By Banji Ojewale
The true prophet of God is not the one who delivers predictions about the New Year or the future. No! Rather he reveals the Creator’s mind and how fallen humanity can be convinced to embrace that vision for his eternal good.–William Folorunso Kumuyi, Convener, Global Crusade with Kumuyi, (GCK)
In one of his sermons at the December 2024 Global Retreat of the Deeper Life Bible Church and Global Crusade with Kumuyi, GCK, in Lagos, Nigeria, Pastor W.F. Kumuyi, Africa’s world-renowned evangelist, said the integrity crisis faced by today’s ‘prophets’ is the result of their desertion of the prophetic station ordained by God.
He told millions of multitudes who watched and heard him worldwide online and physically that the true prophet of God is expected to hear from God and say only what he hears from Him, as sacredly served in the Holy Bible.
God’s sole theme was, is, and remains the salvation of man followed by his final admission into Heaven after faithfully following Him in unfettered obedience to His Word and in righteousness; it’s the message He has cast in stone for His servants, the genuine prophets, to preach.
When these messengers say they’ve heard from the Lord, what would proceed from them and shared in the media must match what’s in the infallible Scriptures.
But, alas, Kumuyi laments, today’s ‘prophet’ opens his declarations with ‘Thus says the Lord…’ but continues and ends with nothing that is of the Lord.
They are seasonal forecasters, largely active when the year is closing and a new one is about to emerge. Or in election seasons.
They turn in long-winding and obfuscating predictions that don’t come to pass. They write books and newspaper articles attempting to railroad reality into their fantasy world.
They show up in the electronic media, hogging the airwaves with ‘prophecies’. They woo the credulous to attract a large followership who are needlessly anxious about tomorrow in a world said to be sentenced to a permanent state of flux.
But Pastor Kumuyi, General Superintendent of Deeper Christian Life Ministry, DCLM, says what God wants His prophet to do is to give man the Gospel message that frees him from worry about such pedestrian concerns.
A prophet’s office is to release the supernatural power that transforms lives for social change now, as precursor to a better world in the future.
What we do with the now is key; there can’t be a tomorrow independent of today. A prophet, as the tradition was in Bible times, was a change agent.
He never rested; he was eager to hear from the Lord, Who was Himself even more eager to reach out to mankind. The slumbering prophet would miss Him when He came up with His word. It’s the society with such a somnolent, indolent and delinquent prophet which gets trapped in cycles of hibernating spells and short wakefulness.
Today’s ‘prophet’ goes to bed and is roused when sporting, ballot and New Year bells ring. They experience nightmarish sleep, claiming upon return to consciousness that they’ve been to the future. But the future, short, medium or far into hereafter, is God’s domain, not man’s territory. He doesn’t share it with halfway ministers.
Before Ghana’s December 7, 2024 presidential and legislative poll, some ‘prophets’ strayed into His forbidden zone. They came back beaten, beleaguered, bloodied and broken.
One ‘man of God’ predicted victory for a particular candidate. He said the Lord opened a chink through which he saw the winner. He ‘’dared doubters to burn his church to the ground’’ if his prediction shipwrecked.
His prophecy didn’t come to pass. Another swore that God did not only show him who would be the next president, but also He revealed what he would wear on the day he’d be sworn-in.
Again, it turned out a fiddled forlorn forecast. A woman evangelist was among those who played God. She declaimed that if her candidate didn’t win, she would return to fetishism. He lost.
But listen to her: “He lost because of disobedience. I saw clearly that he won…But I was instructed to warn him to always wear white till the election results are declared…and to change his slogan…He refused to follow the instructions.’’
Hanging over them henceforth is the devourer called the albatross of unbelievability. Will their assemblies and the public again invest any trust in them? If they say ‘thus says the Lord’, would the congregants and others who hear them not leave the scene before they continue, knowing it’s not the Unfailing Lord they would refer to? Once bitten, twice shy…
These ‘prophets’ failed because their walk to and fro the future was reverie. Having a prophet speak about who wins or loses the ballot or about what 2025 will be like is of scant consideration in the sight of God.
He wants His servants to lead the nations and communities and their leaders into freedom from sin and its deadly effects through the Gospel of Christ.
This is the only message God gives His prophets, not numbers to win a jackpot, not to catch a glimpse of the victor in the ballot, nor to have a brief encounter with a so-termed future.
God’s stand is that sin is the cause of all of man’s seemingly intractable headaches; we deal with it first, and then we begin to enjoy His prescribed solutions. That’s the fundamental our ‘prophets’ have ignored, preferring what would give them perfumed power, popularity, position and prosperity.
The preoccupation of GCK, Africa’s nondenominational body, is to seek a return to the genuine prophetic ministry, where the teaching on Heaven’s goals for man is uncompromisingly presented as we witness destructive end-time doctrines delusively delivered as Divine prophecy. GCK has made multiple landings in Ghana, while it has been to a couple of other African countries. Asian nations among them India and The Philippines as well as Middle East countries like the UAE have also hosted Kumuyi and GCK.
The roaring success recorded by the Liberation Theology campaign that swept through Central and South America in the 80s and 90s was on account of its flight on the wings of sound teachings drawn from the Scriptural truth that the Church and its leaders must not make merchandise of the poor and the vulnerable of society, whether periodically or perennially. They didn’t listen to voices outside of the God of the Bible. Our men of God must learn from them and their Biblical forebears.
