Preached on 28th DECEMBER, 2015 At THE SON OF MAN’S FAMILY ALTAR, NSUGBE. By APOSTLE PETER ODOEMENA THE SON OF MAN “THE SUPREME INTELLIGENCE” “Truth has no substitute” ©BRIDE OF CHRIST MINISTRY WORLD-WIDE
1
LIVE AN EXEMPLARY LIFE
Prophet William Branham said that the greatest offering you can give to God, the greatest appreciation you can show to God is to say “thank you Lord for everything you have done for me”—that’s the greatest appreciation, thanksgiving, every person can give.
2. Just with all your heart say, “Thank you Lord for everything you have done for me.”
There is no appreciation greater than “Thank you Lord. I am happy.” And that is exactly the summary of our praise this moment. We have just gathered to say “Thank you Lord.”
3. It has offered me the opportunity to say “thank you” to all of you that sacrificed your time, took the risk, not because of what you are coming to eat and drink, just to come and identify with me and my family in this thanksgiving service. It is worthy of praise, worthy of record.
4. Nobody ever travelled long distance to Onitsha because of what you will eat and drink, risking his or her life. The transport fare alone is by far greater than what the person will just eat. I mean, by the time you finish N1, 000 in the best restaurant, you will be feeling satisfied but you made a sacrifice.
5. See brethren that came all the way from Nasarawa, if not for the ministers meeting, there must be something that will compel you to be here.
6. Let me use last year for example. Brother Ugonna, you were privileged. This is the second time you are privileged to be here to be a partaker of the celebration. Last year it was done here, he was here with my family. We had a nice time.
7. Look at what a divine coincidence. The same man who paid us a visit while investigating our activities, because of his son who identified with us, while you were here he came, he saw three of you, I introduced three of you, he interviewed you, he saw that you were at least people to reckon with, he felt very much at home, the son is in the right hand.
8. While you are here this time around, the man came here again, traced me down to fellowship. He was very happy, he was testifying of the goodness of the Lord in the fellowship for one good turn deserves another.
9. He praised our faith, said with his mouth that he is seeing the evidence physically in the life of his son that no good father will allow his son to mingle with people anyhow. He came from a very prominent place called Nnanka. He even narrated his experience with his own people: how all the professors, vice chancellors he approached failed him, even senators failed him.
10. Some were running helter-skelter, even looking for their own help. But from nowhere help came. He said he must remain appreciative. I said you were thirteen that we assisted but only you came, he came with a carton of wine—twelve bottles—traced us down to the fellowship with his jeep.
11. You see, God works across purposes. I knew the man, I never knew him before I knew the son; it was a coincidence. I was going to Mama Ikebude’s house with a commercial motorcyclist one day during the burial of the driver’s father. There was a heavy down pour, the commercial motorcyclist stopped and we entered a workshop to take refuge till the rain will stop.
12. At the end of the day we never knew that Onitsha boys barricaded the road preventing us from attending the burial because the man to be buried was an outcast by his elders for he was among those that were plotting coup against the traditional ruler.
13. They made a law that nobody should attend the burial. Of all Onitsha indigenes, only foreigners were allowed to bury the man and I was among the foreigners. I was going because of the way the boy was helping Mama Ikebude with her car, identify with us in everything.
14. While we were in the man’s workshop, discussion ensued. Lo and behold, we introduced each other. I knew his home, I knew him to be related to Mr. G.C. Ibe who happened to be his next neighbor. From there, the man started telling me the history of Ibe and everything for which the man was known in the office.
15. In short, I felt at home that day. From there we entered into so many other areas. You see, I enquired from the young man when he identified with us, about his parents, what they were doing and things like that. The father happened to be the man.
16. He built a very nice mansion at Asaba. He is living with his family. His mother is a native of Onitsha, equally married there, also living at Asaba—a fine gentle man, no-nonsense man. He thinks the best for his children.
17. He said he wouldn’t like any of them to mingle with hooligans in Onitsha, that he is suspicious of all the Churches. That most of them are not Churches but commercial centers that divert the attention of the youths from their targets, that he wouldn’t like such a thing to occur to his own son and children. He said that he must make sure he knows where they are.
18. Do you know that the man carries his sons from Asaba to the fellowship and every holiday, this boy would spend the holiday with the father at the workshop, doing the same work the father is doing even till now. He is living here, he stays with us here. A very nice man.
19. When we went home during the burial, he was among those we left to stay here to keep this place warm till we came back.
20. He is a final year student, pursing a degree program on political science in the University of Nigeria, Enugu campus. Amen.
2
THERE IS A LEGAL ORDER IN WHAT GOD ARRANGES
We thank God for everything. You see, it pays to be good, but the best is, let your goodness be seen in your family life, no matter how good you may be. If it is not reflected in your family life, your goodness is nothing, it is absolutely man-made.
2. I am emphasizing the need for parents to live exemplary lives, so that their children would copy their lifestyle. If you live an exemplary life, maintaining healthy relationship with your wife, close ranks, there may be disagreement for there can never be human association, there can never be anything association, I mean, it starts with marriage, but marriage is a divine human association.
3. If it is really marriage that is godly oriented, it is a divine association. That is why when you are thinking about a wife, stop and pray, find out what is pushing you, what is driving you into marriage, whether it is ordinary mere human passion, borne out of your status, maybe you feel you are of age, your mates have married or you now have money or there is something in the lady, which is not spiritual, I call it physical or external consideration or you found out that same thing in a man. Please, it is the greatest risk any human being can take.
4. The adage is clear and it is pure truth because the Son of Man confirmed it: “The day a man marries a bad wife is the day he starts raising bad children. The day a woman marries a bad man, that day she starts raising bad children.”
5. For if the children do not derive their gene from the father, they must derive it from the mother or both. You see why we don’t joke with the phrase, you know a phrase that metamorphosis into a verb, not adverb.
6. You know what a phrase is, a useless word, a careless word, a casual statement, metamorphoses, transforms into reality, concretizes, and a great damage is done—a frightening foundation for a great damage has been laid
7. What is that phrase “I Love You?” A casual statement, that if not carefully examined, investigated, scrutinized and evaluated before concretizing it, that casual statement may cause a great havoc that would linger from generation to generation, a damage that can never be amended till eternity.
