By FEMI ABBAS
In the January 8 edition of his Friday column in The Nation, titled, THE MESSAGE, Journalism Veteran, Alhaji Femi Abbas, ex-rayed issues with fake prophecies in Nigeria, especially in a season like this. The DEFENDER considers a republish of same on request by fans. Excerpts:
Monologue
This is January, the first month of the Gregorian calendar. This is the month that opens the season of fake prophecies by certain fraudsters who claim to be ‘prophets’. Ordinarily, this month is supposed to be a month of festivities and renewal of hope for those who believe in it in the world of Christendom. How the month transformed into January from Janus and how it became a property of Christianity is another story that is not meant to be told here and now. There is always another time. Ironically, however, this same month of January, in Nigeria, is a proverbial spider web in which some straying human insects are annually snared with little chance of rescue or that of outright emancipation.
It is in Nigeria that many blatantly ignorant people are made to dwell in a labyrinth of self-deception and perpetual confusion, by certain notorious fraudsters, who are garrulously parading themselves as ‘prophets’ in search of vainglory.
Preamble
It is in this so-called giant of Africa that certain agents of Satan do desperately wrap their demonic wishes in a package of delirious hallucination and tag it ‘Prophecy’, for sale to some wishful thinkers, who voluntarily crave for dazzling deception at the beginning of every month of January. The buyers of deception, thus, become captives to those fraudsters.
Ignorantly, such captives, voluntarily queue up before the so-called prophets, for the purpose of chasing mirage in the New Year, on the basis of fanatical gullibility. And by so doing, they seem to have surrendered their destinies to their captors. Observing.
The month called January from any angle, one will discover that it is a peculiar month. Its peculiarity, especially in Nigeria, is such that makes a clear distinction between prediction and prophecy difficult, if not impossible, particularly, for some obvious boobies who are claiming to be educated.
Prediction or Prophecy
Whereas prediction is about imagination just as foresight is about intuition, both are evidently human while prophecy is divine.
There is something strange about prophecy which continues to remain a puzzle to rightly guided human beings. It is like the night that is invisibly pregnant but which miraculously delivers wonders in the day. Except in Nigeria, prophecy is neither by wishful thinking and fraudulent fabrications nor by devilish pretext. Its roots are firmly planted in the rich soil of divinity and its agents were divinely chosen and called Messengers of God. The last of such Messengers was Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who left this earth almost 1500 years ago. Anybody whoever claimed or is now claiming to be a ‘prophet’ after the demise of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is surely a fraudster and an agent of the Lucifer.
Appointment of Prophets
Becoming a Prophet of Allah is never by chance. Only Allah appoints His own Prophets for an appropriate nation with an appropriate mission at an appropriate time. But what most people do not know is that prophecy is just one of the attributes of the Envoys of Allah to mankind. And, claiming to be a ‘prophet’ as peculiar to certain religious merchants in Nigeria, does not make a person an Envoy of Allah.
Actually, the genuine Envoys of Allah are those divinely commissioned with a mission and designated as Messengers. The undeniable evidence of the mission of Allah Messengers is the divinely revealed Books that served as the guide in the delivery of their message. Today, this has been satanically bastardized in Nigeria, by self-styled ‘prophets’, who see prophecy as an umbrella of fortune under which they can hide to dig gold and silver. Such agents only sooth-tell satanic wishes to their ignorant and parochial victims who are callously milked in the name of prophecy.
Today, at the instance of fake ‘prophets’ a mere expression of wishes and satanic prediction have been deliberately termed prophecy, which in turn, has become a major platform for preaching prosperity rather than posterity at the expense of godliness and humanitarianism.
Genuine Prophecy
Genuine prophets are known, not by fabrication and the amount of material wealth accruing from such fabrications, but by pious intentions and 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 whose prophecies are symbols of their divine messages.
Prophecy, therefore, is not to be judged by annual fraudulent predictions by fraudsters who satanically claim to be prophets. Virtually all the religious tenets and regulations in Christianity and Islam today are reflections of the prophecies of the two great men mentioned above in the past two millennia or thereabout. Both men, Jesus and Muhammad (SAW) never pretended to be able to do what they were not divinely assigned to do. They never sought material wealth and, thus, they had no cause to be fraudulent.
