Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.– Ephesians 4:29.
THIS?EXHORTATION OF?PAUL’S, from the Apostle’s perspective on the new life of victory, seems lost on Pastor Ferdinand Nicholls.
Ranting along and railing against a view of mine for nigh three quarters of his half-hour radio show last week, Mr Nicholls sought to defend pastors’ helluva noise on the airwaves.
In disparaging tones – unchristian, I’ve been taught – Mr Nicholls futilely endeavoured to deny me my God-given right to free will of choice. I shall accept noise; I shall not. I shall accept Jesus; I shall not.
The difference in the foregoing samples of decision is that while in the latter the Almighty might institute a penalty for dismissing the Saviour, He will hardly inflict pain for avoiding this racket that Mr Nicholls clamours for and exemplified so notably in his radio assault on me.
And, I do not understand why because karaoke bars ignite the evening skies with their cacophonic blaze, Mr Nicholls should believe the churches have some divine right to set the airwaves afire – hellfire.
The time was when music heard coming from a church was melodious, sometimes rhythmic, and certainly emotive. And the preacher’s voice was sedate and inviting.
Today, many churches have outdoor woofer speakers that feature the sounds of an overamplified drum kit and awful off-key singing.
Then supplementing this is the raving sermonizers who unthinkingly set about terrifying or terrorizing the neighbourhood – in the name of our Lord.
Of course, if you do not have a church building of your own, you can rent weekly time on radio, which the building owners also do as a follow-up to the spectacle on Sundays.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not anti-church, nor anti-religion, nor anti-religious radio programme. I am anti-church noise and anti-religious radio racket.If you would invite yourself into my home, via radio, to bear me a message you purport to bring from our Jehovah, don’t be shouting at me. It is simply bad manners.
And no amount of invoking of the Lord’s presence will change that.
Preachers like Mr Nicholls believe they have a right to bellow at us sinners that we are in urgent need of redemption, and to so do as if, like our Saviour Jesus, they themselves are without transgression. As far as I know, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
It would seem this prosperity Gospel principle has gone to the heads of the new Church Militant. Think wealth, it comes; think health, it is restored; think Heaven, you get there.
The single difference is: think souls, you save them – but you gotta shout at them first.
There be hundreds of thousands like me who would rather have our souls sought out with dignity and decorum, the kind of respect for humanity that Jesus Himself displayed. We shall not be moved by these belligerent apostles, seers, what have you, so consumed by their self-importance that they greatly embellish the attention they are worthy of.
It is not my mission to intimidate any minister of God, as Mr Nicholls has intimated. His is a thought born of unbridled ire, over which he could have had greater control had he hearkened to another exhortation of Paul’s.
“Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath. (Ephesians 4:26)
I intimidate not. I seek to present only fact and reason. And I often ask God’s guidance in this, but I boast not that I get it. I do pore over the Word again and again, though; and so finally I leave this for Brother Nicholls:
“. . . If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
“For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.” (Galatians 6:1 and 3)
Then the ineluctable truth escapes us all.