The Cryptic Text

The thing about prophecy is that it may be cryptic, begging understanding, yet full of meaning. Just hear the prophet in Isaiah 6


In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. ² Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. ³ And one cried to another and said:


      " Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; 
      The whole earth is full of His glory!" 

 ⁴ And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
⁵ So I said: 
      " Woe is me, for I am undone! 
      Because I am a man of unclean lips, 
      And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; 
      For my eyes have seen the King,
      The LORD of hosts." 




Now hear me:


In the year that President Gaddafi died, I saw the gavel, high and lifted up, as my head trembled and knew no restrain. 


I threw my body to the floor and wrenched my clothes out of place. Sack cloth and ashes!
Holy Holy Holy the Apostle's garden! 
Woe is me for I am finished.
I am a poor man, and I live among poor people and I live in a poor country
Even though I run, Poverty gallops after me and even my abusua panyin he pursues.  
Who shall I turn to and where do I find Judas' shekels?
At your mercy! Oh Mercy! For your wisdom o Solomon!
Seventeen and eighteen, your instructions encoded.

 
And as it is with the prophetic, the generation that owns it, deciphers it. Those to whom  it is spoken, understanding comes. If you are not chosen, don't lose sleep of the words.

Arsene Wenger, Time to Join the Cheats

 Sometimes, we forget that football is a game with only one intrinsic value- entertainment. The extent of fanaticism in the game sometimes borders on lunacy. Without passion and the emotions the game will not be what it is, however, for some people, football is a perfect substitute for stupid sectional and ethnic battles of the middle ages . Arsenal fans chanting that Adebayor should have been killed in the unfortunate attack on the Togo team bus in Angola, to a lesser extent Real Madrid banning Shakira's songs from the Santiago Bernabeu because she was dating Gerard Pique who plays for rivals Barcelona, even though she is a Madrid fan, and the unbelievable pressures team managers bear to produce trophies, beg understanding to say the least.

I am not a gunner, but for me Arsene Wenger is the greatest football manager in the Europe. But as it is in life, the accolades are not reserved for the true heroes, but the pretenders that hoist the spoil. He has consistently made top 4 in the premiership without throwing millions of pounds at pampered egotists who will refuse to play a match because they were not started in the game. As if to prove that the wide gap in salary of footballers exaggerates the gulf between talents, he has achieved great results with previously unknown footballers in the premiership with his ability to organize and impose his philosophy of football on their game. 


Why do we love our football teams? Is it not for the joy of victories dished to us in style as the coach, like a master chef, with tenacity and great patience blends his talents and tactics together, spicing them with a winning mentality to produce a team of stars and non-stars that we adore for many years? But alas! The world has exhausted the patience to groom teams . The formula for success is simple, find a billionaire; Russian, American or Middle Eastern, who doesn't necessarily share the club values built over decades, but has a few millions, created in the oil fields rather than the football field to throw at overpaid and arrogant Mega stars groomed under other philosophies, then match them with a coach from somewhere, he may be a megalomaniac like Maurhino but that is ok, and voila we create trophies. To the billionaire, the football project is another toy. He will decide what to do with it once he is tired of it. It is amazing such cheats are not recognized for what they are. 


Thanks to Sheikh Mansour's millions, a Manchester City bench is an ensemble of stars that can easily form the spine of treble winning team. It is lighted by the likes of Dzeko, Tevez, Milner, Nasri, Richards, not counting the likes of Adebayor and Bellamy who were considered unmanageable and thrown out. It is just annoying that exciting young talents like Adam Johnson are robbed of games week in , week out, even though they have proven their mettle anytime they have the opportunity to play. Meanwhile, a few miles away, other clubs put out less talented players every week because for those clubs, life is not fantasy rock with billionaire owners. Football fans are thus robbed of the great contests that would have been if only money is used as an agent in the game to fairly distribute talents around. This can only happen if football like any normal business is allowed to pay for football rather than depending on benefactors from the oil fields. The Stars that light up the games should almost always be on the pitch doing just that, rather than warming benches. We want to see the best players first, and when they are unavailable, we will do with the talents a step lower. That is why I consign the projects at places like City, Chelsea and PSG into the same space as age cheating.


