As the clock ticks to the beginning of eternity

A review of Pastor W.F Kumuyi’s book, Countdown to the End-Revelation of the Great Tribulation and the Antichrist, by Banji Ojewale.

 

Critics have had more than a few plausible reasons to defy erroneous claims, predictions and so-termed prophetic declarations about the end time. Such efforts on eschatology, while correctly condemned as mercantilist, also do little to proselytise and establish an urgency and red alert to make the reader prepared and ready for the event of all human events since creation. Yet these — affirming the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and warning of the calamity awaiting the unrepentant at the return of the Son of God — ought to form the goal of all literature on the looming gloom.

Now, these writers, on the last days, ignore the core message; they opt for pseudo erudition by appending specific dates to the occurrences prognosticated in the Holy Bible. Thus thrust deep in a fruitless dates and numbers game, they fail the key duty of employing Jesus’ teaching about the future to evangelise.

After carefully reading Pastor William Folorunsho Kumuyi’s end time book, Countdown to the End-Revelation of the Great Tribulation and the Antichrist (Part One), I can vouch for the cleric’s fidelity to biblical facts. He perfectly understands that “no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”

Those who came before Kumuyi, have ignored this warning and littered their doctrine with presumptuous timelines detailing how and when the world would drop on us. First it was 1878. Later, they gave us 1881. Then the group’s caucus said 1914 would witness the end of the world. When that failed, they proposed 1918. 1925 followed with the world still standing. More projections for the landing of Armageddon were slated for 1975. They repeatedly brought on themselves avoidable ridicule.

Kumuyi’s book has escaped these flaws and pitfalls of a date-centered enterprise because he is conscious of the Lord’s wise counsel: “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.”

The result is an unadulterated book deriving its assertions exclusively from the Holy Bible. So in the entire 240-page presentation, you have only one identified secular reference (the ancient Greek historian Herodotus). All others are biblical allusions. There is little room for fictional extrapolation, storytelling or support from ex-biblical sources.

But there is plenty of space for evangelism, profuse expository teaching and illumination on abstruse end time symbolism found notably in the books of Daniel and Revelation. Which is why Kumuyi hardly leaves a chapter without an altar call, as it were.

From the first chapter, Pastor Kumuyi, the General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry, popularly called Deeper Life Bible Church, makes it clear that the book isn’t addressing conditions in the world predating the rapture. The countdown he speaks of means the events that would lead to the Great Tribulation under the antichrist, culminating in the cataclysmic Armageddon and the great age of the ages when Jesus’ glorious kingdom will come into effect with the abolition of death and sin. This first part of the volumes ends with satan’s antichrist and false prophets performing misleading miracles.

Pastor Kumuyi’s book contains expressive description of the destruction humanity would encounter during the Great Tribulation. He deploys graphic yet inoffensive prose to stir our imagination. The book is also able to address some controversies. Who will make Heaven? Is it only the 144,000 sealed Jews in Revelation 7? Who are the two angelic post-rapture evangelists in Revelation 11? Are they Moses and Elijah?

Kumuyi’s position differs from the popular view, notably that posited by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins in Assassins, one of their Left Behind fictional series on the end time.

Some readers would allege that Pastor Kumuyi seems to be contradicting himself with the claim on page 197 that there would be “no protection for Gentiles” during the Great Tribulation when earlier on, in pages 69 and 70, had declared that other believers among them Gentiles of the Great Tribulation period will be saved though they missed the rapture.

Countdown to the End impresses the reader with elegant simplicity of prose and inspiring takeaways in the form of memorable one-liners. Consider these: Satan leaves no effort untried in his determination to destroy Israel, and God leaves no miracle undone in His determination to protect and preserve His people. It is unscriptural to expect to serve God without persecution. If the persecutors are strong be stronger. The Devil is not a dummy, he has reasons for performing miracles.

One can’t read Countdown to the End-Revelation of the Great Tribulation and the Antichrist (Part One) and not be swayed by Pastor Kumuyi’s earnest preoccupation to enlist Bible eschatology to call man back to God. There are lessons for all: the sinner, backslider and the saved. We all need the Grace of God, he says, to run from the wrath to come: the first two need God’s Grace of pardon to be redeemed; the third also need His Grace to endure to the end.