8. A man can never correct all mistakes made in marriage. Some people, in their bid to correct the mistakes they made in marriage, went for more wives and made matters worse. The only thing you can do is to endure it when you make such mistake that is very grievous. Because you are binding your soul, your life, your future and the future of the children yet unborn, yoking them with a mess.
9. Do you know what I call it, eternal prison? Because I want you to understand this. I don’t know why I have been hammering on this. The Bible made it clear and nature confirms it to be true: “Whatever God does is eternal, nothing can be added or subtracted from it.”
10. Let me give you one example we enjoy on a daily basis. Whether you are wicked or good, we enjoy it. Sunshine, science cannot provide enough sunshine that will illuminate the whole earth. Can science do that? No. It is from God. It is eternal.
11. Anything can be removed from its place, sunshine will remain there. Is it not true? Thank you very much. God knows why He never made the whole world to enjoy it at the same time. If He does that man will die while laboring. Man will not have rest, for that reason, God added night for rest.
12. Can any man add or subtract from night? The same night you experience here is experienced the world over but not at the same time. It is eternal, is it not true? Whenever night comes you say it is darkness; it is eternal, it is universal. Nothing can be added, nothing can be subtracted.
13. Even if you want to convert your night to day, you will discover that in your honest attempt to challenge nature, you will always jeopardize your life and you cannot forfeit your night and gain it the following day. No. That night you forfeited, you will suffer it by converting the following day into night. For that, nature cannot be cheated.
14. Another example is air. Do you know that God supplied enough air that meets the demand of the whole world at the same time? By day or by night, air is there, it is eternal, and the whole world enjoys air at the same time.
15. Now He that could supply oxygen, that the whole world including animals, living things, fishes in the oceans, all of them will enjoy it at the same time. He supplies carbon dioxide that feeds all plants all at the same time. If He wants to supply sunshine to the whole world at the same time, won’t He do that? There is a Supreme Intelligence.
16. He knows that by day or by night, human beings must breath in and breath out, plants need that carbon dioxide, human beings need that oxygen. The relationship that exists between these things is symbiotic: we benefit from the plants , they benefit from us.
17. You watch raining and dry seasons. He has his reasons. If God will allow harmattan to engulf the whole earth at the same time, everybody will chill. He distributes all these things immediately, specifying everything. Thus, there is a legal order in what God arranges. Nothing can be added nor subtract from it. Amen.
3
AWFUL EFFECTS OF
FAULTY MARRIAGE FOUNDATIONS
Now, I want you to carry this experience and knowledge into marriage: why a mistake made in marriage can never be corrected for marriage is divine. If it is godly oriented, it is eternal, you cannot add you cannot subtract.
2. Thus, when you use your carelessness, your recklessness, your ignorance, stupidity and casual approach to sensitive matters carry it into a divinely oriented matter; you have trailed upon the path angels are afraid of carelessly. That careless word, careless vow, careless romance, careless statement can rope you into an eternal prison yard, rope your future, rope your children yet unborn.
3. Remember, because God said it, it is guaranteed, nothing can change it.
4. Hear me very well, the day a man marries a bad wife that does not suit his purpose, by accident; that is, accidental marriage. He never intended to marry. It was not the reason for going to the woman, he had friendship in mind, before he knew it something, a force followed. It may not be pregnancy. Pregnancy cannot compel you to marry a woman, that is if you are really a man, if you know your right, you know your limitation.
5. There can be a drive outside marriage, the sweet word of the woman or the sweet word of the man which can easily blind; it can be gift, fake gift, false love with false gift, false phone calls, false letters of admiration, love and everything.
6. If you succumb to it, you have carelessly and recklessly dabbled into a divinely instituted matter that nothing can be added nor subtracted from it. Without knowing the future consequences, if you say you will be tough enough or be a man enough to divorce, you make the matter worse. The only thing you will be receiving is word of consolation and that word of consolation is “please endure it. You are not alone.”
7. There are too many people that are caught in the same web, they will be showing you bad examples like your own: where those that are in it never committed suicide.
8. However, the first is this (i) Your progress in life is stalled. You will keep on marking time, why? The two are not walking together. They are living together, but the spirits are not one, they are not having one mind, they are not having one spirit, they are not having one idiosyncrasy.
9. Thus, when you are taking to the right, she is taking to the left. When the children will begin to come, they will be divided between the two parties, the man will have his party supporters, equally the woman will have her party supporters. But they answer a family, united outside but divided at home.
10. Whenever they want to attend parties, they will dress gorgeously, they can go with one aeroplane or one car or by foot. They go there but sensitive and intelligent people will notice that there are discrepancies. If they want to speak with one voice in the party, you will see them biting one another, devouring one another.
11. They may start quarrelling from the vehicle, start quarrelling on the road, start quarrelling even when they are sitting together in the hall while they are sitting down without knowing that the camera man is picking them.
12. There was a meeting I attended in those days, not in our midst. The man and the wife were at the high table. I was also at the high table. The M.C. continued introducing more people to the high table. The man had the wife by his side, for he happened to be the chairman of the meeting.
13. He asked the wife a simple question concerning what they discussed at home, the gift they bought, the present and everything. What happened was that what they wanted to give to the bride and bridegroom was sealed in an envelope and addressed. The man used his writing to address it, but on the high table, the gift was by the side of the man and woman, in between the two.
14. The man requested for the envelope, the woman refused to surrender the envelope. I was behaving as if I was not noticing it. They were gorgeously dressed, they came with expensive vehicle. The man was talking, the woman was replying and a little while, the woman angrily opened the bag and gave the man the envelope.
15. The man reacted saying, “What! This is not the envelope I gave to you! Give it to me.”
16. The woman replied, “I won’t give it.” They never knew the camera man was shooting our side. But I noticed when the thing was happening, the video gun was facing all of us and the two other people there, married couples, so, we were looking at ourselves.
17. Before we knew it, the man snatched it and angrily went out. A little while he came back, he was shaking his legs. He never knew the camera was still on, videoing everything. The woman was busy chewing gum, moving her eyes away from the man. We didn’t want to comment, everybody respected him or herself.
18. I said how I wish my wife followed me to this wedding; it is like the temper of the woman calmed down. She brought out the envelope and said, “Will you take it now?” The man said he has completed it.
