and maybe his wife, prophet Badu Kobi must not be allowed to lose the essence of his calling, whether as Reverendus or based on his own modus.
By KWESI TAWIAH-BENJAMIN, Canada
Tissues Of The Issues
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Ottawa, Canada
