Prof. PLO Lumumba on CORRUPTION in Churches

a country which if god were to judge us correctly ought not to exist on the face of the earth it ought to have received the treatment of sodom and gomorrah but the only beauty in kenya is that god has found 50 people that is the only reason why god still preserved preserve this country but his patience is running out our couple of iniquity is getting filled by the day and we do not know it how is it getting filled by the day on a daily basis we are becoming a country where greed is celebrated we give men and women opportunity to serve and they steal from us we give men and women the opportunity to preside of our health services they acquire expired drugs and women die and children die we are accusing adolf hitler of holocaust that is holocaust of another kind we are giving men and women the opportunity to preside over a transport department they take the money compromise the quality of our robes and men and women die on those roads and then we say that that is not genocide it is genocide and those men claim to be christians we give men and women the opportunity to preside over our counties and our nurses are on strike for one month and our doctors are on strike for one month and not the president not the opposition leader not any member of parliament talks about it and we celebrate them because of our ethnicity you the kiku you say mordo and uber you the lord say what do i do and you the camper say osa vinya mukamba how can a country run that way how can a country run that way and we claim to be christians and we are so corrupt we are destroying the next generation and that is why james in the book that was read at chapter 5 verses 1 to 8 tells and warns them that your oppressors the gold and silver that you have acquired shall corrode all these things that you have acquired that make you feel important it is nothing the great alexander the great who had conquered half the known world before the path of christ at his deathbed instructed the doctors to prepare a coffin with his hands house fresh that it may be known to the world that you came with nothing and you go with nothing and he asked that the paul bears these doctors to tell the world that when death cometh even the doctors cannot stop it yet in our vanity we believe that when we acquire things then we are immunizing ourselves from something the last time i check greed is like drinking salty water the more you drink the more you want but your thrust will never be sated we are individuals in our communities including ourselves we engage in graft and corruption either wittingly or unwittingly but most of it is wittingly and we celebrate these individuals in kenya today when i look at the men and women in the opposition when i look at men and women in government and i remember that not so long ago i had the advantage of working in an organization that investigated them i'm bound by the author of secrecy but i can generally say i look at them and say god save can you god save kenya these are the individuals who will save kenya these are the individuals the pharaohs who have acquired the gods of moses cheating out that they are moses and they are pharaohs in disguise god save king the tragedy that the kenyans either do not know or do not care but i suspect that they know and they have simply chosen to do what was described by the prophet isaiah they have eyes but they do not see they have years but they do not hear they have a form of christianity and christianity has only become a fig lift with which we hide our moral nakedness we must interrogate our christianity because if it were true that being christians immunize us from greed then this country would be one of the countries with the least corruption in the world it cannot be right that we are 80 percent christian we claim and we are one of the most corrupt nations in africa on earth this corruption that is alive and well in us it is alive and well in us because we think that corruption and the things that we have acquired illegally are going to save us but when you read the book of luke that conversation between christ himself and that rich man the young rich man comes forth and said good teacher good teacher what do i do to go to heaven follow the commandment christ says in his divine soft voice and he says i followed all those commandments from my boyhood but then christ said but there is one that you have not done go out and sell your things once you have sold them distribute them to the poor then you shall having unburdened yourself go to heaven and the young man goes out possibly shaking his head and saying now i cannot go beyond that point and christ possibly pointing at him and telling his disciples i tell you how difficult shall it be for a rich man to go into the kingdom of god it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the karma of the needle than for a rich man to get into heaven christ is not condemning wealth christ is simply condemning the worship of wealth because the same bible says that you should have enough for your children's children up to the fourth generation but by the sweat of your brow by the set of your bra not by taking things that belong to others what we are condemning and what christ is condemning is that we should not use our position to acquire things that don't belong to us and i'm submitting to us that one of the reasons why africa and kenya will never realize their potential is that our appetite for that which is evil has been sharpened our appetites are so sharpened that our conscience is seared our conscience is now we can no longer tell the difference between good and evil and because we cannot tell the difference between good and evil we engage in good and evil on a daily on in evil on a daily basis and that is why isaiah says who unto you who call light day and daylight and corruption is to be found in