Isdore Guvamombe Reflections
Back in the village, in the land of milk, honey and dust or Guruve there is a proverb that says the past is history, the future is a mystery, but this moment is a gift and that is why it is called the present. Our present religious gift in Zimbabwe is the mushrooming of Pentecostal churches, most of which are often mistaken for Christian churches.

The gullible Zimbabwean cannot differentiate between Christianity and Churchianity, Gospel and Gospreneuship.

For the avoidance of doubt, Churchianity is attending church for the sake of going to congregate with others with whom one shares a cacophony of earthly values, such as good looks, nice women and men, showing off the best clothes and trendy cars, among other earthly goods which unfortunately turn the gathering into a social club, far away from Christianity, for Christianity is a doctrine hinged on the values and virtues of Jesus Christ. Nothing more, nothing less!

Again for the avoidance of doubt, gospreneurship is the art of making money through the cunning abuse of the gospel, which becomes a tool for stealing money from the poor and the gullible.

Because of our failure as Africans to completely abandon our traditional beliefs and adopt 100 percent Christianity, we find ourselves in a predicament of double dipping or religious prostitution.

By the day we are Christians and because we do not trust Christianity as it is packaged, we then dabble into our traditional religion at night.

The combination of the two is a cocktail for disaster. This is precisely the reason why the current crop of self-styled tele-evangelists and prophets cannot be trusted. Their modus oparandi looks more a hybrid of what is Christian and what is traditional and this is why there is a lot of mistrust on the way things are happening around them.

Probably the next anecdote will help.

Two weeks ago, there was panic in Prophet Walter Magaya’s camp when a crocodile was seen near his church in Waterfalls. Well this is fact not fiction. It is not the figment of the villager’s imagination. It is reality.

The man of the cloth sent his trusted lieutenants to National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority requesting that they capture and remove the reptile or it would be misconstrued to mean the reptile belonged to the popular prophet. So intense was the pressure that National Parks was forced to issue a statement.

“Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority can confirm receiving a report of a crocodile that had been sighted by members of the PHD Ministries near their church building in Mukuvisi River, Waterfalls area.

“The report was made today while the crocodile was spotted yesterday. The Authority believes that the crocodile that was reportedly seen close to PHD Ministries, in Mukuvisi River is the same that was spotted close to Glen Norah area along the Mukuvisi River last week,” said Parks public relations manager Caroline Washaya-Moyo.

The full import of this instalment is that when one stands truly by Christ, that person is righteous, virtuous and unafraid. What inspired Prophet Magaya to approach Parks is the fear that the croc would be misconstrued to be his, given that he had been put on the cross by the Apostolic Faith sects, who had challenged him to a show of power and authenticity.

This villager, who does not belong to these Pentecostal churches, is an observer from the terraces and therefore qualifies to unemotionally unpack the charade.

Back in the village, we would expect the Man of God not to be afraid of a crocodile seen near his church in a river that links up with Lake Chivero, a crocodile infested water body.

We would not expect the popular Man of God to seek the services of National Parks, because that reptile was the work of the evil. He would use power vested in his prophetic healing to deal with it.

Questionable!

To this villager, the sighting of the croc appears to have instilled fear in the Man of God, yet if his religious profile was as holy as his believers and himself would want us to believe, he should have foreseen the reptile’s sighting in his prophecy and told his congregation.

So, the Man of God, gifted with seeing tomorrow, today, failed to see the croc coming to a spitting distance within his church premises and was shocked to his pants, to the point of enlisting the services of Parks?

This villager was told by a mole in the church that the Man of God feared that the croc would appear in the church while he delivered a sermon.

It was a marine spirit that did not need exorcism from him but from Parks.

My foot!

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