19. Come and see how the woman menacingly glanced at her husband from head to toe: “It is like you want everybody here to know us. If it is what you want I’m ready! You want to create a scenario! Why would you put such an amount in that envelope without consulting me?”
20. “I am the chairman of the occasion,” he replied. What happened was that the man put some money in the envelope, surrendered everything to the wife, hoping that when they get there, the thing would be presented together.
21. The woman maybe she wanted to know the amount—maybe when she noticed the money was too much in her own assessment, the man was defending his personality, he was defending the table as the chairman in the occasion.
22. The woman removed the envelope, tore it and reduced the amount, bought a new envelope and insert it with her hand. When the man saw the envelope looking very light, lighter than what he gave.
23. Remember they took off from one family, they discussed, they never attended the wedding by accident. Presumably the couple offered them wine and invitation card, which made them the chairpersons of the occasion.
24. Don’t you see that the struggle started from the home and extended to a public gathering? If the reason why you are having peace with your spouse is because you are just suppressing your feelings, you are risking your family, your family has no future and watch that type of woman, come and see her make up , you don’t need a prophet to tell you that the life of the man is in danger.
25. Mistake in marriage makes a man to marry a woman he cannot control, a woman that cannot be controlled by the word of God, no man can control her even with his fist. If you punch her, she will hit back. You lift her up and slam her on the ground, she will stab you. You talk to her harshly, she will go on strike, nobody will enter the kitchen again.
26. You will be hearing the language: “Anybody that is hungry should go to the kitchen and prepare food!” It will be an affair between you your children.
27. And watch, she will be busy noting those children that are supporting you. At the end of the day, they become victims of her aggression. The aggression will be extended to all the children that are supporting the supposed foolish man, wicked man.
28. That’s why, when the message was going forth, the night that preceded the thanksgiving day, Saturday before the elders, Apostle Kelechi was in the pulpit , he never knew he was repeating scriptures.
29. He says “When you are correcting somebody in this faith, who claims to be in this faith, if he or she is a man or woman, but does not believe the word, doesn’t want the word to regulate him or her in any form or shape, that person will automatically translate it to wickedness and hatred.
30. Our brother never knew he was highlighting the book of Proverbs which says, “Make no mistake of correcting a fool for he will hate you.”
31. To a fool, correction is hatred but to a godly fellow, a righteous fellow, the Bible says that a godly fellow will like to be told where he is wrong. That is why Job said, “Lord, teach me and help me to understand wherein I have erred. Teach me, help me.” This should be our disposition at all times.
32. When he made that statement, I repeated that no man or woman that examines himself or herself, marks his or her scripts without coming out first. That is why God said that we should be very careful, every one of us for self-justification can lead you to abyss.
33. Whoever that justifies himself is a fool. The Justifier is God and God is the word of God, that’s why the conclusion is “Something is wrong because God says it is wrong.” There is no other reason anybody can adduce.
34. Something is bad because God say it is bad. Now we are no longer talking about God in the written word, we are talking about God made flesh, the revealed Christ in our own day, the Justifier of those that have believed in Him.
35. When you believe and confide in Him, His faith makes you acceptable in the Beloved. It is by your faith that you and your sacrifices are made acceptable, which in time past were abominations unto God, for whatever sacrifices the heathens render are to things that are no gods, is it not Bible.
36. By the faith of the revealed Christ in your day, you are sanctified, you are made holy, you are made perfect, that is if you walk in the light He shows. Not when you are walking contrary.
37. I have used this illustration to show you that what happened to that man could happen somewhere else whether you are in this faith or not. Watch the peace you are having in the home, what do you think that is generating that peace, is it a bribed peace? You know you can’t bribe peace.
38. Check it very well, if you are at peace in your family, whenever money is in your hand and you are providing more than the family needs, showering unnecessary gifts, taking your wife by surprise, peace will reign, because you have now allowed her to have her way. Whatever she demands, you say “go to the cupboard and take money.” Note it, you will enjoy that peace relatively.
39. Whenever that money finishes, greater than that peace will come. But in your attempt to finance peace, you have stalled your progress, you will achieve nothing again: the family will have no budget, the family cannot embark on any meaningful project, you will be running round and be answering “my son in Lagos, my son in Abuja,” occupying a good position from year to year, no physical presence.
40. Remember our message “Parental success is not the children’s success.” No man is made great by the achievement of his father, no man is made a success because his father succeeded, never. Your father’s structure is not your structure. Your father’s structure is a collective structure.
41. When you are the firstborn, it offers you a refuge, a privilege, it is a heritage, an inheritance is not an achievement. If because you are the first son like Bro Ugonna, your father was a permanent secretary or director so to say, level 17. He builds a house, he becomes prominent this and that, it will be credited to your father.
42. If you have your eyes there because you are the first son, your sibling must kill you. Any day you come up and make a proclamation as the first son according to the customs and traditions of Ichida that “my father’s compound belongs to me,” when you were not there when the foundation was laid and you did nothing, what will be the heritage of your siblings? They will kill you.
43. Even if they allow you to be there as the first son, you can never come out boldly before your people, you are just like one that took over the late brother’s wife, you have not married for marriage will increase the number of women in your community. But that one that was already married, the husband died and you coveted her, added nothing to the community, the population remains what it was, the population will not increase until you add your own wife.
44. What am I saying? I now have grown up children. I must tell them the truth and in the attempt to tell them the truth, if you are here, as you are now, you have become members of my family. I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to my children while I am still healthy, for a day will still come when I will become weak, I won’t talk to them again, they will be enriched with what they have gathered from me.
45. There is honor when you stay in your father’s house and then build your own while your father is alive. The reason why your father trained you is to become something while he is still alive.
46. You see our brother Chidubem, his parents are very happy with him, no matter the little help they rendered to him, they are alive, they have seen him become a man, what he is now is not what he was when he got married. When he got married, he had a room that had no ceiling, no block, ordinary mud house, everything.
47. I want to disabuse your minds. If anybody tells you that when a man is married, his progress is stalled, I want to give the interpretation. The interpretation is this: The day a man picks a bad wife is the day his progress stops. What is more, if there is any progress in your family and it is traceable to your wife and not you, pause a little, I say pause a little.
