The General Overseer of the Foursquare Gospel Church, Reverend Felix
Meduoye, has cleared the air on the misconception levied against Men of
God over their heavy security.
Speaking with Tribune, he said “Well, to start with, security, I
believe we all know, is in the hands of God. The Bible says it very
clearly that “except” The Lord himself keeps the city, the watchmen
labour in vain.” Now, we also know that experience has a way of
teaching people some things in life. Pastors are human beings; they
have blood running in their veins. And when they hear the things that
happen and they also see the things that happen, especially in some
parts of the country (not all), they may take precautions. I travel to
some parts of the country and I see that on getting there, they have
prepared policemen to take us round, because of what they know about the
place.
This is not my making; I don’t have them here. I’m not saying I
can’t have them, alright? That should be very clear.
Even in the days when the Bible was written, there were walled cities
and cities without walls. Why did the people make the wall? They made
the wall to at least ward off intruders. So, I think that the reason
some people feel there is a need to have security is that perhaps in
their own locality, the level of kidnappng and all of that is high.
Well, God will protect; but supposing you have means to also protect
yourself, what is wrong with that? It is like when we talk of people
taking drugs for healing. God heals, alright, but we know that we still
go to hospitals, we still ask doctors to treat us. But as we are getting
the treatment, I think what a Christian will do is to first of all ask
for healing from God. And the doctors who are Christians or godly enough
know that they care but it is God who heals. So also, I would say on
this issue of security that, yes, we do make sure that we lock the door
of our cars when we are moving around.”
On the issue of pastors making the list of the richest men in the
world, he said “I don’t know whether there are pastors who fall into
that category of the richest men on earth. But I would also think that
there are many rich pastors. Am I saying that is a good thing? Not
necessarily. I’m not also saying that it is the wrong thing. But I want
to put it this way: God does bless people. Abraham was a man who was
highly blessed. God gave Abraham gold and silver. Abraham had herdsmen
and, as a matter of fact, over 300 servants in his house. And there are
other people like that: Solomon was very wealthy. Well, we believe it
that God does bless people. Now if somebody is a pastor and God blesses
his members, I would imagine that he would also be blessed. That is what
I think is happening.
But then we can query a situation where everybody in the church is a
poor person and the man is building skyscrappers and buying aeroplanes.
One would begin to ask why. Why is everybody around you poor and you
are rich? But where you have people who are well to do and the pastor is
just riding the same car like his people, I see nothing bad in that
because it is the people giving to him.”