Written by ‘Prophet’ Patseni Mauka
I am blessed with a very cool name. Patseni Mauka. Very easy to remember. I believe in God. I am a Christian. I know some people might think a Christian can’t have such a name. But that’s because they choose to guess the meaning of my name instead of just celebrating its coolness.
I am a member of a church, or so I was before I stopped making monthly tithe payments for reasons beyond my control. This being a serious violation of church vows, I might have been deleted in the membership book. I will find out. But make no mistake, my relationship with God is very good. That’s what matters most than busy commenting on posts in Stress Free Facebook group while pretending to be attentive in church.
As a church going Christian, I have had a fair share of boring and exciting preachers. One of the most exciting preachers I have ever listened to was a reverend I had long time ago in Ntcheu. He was extremely good at his trade. He always made me go to church every Sunday to listen to his preaching. He told nice stories and connected them well to the day’s theme. I like stories. Good stories.
One story that I will never forget was about a man I will call Jemusi. In the Theba days, Jemusi went to South Africa in search of greener pastures. Ten years after toiling in the gold mines, he decided he had enough money to go back home for good. He left South Africa with ten years’ worth of prized possessions in a big bag.
After arriving back in the country, he set off on a long walk to his home village. Having been away for such a long period of time, Jemusi had no idea about the latest changes on footpaths leading to his village. The path that he took led him direct to a very deep ditch. Just around evening, Jemusi with his bag fell into the ditch. He cried for help but no one heard him.
After some hours, exhausted and losing hope, he heard footsteps and voices near the ditch and let out a loud cry for help. Some two men came to investigate and found him. He told them his ordeal and begged them to rescue him. Fortunately, the two men had a long rope which they dropped in the ditch. They told him to grab it so that they could pull him out.
Not wanting to lose his ten years’ worth of belongings, Jemusi grabbed the rope with one hand and used the other hand to hold his heavy bag. The two men then tried to pull him out but found it too heavy. Surprised on how heavy Jemusi was, they asked him how a human being could be so heavy. That’s when Jemusi told them that he was carrying a bag which he couldn’t afford to lose. The men asked him to choose one thing; his life or the bag, for it was impossible to pull him out while clinging to a heavy bag.
Facing total darkness, Jemusi finally relinquished his grip on the bag. He grabbed the rope with both hands and the men successfully pulled him out. Without abandoning his bag, Jemusi couldn’t have been rescued.
The moral of the story is that when it comes to salvation, there is only one way; repent, follow the Lord and stop sinning. No two ways about it. Brothers and sisters repent and stop wasting your time with being half a worshiper and half a continuous sinner. You can’t be sleeping at your concubine’s house, aka MG2, lying to your wife that you had a flat tire and expect to get salvation.
Neither can you get salvation by lying to hapless Malawians that you will fight corruption but be caught red handed with 145 million Kwacha in a political party account that you are the sole signatory. You can’t get salvation when you are just a wife to a president but your son’s account balance shows 900 million Kwacha although nobody knows what business you do.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, you can’t get salvation if you are a mere non-salaried First Lady but building very expensive flats in Lilongwe complete with a tarmac road up to your gate. Repent or rot in hell. You can’t get salvation when four years ago, you were just a malnourished uneducated cholaboy but now you have a purchased doctorate degree, own scores of expensive new cars, a lodge, flats and companies. Since the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) can’t ask you where and how you got all these things in a short period of time, God will do it on behalf of unsuspecting well-mannered Malawians.
You can’t get salvation by moving from a mere bodyguard of a party president, with nothing of particular value to a rich bodyguard-cum-presidential adviser complete with several posh cars, a lodge and famous accolade of wearing a new suit every day. Repent or burn in hell.
You are lucky that you live in a country where it is common to see people get spontaneously rich and accumulate unexplained millions and billions worth of assets not commensurate with their income or business. You are lucky, you don’t live in Kenya where you would be subjected to lifestyle audits.
You are lucky you don’t live in the United Kingdom where you would be served with an Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWO) which help to freeze or recover assets, when authorities have reasonable grounds to suspect that identified assets represent the proceeds of crime.
However, you can’t continue sinning and expect to get salvation. It’s either you repent, abandon your sins and follow God or you wait for hell. You can’t get salvation when millions of Malawians are living in poverty because of your wicked ways. How do you live with yourself when you keep building billion Kwacha mansions yet your folks in the village have to walk many kilometers to a health center only to find it without basic medicine?
How do you feel when you read a 2018 Child Poverty Report in Malawi that shows that 60.5 percent of the country’s children are still deprived of basic needs such as quality education, sanitation facilities, health and safe drinking water? Stop stealing and pay back the money. Repent or forget about salvation.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of the Publisher or the Editor of Maravi Post