48. It must be a combined effort, she may not be contributing ideas that led to real success, she will not be wasteful, she will not be over demanding, she will not be too exotic, she will not be influenced by the world, she will be asking for somewhere that she will be comfortable with her children, even in the absence of their father. She will be looking for a legacy.
49. But a stupid house wife will be looking for pleasure, material pleasure, pleasure of the day. Whatever money that comes in, she will be presenting lots of items. She will be duplicating the ones in the house, telling you that they are no longer serving the purpose, telling you this and that.
50. She cannot endure hardship without opening her mouth wide. And to avoid the neighbors rushing in and out, a man will use what he has to establish himself to finance the rebellion, to finance poverty using his wealth to finance his future poverty
51. A foolish woman doesn’t even know the value of education of the children especially in a valid institution. A foolish woman doesn’t know that, but a progressive wife expends her money to give her children qualitative education.
52. Watch silly women, these women that are godless, they go to all lengths to make sure their children resist all parental advices, especially from their father, so that they will be godless.
53. Once you are godless, you must be useless. Such women, if they are domestic housewives, their vision will be to place their children in schools around their dwelling places, to save them the trouble of going far to collect them from the school to and fro. They can never indulge in “school runs” because of laziness.
54. Even if you have the best in mind for your children, she will come up warning you, saying “If you want to take your children to a distant school, make sure you will be taking them there and bringing them back. As for me, I don’t have the strength!”
55. You think she is joking, she means it: “Since you are rejecting all those schools around, the children going there, are they not children from families and you want to show that you have money! That is why you are taking them there. But look at our house, no fridge, no air condition, no this, no that! Don’t you see this man bought a car for his wife, the wife is riding this?”
56. If your wife begins to point you to a car when you are not fully established, query that wife because riding a car means increasing your expenditure on consumable goods without profit—increasing your expenditure on providing pleasure, more than property.
57. What establishes a man is property. That is why we emphasize that there should be property before pleasure. You know what I mean by property: human capital development. That is why God said that we should aim at investing the much we can on our children for it is the only investment you can make with long and lasting reward.
58. The next thing is building your own house, where you will live and command your family the way you want. If you are a tenant in the township, He says, “Don’t ever aim at becoming a caretaker in that house, rather aim at becoming a landlord in your hometown.” For it will be a shameful thing to be a tenant in the town and at home. Charity they say begins at home.
59. A useless and unreasonable woman doesn’t think home. If you tell her you want to build a house at home, she will ask you, “For whom? Oh, you want to go and build for your brothers and sisters in the home, not in this house! Over my dead body! Is that what we need? Instead of buying vehicle, you want to build a house at home, where you will go to settle down finally. You are planning to take us home, if it is in the town, is it a crime?”
60. I fought it as a battle. It happened in this faith. I fought it from the pulpit, I was the One that woke Bro. Ojiakor from slumber. I was the one that instituted the building of the house. I carried out the project, finished it, the wife incited the children against me and I became their greatest enemy. Even when I know how much my own money I personally put into that house.
61. By day and by night I was shuttling Umorji, using a bike, saying Brother Ojiakor must have a place he should be spending weekend in. But they said that they preferred living at Enugu. They were not having it in mind to coming home. They were using professors who never had even a kitchen in their homes.
62. One day, one died at Achina, the corpse was placed in an open air, a professor of a faculty and many others like that. Now the house is completed, who is the happiest? She never knew when we completed it, for the day she came in was when somebody died. We had already finished the painting, a house mightier than my own at Mbaise, you need to be there; super furnished now.
63. They are now bidding me to come; nobody wants to stay at Enugu again. All of them have trooped down. Yesterday, they were telling me that if their father wants to go back to Enugu, he should go that they are ready to stay, even their mother came kneeling down.
64. But can you imagine a medical doctor of repute, how many years, a shameful thing! Even the most senior refusing them from sleeping in his house, when people came to marry the daughter of the eldest, the community chased him out, what an insult!
65. What am I saying, if your wife falls within this category so far described, there is no remedial medicine from the word of God. But I will offer you my useful advice as an elder how you can do it. If it fails, come and kill me, but it will not fail.
66. If you notice that you made that mistake in marriage, either by picking somebody who came into the faith because of marriage or picking your girlfriend, who was trailing you and not ready to lose you, carelessly, casually, a careless statement has now metamorphosed into a formidable rock that no caterpillar can excavate, my advice is this: if you want the best for yourself and for your children, Please, do not place any project you want to embark on before her until you have gone mid-way. Have you heard me?
67. Any project you want to embark on, make no mistake of disclosing it to her, until you have gone mid-way. If It’s property, purchase it, show her the document, but don’t say “Let me reason with her,” before buying that property. Till eternity, you will never buy it!
68. You want to start molding some blocks in your father’s house, with a view to erecting at least one room for yourself, keep it away from her. Tell her you went to go home, continue to go home, make good arrangements using people that will help you. Keep on molding blocks until you are sure you have molded enough that would enable you take off.
69. Take a photograph of the blocks, show her the photograph. When you want to take off, keep it to yourself. Begin to use people that you know will do it. When the building comes to a height, take the photograph.
70. Sister Ojiakor never saw the building until we built a storey building of such a magnitude. The children, not even one saw it. It was one day they came to my house, I directed all of them to go to Umorji to see what we have been laboring for.
71. With their faces as thick as that of Mike Tyson, reluctantly they agreed to go. Their first son nearly strangled me, threatening me all round that their father was wasting the money he should have used in a flat in Enugu to erect a house where lizards would dwell. Yes, let me have a house in my hometown, let lizards sleep there. Amen.
4
THE FOUNDATION OF EVERY CHURCH IS MARRIAGE
Why am I talking about marriage all this while? I know that Lagos Household is one of the local assemblies that took off with false foundations.
2. The first foundation that was laid down was by Bro Justice, who turned out to be the one that married his girlfriend, a girl he tutored in the school, together with Sister Sandra—they were his first converts. Out of the two converts, he married Atim, trouble ensured between him and her parents because she came from Cross Rivers.
3. I knew the details and they lived together for many years before the marriage was culminated and consummated. They finished the honeymoon before marriage, what a poor foundation.
