body-container-line-1
30.03.2015 Religion

Religious Frauds (1)

30.03.2015 LISTEN
By Ez Ou

Dear reader,
A familiar African comedian/actor - Osu-ofiah once accused many from Western nations of greed. In his satirical music (I go chop your Dollar) he alluded to Westerner's greed as reason they fell too often, victims of a complicated fraud called 'Advanced Fee Fraud' (AFF). We in the west may be good in greed game, but greed has its root in humanity regardless of tribe or tongue. Greed becomes a problem depending on how it developed and ended.

This is no endorsement of or opposition to the comedian's world view; the article focuses instead on the victims of AFF. The more you examine events leading up to AFF, the more you want to substitute the word 'victim' with the word 'Fraudster'. The reason is, almost in all cases of AFF, both parties (fraudster + defrauded) tend to seek for almost, if not exactly the same smart investing tool - Money they never worked for!

Fraud, including AFF, has left a trail of indelible scars on its way up. While some frauds are very easy to identify, some require intelligent intelligence to distinguish. My admiration for puppy over sheep is because of puppy's incredible perception unlike the sheep, which find it difficult to detect any difference between them and sheep-wolf.

When a supposed church in Kenya ate grasses and drank gasoline in obedience to their pastor, one's observation and conclusion has remained that fraud was committed – religious fraud. Religious fraud has matured and its intensity varies from one place of worship to the other; capacity of religious fraud to go undetected depends on the experience of preachers and awareness levels of the flock. Intelligent preachers desirous on carrying out religious fraud fashion out pacifying and less confrontational methods in services involving semi and well informed audience.

Ponder the event surrounding Creflo Dollar in the immediate past weeks. The amiable American preacher put out a video advertisement purported to urging 200,000 of his believers to give him 300 US Dollars each. This money is expected to meet Dollar's desire for a new Gulf Stream airplane. If this demand is met, US Dollar will be richer by 60,000,000 US Dollars within 2015.

So, why this demand in the first place? CD has preached monetized tithing in all of his ministry life. One key fact about tithing principle is the promise of Zero Problems for the tithe payer-Malachi 3:9-10. How could CD have a problem to the point of turning to members for $60 million? Dollar, not only pays his tithes (if he does) all along, but also receives tithes.

Flocks have been informed repeatedly of a hundredfold increase of their giving-Mark 10:28-31. Attempts by impatient sheep to know when the 100fold increase will unfold have been met by erratic responses. Some preachers tell us it is the same year we hand money over to them; some, suspicious of this tricky question have been frugal with answers. It baffles intelligence how brother Dollar will spend years in ministry and looked into a television camera and tells even an uninformed audience that Adonai promised him a hundredfold increase for his ministry effort here on earth.

To actualize his 100fold expectation he has to pass the buck to the flock who, expectedly, will also reap their 100fold increase. This is what this translates to: for each $300 for the Jet project, one sheep will get $30,000 in return regardless of what you do! If Dollar's theory is this simple my preacher need not invest in advertising? Taking random speculation into consideration, the US preacher has no less than $5,000,000 in various accounts. Other estates are excluded.

Split up the $5,000,000 into 20,000; this will allow 250 people of his members to start a business with 20,000USD each. With the 100fold principle in place, US Dollar will net $5,000,000 x 100fold increase = $500,000,000. Less the cost of greed ($60,000,000 Jet), brother CD will still be richer by $440,000,000!!

Dear reader, this article is not about pastor Dollar; it is about you and me. We wake each morning, wash our faces and look into the mirror and make up our minds to take advantage of people who are desperate though like us, are also pursuing the same fleeting ideas we sold to them.

The only reason the flock could be called a victim is simply because the flock know little or nothing about our products; they rely on us to tell them what to know and what to do; as sheep, they lack the power to oppose or challenge the genuineness of our products and they do not know we are real wolves in their midst dressed as one of them.

Some sheep deserve less pity in that they do not care about the quality of our products as long as our products are well theorized to keep warm their fantasy. These ones are no less different from perpetrators of religious frauds who know that their products are fake yet sell them to vulnerable flocks.

Religious fraud flourishes because, as people become more greedy, they tend to chase fantasies with no restraint; as they do so, they easily get hooked into dogmas that take serious counseling to break free of; the more this is the norm, the more the masters (the real winners) in this crime smile to the banks.

US Dollar's quest for 60 million USD is worth discussing given a long and painful history of fake religious theories underdeveloped nations, Africa in particular, have been exposed to and imported into their homes mainly from the west especially USA.

Shalom.
Eze Uduma

body-container-line