Recently, social media was agog with the story of a pastor who committed a very serious sexual sin and was exposed. A concerned person walked up to me to discuss it. He said, “Pastor Deon, I can’t trust any pastor anymore… Why are all pastors falling into sexual sins?”

All pastors? You must be kidding me! I took that personally. I asked this guy how many pastors he knew personally.

“Have you ever read or heard of a pastor who live a full life of dedicated service to God and humanity, and was scandal free?” I asked.

“Yes, many of them,” answered the man.

“Okay. When you heard that they did well and ended well, did you go around saying you would trust all pastors because of these faithful men, and did you conclude that all pastors were faithful because of these few faithful men?”

He was honest enough to say no.

“Why then,” I asked, “are you saying all pastors are perverts just because of one who sinned?”

In this world of negativity, the man who fails gets all the publicity, and the man who does well is ignored. Bad news doesn’t sell.

SPIRITUAL TRADITION OF PURITY

In my days as a youth minister, I served under a man whose life and ministry were exemplary. The tradition we lived in was that of bible purity, including in sexual matters. That man, though now elderly, is still alive and going strong for Christ. He is scandal free and still living in the spiritual tradition of purity.

You don’t know him. Why? Because he didn’t sleep with a church member’s wife or one of his choristers. All his good works mean nothing to a world bent on rubbishing Christian character. Such men become news only when they commit a crime. The world loves to belittle the good we do while magnifying the faults they see in us. A young, single and largely unknown pastor recently got involved in a case of sexual impropriety. He was only the pastor of a small church of less than a hundred people. The news headline I saw reporting the case screamed, “POPULAR APOSTLE EXPOSED…” The guy was neither popular nor an apostle.

As a university student, I was the leader of a group of youngsters who were all sold out for Christ. We were male and female, and believed that God wanted us to live for Him in purity. Those guys who served with me are all pastors (and professionals) today. No issue of sexual immorality was mentioned among us. It never happened! They are all still living in the spiritual tradition of purity.

You see, I am pained by the new morality that is being smuggled into the church today. Preachers are telling young Christians, “We are all sinners. God knew about every sin you would commit and has made provision for them. No sin can drive you away from God. Don’t feel bad about that sin; God knew you would commit it!”

Nonsense! That’s not who we are. That’s not what we do. Our calling is unto purity, and not unto filthiness.

SIN IS SIN, NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK!

The way things are going now, it seems we are raising a generation of young people who are convinced that pre-marital sex has been okayed by God, or that sexual sins have nothing to do with God; that it is just a personal matter! Christians are now even advocates of polygamy.

A few years ago, a ‘bible teacher’ told me I was overreaching myself by condemning pornography. “How do you want newly-weds to learn about sex if you forbid them to view porn? he asked me.

When we start to think that doing something which is against the Word of God is not wrong, we don’t only do  it, we also don’t feel remorse when we do it. That way, we normalize wrongdoing. More and more Christian are searing their conscience with a hot iron. (1 Timothy 4:2). All tenderness and sensitiveness to wrongdoing has almost completely left them.

Yet, God hasn’t changed His mind concerning sin. Sin is not to dominate a child of God.

YOU WILL BE TEMPTED

As a pastor, I have received thinly veiled invitations to sin. I have also receive some that were’t so veiled.  I once shared with you how I mistakenly found  myself in a den of “sex workers” and then ran for dear life. Some of the things I will share in these series of posts will surprise some people, but since they happened to me (as easy going as I suppose myself to be), I am of the opinion that so many pastors are dealing with similar situations.

I have had women offer themselves willingly to me. One even went as far as saying that she preferred me because I was more ‘good looking’ than her own husband. (That’s nonsense, of course! Just satanic flattery for the foolish and the gullible). She said her husband couldn’t satisfy her sexually. Later, she told me she needed deliverance, but I didn’t cast any demon out of her. Instead, I called my wife and we both cast her out!

In another city, at another time, another temptress thought she had me cornered. I was fed with a string of false information that got me to a place where I was alone in a living room with a woman who wanted to have sex with me. I was lied to. Instead of a group of people that I was told were present in that house, I found myself alone with the woman. She came out to me scantily wrapped in a towel that left most of her bosom bare. As she moved towards me, I took my mobile phone and began to receive my wife’s call.

