It looks like Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams, the preacher who says he wants to ‘live and die like Mandela’, is showing a good example of how Christ is no longer his role-model. ??According to him, certain members of his congregation hurled judgmental looks at him, as he narrated a story about how a rich Nigerian man depended on his (Duncan-Williams’) prayers to get round his insomnia, but instead for Williams to turn the other cheek like a real man of God, the Presiding Bishop and General Overseer of the Christian Action Faith Ministries (CAFM) burst forth midway through his Sunday sermon saying,
‘You can look at me anyway you want to look at me and you can have that facial expression…with some of you I can look at your countenance and I know that you don’t agree with me but I will not apologise and stop preaching it. I’ll preach it. Your countenance [doesn’t] move me at all. You don’t know where I’ve come from. Please give me a break. You don’t have to agree with me. It is my opinion and I’m entitled to it’, he fired back at his alleged critics mottled among the congregation.
?According to him, non-achievers and under-achievers are not qualified to criticise him.
‘…Until you’ve been where I am and you’ve done better than I, you are not qualified to criticise me so don’t overstep your boundaries’, he warned his critics.
But is the Bible Qualified to Criticise the Archbishop? Why does a man who preaches from the Bible publicly display such character? Does the Bible not say in James 1:19-20
‘….Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.’?
One would expect a bishop who has achieved so much to by humbled by what God has helped him to achieve, but instead for Williams to be humbled by his blessings he began to brag,
‘Before you can sit down there and try to subject me to your logic and to your philosophy, ask yourself, what have you accomplished in life? I have 300 people on my payroll that I pay every month with IRS, SSNIT and other benefits just in this auditorium alone apart from other places; I oversee over 2,500 churches affiliated with Action Churches that are under my command. You, you haven’t accomplished anything. Just because you’ve been to some school, you can sit down there and you think you have the right to criticise somebody…please give me a break’, Archbishop Duncan-Williams thundered.
This seems to be very arrogant talk for someone who oversees so many churches. You would think that someone who claims to be a man of God would listen to Hannah of the Bible who said in 1 Samuel 2:3
“Talk no more so very proudly; Let no arrogance come from your mouth, For the LORD is the God of knowledge; And by Him actions are weighed.”
Maybe if he was imitating Jesus Christ instead of Nelson Mandela he would have listened to the Words of wisdom spoke by Jesus in Matthew 23:12
“And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
But Archbishop Duncan-Williams continued to exalt himself as he proudly proclaimed,
’That’s the problem in society. Everybody thinks they can speak; I’ve been to school so I can read and write so I can just talk so you talk. Talk is cheap. Do something with your life. Affect people. Every day I feed over 220 drug addicts including 160 orphans, I feed them three times a day and I never complain. Over 250 people on scholarship roll and we pay scholarships every term without complain…and I carry all those responsibilities on my shoulders. And you, you don’t even have a child. You are not even married. You haven’t even paid the school fees of one child before and you have the audacity to contend with horsemen when you can’t even fight with footmen’.
Why is Duncan boasting of his charitable deeds to have glory before men? Did not Jesus Christ say in Matthew 6:2
“Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men…”?
Duncan Williams says he wants to live and die like Nelson Mandela, but would even Nelson Mandela say such things?
The Author Beatrice can be reached at beatrice.mahlonga@gmail.com