very many places corruption is not only to be found in the political arena corruption is found even in churches today you know a friend of mine with whom we don't agree on many things but we agreed on this one once told me the church has become so mechanical so structured in form that there is no space for christ and god and that i thought was very deep we have structured our worship services in such a way that god is only mentioned occasionally that god is only worshipped occasionally and i normally sometimes ask myself how was christ worshiping christ was an itinerant preacher who engaged in dialogue on a daily basis christ would come and find a few people and engage them in a discourse on matters of the heaven when he talks about the parables of the unleavened bread when he talks about the parable of the sower when he talks about of the parables of the wheat and the tears christ is an itinerant preacher he did not have a title today we are hunkering up after titles there is no shortage of apostles and bishops in this part of the world who and to them on the day of judgment you they'll be told we know you not so the question is we who are seated here we who are kenyans we who know what is good and right are we the salt of the earth or we are the light of the earth this is the question that we must ask what is our contribution i'm told at one time by a friend whether this is a true story or is an apocryphal story i do not know but in some here but in the middle east that there was a sign for saying you can leave your goods here there are no christians there is a sense in which that statement is made tongue-in-cheek but it has a hidden meaning i'm sure that even in this chart when you are calling making an altar call the pastor finds it fitting to say as you come for the altar call you ladies take care of your bugs because even within our ranks saturn is alive and well within our rounds suddenly is alive and well every corner we turn certain is alive and well remember that temptation is always there even christ himself was tempted so that what christ is telling us to do he also went through he had the the agony i keep on saying before golgotha there was the agony at gethsemane there is no golgotha without gethsemane and there is no resurrection without gethsemane and golgotha so there is no triumph without temptation it is your ability to resist temptation that defines who you are in these matters of corruption and i know many thieves in this country there is no shortage of thieves in kenya there is no shortage of thieves in parliament they are there and they are also good men they are but few recently on national television a member of parliament from a place called ciricia i do not know his name that member of parliament but he was asked about corruption and he said on national television that we normally receive bribe between ten thousand a hundred thousand and fifty thousand all of us he said on national television and he was asked a direct question do you yourself receive bribes he says i do and even right now he said there is a matter in which i'm involved in which fellow members of parliament have asked for 56 million and he asked the interviewer who can refuse money except god i'm telling him that we can refuse money and we are they are good men in this country i subsequently sent an sms to the escc telling arrest this individual i'm still waiting for the answer because i believe such a one as that ought not to occupy the position of leadership but i fear that such a one as that will be reelected again and when you elect such men and women to come to parliament we can pray and fast all we want but the last time i checked if you will exclusified these angels there is only one thing that is going to happen something satanic and i'm submitting to us that indeed as we are looking at the country today and you watch these individuals in the 47 old counties these men and women the bulk of them are making promises to us they are telling us they'll build bridges where there are no rivers they'll build bridges [Music] they are now telling us that they shall cause mana to fall from heaven they are telling us that they shall make ice out of water and water out of ice and they shall make fire out of ice they are telling us they are telling us that upon their election our lives will change dramatically in the same way that paul of texas became paul they are telling us that kenya will become el dorado the land of gold on the day of the election they are telling us they are telling us that their manifestos contain the secrets of alchemy that will allow us to convert bronze into gold they are telling us they are telling us that the skyscrapers of america in new york will be transplanted and be planted in ketui they are telling us all they are telling us that all the beautiful things that are happening in europe will in the twinkling of an eye invade our country and we'll never go back again they are telling us and unfortunately we believe them we believe that they are a lot today alchemists we believe that they are latter-day simon the sorcerers we believe that they are going to part the red sea of our lives we believe that they shall erect pillars of fire to separate us from latter day pharaohs we believe that they shall knock stones and water shall come out of them will be tied us those things will not happen because the last time i checked an elephant only begets an elephant how can it therefore be that a rabbit tells me that he'll be get an elephant how can it be the rhinos are now telling me that they shall give fourth lion it cannot happen it will not happen and we believe it we are co-authors of our own misfortune we are cautious of our own misfortune the bible is so clear that thou shalt reap what ours but what are we sowing now i want each one of us because corruption is not only restricted to bribes now