“Ok, you are here already,” I asked my wife. “I’m in sister X’s place like I told you. Three minutes? Are you sure you can be here in three minutes?  OK, I will wait outside for you. Huh? Yes, she’s home alone, and I’m surprised. She’s hearing me now as I’m talking to you. Yes, she now knows you’d be here any moment.”

As I discussed with my wife on the phone, it was clear to the temptress that my wife was close and would show up any moment. She quietly moved away, ostensibly to change into something more respectable. But I didn’t wait to find out. As soon as she was out of sight, I sneaked  out.

Thank God for that call… Except it was a fake call! My wife wasn’t calling. I made it up to extricate myself from a potentially scandalous situation. I quickly walked out of that place trembling. I knew I wasn’t going to sin, but I remembered Joseph’s clothes in the clutches of Portiphar’s wife, brandished as a proof of the sin Joseph never committed. There is a reason the Bible told us to avoid all appearance of evil. It is because it can carry the same penalty as evil itself!

“And if you do not do well, sin crouches at your door; its desire is for you…” (Genesis 4:7).

PREACH AGAINST SIN!

Modern preachers keep telling me that we don’t need to preach about sin; that Jesus should be our focus, (as if these messages are mutually exclusive). How then do you explain the many passages the apostles dedicated to the admonition against acts of sin?

You teach people the principles of prosperity. You teach people biblical ways to have a happy home. You teach people the biblical ways to receive healing when they are sick. In all of these, you don’t see yourself as being ‘poverty conscious,’ or ‘sickness conscious,’ or ‘marriage conscious.’ But when someone teaches people the biblical principles of victory over sin, you accuse them of being sin conscious. You sit on your blind horse galloping towards the land of scandals, pompously claiming that you have new revelations.

Something is seriously wrong when a pastor who is married, goes after underage girls or other people’s wives and then claim the devil sent them after him. You may say, Mr. Deon Akintomide, don’t you think these women are really agents of the devil?”

The question is, if they are Satan’s agents, whose agents are the pastors who sin with them? Aren’t our God supposed to be stronger than their god? Hasn’t our God provided everything we need to handle all the seductions of the devil?

The truth is, many of these women who go after men of God are merely immature Christians or new believers, sometimes totally innocent,  who see the pastors as true representatives of God. Instead of helping them, some of these men take advantage of them. The real culprits are the men who use  their privileged positions to humiliate the people entrusted to their spiritual care.

And what if anyone is a true agent of the devil? Well, I have realized since a long time ago that the devil is a diligent businessman. Those he inspires to spread his filth are diligently doing their job. No man of God who falls into sin has any reason to blame the so-called agents of the devil. If they are doing their job, our own job is to resist the devil. We can only fail when we let them have the better of us.

There was a time it became a crime for a woman to be beautiful and tall and use jewelry in church. Paranoid ‘holiness-police’ branded them ‘agents.’ Thank God those times are gone for good, or are they?

TAKE HEED TO YOURSELF!

Satan’s agents are not my concern. I am my concern. I am the one told to be vigilant because the devil, as a growling lion, is prowling about, seeking who he would devour. I am the one told to be watchful and to resist the devil. Do your job,

I have seen the devastation and the carnage that attended the lives of the unwatchful, What excuse do I have if I do not watch and then find myself with no resisting power? No Christian is given the power to toy with sin. We are to flee sexual immorality.

If you are a leader of God’s people, do not spend more time binding the devil than you spend in building up yourself. Don’t spend more time watching over others than you spend watching over your own soul. Set a higher standard, for yourself than you set for other people. The way I see some leaders of Gods people, they act like they are immune to temptation; like the anointing is some kind of shield that can let them romance sin and not be bitten by its consequences. They warn other to flee from what they themselves are running after. If there’s any characteristic that Satan shares with God, it is that he is also not a respecter of anyone. If you let him, he will paint you all over with scarlet shame and ruin your name and discredit your ministry. That is his job.

And you, Pastor?

Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee. (1 Timothy 4:16 KJV)