Big thumbs to Pastor Enoch Adeboye for ordering his church to refund an eye-watering sum of money donated towards one of its projects after the EFCC established that it came from an illicit source. The GO deserves lavish kudos and kundus for doing the right thing and very promptly. Within 24 hours!
But something about this episode is troubling. It has less to do with the refund than with the rather curious limitations of spiritual intelligence in the RCCG. Here is a church whose leader has taken tea with God, is shown all manner of things by Him and presides over an army of pastors who can spot a breakthrough, a promotion, a pregnancy or a contract from 50 rows away.
These men and women of God claim extraordinary access to divine intelligence. They can identify, in a congregation of thousands, who will get married, have a baby, land a job, become a millionaire, who is harbouring evil intentions and who is about to receive a breakthrough. Some even claim to know the contents of people’s dreams and the secrets of their bedrooms. There is apparently very little about the lives of congregants that heaven does not communicate to them.
But when billions of naira from financial crime arrive as a donation towards a church project, nobody sees anything. No pastor receives a troubling revelation. No prophet is woken up in the middle of the night with a divine warning. Nobody discerns that something is wrong with the money. It takes the EFCC to establish that the donation came from an illicit source and alert the church. The spiritual intelligence network that can monitor the intimate affairs of congregants has to wait for an anti-corruption agency to provide information about the money sitting in the church’s coffers.
I find this extraordinary. The EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, who made the disclosure, is himself a pastor in the RCCG. Even with that spiritual connection, it was the investigative machinery of the commission, not a prophetic revelation, that uncovered the source of the donation. Apparently, heaven’s intelligence service has excellent coverage for pregnancies, marriages, promotions and financial breakthroughs but a spectacular dead zone wherever questionable billions are involved.
Tonight, my thoughts go to Ananias and Sapphira in the Acts of the Apostles. They sold a property and withheld part of the proceeds while pretending to have surrendered the entire amount. The money was theirs. Peter acknowledged that they were under no obligation to donate it all. Their offence was dishonesty, the deliberate concealment of the truth while pretending to be transparent. Peter saw through their deception and confronted them. He did not have to ask while shibarabaing and shiboroboing.
There is a lesson here for today’s Pentecostal establishment. The early church took honesty and integrity seriously. Peter did not need an EFCC investigation to expose the dishonesty before him. But in a church whose leaders and pastors claim access to extraordinary supernatural insight, billions of naira can arrive from questionable sources without anyone apparently receiving so much as a whisper from the Holy Spirit.
What, then, is the value of all these claims of spiritual intelligence? What is the point of a gift of prophecy that can identify tomorrow’s millionaire but cannot raise an alarm about the source of today’s billions? What use is seeing into the future when you cannot discern the criminal provenance of money being brought into the house of God? If the Holy Spirit can reveal the contents of a stranger’s dream, surely the source of a donation worth billions should not be beyond His intelligence-gathering capacity.
Announcing that somebody will receive a car, get married or become a millionaire is no evidence of divine intelligence. Neither is claiming to know the intimate details of people’s lives. The real test of discernment should include the ability to recognise when something is wrong, especially when billions of naira are involved.
Ananias and Sapphira were exposed by Peter. Today’s spiritual intelligence merchants appear to have a more complicated arrangement. They can see your breakthrough from 50 rows away but need the EFCC to tell them when your billions are dirty.
