Controversy Unlimited: The Beginning of the beginning

Calus Von Brazi

So, I’ve finally taken up the challenge. After many months of pressure from all sorts of people to “start writing again”, I’ve decided to do just that. Truth be told; I missed writing, especially after I went into self-imposed censorship following the piece that gave people running stomachs titled, “In the Name of Danquah”. If that piece was diarrhea causing, then with all due respect, I implore those with weak hearts and soft spleens not to read this column for here, we say it as it is with no holds barred. There are no sacred cows here, granted some issues, people and places have enjoyed that privilege elsewhere.

What an introduction! You, my dear reader is now fully baptized into the world of fire. Talking about fire: have you noticed how the election demons are breathing down our roads and extracting the blood some people promised them and are refusing to provide? You see, politicians are probably the most advanced specie of pretenders. I now understand why the Lord Jesus Christ said not all who say Lord Lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 7:21. Some people, wanting power at all cost did not go for Guinness as Faustina Nelson once suggested. They went far and near, seeking ‘divine’ intervention of all sorts, promising all manner of things for that power, and making all kinds of promises to strange people. Oh! What a field day the necromancers had.

Now it is payback time. The necromancers are extracting their lot with or without our permission for we all pretended that it was fine to turn a blind eye to those demonic actions when they were taking place. Somebody mentioned that Atta has exchanged his wedding band for a “Joshua Ring”. I looked and looked and what did I see? Ghanaians are very observant indeed. If in doubt, ask Kwadwo Mpiani or any ex-gratia aficionado. Just compare Atta when he swore the Vice-Presidential Oath in ’97. He was fully in his wedding band. This time, “Joshua don ron things now” as my Yoruba cousins would say! The Nigerian High Commissioner might be pleased with that; at least this does not add credence to the 419 credentials of the people who claim the Ghanaian media is poisoning relations between Ghana and Nigeria due to their “wild diplomatic faux pas publications”. Which brings me to another issue: what is it with Nigerian Pastored churches that has so caught the fancy of Atta? Synagogue (the one where they release doves and claim it is the most Holy Spirit), then Fire (the one that made Zita very uncomfortable from what we saw on TV). Maybe Atta’s incursion into the strengthening of ECOWAS bonds is premised on extolling the ‘virtues’ of the Joshuas and Aminus of this sub-region. I wonder what Archbishop Idahosa would have said about these types; and now…you guessed right: Kweku Bonsam is also claiming the accidents are the results of “consultations” gone bad. Things that make you go hmm.

There was grieving in the land of the living when the tall lanky, handsome Pastor who preaches love lost his two “kids” at one go. What everyone seemed to have overlooked, was that the tall, lanky handsome Pastor had stood on national TV during a Thanksgiving service and said there would be lots of accidents. He had been re-echoing Peter Anamoah, the Macharia of the Pneuma who had prophesied before the 2008 elections that accidents shall be our lot if we don’t desist from displeasing the pleasures of the Lord God Almighty. But you see, I learnt something interesting about David the King of the Israelites who God loved dearly. When the prophet Nathan relayed God’s message about his affair with Bathsheba, David ‘foolishly’ said the ‘culprit’ must ‘repay with four sheep’. Guess what? David lost four of his sons! Is there anything to be learnt from that episode? When you stand on national TV and prophesy motor accidents for Ghana, whose relations, family and friends do we think would be the victims? Remember, here we say it as it is, tragic and unfeeling that this write-up might appear to be we duly sympathize with and at the loss. Life is precious on any front at anytime, but as I have come to understand, you do not mess with the most High God, especially for politically expedient reasons: the repercussions are too devastating to begin with.

Then also is the case of our own Pastors. It is as though they have suddenly developed vocal constipation on matters political. I am yet to see any of them stand and be the watchman that Ezekiel 3:17-18 talks about. They have all become “mumu” vis-à-vis Atta, preferring to find ways of raising funds to buy the lands that have been released to the Nungua and La Stools than boldly proclaiming “Thus sayeth the Lord: except our land is rid of the counsel of Joshua, our young men shall not see visions, neither would our old men dream dreams”. For the right to pose around Atta and his men, men of God are waiting for a Deborah or Daniel to arise and declare the year of our Lord; they refrain from telling Atta to stop taking people’s cars and let the Lord God look upon his word to perform. How they grieve the Holy Spirit! Maybe that is why those of us whose righteousness is like the filthiest of rags are finding favour with Jehovah Jireh irrespective of the fact that the calling was given to them that proclaim on the rooftops, hypocritically hypnotize the uninitiated through their sponsored sermons on radio and TV and would not stop pounding our ear drums with appeals to “sow a seed”, as if they have been instructed by the God that answers by fire to cease making their own miserable lives a living sacrifice unto him. How sweet and revealing judgment day shall be!

Did Atta say he wishes the whole of Ghana could be turned into a prayer camp? I laugh in loud decibels of the 29 lettered Turkish language! The word of the Lord said we should pray without ceasing; he did not say we should turn our lands into prayer camps. This statement, which the so-called men of god (notice I use a small g here, because of the doubtful nature of these charlatans) relished with a relish and foolishly pontificated on as showing a love for God, has succeeded in blinding them further. Now why won’t we see all our warehouses and factories being purchased and converted into churches by these so-called men of god when they were designed and built to underpin production and productive ventures of this Land of our Death (apologies to the late Steve Biko)? Did the Bible not say that a false balance is an abomination unto the Lord? If all of Ghana becomes a prayer camp, who shall produce food for the masses after they have successfully shared the grace and made the declaration that David made at the end of Psalm 23? Or it is their hope that God would produce manna again? I have bad news, the Red Sea was crossed by the Israelites only once; manna is to the Red Sea as starvation is to those who do not consider the ways of the ant and be wise. Come to think of it, why did God choose to use the foolish things of this world (like all the garbage some readers think I have written above) to confound the wisdom of the wise? I shall be back next week. For now though, may the Lord make his countenance shine upon you.

vonbrazi@hotmail.com