Do not be conned by sham pastors and prophets
It is estimated that there are thousands self-proclaimed “tent-churches” in Gauteng alone.
There’s a joke currently making the rounds on social media, about an ageing rural East African peasant who gave his son this advice:“I want to make sure that before I die, you have enough money to go to South Africa to start your own church and become a “pastor” or a “prophet”.
“But, dad? ” asked the son….
“No “buts my boy,” retorted the elderly man in a strict tone. “Just get yourself there, no matter how. Even if it means stowing away on an aeroplane bound for South Africa. I guarantee you’ll be a millionaire in six months and live happily ever after”.
It is estimated that there are thousands self-proclaimed “tent-churches” in Gauteng alone, and most of them are owned and led by non-South African from East and Western Africa. The churches are given names with inducing adjectives that would guarantee the aspiring “pastor” or “prophet” a large crowd of zealous new recruits.
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Most of the so-called “founders” and “leaders” at these charismatic churches glamorise these churches by giving them an “international” status. The founder or leader of the church would often recruit equally corrupt family members or relatives in a bid to lure members to their fold.
Sometimes, just to make the con job even more convincing to the targeted potential congregants, the “international” link to the “church” could even be a girlfriend. Sometimes it could even be a spouse who may be based in some part of Europe, the US or even someone in one of the towns and cities right here in South Africa.
Such is the organised structure of some of illegitimate West and East African charismatic churches operating in South Africa’s townships and cities today. Black people should stop treating these self-anointed pastors and prophets as demi-gods.
Firstly, nowhere in the Bible does God, his prophets or Jesus, charge people money for their salvation. In fact, it is documented in the New Testament that Jesus Christ actually whipped traders who were conducting business inside a temple.
What kind of a “God-people” finds it proper to invoke curses on anyone who does not contribute to their lavish and opulent lifestyle? Of course only the healthy, employed middle-class are targeted because they can afford to sustain the “God-man’s lifestyle.
Years ago in my youth, I remember watching a fascinating movie titled, Blackboard Jungle which featured the famed American black actor, Sidney Poitier.
The movie was a commentary film about the fate of teachers in an inter-racial inner-city neighbourhood in New York. This was at a time when New York City, and its surrounding, were rated as some of the worse crime-ridden residential areas in the world.
Then again, in 1970, the US released yet another school crime movie titled, The Cross and the Switchblade, starring singer Pat Boone. The film was about David Wilkerson’s crusading ministry about transforming young crime gangs, also in crime-ridden New York.
To me, thinking back about these two films, and what is currently happening in our schools today in Mzansi, almost 63 and 48 years later, it is as if the directors of the two school crime gangs and violent movies, were trying to predict what the future held in store for today’s democratic South Africa.
We seem to have reached a point-of-no-return about applying discipline to learners at our schools where crime and violence have reached scary levels of violence. The proportion of brutality at some of our schools by learners against their teachers makes Blackboard Jungle and “The Cross and Switchblade” look like kindergarten fairy tales.
The problem is, just like New York in the 1950s right through to the 1970s, South Africa will have to do what American law-makers did to turn the violent crime situation around. Or else the will be no schools in the future because both learners and parents will find education a scary and violent option.
The assault of teachers by pupils will have to be brought to an end, and law and order restored in our learning institutions before it is too late.
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