Features
The grand era of stomach evangelism
It was when Reverend Bonke and the Holy Spirit descended on Tema that some of us realised that almost everybody was sick in the part of the body or another.
If you were not sick of chronic hernia, then you might have been suffering from financial lockjaw. If you didn’t suffer from migraine then of course you couldn’t ‘shed load,’ meaning you had chronic constipation and therefore, could not offload even if you were given twenty four hours to do so.
One alcoholic said his mother-in-law was always talking nonsense so he would drag her to Bonke for deliverance of the mouth. He was sure the woman’s mouth and tongue would be tamed in the name of Jesus.
What was of more sensation, however, was the case of a well-built woman who said she was going to practically carry her husband shoulder high to the crusade. Her husband was suffering from locked waist, she claimed.
“For three years now he has not been fulfilling his marital obligations. Even Koforidua bitters could not help. I’m going to carry him to Bonke to unlock his waist,” she said jubilantly. It all sounded as if Reverend Bonke had some screw-driver he was going to use for the waist job. Or was he going to hammer the waist to loosen it up?
When Bonke asked all those who were sick to raise their hands, almost everybody did. But I guessed not everybody was suffering from physical ailment. Some actually were suffering from the poverty disease and only needed some injections for financial relief.
Yes, assembled at the Oninku Drive Park were natives of Sikaman, illegal aliens and witches from all parts of the country, all ready to taste of the sweetness of the Holy Spirit, to repent and believe in the gospel and to bring their peculiar problem before the Almighty for redress.
In fact, it was rumoured that Bonke decided to organise the crusade in Tema because the Holy Spirit had told him secretly that the witches in Tema were professionals and could cause havoc day or night, on land or on sea. They had to be subdued by the holy fire!
At the crusade, you saw people whose faces showed clearly that they were disturbed in marriage, such that their wives or husbands had fallen into wrong amorous hands, and if Jesus did not intercede, they’d decide to go mad by force and dance naked on the streets of Ashaiman.
Yeah, many people are unlucky in love. The story of that young woman whose love affair with three men successively ended on the rocks was a pathetic one. She committed suicide to end it all. What a pity! But she shouldn’t have killed herself. She should have gone for a Bible and cried to the Lord. The Lord gives succour and relief.
Those who go for the Bible always have hope in life, and somehow it works out for them. So all those who did not commit suicide because they were either sick or worried came to the Lord with white handkerchiefs to meet Reinhard Bonke the witch killer, to deliver the word and work miracles.
The blind, the deaf, the lame, stroke patients were all brought around as Bonke preached the gospel. When it came to time for healing, everyone was excited. He prayed and prayed and later testimonies abounded.
A child sick of bronchial pneumonia who could not breathe started breathing easily. A stroke patient walked vigorously on stage. Indeed, the power of God was at work.
I guess those whose pockets were suffering from internal bleeding also got cured and they went home with hopes of a financial breakthrough.
I was impressed with the crusade also for the fact that no collections were asked to be made, bringing home the point that salvation and divine cures are for free. Salvation indeed is not for sale. When Jesus healed, he didn’t ask for payment.
When Bonke was in Tema eleven years ago, I was at the same Oninku Park to receive my share of the miracles. At that crusade, collections were asked to be made. Maybe Bonke’s Ghanaian friends wanted it that way so that they could get some money to pay off certain expenses- hotel bills, public address systems, plane fares, etc.
If collections are indeed for such purposes, they are welcomed. But where churches actually sell salvation like a market commodity is what some of us are stubbornly against.
Sikaman Palaver investigations have noted a rise in stomach evangelism – the commercialisation of the scripture for the sake of the stomach, the sale for profit of the good news. Christian organisations abroad even send Bibles and volumes of the New Testament to Sikaman for free distribution and people are selling them. What everyone cares about is his stomach not about his fellow human being or the spread of God’s works.
Today Sikaman churches are fraught with embezzlements, quarrels over women and money, formication, adultery, deception, blackmail and treachery.
Jesus is noting all down, believe it or not. On that dreadful day, we shall see things and hear things. There is an Ewe song which says if you are a good doer, continue doing good. If you also happen to be a bad doer, continue doing bad. -’Each has its own reward.
This article was first published on Saturday Mar 21, 1998.
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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