My name is Leke Alder. It’s a name given me by my father. The surname was a name given him by HIS father. That name, “Leke” is a piece of history, not of me but of my father. It is his perspective on my birth. The full name, Oluwaleke literally means “the Lord overcame.” It is a Yoruba word from the west coast of Africa. It is a narrative of the difficulty of my birth. It enunciates the brutal warfare between the forces of darkness and light as propounded in Christian theology. It’s actually my middle name. My first name is Samuel. Curiously I had adopted the name in response to my search for identity as a 16year old African. But both my middle and first names are two expressions of the same difficulty. In Shakespearean lore I was not born of a woman. I was born by caesarean section. It was a most difficult birth and for my mother it would be the first and the last. The name Oluwaleke is therefore a proclamation of victory. […]
There’s that mistaken belief heaven is a one-way ticket. Truth is, it’s not. Only hell is. In Christian theology hell is a one-way ticket. There’s no return flight from that dimension. But heaven is not a one-way ticket. The Bible says the righteous are coming back to earth after a relatively brief stay in heaven, albeit as citizens of a new earth: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.” Revelation 21:1-3 NLT. The passage suggests God will have a base on earth and domicile with mankind. He’ll live with humanity. […]
Jesus liked to provoke the politicians of his day, especially those pesky Pharisees and Sadducees. They were insufferable! They controlled the levers of power in Jewish society, but they were caught in contradictions. They were vicious with power and yet claimed religious piety. There was all that hypocrisy as well. Pharisees specialised in religious showmanship – finding the best camera angle to display piety on TV… Well, they didn’t have TV in those days but you get the point. They prayed on street corners to get extra view. They staged prayers! […]
It’s so easy to attend church on Sundays without giving a thought to the concept of church. What exactly is a church service? We can of course define church service as a worship session, but then we must ask the logical question, why do we worship God? An answer like, “We worship God because we love God” won’t suffice. John 14:15 says, obedience is the metric of love of God not worship. […]
