| I’ve been trying
to make my relationship with God cordial
By BISI OLALEYE AND NIKE
AJAYI
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
 |
• Bashorun Oguntomole
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
|
Basorun Adekunle Oguntomole, Basorun of Omuo-Ekiti and Balogun
Ijo, St Andrews Church, Omuo-Ekiti believes that speaking in tongues should not
be a meaningless pratter a language that should be understood as on the day of
pentecost when the disciples spoke in tongues and people around understood what
they said.
In a chat with Daily Sun, Oguntomole also does
not suscribe to public display of miracles as well as the fad of being born again.
He spoke on other issues.
Concept of God
God is the
omniscience and omnipotent, omnipresent, and the all conqueror. He is the creator
of Heaven and Earth, but He remains uncreated. God takes care of everything that
has to do with humans. So to me, God is my father.
Relationship
with God
I have been trying to make it cordial. You know I am a human
being. Only God is infallible. I have had the course to be very proud of my relationship
with God. God has been very sensitive to my needs. So, it is a relationship of
father and son.
Tithes and offering
I see tithes as
a compulsory obligation that every human being must do willingly without been
forced to pay it. The Bible also dictates, in Malachi 3vs10 that we should always
pay our tithes. It is out of the bountiful gift God gives us, that we should make
a beautiful return. Tithes and offering are important and every Christian should
obey that commandment.
Heaven and hell
Heaven and hell
are real. Those two are doctrinal. One, heaven is a place where we all look forward
to as Christians or as believers. We long to go to a final resting-place where
we will sit and enjoy the glory of God. And that place is heaven. Constructively,
the alternative is hell. If you do not do what God wants you to do and you deliberately
disobey his instructions and deliberately become very wicked, you are preparing
for hell.
Heaven and hell are two parallel straight lines. If you do well,
you will go to heaven. If you don’t do well, you will go to hell. The only
problem is that nobody has gone there and come back to tell us how it is but,
by statue of our faith, we believe it is real. If you are good, you cannot go
to a bad place and if you are bad, you can not go to a good place.
Miracles
I
believe in miracles with all my heart. It is only God who can perform miracles.
Personally, I don’t go to a church looking for miracles because my Bible
says, seek God first, and all other things will follow. When you are pursuing
a cause, and you surrender it totally to God, something will happen to you and
that is miracle. This public display of miracle, quote and unquote, I do not subscribe
to it. I only believe that God’s miracle exist.
Proliferation
of churches
It is only God who can determine who is genuine or fake.
What the Bible says is that we must test every spirit before we subject ourselves
to that spirit. How do we test this spirit? Whatever your spirit or your pastor
urges you to do, we must first subject it to what the Bible demands. If what they
urges us to do is contrary to what the Bible says, then, one must think twice.
Essentially, it is God who has the prerogative to say this one is not yours and
this one is mine.
Speaking in tongues
On the day of
Pentecost, the disciples spoke in tongues and were understood by those who spoke
other languages at that time. Likewise, if one of the disciples speaks in tongue
in Yoruba language, it would be understood by Yoruba speakers, Hebrew, Greek,
among others. That is what I know about speaking in tongues. Any tongue a person
speaks which is not understood by any person, I don’t agree with it. It
is not in tune with the spirit of the Bible. The only one we read about was at
Pentecost and people marveled because they were wondering how they understood
what somebody who was not born in their culture said.
Born again
According
to my denomination, when you are persuaded and you accept to become a Christian
and you are baptised, you have moved from an old step to a new one. That is my
interpretation of being born again. You have left, may be years of locust; you
have come to the new year of progressive, constructive in the vineyard of God.
I am a born again Christian. I went on my own to the Anglican Communion in 1956.
I was baptised in that same year and confirmed in 1963.
Has God
ever disappointed you?
God has never disappointed me, in any situation.
I have always been His good boy. I have had to escape two traumatic experiences.
One in 1992 when I almost had a fatal accident and miraculously, God saved my
life. Also sometimes last year, I ran into armed robbers on the road. They did
their worst, but my life, wife, driver and friend’s lives were saved. No
single torture was done. I have always had a wonderful relationship with God.
He has always has being my helper, protector, defender and guidian. |
