It was 1995. We were sitting in a large office somewhere in Mayfair area of Ile Ife with a minister. Someone once introduced my fiancée and I to this man who had the gift of gab. They said he was a man of great faith. He could hold you spellbound for hours as he talked about anything he decided on. He was indeed gifted, but I think the man’s greatest ‘qualification’ for ministry was his ability to talk. He was a proof that oration will never go out of style!

He was young, but we were younger still. (It was the period when the messages about ‘mentoring’ became popular and we thought it would be great to be mentored by some people who loved God). This man spoke of so many things and the more he spoke, the more I began to feel uncomfortable. He boasted that nothing could stop him from becoming one of the greatest preachers in the world. He made mighty confessions, and some of them were rather staggering.

“I will ride my jet from town to town, and land in my own airports. I am not going to die until I preach on CNN and every major TV station in the world. The world must hear my voice.”

He stretched his hands at us and said, “Say it with me, ‘The world must hear my voice.’ “

Tola my wife-to-be and I sat opposite him in his office. I looked at her and she looked at me. I’m sure she read my mind that was saying, “Let’s humor this man, dear. Say it with him.”

“The world must hear your voice,” we both responded.

After some more motivational claptrap, this man started asking about our relationship.

“Brother Deon, Sister Tola, how are you guys doing? You must be enjoying yourselves. I know you sometimes kiss and cuddle…” he winked conspiratorially. “Well, don’t be embarrassed. It is normal.” I wasn’t embarrassed. I was shocked. I got up and bid him farewell. We left and started to wonder what kind of a man of God he was. We weren’t immoral, and this man was encouraging immorality and winking about it.

 If I should mention his name today, many who were with us at Ile Ife would know him. He was popular on the University Campus and in the town. That encounter was the last time I had anything significant to do with him. I began to avoid him. I remember that I mentioned him also in my book, “Sex and the Man of God” published in 2014.

 

There’s a reason I’m sharing this story, and you will know shortly. But before then, let me tell you where this preaching orator is now.

 

About two years after I joined Facebook, I got curious and started asking around for him. I eventually got a sister who knew him well. She was the one who told me that he had died.

 

He fell sick. And he died.

 

He didn’t preach on CNN. He didn’t buy a jet. He built no airport.

 

I didn’t mention his death to spite him. Some people who didn’t have ministries I considered to be questionable have died, too. Death is a phenomenon that may be tragic, but hardly unknown.

Everything physical, even if wondered at, eventually waxes old, wanes and withers. But sometimes one just needs to pause and see the futility of man’s carnal pursuits in the light of bigger, eternal ideals. It is very easy for man to think he is God when he is alive and well.

 

Here are my thoughts on this. The God we serve is not the God whom man uses. What many have reduced God to would be so laughable if it isn’t so tragic. We wake up in the morning, grab ‘him’ from the shelves and tell ‘him’ what to do. What He wants us to do and who He wants us to be do not matter.

 

The man whom God uses is one whose life counts to God.

 

The god whom man uses is man’s own creation: a golem conjured up from the rotten recesses of man’s carnal imagination.

 

You may allow your greed to give you visions of gargantuan proportions; you may build castles of desires and zealously pursue their fulfillment. You may bring them all to your mind-crafted god to rubber-stamp. Your god will do it for you willingly since you are his creator and he exists to please you and dance to every discordant tune that flows out of your crooked pipe.

 

You may even get to fulfill some of these dreams. But what then?

After pursuing the mirage and grasping emptiness in the name of achievement, what then?

After building an empire on greed and avarice, using the tombstone of truth as a pulpit from which lies are traded to thousands for their money, what then?

After draining virtues out of the young ones who trust you, taking from boys and girls what cannot be bought with money, and corrupting them with your lust, what then?

After putting yourself in the place of the Omnipotent One, then breaking the trust of thousands, thereby sending them away from the Eternal Hope, what then?

I’ll tell you what. You will be a monument to dishonor. The voices you have silenced and weakened will speak against you. The One Who sits in the heavens will hear, and your Eternal destiny will be sealed within a box of fire. There, the god you made with your vain mind will not be present to plead, for he never really existed, except in your vain mind.

While Mercy is yet beckoning, before the day of reckoning, you should start returning.

There are so many closet perverts out there, and they include professing Christians. I’m writing this piece to tell everyone that it is very dangerous to hide your sexual weakness; that it is better to seek help now when it is honorable to do so. If you don’t, that latent sexual pressure building up within you may well be your ruin.

This will be the first in a series of articles on sexual perversion and the way out of it. It is an uncomfortable thing to write about. The truth is that it has become imperative that we confront this issue from the biblical point of view. The world’s antidotes are not working. More often than not, they recommend the very process that encourages immorality while fighting the natural outcome of the process.

As you read this, please feel free to comment and even disagree with anything you feel is out of order. We can respectfully have a debate on this. My friends list on Facebook is not a long one, so I humbly implore anyone who sees this and connects with it to share it.

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I remember the case of brother X. He had been attending our new church for more than one year. A very amiable person, he wished to be more deeply involved in some ‘sensitive’ church activities, but I kept having a check in my spirit. I didn’t sense the freedom to commit anything serious into his hands. Something didn’t just seem right about this precious brother, and the Lord wasn’t telling me in very plain terms. So I just kept watching him.

On this particular day, he wasn’t looking happy at all. I had taught on how to overcome sexual sins, and I had been very explicit in some of the things I said. Several people were uncomfortable, but he was chief among them.

