I had a friend who traveled to a different state for a Christian event to see a popular White American preacher and healer.  His name is almost on any Christian tongue in the USA, who really goes to church and watch Christian TV.  You can actually see him on TV healing everybody he touches and by healing people merely by touching a stack of letters in which they have requested some form of healing.  When he came back from the Christian event, my friend started glorifying God and all its wonderful healing powers.  He even told us how the preacher healed the blind, the lame, the deaf, and the sick, but my friend was still a cripple.  Everyone challenged him about the authenticity of the White man of God.  They claimed that the only way to believe the preacher and his God is for their friend to return healed.  To this, my friend claimed that he had little faith and that he and the rest of his White Christian friends did not make it to the stage on time to receive healing.  Why do you go see a healer and not sit on the stage or make contact with him?  Of what use were his friends?  Did they not put a man through the roof in the Bible just to meet Jesus? 

About a decade later, another friend of mine drove about 5 hours to see the same man of God, but this one only fractured one of the bones of his lower leg and missed the rest of the soccer season on our team.  He was already going through treatment and it was healing when he went.  Despite the fact that he was still in some sharp pain, he only went to listen to the word of God because he was impressed with the preacher’s teaching on TV.  While he was on his seat, the man of God began to pray for healing generally, and he also mentioned that someone’s leg was being healed.  My friend was just praying when he felt a sharper burning pain on his broken leg.  He claimed that it felt like something sharp and burning was rubbing upon his leg.  He said that he was so uncomfortable that he wanted to sit down and removed his socks and shoes to rub it, but he decided not to out of fear of being considered uncultured.  So he went home afterwards thinking his leg was not healing at the rate the doctors had predicted.  When he got home to his wife and newborn baby, he was about to complain about how serious a sharp pain came upon his leg and how the doctors are unreliable, when he realized for the first time that he was healed.  The pain was totally gone.  He could now twist and turn his leg in any and every direction.  This was when his complain speech turned to praises for God because he now realized that the burning sharp pain was God rubbing and healing his leg. 

I was the saddest man in the world at that point.  I hate confusion.  I like things to make sense.  I love intellectualism, history, God, wisdom, and abstract reasoning. Unfortunately, my two Christian friends were annoying me with their two varying stories that led to some form of confusion.  Is the White preacher a man of God or not?  Why did one get healed and the other is still a cripple to this day?  Or is God only able to heal broken bones and not permanent deformity?  It was not long after that my friend who got healed informed me that the man of God was a fake despite his permanent healing to this day.  He claimed the preacher was a good teacher but he has done some things since the time of his healing that has made God reveal to him that the preacher was no good.  Now I had double confusion in my hands.  I then asked him why he would dare to call the man that healed him fake and why he did not heal my crippled friend.  The answer is my purpose of writing this article.  He said that the degree of their healing was based on their purpose of going to see the preacher.  Why my unhealed friend went because he was a Christian, and it was a tradition for White college Christian organizations to organize to go to Christian events in their area, my healed friend went because he was seeking the wisdom, knowledge, and understanding of God from a preacher he admired at the time.  My healed friend came with purpose, respect, and reverence for God.  Any Muslim or Pagan, who came with the same purpose despite the pain, time, and distance, would have received a blessing, but how does this relate to the African God for Nigerians and Africans?

According to the book titled “Living with a Peace of Mind”, there is only one true God who has a different purpose and destiny for each and every individual, nation, and people, but only those who find their purpose and destiny would live a life of success and peace of mind.  What God made good for the Europeans or Arabs may not necessary be the best for the Africans.  Europe used to be the poorest continent of all until they found the Bible and used it to civilize themselves for their benefit.  They complied the Bible (some African Gospels) for the worlds that were not their own, listened to God, and with the help of Science took control of the world till this day.  The Arabs and Persians also had their problems of oppression from the Asian Barbarians and Eurocentric Christianity, until the Arab Prophet heard from God in the desert.  After they established the word of God for the Arabs, they sat on the camels and horses, and rode to take control of their destiny in the name of God, Gold, and Glory (the Arab 3- Gs) even into the Black continent of the original man of God’s creation.  What is God’s message and destiny for the Africans?  Has God given us everything but we have failed to follow God and instead followed others who have found their destinies?  A man who does not know his destiny only lives and survives to help others accomplish their destiny until he finds his, if at all.       

