By Imma Okochua ·
Who wants to be kidnapped from Lagos, imprisoned without trial in Ekiti State, arraigned before a magistrate court, taken before federal high courts and sued before state courts in different states, all for the same or similar alleged offences ? Oh, and be taken before the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee?
What was his offence? Talking or writing? Was he the only person who witnessed what he said he saw and heard? Was he the only person who suffered from what he complained about? There are others who have the same complaints but have kept quiet and therefore suffered nothing more.
That’s the world, and church people consider the sufferer a hero. But in the church of Jesus Christ, who wants to be criticised, accused, tried in absentia, condemned and imprisoned in peoples’ minds for condemning obvious sins and all forms of public unrighteousness in the vineyard of God? Who wants to be refused the opportunity to share the word of God in churches and through publications? Who wants to be hated by church leaders and cursed by men?
Is it you? No!
Silence is golden. See evil and say nothing. Be dumb to sin and sinners even sins committed repeatedly in public against God and His church. Go your way. Leave everything to God.
God gave you eyes, ears and mouth. Yeah, He gave you a mind and a spirit. But all these are to be locked up when the church sins.
The silent one is the righteous one but the one who puts his eyes and mouth to use is the horrible sinner. Woe is he.
Shut up and be praised for being spiritual, mature and loyal. Be silent and be celebrated by the scornful. Be deaf to public evil in the church and be fetted.
Silence is life. To speak the truth is death. Choose life. Shut up, no matter what you see and despite what God screams. Na only you dey see, hear and get mouth?
Be silent! Be not crushed under the anger of the spiritual lords. Go not down into oblivion because of your words against public sins committed against God and his saints. Shut up and be saved. He that sees evil and says nothing shall be saved. Those who shout out against evil will damned, says the church of today.
Then let me be damned! Let me be crushed. Let my office another take. Let me be forgotten. Let another write my column and make my contributions. Let me be imprisoned and cursed. Give the microphone to another.
I shall speak even louder in 2025. To sanction me is to free me from the consort of men who buy assignments and love with unholy currencuy of compromise and condonation. Jesus is Lord. He is the ONLY Lord. He is my only Lord. All others who threaten to shut me up are false gods. I will not bow down to them.
Like the young Hebrew men said, let me perish if the Lord will not save me. But I will not bow to the nourished and pampered sin of my generation and the gods who patronise and drink from them.
Hear, my persecutors, to sanction me is to set me free. I will be free to confront the public sins of my generation, and of the church of today as never before.
Let me write for God and not for gods. Let the silent ones write for the silenced ones.
We live when we are free. And our only freedom is in and from Christ Jesus.
Therefore is this a year of speech, of the trumpet and of truth spoken. We will stand where the prophets stood and declare what the Holy Writ utters. We will not apologise for telling the truth. As that man went to jail for the truth told to secular power, so let me be jailed and sanctioned for the Word of God. I am of the lineage of John of Patmos.
Happy New Year!