He waited after the service and insisted on seeing me. When it was his turn to speak with me, he began to choke on the words. It wasn’t easy for him to let out the shameful things he wanted to say. He squirmed and fidgeted. Embarrassment was written all over him.

When he finally found his voice and some composure, he said to me,

“Pastor, I have been in the bondage of sexual perversion for a very long time.”

That wasn’t new to me. I routinely counseled people who were involved in different kinds of sexual perversion. But the brother wasn’t done.

“When I was a kid,” he said, “My parents brought a little girl to live with us. She was in our house to serve as ‘house girl,’ helping with the chores and attending to little things. My parents were responsible for her education. We lived in a rural community.

“This little girl and I slept in the same room. One day she began to play with my penis. From there she taught me how to have sexual intercourse. She was nine and I was eight.”

Well, he still wasn’t saying something I hadn’t heard before. But he wasn’t done yet.

He continued, “By the time this girl left our home, my sexual urge had grown very strong. I wanted to continue having sex, but I wasn’t bold enough to approach the girls around. Most of them were older than me. But the burning sexual urge didn’t abate.

“One day I was sent to feed our goats in the barn. As I was doing the job, I noticed a male goat trying to mate a female one. Something gripped me that was so strong I couldn’t resist. I found myself taking the place of the male goat and committing bestiality.”

Now he really got my attention. But he wasn’t done yet.

He told me how he regularly had sex with goats, and then began to do it with dogs. Worse things were said that I cannot repeat here. He had since left the village for several years and had been married for about three years at this time, but the unnatural urge was still with him. His wife couldn’t take his sexual excesses and complained bitterly. His sexual demands were extremely unnatural.

He became worried when his wife started to behave in strange ways about a year earlier. The lady would wake up in the middle of the night and start to walk on all fours, behaving like a goat. She was unaware of this most of the time, but sometimes she knew some overpowering urge made her do things she didn’t want to do. This happened whenever he decided to be intimate with his wife. His wife had been contaminated without knowing it.

This brother had been hiding his problem until that day. The Word of God shone the light into the dark cavern where the devil was hiding in his life, and he decided to seek help.

Permit me to skip the details of the ministration that got him delivered, but I am happy to tell you that he was totally delivered. The evil spirits that entered him through those bestial sexual acts were cast out, and his wife also was delivered from the “spiritually transmitted sexual disease.”

HELP IS AVAILABLE

I’m writing this to encourage people to come out and receive help. If you are battling unnatural sexual urge, don’t hide it. He that covereth his sins shall not prosper. (Proverbs 28:13). I’m thankful to God for this brother and I so much appreciate him for deciding to deal with this spiritual bondage.

See what is going on in the world, even in the church today. Fine looking men with their big bibles, who have attended church for years and even taught bible study, are being caught molesting little children. Pastors who are successful according to human standards, who have all the things they’ve ever prayed for, and who have beautiful and dutiful wives at home, are being caught having multiple extra marital affairs, or taking advantage of younger people under their spiritual care. More women are becoming more sexually emboldened and are developing insatiable sexual urge that’s making them have multiple sex partners. Chastity has become an endangered virtue.

The internet’s ubiquity has connected a direct pipeline of sexual lust and immorality into million of hearts. Christians are embracing the secret sins of the flesh and soothing their conscience with the message of extreme grace. Repentance is fast going out of fashion. Conscience is being seared with hot iron. Purity is now purely theoretical, and no more practical. Since Christ has paid it all, we can do it all, and not feel condemned.

Governments are competing with one another to legalize homosexuality, and strange doctrines are spreading which downplay the importance of holy living. But the word of God is unchanging.

“Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” 2 Timothy 2:19.

What makes a forty-five year old man defile a five year old girl? What pleasure is there for a thirty-seven year old female teacher who sexually molests the kindergarten kids entrusted to her care? What makes a successful man of God sodomize teenagers under his spiritual care?

The cases I mentioned above are actual cases, and the offenders served jail terms. But the point is, is it all natural?

Many of these people have been battling with these urges since they were kids. While some cases may be said to be natural, many of these people are in the grip of malevolent forces that are living their unnatural fantasies through the people.

The world has been invaded by powers it doesn’t understand. The desires of mankind are being taken over by ‘demonkind.’ Brethren, you must understand what is going on and run for cover, for this is just the beginning.

The world and the church are in damage-control mode. We only respond to evil after it strikes. People are doing their best to warn kids and vulnerable people to be careful of perverts. The real problem is that many of the perverts are part of us. Uncles, aunts, caregivers, pastors, brothers, sisters and even parents!

Many of the people we are warning to be careful of perverts are perverts themselves!

It is time we began to look evil the the eyes and call it out. It is high time we dealt with the fact that many of the beautiful and handsome people singing and worshiping in the church need their conscience purified. They are God’s people, yes, but if they need help, then they need help! If you don’t talk about it, they won’t take it serious. Motivation is not all these young people need, they need purification also.

If you have been sucked into this swirling spiral of lust, it is high time you extricated yourself. Pornography, pedophilia, homosexuality, rape, adultery, fornication and other sexual sins are in a class of their own. (1 Cor 6:18). They have become a very powerful tool in the hand of the devil for the damnation of many souls. The destinies of many are being truncated because of this.

We all need to understand that many of these acts of perversions are works of demons. In the next installment of this series, I will speak more on the demonic aspect of sexual immorality