In an age so modern and sophisticated, where the world is now a global village, some seers amongst us are still claiming to have visions or messages from the most high God just to hoodwink their adherents and fellow human. Of cause, as always, it is for a selfish end. None of them saw this coming……
Since the nation’s slumbering senses were jolted to the sudden awareness that the dreaded Coronavirus (COViD-19) could be closer to our shores, than ever thought after all, not a few gallons of ink and saliva have been expended writing and talking about the deadly disease. I did a warning last week in this column. And sequel to this column, one of our leaders in Nigeria, after reading my column, decided to illuminate my thoughts better. He sent me an extract from a Sylvia Browne’s End of Days, Predictions and Prophesies about the End of the World.
This concerned leader, a renowned medical doctor of great repute, did not offer any extra comments on the extracts from the book, nor on my earlier column. But the extracts he sent, did say quite some volume, not only on Coronavirus spread, but another fundamental pillar of our problem as human race.
I have taken my time to read through not only the extracts, but also few I could get from the internet. The woman authored about eight books, all on psychic matters. She wrote lucidly well
Sylvia Browne, an American psychic and spiritual leader was born in 1936 and died in 2013. She wrote the book “End of Days” some 12 years ago. She did not only foresee the menace of Coronavirus. She did mention some other things. But most particularly, she mentioned dates and places where the pneumonia like illness will originate from and that it will spread globally. Alas! In the year of the Lord 2020, her prediction came flashing globally with deadly accuracy.
Browne had claimed to be a medium with psychic abilities. This aspect of her profile interest me to no end. She did not claim that God told her in a fraudulent New Year messages or after a rendezvous in a hidden place only to emerge that she had been of a Hill or Mountain seeking the face of the Lord. The basis of her predictions and prophesies was the deep understanding of the psychic system and how they work.
Those conversant with how Ifa (Traditional Oracle) works will understand Ms. Sylvia Browne better. I sure know that the religious bigots will come for my neck. I am sure the blind is ready to push the ones with two wide open eyes into the dark pit of information debrief. Still, I will push on.
Ifa works exactly the way Ms. Browne had. She had used her connection with the Esoteric World to see what ordinary eyes cannot see, and if seen cannot decipher.
The tale is still active between the ancient Ila Orangun Kingdom and those from Ila that settled in Esa Oke, and elsewhere in the south-western part of Nigeria. Ijimagodo, the man that brought psychics power into Ila Orangun lived until he dwindled off mortal existence. He was said to never taste death! He was said to consult his Oracle every morning.
O yes! The Holy Bible says: ‘My people perish for lack of knowledge and vision’. Where are the visions today? Our prophets have gone mundane with their ‘predictions and prophecies’. What most of them do is simply intelligent guessing. Read the newspapers, listen to debates on television and radio stations, make your deduction, and following day, rush to the pulpit, and deliver your thoughts as God’s messages. What they then dwell on is prosperity preaching that can and will only enrich them and their immediate family and or visions that will bring fame to them as well as more congregants to their church.
Ms. Sylvia Browne has finally exposed all our January 1st prophets and seers. It becomes hard to take that this woman published this book in 2008 with no aggressive publicity to drive the volume of sales. Perhaps, recording the message for today was more important than sales!
Our commercial prophets here would have mandated all church members to buy some specific copies each. The ones with schools, especially, tertiary institutions, would have compulsorily included the book on the lists of books to buy. Prophet’s Books are no miss in some faith based schools. The goal here is the sales and fund that could be raised from the dying congregants, not the message.
We live in a world at odd with itself. Everything that we could use for our developmental benefits have been destroyed, bastardized, or denigrated in favor of the ones we understand not. Our Ifa can do more, and can still be deployed in solving critical issues here. but we support the Colonial masters, who barely knew our belief systems, to enact the Criminal Code Procedure that pointedly consigned Ifa and it uses into the dark abyss.
Deploying Ifa into our state administrative mechanism could perhaps, have helped us in navigating a lot of policies that have come to hunt us to no end. We have turned back from the ways of our fathers. We enjoyed the strange life and easy access to good life brought by the corrupt Colonial imperialists. Today we lament. We mourn over a lifeless institution, we mourn over a shameful lack of national ethos.
We do not just enter the route today. We have been on it for a long time. And pathetically, the time is short, very short to effect any serious corrections. We look at critical issues to parochial prism. We are still not broad-minded enough. A nation that want to grow must view issues broadly. We need to now.
Our people need to listen more to voices of courage, to voices of wisdom (apologies to late Pa Obafemi Awolowo) than this babel of noises from the pulpits. If an American psychic can sit down, consulted her medium, and came up with prophecies of global acclaim, our garrulous ‘thus said the Lord’ merchants, should be ashamed to still stand before their congregation and make any stupid proclamation. We should rather turn to our mediums here to see if we can get out of the cul-de-sac we suddenly found ourselves. At least, if we do not see Ifa, Ifa sees us!
At least, from this point on, no sane person should look at the New Year garbage from the pulpits twice again. These seers actually, see nothing.
A word is enough for the wise.
Afolayan Adebiyi writes from Lagos, Nigeria
Feferity (c) 2020