4. The second was like the first: Apostle Monday married his apprentice, his girlfriend. He decided to train his apprentice or seamstress, from there, the idea of sending her to school for NCE was muted out. They exhausted their honeymoon in friendship and apprenticeship. Before we knew it, the thing became marriage.
5. On the day we went for the marriage, that was the day I really suffered in Lagos. I won’t forget it. We were placed in the den of mosquitoes. They put us in an uncompleted hotel, a hotel that was under reconstruction. We were nearly starved to death.
6. We were taken to the park from the wedding hall. We slept at the park, waited from 2 o’clock to 9 o’clock, the vehicle left for Onitsha, that was ABC transport.
7. Brother Chidubem, am I bearing false witness? You travelled back alone. You used ABC also. We parted at Benin when I slept at Upper Iweka, poor foundation.
8. The third was like the two: Pastor Monday Obakpolor, married his girlfriend. They met in the school, they met in the youth service. They came from one area. They were romancing, we knew they were friends, they didn’t deny it. The friendship which started with a casual statement continued until Pastor Monday Obakpolor got a job, that job took him here and there.
9. Finally he went to Aba. Anywhere he went, the lady was patiently waiting, because marriage was the considerations: “If you like run to hell, I don catch you. If I lose this one who will bell the cat?”
10. No matter the preaching, no matter the hardness of the preaching, she held tenaciously to Brother Monday. When the thing became scandalous, Brother Monday decided to marry anyhow using his last kobo and from that day he used his last kobo to marry till now, Brother Monday has not seen the light of the day.
11. Brother Monday Obakplor, am I bearing false witness? Because the money you spent during your traditional wedding, nobody has ever spent it in this faith. He married outside our faith. Justice married outside our faith, under threat. They married their girlfriends, casual statement that resulted to an eternal conjugation.
12. Bro Kennedy had children from his girlfriend. He befriended the lady and friendship culminated into marriage. Before he knew it, it became children before marriage. Children in friendship. Because of children, he was not prepared to forfeit her to Imo State or Anambra. He decided to fulfill all the marital demands and they are living together.
13. What is more, another thing that is coming into our midst gradually, it is called “Marry and die.” Wedding is becoming a thing of the past. Wedding after marriage is becoming an Old Testament affair. It has started in Onitsha, it is spreading gradually. To introduce false doctrine is easy. It starts with one man.
14. While I am talking, Brother Austin has been bending down. Yes, he knows why he is bending down. He identified with this faith, he was doing well with us. A little while, he abandoned the faith for many years, reappeared in Lagos with a wife, that was the history of the marriage.
15. If you check these foundations, they are all faulty. I say they are all faulty. Check all of them, they are faulty foundations and now Matthew has come up with this own again, which means nobody will marry according to our faith in Lagos if not Brother Ugonna and Pastor Rotimi.
16. Why must your members marry contrary to the faith, contrary to our doctrines? What is the relationship between Christ and the Church; and husband and wife?
17. The truth that established the Church is the truth that established the marriage. Thus the foundation of every Church is marriage. In any local assembly, where the foundation of marriages are all wrong, check that Church, you will see intractable problems from time to time.
18. What is more, because you married your girlfriends, they must keep on reflecting the natures of girlfriend. If there be any minister that attacks a reflection of girlfriends, appearance of ladies in the Church, that minister has trailed on a dangerous ground.
19. If it is a married brother, don’t worry, the wife must strive very hard to live above others. For instead of those who are wrong, who are in the majority to copy her example, they will be finding fault which they will use to defend their cases for their husbands, for such people can never emulate anything good.
20. If you try to impress it on them, they will form an association and begin to criticize something that is good instead of emulating it. Whatever that person does would be interpreted to mean the person is doing it that the people will love her or will hate him, to prove that he loves his wife more than any other.
21. Since you know that the love a man has for his girlfriend does not allow him to see the fault until it becomes damaging, you may be defending something that will kill you tomorrow: “I don’t like the way he talked to my wife—the way he mentions my wife’s name every time in the pulpit. If he mounts the pulpit and my wife’s name is not mentioned, he has not preached a message. Is that what we received? At least he should preach the word and stop calling names!”
22. Even if he doesn’t say it openly, he is boiling inside. The wife may not say it in the fellowship, but will be saying it at home. All aimed at seducing the husband out of the way of truth and if that man opens his mouth to speak otherwise, he will go to bed without food, that bed will not accommodate the two. Even if they are sleeping together, their bodies will not touch each other for weeks until he tenders apologies for taking side with the truth, until he begins to plead with her to bear with him.
23. In other words, you have cancelled all that you heard from God. What am I trying to achieve, I want to use your visit to talk to you. This is the first time all of you have come together in my house this way, only Matthew and his girlfriend are there and few others; so that when you get home, you can talk to brother Matthew and his girlfriend of course.
24. I know that when a man goes out of the way of truth, he will like others to follow that way. You know it is easier to follow a bad example than to follow a good one.
25. Immediately Peter and James were found in hypocrisy, Barnabas joined in same discrimination. If not for Paul who cried out, the rest of the apostles would have been buried in that open display of hypocrisy, then the ministry was blamed in their hands. Amen.
5
REMEDY TO FAULTY MARRIAGE FOUNDATIONS
If you don’t want this ministry to be blamed in your hands, please, never forget the topic we discussed in this meeting, two major topics: THAT THE MINISTRY BE NOT BLAMED IN MY HANDS.
2. Another topic that is joined with it is: SEEING WE HAVE THIS MINISTRY, WE FAINT NOT, BUT HAVE RENOUNCED ALL HIDDEN THINGS OF DISHONESTY, NO LONGER WALKING IN CRAFTINESS, BUT WITH GODLY SINCERITY, HONESTY OF PURPOSE, WE COMMIT OURSELVES TO EVERY MAN’S CONSCIENCE IN THE SIGHT OF GOD.
3. What is the remedy where such a grievous mistake is made? The remedy is already provided. To such people, the Bible says: those that love the Lord their God should not keep quiet, for when God will number, He will number all that resented all those evils and appearances of evils, those whose righteous souls were vexed by the manifestations of evils, they were the people God numbered before and saved, they are the people He is numbering now—those that will take side with God or condemn evil in all ramifications, no matter where it is found.