Today’s Fake ‘Prophets’
Today, fake prophecy is a product which finds a large market in Nigeria for which ignorant and parochial people queue up in multitudes, to buy from fraudsters, with the intention of gaining fraudulently what they are not divinely destined to gain in life. Thus, 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 into material fortune stupendously without any regard for conscience or for consequences. It is on record that most broken homes and criminal activities in Nigeria today, particularly, corruption and other social crimes, are products of fake prophecies and insensitive display of wealth by demonic prophets. It is evident that the ridiculously stolen amounts of public funds by public officers end up in the pockets of some so-called overseers of certain religious sanctuaries who are listed among the richest people in the world. Is religion about material wealth? In who’s emulation is acquisition of material wealth, such as riding in executive jets and possession of properties around the world, in the name of clergy? And, according to which religious tenets were some so-called religious leaders acting as arms contractors for the government some years ago?
Sources of Fraudulence
Individual or family ownership of sanctuaries
is perhaps, one of the most satanic crimes in Nigeria today, which emanates from heartless preaching of prosperity at all costs by the so called religious leaders who are so much desperate to be rich that they even borrow billions of naira from banks to build religious sanctuaries that would become the heritage of their wives and children. It is a well known fact that the common religious bragging in vogue, in Nigeria today, is about the number of sanctuaries owned in the country by the so-called overseers as well as the number of branches of those sanctuaries in Europe and America. Thus, the richer the 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 the overseers.
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 the cause of calamity, 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.
The Rule of Law
The Prophet emphasized to his Companions that nothing, besides the rule of law, would ever bring necessary sanity 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 (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 dangerous satanic dragnet. In other words, the Qur’an is an everlasting prophecy recalling the occurrences of the past, serving as the guidance of the present and turning focus on the future expectations with a view to clearing the way for the pious ones.
By asking the world to follow the rule of law in all their ways, the Prophet never aimed at rising from his grave one day to govern any particular nation or region of the world. Neither did he leave any heir behind who would inherit the governance of the 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.
To marry according to the rule of law; to divorce, if need be, according to the rule of law; to raise families according to the rule of law; to transact businesses according to the rule of law; to play politics according to the rule of law; to give judgment according to the rule of law; to conduct elections according to the rule of law; to legislate according to the rule of law; to govern according to the rule of law, these and more are the elements of the mission preached by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and, there has never been an alternative to it since his demise about one and a half millennia ago.
Today, is there any individual, group or nation not affected positively by the rule of law in the world?
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 and are fed through their roots in accordance with the natural rule of law that governs them. Disharmony prevails only when deviation occurs from the rule of law. 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 disharmony today because of deliberate deviation from the rule of law by those in power. 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. That was the fortune of Nigeria when Umaru Musa Yar’Adua emerged as President.
His insistence on rule of law first sounded odd to some lawless elements who took such stand for granted because they never experienced rule of law in Nigeria before his coming. But that was the blessing that our country needed as a solid foundation for a strong building. But, after him, see what Nigeria has become. 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.
Lost Paradise
Prophet Muhammad never spoke in a vacuum. His utterances were divinely guided. And the Qur’an confirms this as follows: “He (Muhammad) never spoke out of sheer whim; his expressions are no other than inspired revelations; he is taught by the One who is mighty in power…”
Nigerians of today have become like the Israelis of yore who after being rescued by Prophet Musa (Moses) from the manacles of Pharaoh, showed ingratitude to Allah and were thrown into the wilderness of life. Having suffered in the hands of a blind and deaf Nigerian Pharaoh for eight terrible years and having been liberated by an unexpected Musa (Moses), it only behooved conscientious people to be grateful, not necessarily to that Musa (Moses) butto God who used him for this divine gesture. The sharp difference between the road to hell and the one to paradise which Nigerians experienced within the first decade of the fourth republic had shown how wonderful Allah could be in His deeds. It also confirmed the genuineness of Prophet Muhammad’s prophecy as divinely attested in Chapter 20, Verse 24 of the Qur’an thus:
“When my guidance is revealed to you, (Muhammad), whoever follows it shall never err nor be afflicted; but he who gives no heed to My warning shall live in distress and be raised a blind person on the Day of Resurrection…”
The Qur’anic verse quoted above must always be a reference point for all decent, law-abiding people. Anything contrary may only pave the country’s way to waterloo. For politicians, professionals and artisans to rely on fake prophesy in the name of religion, as now prevalent in Nigeria, is to cling desperately to a sinking straw. Those who did it in the past are now part of the debris of a dormant history. The fraudsters of today who are parading themselves as ‘Prophets’ will surely not be different from those of the past who have now been consigned to a permanent historical oblivion. Let those who have ears heed this axiomatic warning. Materialism is mere vanity which has a limited time.
“Allah does not change a people’s lot unless they change what is 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! THE MESSAGE
