By Abdu Rafiu
It may be too early in the year to say. Although the Year 2020 may have handed us over to Year 2021 and faded into oblivion, our world is still experiencing some of its grueling features and one begins to wonder whether Year 2020 had its luggage full when it was departing it could not carry all it needed to go away with or its trademarks are a bequest. Within the first week of its unveiling, Year 2021 has proven it may not be much different from its predecessor. The omens would seem it would be worse. It is remarkable our prophets have been cautious this year in their pronouncements on the night of the accustomed cross-over predictions. I did not read of any of them raising exaggerated expectations of El Dorado in our land or outside our frontiers unlike last year when one of them said “it’s go na be a great year” while another said “2020 equals supernatural shift.” Here was yet another:” It’s going to bring a series of joy.” This year all of them still said God, the Almighty Father, the Creator of all, spoke to them!
The new and higher knowledge spreading on earth today reveals that even a perfected human being (spirit) already living in Paradise cannot cross the boundary of his plane to the next higher one. He would lose consciousness. If he were to attempt even if helped—which is impossible to start with– to the plane of the abode of John the Baptist, for instance, he would be burnt. Yet, the Lord Jesus Christ said that in His Father’s Kingdom, John the Baptist is the least! John the Baptist was specially incarnated on earth to baptize the Lord Christ. The vastness of the distance from the plane of his abode and that of the Knights around the Throne of the Holy Spirit, His Castle at the Summit of Creation, is inconceivable to man on earth or to the perfected spirit back home in Paradise. Man cannot just survey the vastness and distance. Drawing from the new knowledge, I hinted last week at the distance between the Divine Realm and the Throne of God which is even separated by an ocean of fire. The Divine Realm is outside Creation.
Come to think of it: We learn in The Book of Revelation that there are seven universes. Ours is Ephesus. To demonstrate its vastness, it should be noted that our earth is a planet in the solar system and so described because it is a system around the sun. The sun itself is a star, one of the billions of stars in our galaxy called the Milky Way which in turn is only one of the billions of galaxies in our Universe. It is even different from the actual Creation which is spiritual. The universe is at the outermost fringes as a part of the World of Gross Matter which is why it can go into disintegration whereas the spiritual is eternal, hence the admonition to us all mankind to clean up ourselves quickly and mature so we can get out of there before it dissolves. The disintegration brings the final death for those who may not have washed their “linen clean” and are thus trapped in it. From the foregoing, it can be seen that our universe with all its inhabitants, including principally the cocky human beings, is not more than a speck of dust. In other words, it should be noted that guidance bearing messages can only come to human beings in a chain of helpers from On High. No human being can bear the approach and the Voice of the Holy Spirit how much more those of His Father, God Almighty.
Within the week, Mr. COVID-19 bared its fangs to prove that it is not in an unrelenting mood nor has it departed with Year 2020. It took away a leading light in academia and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Professor Oye Ibidapo-Obe. Only yesterday it felled another highly regarded former Dean, Faculty of Education, UNILAG, Professor Duro Ajeyalemi, according to several media reports. Professor Ajeyalemi was pioneer Registrar/ Chief Executive of JUPEB. Haroun Hamzat, brother of the Deputy Governor of Lagos has also died. The country recorded 1,354 infections on Tuesday, from troubling 1,204 cases on Monday. Tuesday’s figure is the highest since the index case on 27 February last year. Senegal has clamped curfew on two highly populated regions to contain the spread of the pandemic in its second wave in the country. The two regions have accounted for about 90 per cent of the 19,803 cases so far. Although the causes are not disclosed, two other persons in the public eye have died as well. They are veteran journalist Babajide Osokoya, a Mass Communication graduate of the University of Lagos, and a popular actress Folake Aremu, better known by her stage name, Orisabunmi.
On the political plane, Mr. Donald Trump, resisting the possibility of his vacating office in about two weeks time, is still roaring like a bull in a China shop. He is reported to have mounted pressure on Mike Pence, the Vice-President to see how he could overturn Joe Biden’s victory as chairman of the Congress that was to meet yesterday to confirm the Electoral College votes. Pence demurred saying he had no powers to decertify Joe Biden’s win.
The air is saturated with distressing reports of tension everywhere. Despite world’s opinion, Mr. Trump is not relenting. He has descended from presidential propriety and honour in his conduct to the level of a ruffian. The Japan Times observed what it described as Mr. Biden’s strategy to tame Mr. Trump: “Ignore him.” Letters to the editor in The New York Times and Washington Post say Trump must not be allowed to desecrate the lofty office of the President of the United States; he must go. The world is watching. To any discerning person, the world is clearly out of joint; only the right recognitions of the Truths of life and existence and working to straighten the detours employing the mechanisms of the truths can bring relief. The recognition brings to our awareness the place of man in this vale of matter.
Man is to stand between the spiritual and the material worlds so that through his special nature as a spirit he can ennoble the material worlds and weld them into one, a world swinging in purity, beauty, gracefulness and splendor. The mechanisms are already in place, but we human beings have ignored them and fashioned out our own way of how life should be from our limited horizon, not as creatures that we are but as the master. The consequence is what the world is witnessing today. It is through man if he were at his post that pure life from the Source of Light is to pulsate downwards and ennoble as well as uplift the material world into a realm of joy, peace, happiness and development.