For the past six years that Arsenal has won no trophies, they have consistently made top four in the premiership, they have consistently performed well in Europe including an unfortunate 2-1 loss to Barcelona in the 2006 final, a match they mostly played with 10 men, and more importantly, they have always played good football. The reason we stay glued to out TV sets for 90 minutes and throng various stadia around the world to watch football is not to see team captains lift trophies, but rather to feast on the skills that dazzle the eye, the creative passes, the fluid positional play, the breath taking movement along the flanks, the great midfield battles, the resolute defensive work, the spectacular saves, climaxed with great goals that are savoured for years and ultimately crown football as 'The Beautiful Game'. Even the howlers and unbelievable misses push our adrenalins to the right level. Arsene Wenger's teams have given us all that and more. The trophies are just the icing on the cake.


The Arsenal system has an uncanny ability to identify talents even at tender ages and bring them through the ranks. There is no doubt about the talent and ability of Cesc Fabregas , but when Wenger threw him into the middle of his midfield after the departure of former captain Patrick Vierra , many considered it a gamble. But for young Fabregas, there was little motivation required for success than that vote of confidence from the gaffer. Ironically, it is this belief in talent that will cost Wenger the loyalty of the stars he created. Soon, they are household names, and the jackals descend on them with millions of pounds that have nothing to do with football. They abandon their mentor ostensibly because he doesn't invest in big names that translate to trophies. Without the nurturing Wenger gives some of these players, their talents would have been buried under the rat race for big names and trophies at any cost, long before they would learn to spell trophy. These players are not just turning their backs on the system that produced them, but also crashing Wenger's vision midstream. The other irony is that the vision is no different from the aspiration that ostensibly forces these players to leave- to build a winsome side that wins trophies.


The business side of Arsenal's game has also been well catered for. Player acquisitions have been sensibly balanced with youth development, salaries reflect the earning power of the talents on display and they have a great brand. At the time that Wenger was busily paying for the Emirates stadium, Manchester United, bought by the Glazers in a leveraged takeover in 2005, were reported to be considering selling old Trafford to raise money. Today, Barcelona produces the world's most exciting talents from their academy , but even they struggle with managing their finances. When Sandro Rosel took over the club's presidency in 2010, he announced that there were serious liquidity problems which required the club to take a loan to pay delayed salaries of their stars. Wenger has no such problems, but tell it to the fans.


I have no qualms against any player for selling his talents to the highest bidder. Samuel Eto recently admitted he signed for the previously unknown Russian side, Anzhi Makhachkala, because of the profane amount thrown at him. I suggest our own Asamoah Gyan borrows a leaf from his book of honest talk and admit that he joined Qatari side Al Ain because it makes economic sense, and not because he wants to play in Asia. It is the people that run the sport that must fix the relationship between money and the game. It is good to know that UEFA have stepped in with rules that enjoin clubs to abandon the wayward football economics from 2013. But that year might be too far away for Professor Wenger. Let's face it, some members of the team that was drabbed 8 -2 by Manchester United will not be selected to represent Ghana at an under-17 tournament. To make matters worse, it is now official, the soccer pendulum has swung in the direction of Spurs, they are now the Lords of North London. Even though the owners threw their support behind him, there is no doubt that if this trend continues, even the great Wenger, will be a candidate to be fired before the season ends, or Arsenal may even get relegated to the championship.


Unfortunately, just like in all human endeavors, results are celebrated not how they were attained. A graduate will flaunt a certificate acquired by buying exams papers before they were taken, and a football team will celebrate trophies acquired by paying referees and fixing matches. It is therefore no surprise that there is pressure on Professor Wenger to do everything and anything to win trophies. Until someone has the common sense to put a halt to the Abramovic and Mansour revolutions, listen to your fans, break the bank this winter, and buy your supporters a piece of silverware. It seems they will prefer an insolvent club with a cup at the museum to a thriving club with a great future. I believe Harry Redknapp is still a hero in Portsmouth for helping them reap where they have not sown. Sorry Mate, it's time to join the cheats.

The Prophet who failed to Die

Prophet Segbene Xenodzi

He was an unknown entity until a few days to the July 9 2011 congress of the ruling NDC. Somehow he managed to court the attention of the media by making the audacious claim that God had revealed to him that the premier first lady under the fourth republic would upstage the sitting president to become the flag bearer of the NDC in the 2012 Presidential election. It wasn't just the claim, but the fact that he staked his own life on the result of the congress. That alone exposed him for who he is- another charlatan ready to ride the wave of a momentous event into fame and prosperity. 

