The Sunday Mail
Dr Augustine Deke
Most conflicts from across the world have a religious tone. Indeed, religious cults are a recipe for disaster and therefore Government should be on the look-out for them to avoid religious based civil unrest. Most cults draw their inspiration from their respective leaders due to a number of reasons.
What the prophet says is taken by the subjects without any questioning. Uncritical thinking, manipulation and brain washing makes the subjects gullible.
Divination is a common practice in cults and modern prophetic movements. The word divination comes from the Latin divinare, meaning “to foresee” or “to be inspired by a god.”
To practice divination is to uncover hidden knowledge by supernatural means. It is associated with the occult and involves fortune-telling or soothsaying, as it used to be called.
From ancient times, people have used divination to gain knowledge of the future or as a way of making money. Identification of sources of the problems has become the norm in most cults. Some diviners charge for their service. This evil practice dates back to the Old Testament.
The elders of Moab and Midian left, taking with them the fee for divination. When they came to Balaam, they told him what Balak had said. “Spend the night here,” Balaam said to them, “and I will bring you back the answer the Lord gives me.” So the Moabite princes stayed with him. (Num 22:7-8).
Divination can be seen as a systematic method with which to organise what appear to be disjointed, random facets of existence such that they provide insight into the problem at hand.
Divination has a more formal or ritualistic element than fortune-telling and often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in African traditions.
Sorcery, prophecy and idolatry(Deut 27:15).
One of the major trademarks of prophets and cults in the 21st century is the high usage of a combination of sorcery and fortune telling or soothsaying.
The major trademarks in deliverance services include chronomancy, that is the determination of lucky and unlucky days by the prophet.
It also includes chairvoyance, the spiritual vision or inner sight of a person’s life. Objects ranging from anointed water, anointed clothes, anointed towels, anointed bangles, anointed grass, anointed rings, anointed portraits of the prophets, talismen and anointed oils, among many other objects, are now common in religion.
Lithomancy is the use of stones or gems for protection and luck.
Necromancy entails contacting the dead or channelling through familiar spirits or souls of the dead.
Numerology applies to the use of numbers to speak into a person’s life.
Onomancy is the identification of problems through names.
Biblically, use of objects also falls under sorcery and soothsaying is common during sorcery. Enticing words of comfort and instilling fear are common with soothsayers as they dispense their ‘healing’ products.
The term soothsayer comes from an ancient word that means, “to soothe” or comfort. It is associated with occult. God refers to the practice as “divination”, which is condemned by the Bible.
Soothsaying also applies to those in church who speak false messages on behalf of God. It is the spiritual counterfeit of real prophecy.
It’s a counterfeit because it “sounds” like a message from God.
Threat to national security
Events from around the world show that once ignited, religious strife tends to go on and on. Take for example the intractable inter-religious wars between the Jews and Muslims in Northern Ireland, the Christians in Palestine, the Hindus and Muslims in South Asia.
Attempts to restore peace in the affected is failing because there is no understanding of the dynamics of religious conflict.
The extremist elements are always invoking past injustices, imagined or real, at the expense of development and social security.
By nature, sects are protest movements.
In Africa, most sects have emerged due to the need for independence from foreign control of religious convictions. Most sects want their worship to have a combination of Christianity and African religion.
Cults without strong African traditional links have devoted themselves to prophecy and using various items.
However, both groups have strong allegiance to the prophet.
Now if politics is added to the dynamics of such movements, they becomes a threat to national security because cults are driven by supernatural revelations, rather than logic.
A case study of East and Central Africa shows that most religious cults have become a problem to security. Most of them have taken revolutionary overtones and are difficult to control.
The governments of Kenya and Uganda fear that religious sects and cults will ultimately challenge their authority, especially since some have already taken on revolutionary overtones.
In the 1980s, one group, the Holy Spirit Movement, proclaimed war against the Ugandan government. Its leader, Alice Lakwana, told her followers to protect themselves against bullets by smearing cooking oil on their skin, and declared that stones or bottles thrown at government troops would turn into hand grenades.
Thousands of her followers were mowed down by soldiers as they marched in the country’s capital. When Lakwana fled to Kenya, Joseph Kony, another spiritual leader who sometimes wears women’s clothing and claims to speak directly to God, took over, renaming the group the Lord’s Resistance Army.
The group has abducted more than 10 000 children in an ongoing war with the government. The Lord’s Resistance Army is a menace in central African countries.
When a cult leader speaks, their instructions are followed strictly. When the leader dies, they take on new forms of operation under a new spiritual leader.
Fanatism and intolerance reigns supreme in sects.
Dr Augustine Deke teaches Religion and Politics, World Religions and African Traditional Religion at Zimbabwe Theological Seminary in Gweru, an Associate college of Great Zimbabwe University. E-mail feedback to [email protected] or [email protected].
