A young married couple based in one of the North-central states recently paid dearly for their lack of fear of God. The couple attended a Pentecostal Church headed by one of the very few men of God in right standing with God. They met in the church and began a relationship which culminated in marriage. Before their wedding, however, there were rules the pastor had laid down for all couples intending to marry in the church which the duo had to observe. It is the policy of the church that all such couples must undergo HIV, Genotype and Pregnancy tests, and only if they pass the tests would the wedding be solemnized. The HIV and Genotype tests could be conducted a month or two weeks to the wedding, while the pregnancy test must be carried out two days before the occasion. Not only that. The Church has its own doctors, and they are the only ones permitted to carry out the tests to avoid faking of the results.
By these measures, the pastor endeavours to ensure the wellbeing of his congregation, as well as instill holiness in them as the Bible commands young Christians to flee fornication which means to avoid sex before marriage. The HIV test is to avoid joining someone who is HIV positive with another who is free of the killer disease without the latter’s consent, while the Genotype test is to avoid joining couples whose genotypes are not compatible to avoid the misery of giving birth to sickle cell carriers.
This particular couple had slept together and just before their wedding, the lady discovered that she was two months pregnant. Confusion set in as to how they would scale the hurdle of the pregnancy test, more so that obtaining a fake result from any doctor or hospital was out of the question. But between her and her fiancée, they came up with a solution: to collect her friend’s urine and take it to the church doctors for the test. Thus, they fooled the doctors and their pastor.
However, as the bride was walking down the aisle on her wedding day, the pastor heard a voice telling him that that lady was two months pregnant. But he thought ‘no, it can’t be. We tested her urine and it was negative’. Thinking he was being over-sensitive, he dismissed the possibility of what he heard and went ahead to conduct the wedding. As he later wondered about the voice he heard, he decided to watch out for the exact period that the couple would have their first child, to know if there was anything to that voice or not. And lo and behold, the lady gave birth to a baby girl exactly 7 months after marriage and the baby was not premature.
The couple knew that the early arrival of the baby would expose their secret, so they thought of how to deal with the situation. The new father told the pastor, who wanted to know what happened, that the baby was premature. The pastor, sensing foul play, sent the church doctors to visit the hospital where the baby was born to confirm what her father said. And on getting to the hospital, they discovered that the baby was delivered full-term.
The pastor broke down and asked God for forgiveness for ignoring His voice on the couple’s wedding day, saying he did not know that it was God who was talking to him that day. He then sent for the lying couple and confronted them with the facts, asking them to tell him the truth about the urine. Thereafter, he said, they must do an open confession before the whole church the following Sunday, after which he and the church would pray for them. Then they would occupy the back bench for six months before they would be restored. He warned that they must observe these punitive measures to avoid the wrath of God.
If the pastor thought that the couple would break down in tears and ask God for forgiveness, he was mistaken. The husband was angry and disgusted by the pastor’s conditions, asking ‘Are we the only ones that did it in the church? Why should our own be different?’ He insulted the pastor and dragged his wife out of his presence, and they stopped attending the church. Thereafter, things started going bad for them. And about a year later, the husband died. The wife then came weeping to the pastor, asking for forgiveness and explaining that she would have waited till after their wedding before having sex but her fiancée was impatient and she did not want to lose him. And when she discovered that she was two months pregnant, she took her friend’s urine for the test, because she had always dreamt of having a white wedding.
After the episode, the pastor changed the policy of bringing urine from home for the pregnancy
test. His female secretary now obtains the specimen from the sisters inside the church toilet.
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