In view of the fact that brevity is the soul of wit we shall be brief and would not be lured into your circumlocution. You seem to have been amazed that people who believe in God through Jesus Christ and Mohamed can have a sense of consternation that unbelievers can be included in an exercise to thank God or Allah for his mercies enduring forever .It is a pity that you a so-called believer in God and man’s approach to him through Jesus Christ or Mary ( for Catholics)can endorse ancestors as a means of approaching God. This issue is highly dialectical and cannot be concluded in a hurry .
You know as we do that there are innumerable religions when religion is taken to mean the worship and belief of a God or gods. It is in this vein that the recognition of religion comes in by developed and developing states .It is in the same way that universities are recognized which is why when advertisements are made for jobs candidates are advised to have their qualifications from recognized universities .This is simply because there are universities that cannot be recognized by the state. According to your unchristian logic the government should have called forth not only practitioners of African Traditional Religion but also Hindus ,Buddhists ,Taoists and Confucians etc to also offer prayers because they are also religions .
For the benefit of readers angels are mentioned 400 times in the Bible and their ranks include seraphs and cherubs . The Greek and Hebrew words translated ‘’angel’’ in the Bible both mean ‘’messenger‘’.Angels can therefore communicate with one another and they have in the past communicated with humans .The angels are not former humans who lived on earth .Jehovah created these spirit beings long before the creation of man .Job 38:4-7.
‘’Notice that Satan is said to be misleading the entire inhabited earth’’.He misleads people like you by promoting religious lies to turn them away from God and his word. One such lie is that at death everyone passes on to the spirit realm. There are many variations of this idea .For example in Africa many believe that at death people pass on to a spirit world inhabited by their ancestors .This we believe is the belief you also share judging from your arguments .The teachings of purgatory and hell are based on the idea that a person goes on living after death .
The belief that spirits of the dead return to minister to the living has prepared the way for modern spiritualism contrary to Christianity. If the dead are privileged with knowledge far exceeding what they possessed before why should they not return to earth and instruct the living?
If spirits of the dead hover about their friends on earth why not communicate with them? That’s your theology or non-theology.Fallen angels appear as messengers from the spirit world.
‘’What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons ‘’ 1 Corinthians 19-20 ‘’Do not turn to mediums or wizards ; do not seek them out to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God’’ Your statement that ‘’ Libation is poured by man ultimately to the Almighty God but through the intermediation of Ancestors ‘’is an elaboration of the Oxford English Dictionary meaning of ‘’a drink poured as an offering to a god’’.In your definition you have striven unduly to link libation to Christianity to suit your superstitious beliefs .
What we were saying in that editorial is that everyone has the right to practice the religion of his or her choice but that Sierra Leone has established religions which are God-centered and are not to be compromised with pagan religions like Njai in African Traditional Religion .Your advocacy on their behalf is therefore futile .In our first paragraph we stated, inter alia, that almost all citizens belong either to one of the two religions of Christian or Muslim with the operative word being ALMOST.This is in contra-distinction from your unsubstantiated statement that there is a large population of Sierra Leoneans who practice African Traditional Religion unless African Traditional Religion and the Spiritan Congregation (Holy Ghost Fathers) are interchangeable .
Your diatribe has succeeded in putting the Catholic Church in the news for the wrong reasons at a time when the church is steeped in a scandal in which 34 priests have resigned for Child secular abuse and when the Pope who is supposed to be infallible has admitted making mistakes. At first it appeared to be a public relations exercise on behalf of the central Catholic Church but it turned out to be the outpourings of an unrepentant necromancer.What you succeeded in doing also was to portray the Holy Ghost fathers as necromancers who do not believe in the mediation of Jesus Christ but their ancestors.
According to you we have opened a can of worms but we believe what you have done is to stir a hornets nest. If it comes to worms we are at the ready to multiply them any time.
Yours in ancestor worship
Editorial Board
Nota Bene: You would do well to publish the creed of the Holy Ghost fathers for the edification of our readers.