inspect your heart in the little things that you do in your office when your child does not have a pencil at home do you take a pencil from the office to take it home what do you do in private because we are in the business of doing that and you don't think that that is corruption you imagine to yourself if every worker were to take a pencil from your place of work those of us who love this country which country is great in prospect we must begin to say something you know whenever i've talked about corruption i've always said that there are two ways of dealing with the corrupt in this country to tell the king and the queens that they are naked there are two ways of doing it one of the ways is to be found in the synoptic gospels and is what i call the way of john the baptist you go out into the agora and shout you herodias you have an illicit affair with the wife of thy brother philip now stands condemned you say so in the agora you will be arrested then there will be a dance at which salome will dance so well and salome will be asked to name our prize and salome will name her prize at the head of john the baptist so if you choose to shout in the agora against corruption you must be prepared to pay the ultimate price how many of you are prepared because the last time i checked if you've not found anything martin luther king jr used to say for which you are prepared to die you have no business leaving all of us must find something for which we are prepared to die then we are worthy of living it is incumbent upon us as christians and patriots to point out the evils that believe our country not with the arrogance that will inflame the anger of the leadership but with the firmness that will open their eyes we must do that consistently without fear of consequence but there is another way also of doing it depending on the circumstances and that way i call the way of nathan nathan visits david and he tells david o king in your kingdom there are two people one very rich and the other one very poor with only two animals and the one who is very rich takes the one from the poor one and david says if there is such a one is my kingdom then such a one should be punished and he says o king it is you you have taken uriah's wife and you have sent to ryan to the battlefield and he is dead there there is a sense in which we must determine what is the right approach there are times when you use the method of john the baptist and there are times when you use the method of nothing choose what is appropriate choose the instruments of first resort when first resort is at hand choose the instruments of last resort when the last resort is at hand but never ever stop doing the right thing those of you who are familiar with the world war two will remember this famous report which i do not render in the manner in which was rendered but i render it in this manner without losing its substance the famous statement attributed to martin newman when they came for the jews i said nothing because i was not a jew when they came for the communists i said nothing because i was not a communist when they came from the trade unionists i said nothing because i was not a trade unionist when they came for me there was nobody to say anything the moral of martin nemola's statement is and when there is danger shout against it and we put it so very well into swahili because there is a sense in which you could be the next so let us never imagine for one moment that we are safe throughout the ages we have seen good men fight crush it is not a battle that started yesterday we have told ourselves that it all started in heaven and then we descended to the garden of eden and we saw the exploits of lucifer then we went to sodom and gomorrah and we saw the contention between abraham and god and it did not stop there we saw moses grappling with janice jumpers and dayton and he did not stop there our own christ is tempted being told if you only agree to worship me the entire world will be yours and christ says no the only one to be worshipped and he did not stop there even our own christ was betrayed on the basis of 30 pieces of silver but they are good men throughout the ages who have demonstrated by what i'm dead that when the chips are down they are prepared to pay the ultimate price that is how i understood the story recorded in the book of daniel the story of three four young men daniel hananiah misha and azaria known to us much more famously as shadrach meshach and abednego when they were performing in the household of nebuchadnezzar they were given different names they were told to worship an idol made six cubit wide six cubit long and they were told you've got to worship it and they refuse and the fire was lit seven times over and the bible record that those who threw them into the fire were consumed immediately but when they went in there they said the god that we worship will rescue us but even if he does not we shall not bow unto you and within a few minutes we are told that there was a fourth man in the fire and nebuchadnezzar said but i threw in three men but i now see four and the fourth one is like a son of the gods we must always create an environment where the fourth man comes like a son of the gods and that we can only do by resisting that which is wrong at all critical times but like luther king used to say before the victory is won men who are righteous and women who are righteous will be called all manner of names but do not be deterred is it not winston churchill who said you can never realize your goal if you turn to throw a stone at every dog that box let the dogs back but you move forward ever backward never we are being told that there is something happening in sodom and gomorrah but the divine injunction to the wife of luke is that you shall not look back because if you look back you shall become a salt of stone the choice is ours the choice