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.