By Oyewole O. Sarumi
The history of faith is often a history of tension between the Spirit and the form. Across the vast land of Africa and throughout the global diaspora, the Christian faith has grown with a vitality that is the envy of the world. However, with this rapid expansion has come a shadow, a subtle, creeping reliance on the material over the Messianic. We have entered an era where the symbols of our deliverance have become the objects of our devotion. Like the ancient Israelites, we have taken that which was meant to be a temporary vehicle of God’s grace and transformed it into a permanent monument to our own superstition.
This article addresses a crisis of theology that threatens the very foundation of our witness: the “Nehushtan” factor. It is the process by which a divinely inspired moment is calcified into a human-led method, eventually becoming an idol that stands between the believer and the Living God. As leaders, we are called to be the Hezekiahs of our generation, iconoclasts who possess the spiritual courage to strip the “holy” of its god-like status when it begins to compete with the sovereignty of Christ. We must recognize that the Church is currently neck-deep in a modern form of idolatry, often sanctioned by the pulpit and cheered on by the pews.
The Anatomy of an Idol: From Moses to the Monarchy
To understand the gravity of our current predicament, we must revisit the wilderness of Zin. The story of the brazen serpent in Numbers 21:4-9 is a landmark event of divine mercy. When the people spoke against God and Moses, fiery serpents were sent among them. In response to their repentance, God instructed Moses to fashion a bronze snake and set it on a pole. The instruction was clear: “everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.” It was a profound act of grace mediated through a physical object.
However, a dangerous shift occurred in the seven centuries that followed. What was intended as a specific remedy for a specific moment became a national relic. By the time King Hezekiah ascended the throne in II Kings 18:4, the people of Israel were burning incense to this bronze serpent. They had invested it with a “god-like” status, justifying their devotion because of its prestigious origin. After all, it wasn’t a “foreign” god like Baal or Asherah; it was a “scriptural” object commissioned by the greatest prophet in their history.
Hezekiah’s response was revolutionary. He did not merely move the serpent to a museum; he “broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made.” Most tellingly, he gave it a name: “Nehushtan”, which literally means “a piece of brass.” Hezekiah understood a truth that many modern leaders have forgotten: “Anything that was once a channel of God’s power but is now an object of man’s worship must be destroyed.”
The Justification of the Inanimate: A Theology of “Things”
In our contemporary context, particularly within the charismatic and Pentecostal movements in Africa and the diaspora, we see a frantic re-enactment of the brazen serpent saga. We hear leaders and congregants alike justifying the use of “anointed” oils, mantles, aprons, holy water, and “miracle” sand by pointing to isolated scriptural events.
They cite Jesus spitting on the ground to make clay for the blind man’s eyes (John 9:6), or the handkerchiefs and aprons taken from Paul’s body that healed the sick (Acts 19:12). They speak of Naaman dipping seven times in the Jordan (2 Kings 5:14). These leaders argue that because God once used an object or a physical act, that act can be codified into a repeatable spiritual technology.
But this is a fundamental hermeneutical error. What these justifications fail to notice is that no one else in the New Testament was instructed to use spit and clay as a standard protocol for ophthalmology. Paul never established a “Handkerchief Ministry” department in the Ephesian church. These were “extraordinary miracles” (Acts 19:11), sovereign acts of God that were never intended to be turned into sacraments or methods. When we turn a unique moment of divine intervention into a repeatable method, we are no longer practicing faith; we are practicing magic.
The Mechanism of Deception: Why the Pulpit is Responsible
The proliferation of “sacred objects” in today’s Church is not an accident; it is a failure of leadership. Many “spiritual papas” have become promoters of idolatrous practices because these objects offer something the Gospel does not: a sense of control. Let it be known that true relationship with God requires waiting, holiness, and submission to His sovereign will. Idolatry, however, offers a shortcut. If you have the “right” oil or the “blessed” mantle, you feel you can initiate supernatural possibilities at will.
This has created a generation of believers who are “drunk on hypnotic lies,” as the initial material suggests. They have been conditioned to believe that God’s Spirit is “in” the object rather than “with” the believer. This is a rejection of the New Covenant. Under the New Covenant, the believer is the temple of the Holy Spirit. To suggest that one needs a specific bottle of water from a specific mountain to “activate” God’s presence is to rebuild the veil that was rent at Calvary.
The pulpit is responsible because these objects are often used as tools for financial extraction. When a “mantle” is sold or given in exchange for a “seed,” it ceases to be a symbol of faith and becomes a commodity of trade. We have turned the Father’s house into a den of merchants, where the desperate are sold “Nehushtan” under the guise of “anointing.”
