Theme: God is the ultimate reality; seek and worship God in spirit and in truth.
An extremely important and liberating Truth needs articulation to clarify grievous misconceptions about the nature and universality of the Creator, which have hindered a very sizeable gullible fraction of humanity, numbering several hundred millions, from actualizing their true relationship with the Creator. There is only one God; the Creator, Sustainer and Sovereign LORD of the Universe. However, since there are numerous languages in the world, the Creator also has numerous names such as Tamuno, Tamarau, Temeowei, Woyingi, Ayiba, Olorun, Chukwu and God. Thus the God of the Ijaws (my people) is also the God of the Yorubas, Hausas, Ibos, Ibibios, Efiks, Kanuris, Urhobos, Itsekiris, Edos, Tivs, Bantus, Zulus, Europeans, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Koreans, Arabs, Jews and all other peoples and nations of the world!! Therefore, oftentimes, the argument as to which God or whose God a person believes in is simply a cloak for an anti-God Spirit that refuses to acknowledge or submit to the Supreme Being!
The oneness and orderliness of the universe, amply demonstrated by the structural and functional unity of its component planets, stars and galaxies, render polytheism absolutely illogical and untenable. It is absolutely improbable that one god created the day while another created the night, or that one god created the sun, another created the moon, yet another created the earth while other gods created the other planets! If it were so, the universe, at best, would have been in extreme chaos, and at worst, never have existed, as the different gods battle for supremacy and influence!
Religion is the inevitable relationship or interaction between man and his Creator. Since there is only one God, there can only be one true relationship with God, and ipso facto, only one true religion!! The “One True Religion” was certainly the religion that was practiced in the beginning by Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel. However, over the ages, occasioned by the fall of man, the “One True Religion” has been variously perverted; necessitating intervention of the Creator to return mankind to true communion with him.
Man’s propensity to pervert the true religion (his true relationship with God) is best exemplified by the swift slide of the Israelites to idolatry immediately after meeting with God and receiving the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai; just days after being supernaturally delivered from slavery in Egypt by dint of the Ten Plagues; just days after God miraculously divided the waters of the Red Sea to enable them cross the sea on dry ground while the Egyptian soldiers, chariots and horsemen that pursued after them were drowned and annihilated by the waters which flowed over them. “When the people (Israelites) saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. …” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” – Exodus 32: 1 – 8.
Another attestation to the Israelites deviation from the true worship of God is chronicled as follows: “Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of a hundred and ten. … After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. … . They followed and worshipped various gods of the peoples around them.” – Judges 2: 6 – 12.
The “Ijaw Religion” or “Pure Ijaw Culture” is incontestably purely and totally biblical. However, just like the Israelites, and indeed like all other peoples, the Ijaws have had various perversions of their originally pure religion. If the “Ijaw Religion” or any other religion of the world is purified of its perversions, the distillate will be the original pure “One True Religion”!
Unarguably, the Creator has the unique and exclusive right, privilege, authority and prerogative to determine the right relationship that should exist between him and mankind that he created. This truth is aptly proclaimed in the following excerpts of the Scriptures: “The God who made the world and everything in it is the lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. …… From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. …. . We are his offspring. Therefore, since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone – an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” Acts 17: 24 – 31.
Most importantly, Jesus declared: “God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.” – John 4: 24. Jesus also declares: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” – John 14: 6. God corroborated this momentous claim of Jesus at the epochal Transfiguration of Jesus: “After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. … While he (Peter) was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”” – Matthew 17: 1 – 5. This is epochal because, herein, God commands us all to follow Jesus; thereby confirming that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through him. God commands us all (all mankind) to follow Jesus, when he commands us to: “Listen to him!” “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3: 16.
Furthermore, and very importantly, Jesus declares: “Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?” Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” – Matthew 7: 21 – 23.
God judges the intents and purposes of every heart regarding everything we do! God cannot be fooled or mocked by our hollow outward false and deceptive professions and acts of piety! It is written: “The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”– Isaiah 29:13. And again, the Scriptures testify pointedly as follows: “When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, “Surely the LORD’S anointed stands here before the LORD.” But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” – 1 Samuel 16: 6 – 7.
In this regard, it is pertinent to give the following testimony: In a vision on Saturday the 17th of October 1998, God took me, in the Spirit, to Lagos City in Nigeria and showed me numerous churches adjacent to one another on the main streets. Three big churches were located at the corner of a street. I saw numerous Christians clad in colorful African attire, streaming to the churches. The LORD took me inside one of the churches where prayers were being said loudly. The pastor and his wife were holding hands and were weeping loudly and emotionally as they repeatedly called on the Name of God and Jesus. Then the LORD told me: “They are acting.” I was extremely sad to know this!