  
He was one person who took the former first Lady's call for boldness seriously. Boldly, he staked the success of his own con game on an event few thought was likely- Nana Konadu's victory at the congress. If the gamble had paid off, he would have won over a good number of gullible Ghanaians who will pin their hopes on a man who gambled on an event with a 50% percent mathematical chance of success. This mass of people would be the source of manner for the prophet. Perhaps the person who christened Segbene Xenodzi has better prophetic unction than the self declared prophet. He seemed to have seen into the future of the baby when he named him Segbene, a name that could mean rebuked by his destiny or denied by his destiny.

 
Prophets are usually in high demand for reasons not farfetched. What is not known to man inspires fear and anxiety. The prophet is able to speak the mind of God, who has seen what hasn't happened and heard the yet to be spoken. He who speaks for the gods must have his ears with the gods. So throughout history, Men of all persuasions will have a special place for the prophet, be he the Jewish prophet Elijah who executed four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal for failing to prove their prophetic worth (I kings 18:40), or Agabus, who predicted famine in the Roman world (Acts 11:28) and the tribulations of Paul at the hands of the Jews (Acts 21:10-11) in the early days of the church, or Chielo the priestess who declared the oracles of Agbala in the Ibo village called Umuofia (Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart) .


 
Even in today's world, few will doubt the fact that there are men and women with the gift to tell you of the unknown. But it is a gift with great attraction for con artists whose interests are in the recognition and rewards that come with the office. The foundation for the rewards is laid in Mathew 10:42- receive a prophet and receive a prophet's reward. Many of the Charlatans will fake prophecy and lay the needed emphasis on receiving the prophet, and soon it is the 'prophet' who gets rewards-for-prophets as the gifts come in thick and fast. Some of them will even tell you what 'seed to sow' for the measure of your prophesy.


 
The truth is that even the bible records many cases of false prophets and false prophesies. Jeremiah 28 Narrates the encounter between Jeremiah and Hananiah, a prophet who prophesied lies about the liberty of the Jewish people. Hananiah broke a wooden yoke that had been hanging on Jeremiah's neck, ostensibly to symbolize that God had broken Nebuchadnezzar's yoke of oppression over Israel. Even the Prophet Jeremiah said amen to his antics before warning him of the consequences of false prophesies. God later spoke through Jeremiah, passing the death sentence on Hananiah and replaced the wooden yoke with a yoke of iron.


 
The problem with false prophets is that there is no limit to what they would say to promote their self serving agenda leaving in their trail broken homes, battered lives, disappointments and many times death. The usual victims are the most vulnerable in society, old women, the sick, aspiring wives and kids. They freely appoint witches in the family and apportion to them any evil they create in their fertile minds.


 
There is no better litmus test to identify the false prophet than what was proposed by Jeremiah 28:9. If a prophet prophesies peace and his words come to pass, then we know God instructed him. With this yardstick, it is easy to weed out the likes of Prophet Segbene. Unfortunately, the followers of these charlatans believe in their prophets more than they believe in the bible or common sense. They refuse to spot cases of obvious fraud and manipulation. A lady received a prophecy that she would own a car by her 40^th birthday. When she woke up at 40 with no car, I thought that was enough for her to understand who she was dealing with. I was wrong. She concluded that her parents got her date of birth wrong.


 
With such unalloyed belief from their followers, the likes of Segbene will thrive for a long time in Ghana. The answers Prophet Segbene gave to the journalist who asked him to explain his prophetic faux pas were consistent with the con behavior of such people. Hear him - "God cannot lie", "She has won wonderfully but the NDC is so intelligent, NDC is a great party, you understand, so they have a way of uniting themselves, OK. So after she has won, they met and then turned the whole thing and put a different result out," – Outrageous!


 

For the sake of the vulnerable, I pray that the prophet will die. No, not his person, but the lying ministry in him that he calls prophetic. If prophet Segbene will stay true to his words and kill that man, many poor souls will be saved from earthly torture. He asked for a firing squad when he made the prophecy, but all I ask of him is to kill his ministry of lies to save the next victim of his self delusional rants.