Obedience vs. Object: Where the Power Truly Lies
We must bring our people back to the core truth: there was no inherent power in the bronze snake, just as there was no power in the jawbone of the donkey Samson used to slay a thousand Philistines. The power was activated through ‘obedience to a divinely inspired instruction.’
When Samson finished his battle, Judges 15:17 tells us “he threw away the jawbone.” He did not keep it as a lucky charm. He did not build a shrine to it. In fact, when he became thirsty shortly after, he did not turn to the jawbone for water; he turned to the Lord. This is a critical distinction. The object was the tool for the task, but the Lord was the source of the life.
Modern idolatry thrives because it is easier to trust an object you can see than a God you cannot. It is easier to carry a bottle of oil than to carry a cross. But God is not a method; He is a Being. He desires a relationship, not a ritual. When we encourage our members to put their faith in “things,” we are leading them away from the Shepherd and toward the inanimate. We are teaching them to look at the “snake” and forget the God who commanded it to be raised.
The Socio-Cultural Dimensions of African Idolatry
For the African leader, this issue is particularly complex. Our cultural heritage is rich with symbols and physical expressions of spirituality. While this is a strength, it also makes our congregations particularly vulnerable to the syncretism of Christian symbols with traditional fetishistic mindsets.
A well-rounded research into the “Enchanted Worldview” of Global South Christianity suggests that many believers see no conflict between a “holy” object in church and a “charm” from a traditional priest, provided they both “work.” As consultants and theologians, we must be clear: Christianity is not a “higher form of magic.” It is a different kingdom entirely. By allowing the use of objects to dominate our liturgy, we are inadvertently baptizing old superstitions into the new faith. This does not deliver the people; it merely changes the brand of their bondage.
The Iconoclast’s Mandate: How to Reclaim the Altar
How do we, as leaders, address this “Modern Nehushtan”? How do we follow the example of Hezekiah without destroying the faith of the people?
Firstly, we must ‘strip the objects of their status.’ Like Hezekiah, we must name the idols. We must tell our congregations plainly: “This oil is just pressed olives. This water is just H2O. This cloth is just cotton.” We must remove the mystical aura that leaders have used to shroud these items. We must emphasize that God’s Spirit is not “trapped” in a liquid or a fabric.
Secondly, we must ‘return to Word-centred Ministry.’ The rise of idolatry is directly proportional to the decline of sound biblical teaching. When people do not know the Word of God, they become susceptible to the “prophetic” gimmicks of men. We must teach the character of God, the finished work of Christ, and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
Thirdly, we must ‘model a “thing-free” faith.’ As leaders, we must demonstrate that we can pray for the sick and see them recover without the aid of props. We must show that we can face spiritual warfare without needing “consecrated” salt or sand. If the leaders do not move away from the “brazen snakes,” the people never will.
The Cost of Silence: The Danger of a “Post-Faith” Generation
If we do not take up the gauntlet as Hezekiah did, we risk losing the next generation. The youth of today, the Gen Z and Alpha generations in the diaspora and urban Africa, are highly skeptical of performance. When they see the Church operating like a marketplace of magic, they don’t see “power”; they see “fraud.”
By tolerating modern idolatry, we are making the Gospel look ridiculous to the watching world. We are confirming the biases of those who believe that religion is merely a tool for the manipulation of the poor. Our silence is an endorsement of a system that spits in the face of the sacrificial life of Christ. We cannot cheer for the “Merchants of Poverty” and expect to be counted as friends of the Man of Sorrows.
Turning from Things to the Living God
The Israelites burned incense to a piece of brass for 700 years because no one had the courage to call it what it was. For seven centuries, they lived in a shadow of a past miracle, missing the present move of God. We must not allow the same to be said of the 21st-century African Church.
My fellow leaders, it is time to shred the idols. It is time to tell the truth. There is no power in the bottle, no virtue in the apron, and no salvation in the “seed.” The power is in the Name of Jesus, and the victory is in the Blood of the Lamb. Let us save ourselves and our flocks from this modern idolatry. Let us tear down the high places and cut down the shrines of “method-worship.”
Let us be known not for the “things” we carry, but for the God we know. The pulpit must stop being a showroom for Nehushtan and return to being a herald of the Cross. Only then will we see a move of God that is not a performance, but a transformation, a revival that does not leave the people impoverished and superstitious, but empowered and free.