Koo, y'abre ne 'prophecies' dodo yi! (WE'RE SICK AND TIRED OF ALL THESE PROPHECIES!)

K1: KOO, Did you hear the latest prophecy by a member of Ghana's Death and Doom squad?

K2: I did oh, Koo! Why do they only ever predict the impending death -- usually a killing -- of other people?

Ask again! The answer is simple. As a witty person once said, “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no-one wants to die!”

HAHAHA: So if you want to catch someone's attention, the unfailing method is to predict his or her death?

Yes. And in this country in particular, where death is worshipped, speak of the impending death of someone and even if the person himself is too sturdy to be rattled, his beloved relatives and friends will all become agitated.

As if they'd never heard of the Shakespearean saying that

“Cowards die many times before their deaths/ The valiant never taste of death but once/ Of all the wonders that I yet have heard/ It seems to me most strange that men should fear/Seeing that death, a necessary end/ Will come when it will come!”

Julius Caesar, Act2 Scene 2!

Ei Koo, just like that? woho ye hu! [You are to be feared!]

Well, death does strike so much fear in us that all a so-called “prophet” needs to get us shaking in our boots is to mention death in connection with our good selves!

The guys are good psychologists, eh? They can read people's minds!

Well, it isn't particularly ingenious to predict something that everyone knows will inevitably happen to him or her, is it? The clever thing is to turn the inevitable – which is already accepted and is never really present in our conscious minds – into an immediate possibility. A singer will die in or before December.... (That means the “prophet” has a good nine months during which he hopes the fickle minds of the public will forget his prophecy, if it's unfulfilled!) Or he makes the date of the impending doom so general and unspecific that he can place the subjects of the prophecy into permanent psychological captivity. If the victims don't die, they will think that it's his kind and effective intercession that has got the Almighty God to change the fate of the subjects! And if they do die, he prophesied it, didn't he?

Oh – heads, he wins?

And tails the hapless victim loses! And at each stage, stupid “journalists” will be on hand to act as the “mouthpieces” of the “prophet”! "Man of God"! "Renowned Prophet!" etc. All accolades bestowed on the quack would-be Elijah, without a shred of evidence being produced to confirm that he'd ever been spoken to by Abraham's sacrificial lamb, let alone by "I am What I am" Himself!.

Should such practices by “prophets” not be classified as fraud by false pretences and criminalised?

How would you obtain the evidence to prosecute the perpetrators? The victims – or their frightened dependants, or both – who should be lodging a complaint about the police to act upon – would most probably be so frightened that they would spend hours on their knees with the very “prophet” you want to prosecute!

Being anointed with holy oil...

And uttering every prayer known to man, including the whole of the Book of Psalms....!

A really nasty prophet would even bring in St Anthony, and things written in Ancient Hebrew and Greek!!

Yes! Haven't you head that the late Emmanuel Ako Adjei, a member of the Big Six and a legal practitioner of note, told a court in Ghana that he once went to a cemetery at midnight to invoke a spirit called “Zebus of the Kingdom of Uranus” to get the spirit to double money for him?

Whaaaaaaaat? At that level? Ako Adjei, who was once Ghana's Foreign Minister?

The very same!

Yiee, when it comes to questions of belief, even the most intelligent or best "educated" people can be taken to the cleaners by people not fit to wipe the dust off their sandals, so to speak? What's the meaning, really, of being “educated”?

Yes. Sad. You see, each and everyone has an inbred sense of insecurity. It's in our psyches to protect us from taking unnecessary risks. But when we surrender that to a “prophet” and allow him to manipulate that suppressed fear to fit into what he wants us to believe in order that he can enslave our minds, we need to be extra strong, or extra wise, or even extra devout, to be able to look the “prophet” in the eye and say, “Look, Jesus wouldn't have thought it decent – or godly – to frighten anyone, okay? On the contrary, Jesus whom you claim to follow, said we are all the beloved children of God. So, why do I need you to intercede on my behalf with My Own Father God who, according to Jesus, won't give me “a stone” when I ask for bread, or “a serpent” (snake) when I ask for “a fish”?

Koo – The Sermon On the Mount! [Luke 11. 11!] A Daniel come to judgement!

Oyiwa! [There you have it!] My last word on the subject, Koo, is this: “prophets” would, according to Jesus, be known by their fruits. Therefore, if they were true prophets and not quack ones, wouldn't their genuine concern oblige them to call in a person about whom an authentic revelation had been made and pray with him or her in private, instead of advertising the "revelation” on radio and TV to boost their own "saleability"? Bribing the station operators to keep publicising the “revelation”, up to the high heavens? How do the media get to hear of these "revelations?" Isn't it obvious that they called by the "prophets"? Which genuine man of God would act as a press agent for himself? And finally – finally Koo – why do the “prophets” only receive “revelations” that prophesy bad things (usual death!) about other people? What about winning the lotto? Or being told how an infertile woman can give birth to twins? A lame man being able to walk? Are there no blind people in Ghana whose sight can be restored by the “prophets”?

Koo – it's all a con!

Amen, my good brother!