Stealing in the name of the Lord

When I decided to write this piece, I prayed to God to give me a sign that he is still here with us. Remember “Criminals In Cassock”? It was a piece I wrote a few weeks ago concerning religious charlatans who have literally bewitched some people in this country and reaping from the sweat of the good people of Ghana. I wrote that piece to support Mr. Rawlings who ruthlessly took on self-acclaimed “Bishop” Daniel Obinim and “Reverend” Kumchacha.

If that piece were to be a product that I took to the market, I would have withdrawn it and replaced it with this one. The truth is that unless we seize these so-called “men of God” and march them to Pantang or Ankaful Psychiatrist Hospital for treatment we will wake up one day to hear some bad news. We don’t have to wait for the worse to happen before we start talking about it. If a “man of God” can pull a man’s manhood in the full glare of the congregation in his attempt to heal the person of impotency and also stump the stomach of a pregnant woman all in an attempt to heal, then something is wrong with the brain of the “man of God”.

Obinim (I will never glorify this guy with the title of a Bishop because he is not one) said he could turn into a snake and that he once turned into a lion while Jesus Christ also turned into a tiger. In his moment of total madness he hired some gullible artist to draw his picture to make him look like an angel with angelic wings to march. He told his poor congregation that Jesus Christ made him an angel and asked him to go out there to heal people. When this fake man of God had a brash with “Rev” Owusu Bempa, he threatened to kill him using one of his so-called angelic wings.

Listen to the charlatan and confident trickster: “Even as I am talking to you now, I am flapping my angelic wings behind me. The Lord wants to destroy Owusu Bempah through me. Tell Owusu Bempah that I am waiting for him and I am here until 10pm. I will prove to Owusu Bempah that I, Obinim, have received power from Jesus Christ to do His work in Ghana. Today, I will prove to Ghanaians that I am an angel. I want Owusu Bempah to come here today to challenge me that I am not a true man of God using the power Jesus Christ gave me and that I am using occult powers and that I took occult powers from someone called Yaw Appiah. I want him to come and show me those powers. Every day you mention my name; Obinim has done this, Obinim has done that. Is anyone asking why all these attacks on me? I have been advised to ignore and I have ignored them. Then you, Owusu Bempah, start talking about me and say I am fake and I practice occultism. Look, Owusu Bempah if you do not respect yourself, I will bring you down today.”

Seriously we need to do something NOW to stop this crook from cheating the poor and ignoramuses. Sadly, you see people who are supposed to know better falling prey to this self-acclaimed angel of God. As for yours sincerely, I am not deceived by his pretenses of piety because I have seen his king before. My cherished reader, do you remember the story of Jesus Christ of Mantukwa? This was another crazy fellow who gathered some women, children and men, brainwashed them and transported them all the way from Aflao in the Volta Region to the Brong Ahafo Region. This criminal took them to a thick forest and established his church with his wife who calls herself Mary Jesus. Jesus Christ of Mantukwa told them they were in the forest to wait for the second coming of Christ, as if Jesus will descend from heaven and settle in the forest in Brong Ahafo Region! Children were not allowed to attend school and they were treated like sub-human beings. It was Anas Aremeyaw who exposed the whole madness before the security forces could move in to liberate the poor followers of Jesus Christ of Mantukwa. Before the liberation, many teenage girls were impregnated in the forest by Jesus Christ of Mantukwa and his fellow brainwashed “men of God”. Children who were liberated were malnourished due to the bad quality of the food they ate in the forest.

And have you also forgotten about Jesus Christ of Dzorwulu? This was also another mad man who established his church at Dzorwulu and made his congregation drink his urine. People waited at his doorsteps every morning and begged him to urinate for them to collect the urine because he made them to believe that when you did drink his urine, you will be cured of any disease. When his church members wised up and realized that the man was fake, he jumped through one of the windows of his church and has never been heard of again. These wolves in sheepskins do not know that those who commit evil in the name of Jesus blaspheme the name of Jesus and on Judgment Day they will have to answer to the Almighty God for such a blasphemy. These are people who abandon every value except the will to make money and live luxurious lifestyles, all in the name of Jesus.

In his moment of devilish trance, Obinim shamelessly took Reverend Sam Korankye Ankrah to the cleaners and used unprintable words against the fine gentleman for calling him a fake man of God. He did not spare Rawlings when the former Head of State commented on his behavior Thankfully when he took the battle to the doorsteps of Afia Schwarzenegger; he smelled pepper. This was a “Man of God” who lured his fellow pastor’s wife to a hotel, had sex with her and used filthy words to describe the private part of his own wife, Florence Obinim. Can you imagine a man of God and his cohorts rushing to a radio station, armed with crowbars to kill the host? When I saw him in handcuffs the day he was sent to court, I thought that will go a long way to make him sober, but sadly the situation has become worse. Just take a close look at how he has bleached the whole of his body, coupled with his use of bad grammar and wrong pronunciation of English words and you will side with me when I say the man needs deliverance rather than him delivering anyone.

. To be fair to this fake called Obinim, he is not the only one in this church business. We have a whole lot of them out there, deceiving and killing people softly. These days, instead of some of these church goers visiting the hospitals and other health facilities to seek cure, they prefer to visit these so-called men of God to be cured. The sad aspect of this canker is that the illusive cure they seek continues to be illusive, no matter how long they attend the churches. Monies which could have been used to buy drugs are given to these crooks. Men of God are supposed to preach to win souls for Christ, but these criminals capitalize on the ignorance of their congregation to make money. When the Lord Jesus Christ went about curing the sick, we never heard him calling people to meet him in Jerusalem, Canaan or Capernaum to be healed. In fact, he never advertized that people should come to him for a cure.

If you watch their congregations, you will realize that about ninety percent of members of their church are women. Many of these women go there to look for husbands. Some go there to buy “Anointing oil” so that they could get pregnant. As for the young guys all what they go there for is to get a visa to travel abroad as if that place is an embassy. Instead of going out there to work for money, they spend about six days in the week to sit in these churches thereby, contributing nothing to the economy. When you calculate the man-hours lost in revenue to the state, you will understand what I mean.

In his revolutionary days, Mr. Rawlings did something which was laudable but sadly only a few people remembered what the man did. Rawlings and his fellow revolutionaries looked around and saw the sprouting of mushroom churches where people spent a whole lot of their time, fasting, singing, dancing, praying and looking for miracles. When students and soldiers were in the bush evacuating cocoa beans for export to help the country earn foreign exchange for the development of the country, these church goers and their pastors were busy praying. So Rawlings, the revolutionary, issued a fiat closing some of these churches so that each and everyone will get involved in nation building.

In the early seventies, Comrade Fidel Castro also did the unthinkable to the amusement of all Cubans and Christendom for that matter. Christmas was fast approaching, but sugar cane, the main source of income for the island country were getting rotten in the fields and needed to be harvested, or the country risked losing foreign exchange which the country relies on for development since Cuba was facing biting sanctions. Fidel Castro ordered that Christmas should be postponed that year so that everyone could take part in the harvesting of sugarcanes. Cubans obeyed and that year Christmas was postponed so that they could harvest their sugarcanes. That was the first time Christmas was postponed in the world.

I am yet to see a president who will be bold enough to sanction these mushroom churches and their pastors who are out there to steal the people in the name of the Lord. I know any attempt to do this will be met with the usual refrain: touch not my anointed. The question one may like to ask is: who in the first place anointed Obinim and the other charlatans and quacks in cassocks? We read of Saul anointing David in the Bible but we never heard of any prophet anointing Obinim. No wonder he is being described as a freelance Bishop. Abodam!!!