I was watching the History Channel today and they talked about the forbidden books of the Bible.   These were not just books that did not make the European or Romanized Bible of today, but they were also books that did not fit the European destiny that God had given them.  They talked about the Gospel of Enoch, who is recorded as the only man that went up into heaven to be with God without dying in Genesis 5.  Enoch talked about how God took him in the spirit to speak with angels, know the position of the stars and their powers for humans, but Europe did not like this because it looked to astrological and was like idol horoscopes for the new destiny they wanted to embank upon.  The Gospel of Thomas, who initially doubted that Jesus had risen, talked about the first twelve years of Jesus as a boy.  How he was stubborn, hot tempered, and could not control his powers.  They talked about how Jesus pushed a boy off the roof to his death, and when the people got angry at what he had done, he raised the boy from death and asked him to tell the people he was just sleeping.  They also said that when Jesus planted a seed, he got a hundred fold.  He did not also heal his blood brother James from a viper’s bite, but he miraculously corrected his mistakes whenever he cuts wood for Joseph his father.  Europe rejected this because they wanted to portray the image of superiority and perfection to their conquered worlds.  

The Gospel of James, blood brother of Jesus and head of the early Church, talks about Mary having the divine birth before Jesus, and Mary as a subject was the first chapter.  Mary’s father was Joachim and the mother was Anna.  They could not reproduce and it was after Anna gave up that God gave them Mary for the purpose of producing Jesus without the use of Joachim.  Europe rejected this because they wanted to focus on a masculine Jesus as divine instead of Mary stealing the show.  Even, the Quran mentions and talks more of Mary than the Bible.  The Gospel of Nicodemus, talks about Jesus going to hell to raise the saints that fell before his time to go to heaven.  Hell was not a place of torment but a place where everyone went after death.  It taught that there was equality in death without hell fire, and only the one God chose rose to be with God.  Europe rejected this because they needed hell fire to convince their world to submit to their rule or perish like in God’s hell.  Peter’s Apocalypse would have been the book of Revelation instead of John’s Apocalypse because it was very specific about the detailed punishment for each sin in hell.  But when Peter asked Jesus why so much punishment when he is supposed to be a God of mercy, and Jesus told him to keep a secret.  The secret was that everyone would be saved but if they know that, then no one would be good.  In order words, everyone who gets the wisdom of God, applies it, and ask for forgiveness would be saved and not the fear for an evil God with hell fire.  The Europeans hated this for their purpose because you do things their way or suffer severely for the consequences without mercy.  The other Gospels were that of Phillip, Mary Magdalene, and that of the Egyptians (African not Arab).  The Gospel of Mary Magdalene was rejected because she was too close to Jesus than the male disciples, Jesus gave her some privileges that the guys did not get, and she was the last to see Jesus when he died and the first to see him when he rose from death.  She was also a leading force in early Christendom and this would be a huge contradiction to the Roman culture upon which the new faith or destiny was based.  

These rejected gospels are called the Gnostics.  They were ordered to be burned and never to be discussed again.  Some African priests and members of the early church who saw the decline of African influence in the ancient world and disagreed with the European canon (Bible) stored them in large jars.  They transported the word of God into the only place where the truth of man and God’s creation originated – Africa.  These jars were discovered in the hills of Egypt and Ethiopia.  One of the gospels also mentions that the wise King Solomon in Jerusalem (in the European Bible) was not ruling well, so God sent the son of Queen Sheba and King Solomon, Menalik, to bring the Arc of the Covenant to Aksum in Ethiopia.  Many scholars still believe that it is there to this day.  How come Africa is so precious in God’s eyes but yet we never hear from him.  Everyone else takes our Books (Gospels), wisdom, and resources to better themselves but us.  Arabs still entered Africa to discover the Gnostics books and sold it to the Europeans museums, which in turn are rediscovering and translating them for us.  Where are the African scholars of ancient and Biblical history in all this?  We need to start reading our history books, Bibles and Quran to hear our own destiny from God, tiding and spending to boost our business and economies, instead of buying SUVs, and buying the latest clothes to wear to places of worship where they teach and encourage us to help Europeans and Arabs maintain and sustain their God given destinies.  The African God will be an inspirational God that will inspire us from within to make reading a culture.  Readers are leaders, but Africans are European and Arab consumers.  We need to be inspired to have the Gnostics and our history written on our hearts and tongues, just a much as we hold the European Bible and the Arab Quran very dear.