is as clear as it was in the day of joshua when it is recorded in the book of joshua chapter 24 it says when you are across the river you are grandfathers worshiped idols terror and when you came into the land of the amorites you also found their gods choose you now whether you shall worship the god of your fathers across the river or the god of the amorites in whose lands you live as for me and my house i shall worship the lord that question is an eternal question we must make a choice the choices are not easy but i know men and women who have made those choices stephen the first christian to be murdered made such a choice the question is you are here today what choices are you making today are you making the difficult choice of doing that which is right and good because it's just good to do that which is right and good are you enticed by the latter day things that we see on a daily basis because i know but i have many friends who have helicopters but the beauty of it that when the helicopter flies it must stop comes down i know many friends who have cars such as lamborghini and porsche and mercedes-benz but the last time i checked the mercedes-benz stops and he gets out of it and gets into his house of gold and goes into his bed of gold but even in the bed of gold there is no sleep he has to induce sleep by using tablets and even then sleep refuses to come i know many friends who can afford all the good food in the world caviar and all the good meat but their appetite since disappeared they've got to eat things to induce appetite and even when they hire induced it does not come but i know other friends who are not so materially endowed or they not they don't need soup to sharpen their appetite no they were born ready [Applause] you bring forth the food and they consume it they don't need it i know poor friends who do not have beds of gold but even when they sleep on the floor they sleep soundly for eight hours and they don't have nightmares they have sweet dreams which they have forgotten in the morning i know friends who have nothing they have no television they only play play drafts and they enjoy it so thoroughly they don't take out an insurance no they don't god is their insurance and there is a way in which the god that we worship has a way of turning all these things in a positive way and that is why i look forward to the day when we shall have in leadership men and women who love this country i remember an old man with whom i had the privilege of working for a short time former president of tanzania julius campbell ragnarok on the day that he left office after 24 years in office it is reported he had only eight thousand equivalent of united states dollars in his account that is just about the amount that our mca uses of our weekend after 24 years that is all he had with a single house in dar salaam and another one in bhutan our mcas and our governors within four years have 80 and 40 houses and if you look at them they have expanded so exponentially that even suits can no longer fit some of them if you look at them they are even running away if as it ever occurred to you that our leaders are running away from something they are running away from themselves when they go to the barbershop the first thing they ask for a man dying my hair that it may not be white if god divinely said that when you grow old your hair stands gray why are you running away from your age and when you have men and women who are running away from themselves from their appearance how truthful can they be to us they are little things but they have something to tell us i'm submitting to us the time has come that we must remember that this country will only realize our potential the day that good men and women have the opportunity to serve the bible that we read has numerous stories telling us of how the people enjoyed when good men and women were in authority and how they suffered when evil men were in authority this country that i live in that i love has great potential but potential is only potential we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of both god and man we must repent and be of contrite hearts and our repentance must be total and complete because the god that we worship cannot be mocked he knows in advance whether our hearts are contrite or not so today if we are liberating ourselves from the seven deadly sins let us ask who is a friend of mine and who is a kenyan who has been wavering recently between two opinions has written a beautiful book called towards genocide in kenya the curse of negative ethnicity and koiki says and i agree with him that the tragedy of kenya is that our low voltage ethnic warlords have hypnotized us and they have made us believe that we only must follow them and we have turned them into god we have deified our political leaders we have treated them as god for so long that some of them now think that they are gods some of them now think that they are they are the messiah they suffer from the messiah complex they believe that god has sent them with a direct instruction to rescue us from latter-day pharaohs no they are not and it is our duty to recognize and unmask them and to know that they are only humans and to remember that there are days and on latter day journalists and genres and when we do so the god that we worship will liberate us from corruption of the morals i know also that we have a cast of ethnicity the god that i worship is a god of diversity not god in his divine wisdom chooses to create human beings some brown some pink who we call white they are never white people i've never seen a white person myself but they are pink but we say that they are white then there are some who are we call yellow they are not yellow they are just brown of a different shade then there are some negroids and within the negroid race there is a wide spectrum and when the god sits upstairs he