It is always the case that religious people will always go against the dictates of the holy books of the world’s leading monotheistic religions, the Bible and Quran.
As a very religious but very corrupt people, Sierra Leoneans and our leaders do not fully grasp the deeper things of the Bible or Quran but go as far as using their very sacred words in very unholy and irreligious ways. Key among them is breaching or violating oaths without considering the Biblical promises God made when dealing with oaths.
In Deuteronomy 23: 21 the King James Version of the Bible said; “When thou shalt vow a vow unto the LORD thy God, thou shalt not slack to pay it: for the LORD thy God will surely require it of thee; and it would be sin in thee..”
For failing to keep God’s words, we sin, something that God would require we pay for.
The renowned Mufti Taqi Usmani expounding on the Quran said; “Allah does not hold you accountable for your laghw (ineffectual) oaths, but He does hold you accountable for the oath with which you have bound yourself…take care of your oath…”
Based on how things are going in the country, it is high time that we as a people start considering how our leaders’ guilt before the Lord God is currently affecting us and our country as God is engaged in a serious fight against our leaders.
When our leaders, including the president, his cabinet, MPs, PCs, and heads of departments and agencies, win or are appointed into office, they swear oaths on the Bible, for Christians, and the Quran, for Muslims that they will uphold and defend the constitution including speaking the truth.
As men and women chosen by us to represent our interests, they act and speak on our behalf. It follows that as representatives for our good based on their actions; consequently, they are also there for our evil, also based on their very actions.
God takes oaths very seriously. As God is the truth, he requires that all men speak the truth. As a matter of fact, God wishes that no man swears an oath to him; he’d rather we stop making oaths to him, as true to his word he will require it of us when we fail to keep it, making it a sin.
When our leaders make oaths before God and then turn around when they have settled into their seats and forget their oaths, they fail to realise that oaths to God taken on his holy books anywhere come with a price on you, your family, your generations unborn, and we the people you represent.
God is a God of continuity that punishes the sins of the wicked up to his fourth generation. Since a modern generation is 29 years, God will collect debt for sins against him by someone up to 116 years after that person’s death, although God does not have to wait that long to act.
Forgetting their oaths sworn to God, upon getting to office they and their promises to the populace including the Bible and Quran all go out the window. These men and women go on to lie, cheat and steal, and threaten and assault anyone that gets in their way. Every week without fail there is some revelation about their corrupt practices that continue to taint and embarrass us locally and internationally.
But a man’s hands are too short to box with God. And since God has to uphold the integrity of his holy writs, some of these people and their families start experiencing God’s vengeance while they are in office. Unfortunately for us, we and their families also suffer God’s wrath.
Although some feel God’s wrath during their tenures, most feel the pinch when they have either been sacked or voted out of office. We have heard of the horrible fate that met a former leader and his entire family of very promising children. Sadly they are all no more.
But we are a people that refuse to learn as the men and women that come after the abovementioned lot not only continue in their actions but go as far as perfecting them in an attempt to adapt with the times.
Today our country is so caught up on hardships that we cannot truly say God is with us. As a matter of fact God left here a very long time ago. Our failure to keep oaths is one of our biggest sins in Sierra Leone. Learning well from our leaders who are notorious promise breakers, we borrow from and lend to each other only to turn around and not repay or receive what’s due us from the debtor.
Looking at where we are today as a people, the Lord is indeed fulfilling his word based on our leaders’ failure to be obedient oath keepers; we are cursed in the city and cursed in the country; we have the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world as the fruit of our wombs are cursed; we have a very fertile land but “the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks” are under a curse.
We are a confused lot that have come to utter ruin among the league of nations; simple curable diseases ravage us; foreigners come to our country and make it while we suffer; our young men and women only have eyes for overseas as there is nothing here that they’d want to stay for, etc, etc.
We are using this space to remind our leaders to remember their promises to God made on our behalf and reform their ways before something horrible happens to this country courtesy of the Promise Keeper of His Holy Word.