4. Don’t divorce your wives, live in peace and that peace if it is not generated by your wife’s obedience to you, it is not real peace. I will not divorce my wife, but I will not stop her from divorcing herself. She will tell the world why.
5. If I’m sure I’m handling her in the fear of God, telling her the truth which has no substitute, but her inability to take side with the truth, makes her soul restive that she decided to pack away, I am not answerable to anybody. She is the one that will tell the world why she took that action.
6. Sensible people will actually know the whole truth and in such a situation, she won’t stay more than 48 hours, because when she will open her mouth, people will sneer at her. Less than 48 hours, her conscience must surely smite her. Everybody will hate her with perfect hatred because they know the disposition of the husband.
7. When you are defending your wife in error, you are defending an illegality you cannot cope with. You are transferring that illegality to your children yet unborn.
8. If you notice your children are tilting toward their mother who is not prepared to obey you and you keep quiet, you are indirectly sponsoring a coup that will over throw you.
9. If you know you cannot redeem your wife from the hand of the devil, from bad character, fight and redeem your children, that is your legacy, that is your only heritage but don’t lose all, don’t forfeit all.
10. You see the difference between a sister and a brother. If you want to marry a sister, the first move you will make, report will be coming to you from the pastors, elders, sisters and everybody. If the report is adverse and you harden your heart, it is your decision to go that way not that you were not furnished with the right information without bias.
11. However, it is not so with your girlfriend for your girlfriend will paint angelic picture of herself, because it is one-one affair. But when you want to marry a sister it is not one-one affair, it is collective affair.
12. In this one-one affair, rosy picture painted, how do you know that you had made the greatest mistake. That angel, the moment you finish with everything, traditional wedding, bride price and so on and she comes home, all her five fingernails she trimmed would appear. Her real nature will now come out. If she is a dirty woman, your house will look like a den, a place where pigs are kept.
CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS
13. I want to show you a sign by which you know when your wife is dirty. Once your wife is dirty, your family is dirty, your children are dirty for you may be smelling, without knowing. Because every cloth you are putting on catches the odor of the house, the smell of every family is perched on that cloth.
14. That is why people that have the odor can hardly notice it, because the wife is smelling, he is smelling, the children are equally smelling. The bed is smelling, the seat is smelling, the staircase they climb is smelling, hence they are accustomed to it.
15. If your house can only be neat when you as a man decides to use broom to sweep, put things in order, dress the bed, you have kept a dirty woman in the house.
16. If when you come back from work and you need food, it is when you will hear, “Wait, let me wash plate. Let me wash cup.” Your family is dirty, your wife is dirty.
17. If when you need to change your dress you request for one, you will be pointed to the linen hamper. Linen hamper means a place where you heap used clothes. Even if you are not pointed to it, because you are afraid, you go to the wardrobe, you don’t see any you will put on, you will be tempted to go to the linen hamper where you heaped the used ones.
18. You will be selecting. When you select, you are changing it until you see the one you will manage. When the woman is lying on the bed doing nothing, your house is dirty, she is a pig! You married a dirty woman who appears to be cosmetic as a girlfriend and now the real color is out and she must pass it on to your children.
19. A clean woman, passes that cleanliness to the children, to the maidservants. Another way you will know when your wife is a dirty woman and will run a dirty home—remember when a woman is dirty, her food is dirty, her kitchen is dirty.
20. She will stay at home, first thing in the morning, if at all she will remember to pray, when the prayer is over, she won’t remember to brush her teeth, wash her hands or face. The next thing will be eating one thing or the other. She will stay in the house, eating in the morning means between 6-7 o’clock. She will eat another one in the morning between 10-11 o’clock.
21. Then evening food, the same wrapper she put on the same night, the same everything, 2pm in the afternoon, she would eat, 4pm, she would eat the one that will stay till night. Yet without taking her bath, it will be when she will be taking the last food that she would remember brushing her teeth.
22. How does she brush her teeth in the morning? She will bring water, put it in her mouth and spit it out, use water to rinse her mouth, that is tooth brush and paste. From morning the man may leave the house as early as 6: 00am, only to come back by 5pm to meet the wife tying the same wrapper, without taking her bath. She would be giving reasons why she failed to take her bath: “The child is crying too much! Since morning this child doesn’t want me to drop him on the ground.”
23. A foolish man will say, “Don’t worry, give me the child, go and bath.” You are spoiling your family. You spoiling your wife. You can never have real success in your life, and watch that family, sickness can never leave that family. You can never raise healthy children, and any family where the woman is loose in the sense that she is dirty, that family can never have a standard: no standard even in raising the children.
24. But God has given us all things, we have been fully equipped to raised godly homes, godly children. Remember the message that CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS. This issue was so important that God commanded the Jews in the wilderness that they should not pass faeces on the ground.
25. He said, “When you want to do it, open the ground, put it and close for I hate to see filthy and dirty environment.” God hates dirty and filthy environment, how can you now permit it? Can God come into your house and breathe in fresh air, for there can never be fresh air in a dirty home.
26. What makes a home dirty is not the size of the home. If you are dirty in one room, you must be dirty in a duplex. If your laziness cannot allow you to make a room clean, if you dare have a flat, the whole rats in the world, the whole cockroaches, the whole cobwebs will be your window blinds, yet a human being is staying there.
27. You are now talking about witches and wizards; you are the one bewitching yourself, for nothing bewitches a dirty family more than the filth. When rat will just jump on the bed, they have tried you, wizards have come. The filthiness around you can even bring a snake in the last floor of your house.
28. Yes, filthiness aids all those reptiles. Before you know it, you will see one snake on top of your bed, you begin to call the Son of Man that your mother who died, threw one across the Niger Bridge and it landed on your bed.
29. What am I saying, seeing we have this ministry, we faint not, all round ministry, giving no offence in anything so that the ministry be not blamed. Necessity is now laid on us to put our families in order, for that is what we received from the meeting. Amen.
6
PUT YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER
I have decided to refresh your memories because of the thanksgiving we had yesterday, may be if I don’t refresh it now, the Thanksgiving will replace the Ministers’ Meeting, for it was the issues of your coming down.
2. If it was for Thanksgiving alone, only one or two would have followed Bro Rotimi, but because Ministers’ Meeting was scheduled, all the ministers have to be there.
