Enough of doom prophecy

With the torrid economic hardship witnessed across Africa, the resilient people device alternative means of keeping themselves happy and earning a living (however decent and otherwise). The decent means often include: Seeking respite in religion, with hopes of a sudden miraculous turnaround in both personal and metropolitan adversities.

“If manna fell from heaven in biblical times, a lot more can fall in the 21st century” some poor Africans mutter to themselves, as they troop in large numbers to their various Christian worship centres, equipped with a keen sense of expectation, to hear the latest series of prosperity sermons (which don’t come in cheap packages by the way).

With the evolution of the ‘gospel’ into some sort of spiritual ponzi scheme, the condition for wealth or ability to survive in a toxic economy, depends primarily on the investment of capital (special seeds/prophet offerings), in order to reap accelerated dividends (the materialised prophecies for financial favour). Well, that’s a story for another day… Let’s narrow down our journey to the topic!

The beginning and tail end of every year, marks the peak period for revelation-bound ‘Ministers of The Gospel’ to unleash terrifying prophecies, which showcase their ‘supernatural ability’ of seeing into the future.

These horrifying prophecies, of course, as “inspired by God” as they claim, tend to create severe tension and panic among their followers, who are left bewildered at how much ‘God possibly disregards our existence!’

In 2017 alone, the following calamities have been prophesied by some notable ‘superhuman’ prophets: Not also forgetting the embarrassing outcome of a failed prophecy, which predicted the failure of President Trump at the recently concluded American polls.

Over the years, gospel preachers/doom and fortune tellers (despite their enviable ‘familiarity’ with God), have proven themselves incompetent in suggesting workable solutions to the continent’s political/economic woes, yet milk the poor of the little they can afford, in disguise of supernatural wealth creation.

In these blurry political and economic times, I ‘humbly’ advise our preachers to kindly adjust their hefty lamentations of doom, to a more consoling prophecy of hope and good tidings for a change, since amassing wealth and reeling off a variation of prophecies, seem to be all the church stands to offer.

• Princewill Nimi,Lagos