Cruasade! Crusade!

Cool In The Village - with Kwabena Amoo/Heritage

CRUSADE! Aren’t we tired of crusades in this country? These days, the only major advert you hear or see is crusade by one pastor and his church or the other. And now they themselves have noticed that we have become crusade-fatigued so the only way out is to pool resources together and do team work. So, pastor A announces his impending crusade but on the bill is Bishop B from that church and Bishop C from yet another church to give a seeming respectability to the impending crusade. But most important of all is the inclusion on the bill of a Rev. Dr. Bishop X from the USA. What is all this for? To con Ghanaians! To deceive Ghanaians!

Anybody who is smart enough knows that Ghanaians are extremely gullible people when it comes to matters bordering on the supernatural. Our gullibility has enabled the present day pastors to cash in on us and we are unknowingly making them rich men and women our own expense. Our women are very guilty of this. Evidence is the large number of women in all the churches across the country as opposed to men.

They have left their Methodist, their Anglican, their Catholic, their Presbyterian churches because there is no ‘spirit’ in those ones and joined the latter-day one-man churches where they believe there is ‘spirit.’ The pastors in these one-man churches tell their congregations what they want to hear like our traditional priests and priestesses did in days of yore. In these hard times people want to hear that their financial breakthrough is just around the corner and all that they have to do is to attend church regularly and of course, donate generously to the church, never mind whether they are in gainful employment or not.

The young ones want to travel abroad for greener pastures and they need visas. The latter-day pastors pray for them to be given visas. These pastors also pray for people to have husbands and wives and insist that any ill-luck or misfortune is propelled by the Devil. So, the Devil must be fought, if need be militarily, to be conquered.

A pastor last December organized a crusade with the theme: AMBUSHMENT OF THE DEVIL and spoke of how the Devil could be ambushed militarily and conquered. This however sent me rushing for my dictionary. I had never heard of the word "AMBUSHMENT’ before. It doesn’t exist in the English dictionary but that pastor no doubt, wanted to impress his audience, hence the coining of that word. There are many instances where modern pastors make fantastic claims of healing the blind, making the lame walk and curing the sick.

Fine, I have no problem with that if they are true. But even, if they are true, do you have to advertise them on the television? Do you have to advertise them on the radio? Do you have to advertise them in newspapers.? These are not teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ Himself brought someone back to life and told her parents" not to tell anyone about it. In other words, ‘don’t give publicity to what I have just done.’ This is what true followers of Christ should do and not to compete with one another on television and radio advertising themselves. Anyway there was a case of partially blind man who attended one of these crusades recently.

Before he went to the crusade grounds he could see a little with the aid of a pair of spectacles. When be was instantly "healed", he was asked to throw away the spectacles. He did throw the spectacles on the ground before him and stepped on them crushing the lenses in the process. Before he left the crusade grounds he was asking of his pair of spectacles. He could not see at all; he hadn’t been healed!

Come to think of it. We need who will be encouraged by their peers ad pastors to work hard and push this country forward. On the contrary, the latter-day pastors are breeding laziness amongst the populace. Some of them have what they call ‘prayer camps’ and people go and stay there for days and weeks doing nothing but fasting and praying for financial breakthrough. God Himself will never answer such a prayer from a lazy person. He says, ‘Go to the aunt, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise.’ (Prov. 6:6). A sluggard is a very lazy person and is being told here by the scriptures to learn from the tiny ant who works tirelessly for the rainy day, and change his attitude. We must work tirelessly for our daily bread. You cannot reap where you haven’t sown. You cannot earn money when you haven’t worked for it. This is very simple logic.

When the majority of Ghanaians are farmer in the villages and the rest are low-paid workers in the cities and towns and you go about tricking than in your adverts (because unfortunately, they are gullible), to come to your crusades for days and nights and to donate to your personal coffers, what are you up to? You are robbing them you are cheating them in the name of Christianity. 1esus Christ didn’t teach that. "By their fruits ye shall know them. " Stay cool.