3. Thus, do not use thanksgiving to replace ministers’ meeting, which was the essence of your coming down.
4. It dawned on me this morning after my morning prayers in the bed that I should meet with you in this family altar to rekindle the light in you, so that it will be the testimony that will guide you as you drive along: it will be before your eyes, it will be in the table of your hearts.
5. In your homes, sit your families down, give them a rundown of what brought you to Anambra State, what you gathered in the ministers’ meeting, not what you gathered in the Thanksgiving Service for you gathered nothing but dancing, eating and drinking.
6. Was it what brought you here? The money you spent for the fares only was enough to take you to the best hotel in Lagos, entertain all of you at the same time.
7. It dawned on me that I should talk to you again, revisiting the Ministers’ Meeting, making it fresh. This is a wonderful privilege you are having for staying here after the meeting. Those that left last night, I bet you, their testimonies in their vehicles was the Thanksgiving.
8. When they get home, everybody will be scrambling to the pulpit to share testimony, saying, “I ate one plate of garri, one plate of semovita, one plate of rice. I finished twenty meat!” But it shouldn’t be so to you. If there is a local assembly that needed that meeting it is you.
9. Apart from Onitsha, Lagos provided the largest number of ministers. Check very well, apart from Onitsha, Lagos provided the greatest number of ministers, not Abuja, not Nasarawa.
10. You know, Nasarawa came with Nsem, Zonkwa and Jos. That was what made the number to be swollen. Check the number that came from Nasarawa, how many of them: Brother Fryde, Pastor Emma, Brother David, Bro Abu, but look at you, how many of you, seven of you!
11. Apart from Onitsha, Lagos provided the greatest number of ministers and now you are all ministers, you will be having problems because in a local assembly where you have eight vibrant brothers as ministers, who then forms the congregation, who then listens to the message? You see why you are having problems, you are top-heavy, instead of you to obey or to follow suit, you’ll be finding fault with the one that is ministering.
12. While he is ministering, you are busy writing your own note, asking him to come down and I can see a situation where everyone of you will like to mount the pulpit every fellowship day. Everybody will have a message because all of you are ministers. Who will minister to you again? You see why you must go home and rethink.
13. Let me sound it as a warning. Warning in the sense that it must be obeyed or else, I will do something you never expected. Every Wednesday fellowship, apart from the song leader, only one minister will preach.
14. On Sundays apart from the song leader, the person that opens the fellowship, only one minister will minister, the rest should sit down and nobody should ever make the mistake of going to the pulpit without the approval of the pastor in charge of the fellowship, that is our order.
15. Even here in Onitsha, I don’t mount the pulpit. If I want to go to the pulpit, I will announce it ahead of time. Even sometimes when I have some announcements I will pass it on to Pastor Dan to make the announcements, Brother Kelechi cannot go, Pastor Dan will ask; “Brother Kelechi, do you have a message?”
16. If you do not obey, all of you will perish. If you do not obey this instruction, I bet you, all of you will perish, iron will not sharpen iron, because all of you will believe you are holding double-edged sword that it sharper than the other.
17. There is no brother that will mount that pulpit as a minister because you do not confer with yourselves, you don’t censor messages. If you come to fellowship with clean heart, Brother Kennedy mounts the pulpit as a deacon, as a teacher, the message he will take up must surely help you, if your heart is open to receive Brother Kennedy first, for you must receive a minister before you receive his message.
18. The moment you recent a minister, the message profits you nothing, you will always be jotting things you will correct, things he did not say well, things that didn’t sink well with you. The devil will be quoting other messages, even messages you do not have handy, you will be going and quoting them randomly without anybody verifying.
19. That was why I called Bishop Elijah down from the pulpit. I called you as a bishop to the pulpit at the ministers’ meeting and you were quoting messages you were not holding, quote page 4, quote chapter 3; nothing. You quote and quote, it became what Apostle Monday did in Onitsha.
20. He was called to the pulpit. He mounted the pulpit, “Are you there, I mean read from there; read from there.” He quoted a message. Did you tell us what you were coming with? We didn’t come with the messages, he never told us ahead of time and he was telling us: This message titled page this and that, yes I mean it. Please read it for me. Read it, read it.” We were astonished.
21. Brother, we don’t have the message you are quoting and you don’t have it there, you only came with a piece of paper where you noted the message pages, chapters. You didn’t come with the message, you didn’t write down the contents and you didn’t tell us to come with the message.
22. He was telling brother Amamkem, “Read if you are there. Are you there? Pastor Dan, read it there for me.”
23. We called him down. This is not how we minister. We don’t censor messages. A minister that is going to the pulpit must be prepared. He that wants to go to the pulpit must be prepared. Go to the pulpit with the messages. Assemble them the way you want to minister. When you quote, you read, if you cannot read, give it to somebody who will read it for the congregation.
24. What is more, this idea of competition for preaching should stop. Do not compete for preaching. Rather compete for character, be the best in character. Let my message be that of the devil, but let my character reflect Christ, I will be satisfied. But I know my character will reflect my message.
25. Thus, don’t compete for the pulpit, compete for character. When you build your messages, go to the pulpit with them, somebody will be enriched. But if you don’t do it this way because all of you are ministers, you will be raising faultfinders. This one will preach, another one will counter. This one will preach, another one will counter. Everybody will be looking for quotes that will make the congregation disbelieve the other.
26. It is absolutely rubbish! It looks childish. It will take all of you to hell, for that reason, my regulation is: every fellowship day, if you open the fellowship with praises, come down, invite the minister. If you have a message for the congregation, see your pastor before that time. He will make a way for you.
27. Not that day, because your pastor may have another message for the flock, when you tell him you have a message, he will arrange for the day he will call you, he will tell you “Get ready you will handle it on Wednesday or next Sunday.” Your duty is to obey; you cannot just come to the fellowship and say “Pastor I want to go to the pulpit,” na lie.
28. Do you know the problem he wants to address in the congregation? Because he is the pastor in charge, if the Church fails, you will not be blamed, he is the one that will answer for the flock, he is the overseer of the flock. You are helping ministers in the five-fold, helping the pastor to put the flock in order.