It is the recognition of the truth that is to bring relief and succor to all troubled lands and peoples. To recognize the truth, we may just begin to observe certain phenomena around us which we human beings can do nothing about, severally, collectively or individually. I have made this point before but it bears restating it. That we are unable to do anything about them means they are outside man and his control. As science has discovered, for example, matter cannot be destroyed. Its disintegration, which I referred to earlier, only returns to its beginning, back to radiations as what is called matter is a parcel of condensed radiations. It means the end must go back to its primordial beginning. Thus, there is the law of the cycle; the law of returns that stipulates that what a person sends out is what returns to him. What he sows is what he reaps. This should induce us into deep contemplation more so as it has been proven that human beings have reached their wit’s end.
There is that which ensures that what are similar pull together, whether man or animal, reptiles or birds. Does this not hold the key to conflicts in nations, in societies and homes all over the world—that the problem lies mainly in forcible configuration and union of dissimilar entities? One group is determined to dominate the other and appropriate its resources and the targeted group vigorously resists. There is the Law of Gravitation which works from above downwards, ensuring that what is heavy sinks and what is light rises until either finds its level. These are automatic self-enforcing mechanisms which have been recognized over millennia but ignored and scorned till this day. In their consistency, regularity, immutability and incorruptibility they have become recognisable as laws. All laws express the will of the law maker whose primary aim is to ensure order and harmony and development. It follows therefore that similarly Natural Laws, variously called the Laws of Creation, Spiritual Laws or Divine Laws and to lawyers, the Law of Natural Justice, must express the Will of the Maker of Creation, the Creator of the Universe. Any wonder, therefore, they are so perfect, immutable and uniform in all Creation and just, nourishing and furthering development.
In the new and higher knowledge mediated to us human beings on earth today which I am wont to draw attention to in this column, we are able to avail ourselves the Light of Truth shed on all matters. The Truth that these Laws are the underlying principles of all happenings. We also talk about the spirit of the law which means the will of the law maker expressed by law. The Maker of the Divine Laws, the Laws of Nature, or of Creation is the Almighty Creator. The Laws express His Will. The Laws are thus His Will made manifest, His Spirit in activity. The recognition of the Laws helps our recognition of Truth—that which is, that which alone can say I am, the only changeless Reality. Thus the Holy Spirit is Truth embodied, through Whom Creation issued and Who maintains Creation, the Law and Life Himself in activity, the Holy Will anchored in the Laws. In these perfect Laws alone lie order, harmony, abundance, good health, strength, joy and peace. Any deviation from them must bring the opposite because they can never bend to or heed the wishes or opinion, arrogance or folly of human beings except there is obedience to them. Didn’t the Lord say “If you offend the Holy Spirit, there will never be forgiveness?” That is if one breaks the Law, the consequences must return to him. The Holy Spirit, the Will and Law, is therefore Justice. We must inhale and exhale. Where inhaling becomes impossible as is the case in an affliction by coronavirus, a ventilator becomes inevitable in the Law of Balance.
The health of our world, harmony and joy make recognitions of the Laws with which the Creator governs His Creation unavoidable by all human beings.
BISHOP KUKAH
Bishop Matthew Kukah deserves the nation’s thankfulness for his efforts to halt the obvious drift of our country. Like prophets of old, he stepped forward to censor the President for his failings which even the blind can see and the deaf can hear. Bishop Kukah spoke to give profit not pleasure. It is the hallmark of love for the President and the Country. Love that is true gives benefit not comfort. True love is severe. It does not permit of indulgence or fawning. Over thousands of years, prophets and priests are known to speak truth to power. It is in the line of their duties.
How do you build trust, forge a sense of belonging among the diverse peoples and construct a harmonious society where there is a feeling of lack of inclusiveness and blatant marginalization? Where is love? That was the point cerebral Bishop Kukah raised. The President’s apologists who came out to disabuse our minds by stating distribution of employments in the public service state by state did a poor job of it. Who were these said to have been employed by the Buhari Administration? What are their names? What was the date of their appointments? And to where—ministries and agencies? What are their positions and doing what?
Bishop Kukah has not said anything new about nepotistic mindset of President Buhari to which several notable citizens have not drawn the attention of the nation. Stormy petrel Dr. Junaid Mohammed was among the first to draw public attention to the President’s narrow pattern of appointments. Chief Edwin Clarke issued a public statement on the provincialism of the President’s appointments. Professor Ben Nwabueze did the same before Chief Clarke. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, normally restrained on matters of this nature, could not help feeling concerned and issuing a statement. The alliance of leaders of Southern and Middle Belt states have even sued the President accusing him of breaching the constitution which makes application of federal character in all appointments mandatory. On the troubling insecurity sweeping through the land, Prof. Wole Soyinka has spoken about it; the Sultan has made a pronouncement on the subject, so has the Northern Elders Forum.
The nation has Bishop Kukah to salute for his courage and consistency.
The Guardian
