Preaching salvation to sex workers

Preaching salvation to sex workers

By Clem Oluwole

In the Holy Writ, a story is told in Ephesus of how Apostle Paul worked miracles that held the inhabitants of the city spellbound. Handkerchiefs were taken from the Apostle and placed on the sick and they were made whole. Similarly, individuals that were possessed by evil spirits got exorcised at the sight of the handkerchiefs. That was the level of anointing with which he operated.

Seven folks, said to be sons of Sceva a chief priest, took it upon themselves to imitate Paul. They called for the presence of those who were possessed by demons in the city, so that they could cast out the evil spirits. A score of evil spirit carriers soon converged and then the exorcists hollered: “In the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches, we command you depart.”

The evil spirit answered and said: “Jesus I know, Paul I know; but who art thou?”

The evil spirit became furious at the sight of the pretenders. It leapt out and overwhelmed them, pummeling them black and blue. The imitators also had their garments torn and they fled in all directions naked and wounded.

The Ephesus episode was replicated recently in Asaba, Delta state, when two men of God from a new generation church located at Ibusa Road also decided to imitate Paul. They took it upon themselves to preach salvation to commercial sex workers who plied their trade at the Cable Point whore house which is a notorious stop-over for hoodlums and has the largest casinos in the South-South zone.

According to an eyewitness, the duo had gained the attention of the sex workers, who mistook them for patrons. But after a period of time, the prostitutes decided to put the genuineness of the evangelists to test. They began by revealing their boobs and then the other tempting parts came into view. The men of God became seduced. They dropped their bibles and their hosts led them into their rooms where they were said to have had some “quickies”.

After the lewd encounter, the prostitutes demanded for payment for the services rendered, insisting that the two whore mongers used evangelism as an alibi to have fun with them without payment. Then a fight broke out. The sexangelists (my coinage) argued that the sex encounter was not their original mission. As it happened in Ephesus, the furious prostitutes stripped their guests naked and made a bonfire with their clothes along with their bibles.

The whoring duo must have learnt a bitter lesson. They got themselves into the scandal because they underrated the seductive endowments of women. Many men of God had fallen off their holy altars on account of their lust for anything in skirts or wrappers. And their ministries went caput. The bible is also replete with stories of anointed men of God who fell from the laps of women. Wiseman (King Solomon) was drawn away from God who showered him with wisdom, by his women running into hundreds. Before Solomon, Samson, the strongest man in history, had fallen from the luscious laps of Delilah and ended up as an object of fun and ridicule to the Philistines.

The Bible made it clear: those who think they are standing should be wary lest they fall. The Asaba evangelists (if they were real men of God) ought to have shaken the dust of Cable Point off their feet and fled the scene as soon as their audience began to unveil the apples of Sodom. They might have had genuine intentions of delivering the prostitutes of the sex demon that possessed them. But they got the disgrace that came their way because they failed to flee from evil manifestation as enjoined by the Holy Writ which they equipped themselves with to the sex front.

May be history merely repeated itself at Asaba as it happened in Ephesus where the evil spirit beat up the imitators of Apostle Paul. Anointed men of God (not imitators) would have cast out the sex demon in those whores rather than falling so cheap to the Cable Point temptation.