Things fall apart

Joel’s conversion was an unanticipated thing to many. Those who had known him since the days of his boyhood could not believe that such a drunkard, a drug abuser and an armed robber would ever stop all those evil things. His name was constantly synonymous with evil.

He had been to rehabilitation centres many times but it was as if the correctional facilities had only shaped him into a worse citizen. He had become a hardcore criminal who did not care about human life.

He blandly told those who attempted to bring him into the right lane that if everyone in the world was doing what everyone else was doing, then the world would be a very dull place to live in.

But now he proclaimed with total vigour that he had bidden farewell to his ugly past. He made it clear that he was now the changed Paul who had carried the cross of Christ ready to follow him.

“Brothers and sisters, in every human being’s life, there is a turning point. What matters most is to embrace it,” Joel was preaching at the market square one calm evening.

He had entered into a deep ministry of preaching the word of God and slowly started believing that his church’s doctrines were archaic and that they did not conform to the changes of time. Then, he abandoned the church and founded his own church which he named Salvation Day Church and he was its pastor.

The church was growing at a rate of knots. Many people left their churches to join this new church because of Joel’s moving testimonies. They were the kind of testimonies that moved even hearts that were hard like flint.

It even expanded to other distant areas and recorded as one of the fastest growing churches in the country.

During one Festive Season, Pastor Joel targeted those who spent their times at beer drinking places. Winning to the love of God as many drunkards as possible would be a great testimony, he assured himself.

His first destination was Spot 16 Club, a beer drinking joint situated at Mauni Trading Centre. At the beer-drinking place, he found so many people who had been his close friends during what he called his time of ignorance.

When his former booze mates saw him, they were terribly shocked. News had reached them that their colleague had received the good news of salvation and that he was a transformed man now.

One of the drunkards looked at Joel and said to him: “What does a man of God seek in the midst of sinners?” And his colleagues shrieked with laughter.

“Maybe God has betrayed him,” another one said.

Pastor Joel laughed noiselessly. Looking at the many people who were in the pub, both men and prostitutes, he walked towards them and stopped in their midst.

“Children of God, I have come here to preach the good message from God. Today you can receive this good news and be baptized,” he said and paused.

He read many verses from the Bible and condemned beer drinking in the uttermost way possible. “What shall a man gain by finding all the pleasure in this world while losing his life? Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything shall be added unto you,” he preached.

He went forward towards the counter and picked three bottles of beer. He feigned drunkenness and asked the people in the pub what they gained by being in the state that he was demonstrating.

Hell broke loose the following Sunday. As Pastor Joel was standing behind the pulpit preaching, the drunkards to whom he had preached the good message of salvation stormed the church with bottles of beer in their hands.

The pastor stopped in mid-air as the drunken people invaded the church with their reek of beer and cigarettes. One of the drunkards was carrying a DVD player and another had a television screen. The two walked deftly towards the platform and connected the equipment to an electric socket. All the people in the church were just watching with both amazement and shock.

“People of God, this is high time you knew the truth which has to set you free. Your pastor is a trickster. He uses your hard-earned money to drink beer and here you are listening to his message,” one of the drunken men said.

Pastor Joel just smiled. He believed that it was the entire devil’s work and he told himself that no one in the church would believe those sons of the devil. Then the DVD began to play and everyone’s focus was at the screen.

The congregants were shocked to see their pastor staggering to and fro while holding bottles of beer in one hand with the Bible in another. That was the only part which was shown and one after another, people began to walk out of the church building.

Pastor Joel tried to make an explanation but all in vain. Untold confusion was finally loosed upon all the 28 branches of the Salvation Day Church. News about what had happened at the headquarters of the church was disseminating like wildfire and people could have trust in Pastor Joel no more. And all the 28 flocks scattered to the four winds.