29. We are co-laborers. I am a co labourer in Onitsha. Apostle and others are co-laborers, the pastor is pastor Dan. That’s why you hear us clamping down on him. Look at the way he has been laboring since you came, did you see any minister laboring like him? In the kitchen, he was coordinating, everywhere, because he is the pastor. The same way it is with Pastor Thomas and Pastor Christian Dike. We were giving them our suggestions and opinions for them to implement.
30. Thus, don’t ever disrupt the peace in your fellowship because all of you are now captains. When two captains are holding on a boat in an ocean, It must capsize. Two drivers cannot hold on to the steering at the same time. One will stay in front quite alright, one will be driving. If he is tired, another one can take over, like they left last night, Bro Abu is a good driver, bro David a good driver, bro Emma is a good driver, all of them. But one will take off. If he feels sleepy the other one will collect the steering. If another one is weak, another will collect the steering. I mean the idea is to take us home safely. Whether A is driving or B is driving, the idea is to reach home safely.
31. Nobody reported you to me, but the Spirit of God in me is revealing to me what is happening among you. You cannot deny this, you cannot deny it. What is more, whenever this thing is happening, you will be rubbing shoulders. You can hardly condescend one to another, you don’t even respect yourselves. Humble yourselves before one another; so that you can serve one another with humility, you have only but one purpose.
32. Look at Onitsha, we rally round the pastors, for it we don’t rally round them, they will not achieve anything. Thus, don’t just be a faultfinder to your co-minister; be a house builder not a house destroyer, a fault finder is a destroyer.
33. Hear me very well, you can have useful suggestion for your pastors, it is not a pulpit matter. If there is anything going on and you feel it is not the way you want it, you want to know the reason why it is that way, it is not a pulpit affair. You go to your pastor or you phone him, say “Can you see me while coming back,” or “I will like us to see.”
34. You stay and then discuss. Learn from me. You heard yesterday and they were testifying. Pastor Dan called and Pastor Thomas said okay. They came here. It wasn’t a pulpit matter. I wanted them to hear my suggestion and at the end, they were happy.
35. You don’t go to the pulpit to begin to make suggestions, when you have already used your message to bias the minds of brethren, giving them the impression that they were being misled. That spirit of toppling the other should be cancelled this moment.
36. Don’t aim at toppling one that is there. Don’t make a good impression of yourself before other, only to end it running down the reputation of others, don’t. You are not struggling for anything, rather, you are fighting the same cause and you must run this race according to the rule, the rule is be in line, be in line.
37. Don’t run zig-zag, don’t estrange yourselves. There shouldn’t be anything discord at all because you are ministers. If all of you are ministers, who will you minister to? The man that is coming tomorrow will also buy a portfolio and follow you. Hence in a fellowship where there are twenty brothers, there will be twenty ministers, then you will be ministering to your wives. If I were your wives, I will join them, I will join you, before you come, you will see me in the pulpit.
38. There is another trick the devil uses to fool you. In a local assembly where the ministers are in the majority, it is very easy for the devil to come in. “Now I’ve granted a chance. It is an order from the Son of Man.”
39. No matter where you meet me I am what I am. There is no place you will meet Buhari and you remove him from Mr. president. Even if you meet him in the parlor, in the bedroom, at the seashore, he is the president, his word will be credited to him as the words of the president.
40. I am the One talking to you. The Son of Man is talking to you. Don’t allow the devil to begin to corrupt your mind to walk craftily from now, because of the regulation I am giving for your own good, I can see the devil trying to use another prowl.
41. When a minister now come to open the fellowship, he will convert the opening of the fellowship to preaching. If he sings one song he will halt it and then begin a preaching for one hour. All of them in the name of opening fellowship.
42. What do you do there? You go there, salute your brethren, sing praises with them, usher in the minister. But when you go beyond that, common sense is there that there is an information you want to pass. Opportunity has come, you have used the issue of opening fellowship to drive in that message because the force is always in you, the drive is there that if you don’t minister in any fellowship, you feel you are losing something.
43. For that reason, I will make the rule. If I leave it open it will cause havoc from among you. When you get home let the pastor appoint one of you who will be vested with the responsibility of opening the fellowship.
44. In the absence of that person, another person can now open it and borrow a cue from the person who opens it. That person that opened fellowship, if he has a message, he will also discuss with the pastor. He will be allowed, he will give him message.
45. I want things to be done decently or in order. If you obey this rule, you will be beneficial one to another. But if you operate independently because you are co-ministers, you will cause more harm than good and you will all perish. If all of us are ministers, who will be listening to us?
46. With those few words, I believe I have rekindled the light of hope in you. I have reviewed the ministers’ meeting in you. I have flushed out the thanksgiving so that your testimony—while you drive along to your home—will be that the Ministers’ Meeting was beneficial to you—you derived something from the Ministers’ Meeting.
47. Let me say that the ministers’ meeting has come to an end this morning as far as Lagos is concerned. This is the summary. Shall we pray
PRAYER
Our heavenly father, we thank you this morning. Any day we wake up and see the light of the day we say, praise and honors be to your Holy Name.
2. Father, we have heard the word and we are pleased with you, you really want us oh God to make the best out of this ministry, you want us to make full proof of our ministry, that is why you have come this way again putting use in remembrance of that which you told us during the minister’s meeting.
3. Father, may it continue to bubble in our hearts like a river, may it never dry up again, father divine, may the experiences we gathered see us through in all our sojourn in this faith, may it never fizzle out of our memory from now till eternity for your name sake. Lord we thank you for the wonderful outing we made yesterday.
4. Thank you for receiving our thanksgiving, our offering, our sacrifices of praise, thank you for the journey mercies granted to all your children, friend and well-wishers that attended that meeting, to your name belonged, the glory, victory, the praise forever and ever through Christ our lord.
5. This morning oh God, some of our brethren that stayed with us here will be going back to Lagos to start their work tomorrow, to rejoin with their homes, I am handing them over to your care, be with them, bless them, make a way for them where there is no way, may their journeys be accident free, for those that left last night, we hopefully believe that they have reached their destinations safely.
6. Father, even others that will be going home today in our way or the other take care of us. As we stay at home may your glory oh God cover all of us, may we never stray away from your presence, in everything oh God, help us to appreciate you, teach us to number our days, to incline our hearts with wisdom, through Christ our lord we pray. Amen.