must say behold what beauty and we in our own way because as it is in heaven so it is on earth when we are creating things when we make a piano unto ourselves we give the piano the black keys and the white keys and when we hit at the white we hit at the black how melodious the music the combination of black and white even i black and white how melodious the god that we worship is a god of diversity that god loves the kikuyu of kenya for their industry that god loves them that god loves the lugia of kenya for their energy that god loves the taita and the wakamba for their humility that god loves the messiah for the agility that god loves the lure of kenya for their quest for perfection that god is the god of diversity and then that god brings them into kenya and tell them produce a melodious music that sings kenya and we are refusing to do that we are judging each other on negative things we are asking that we be judged by the content of our character how is it that when you leave your home you leave you a beautiful child whom you love in the care of alohya maid how is it that when you leave your home you have a cumber made who is looking after your child how is it that you have a kikuyu a lure carpenter and that you have as man manning your gate you have a truckana and then when you are electing the president you are told it must be from your tribe i can never understand that logic what you want is a man or a woman who fears god who is going to ensure that kenya thrives and i look forward to the day when on the eighth day of august we have the opportunity to select the choice is very restricted unfortunately but we are saddled with them let us look at men and women on the basis of the ability not of the on the basis of their ethnic extraction and let us go down in prayer because even these leaders that we think are terrible god is capable in the twinkling of an eye into converting them into good men and women our prayer is that it can't happen god is capable of converting them and making them say like matthew in the bible or like zakayas in the bible from whom i took i shall return sevenfold because there is no forgiveness without repentance there is no peace without justice but i'm submitting to us that we are capable you know as i conclude i always look and read that i read the bible and ask myself i wish i was in the first century and i kept on asking myself would i have been peter would i have been thomas would i have been judas iscariot who would i have been in that arrangement i delude myself with the help of hindsight that i would not have been judas i think that i would have had elements of thomas because the the thing that was happening was so monumental that is only natural to question it i would have asked christ christ i know you are christ but let me just confirm a little and once i had confirmed i would have followed christ those are moments of doubt and i ask myself that i go down and as i think about things like corruption and i see to myself that christ has been crucified and christ is in the grave and everybody has gone their way peter's run away and everybody has run away and all of them are in a state of depression they are saying there was once a man who came we thought he would liberate us but they crucified him this thing has ended then i remind myself that two women go to the grave in the morning and lo and behold there is nobody and lo and behold they are told why do you look for that living amongst the dead and i remember that there is a journey to mouse and i remember that the 72 are gathered somewhere on the day of the pentecost and i see to myself that perhaps this is the day of the pentecost and that we are re mincing over these things and we have our own day of the pentecost that after you have gone through these series of teachings about the seven deadly sins and it has been exposed to you and after you've been forewarned that in fact if you don't change your ways then you'll have eternal damnation and today we are talking about corruption and we know corruption is a bad thing and we know we have been victimized by it i'm assuming to myself that the god of heaven is up there and that is looking at us in his own divine way he'll not be dramatic today no there'll be no parting of the red sea in that dramatic way now there'll be no pillars of fire no not in that dramatic way there'll be no manner from heaven in that dramatic way because he gave us an instruction go ye and subdue the world go out and part your own red sea go out and make your own manner so there is a day of the pentecost today and i want and i believe that after i will leave here you will all be speaking in tongues and that you'll be speaking in tongues and what you'll be saying no more negative ethnicity that if i am from the kikuyu nation from today henceforth i shall not refer to the laws of or why not that if i am long i'm not going to refer to the kikuyu as jarabwan i'm not going to do that and that if i am cumber i'm not going to say may come back if india i'm not going to say osa vinya mukamba but i am going to say like the luhia's vindu chain things can change ladies and gentlemen it can't be done we must do it let us leave our christianity that does not mean that we will not sin now winston churchill said that success is moving from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm and i'm submitting to us that in our quest to meet christ and to do good we will move from failure to failure but we must never cease to be enthusiastic because the more we try the more we reach close to our target it can't be done it must be done because if it is not done we are done god bless you because god is from everlasting to [Music] everlasting

Channel: The PLO Lumumba Foundation

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Length: 39min 51sec (2391 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021