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Knighted Again – Ch.9 | KT OLLA

NILE chose to go to church for the last time and say goodbye to everything church.

And so that quiet weekday, the 15-year-old went to the evening fellowship but didn’t sit with the band. He simply sat at the backside of church.

That day it was his father who preached. His short sermon was titled, “Adam’s Babel”.

He began. ‘People of God, why do you think that all societies of mankind craft idols? Craft the things that they could see as god?

‘Well, they always say these things: that it’s in an effort to reach the Almighty. That anyone looking for Him tries ways.

‘Yes, that is what the scholars of Athens said, too. Because they made big efforts to find God.

‘It was in the first century AD when a missionary like Paul met this people. Yet this is the selfsame thing I hear among modern folks!’

He asked his lay reader, a woman evangelist, to read the scripture.

She read the Book of Acts XVII. 18, 22 & 23.

Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, ‘What does this babbler want to say?’ Others said, ‘He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,’ because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection.

Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, ‘Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious;

for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.

The  minister stopped the reader there and said, ‘Now this was back in the age of Greek and Roman philosophers when people try to know great matters.

‘But despite the effort of these intelligent people, they arrived at a conclusion that the God they searched for is unknown. That mortals like them can’t find Him.

‘You know, today too many folks share the thought of the Athenians! Well, they’ve taken “the Unknown” as non-existent. They’ve taken “the Unseen” as a lie.

‘They say, “If we searched Him this much and we can’t still find Him, then maybe He doesn’t exist!”

‘But all of these are a result of futile efforts to find God!

‘So now you’re asking: Is trying to find God a wrong idea then? Is looking for the Most High something wrong?’

His members settled back to think on his questions. His youngest son also wasn’t left out of the thought.

Reverend Wadibe picked up.

‘People of God, the scripture is filled with passages that tells us to seek the Lord and we will find Him.

‘For instance, God Almighty says that those who seek Him early will find Him.

‘Again, He says in another place that we should seek the Lord while He may be found.

‘So we could possibly say Athenians weren’t so wrong to want to find God.

‘Now the question is, Why then did they fail? What makes their chase to find the Lord end futile?

‘What makes it wrong that man should search God?’

The small congregation sat up in their seats. They were asking the same questions the preacher asked. So they wanted to learn more.

The evangelist led his curious listeners to the passage in the Bible.

It was the 26th and 27th verses of the same chapter. His lay reader went over the passage.

He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,

So that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.

Now Wadibe turned to the congregants.

‘The scripture tells us to seek the Lord. We are to seek because this kind of quest comes from the heart.

‘You wonder what makes seeking God different from searching?

‘Well, you search for things when the quest is merely physical. When the chase after it is marked by your sweat – by your own toiling.

‘So when a searcher finds their lost item, we credit their success to their own efforts.

‘The item doesn’t find the searcher, so we cannot praise it. But we laud a searcher who sweats to find things.

‘Yet how can we search out the Almighty? How can we hope to find Him by human means and effort?

‘How can we think we’d be lauded for being the one to catch His eyes – when it is in our effort we boast?

‘Aren’t we plying the path of Babel? That path called Rebellion?’

Some quiet sighs floated across the pews.

‘We must know’, resumed Wadibe, ‘that this God we’re trying to search is the Most High whom no eye has seen...

‘And yet we boast that our eye service can find Him!

‘We must know He formed our world, plus a hundred billion wonders...

‘How then can you boast in your sweat, Children of Adam?’

He went fiercer.

‘Tell me now—can an ant be said to find a person by search?

‘Isn’t it the other way round? That we find the insect by searching it?

‘Likewise it is God who finds us by search! Like he found Adam and Eve when they fell!’

Nile sat there gripped by the words. He was listening attentively, as everyone else. But the words seemed strange and he wanted more.

So right then, the evangelist hit the nail.

‘Now you ask, what then should man do? What must Adam do after the Fall to find God?

‘Well, there’s better news. Why, because our ladders can only break, yet God has made the way!’

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