For most part of this year, our politicians have pre-occupied themselves in thought, speeches and actions with the year of the Lord 2027. I am using the phrase year of the Lord reluctantly. Indeed, what I should say is, the year of the politicians, their foot soldiers and legions of hangers-on.
When 2027 is mentioned, the mind races in no other direction than politicians, politics, mounting of soapbox, rowdiness and elections. The fixation and the attendant calculations, strategizing towards the magic year at the moment is such that you would think there is no gulf between now, 2025, and 2027.
You are made to think 2026 does not exist. Come December, 2025, all you need do is to take a giant stride and you find yourself in 2027. In most places, governance has literally gone into a coma!
While the politicians are doing what they know how to do best, some others who are sensitive watch with bated breath the disconnect and the disjointedness that our world has become. In their ruminations, in contemplation in their closets, they wonder: Wither our world! War here, disaster there, violence ravaging here, landslide wiping out a whole community there.
Reuters report says a massive landslide wiped out a whole community in Sudan. That was on Sunday night; the village of Tarseen in Jabal Marra Mountains in Western Sudan’s Darfur region was buried beneath mud and rocks. Aljazeera put casualty figure at more than 1,000. UN said on Wednesday that it was sending assistance to those who could still be found alive.
Last week, earthquake ravaged Afghanistan, claiming 600 lives. Before that, earthquakes measuring M6.8 hit Severo-Kuril’sk, Russia, a country locked in an intractable war with Ukraine, about the same time with the earth rupturing in Indonesia, and coincidentally also measuring 6.8 in magnitude.
Many are wont to say that horrifying as these natural disasters are, there is nothing new under the sun any longer. Anyone who follows the intensification and acceleration of events keenly, however, would know there is a lot new in the afflictions that assail the world in these times.
There are tribulations and sudden deaths. We are told in higher knowledge available on earth today: ‘Everything is boiling up in every country under the pressure of the Light. Every kind of tribulation is increasing to the point of despair until finally nothing remains but hopelessness’.
In the last eight months alone, Nigeria has lost 15 celebrated Nollywood actors and actresses. Between 2010 and 2024, no fewer than 100 of them passed away. In the last three weeks of the just-ended August, five famous artistes left. They were Olu Michael; Captain Hosa Okunbo; Rich Oganiru, Christian Udogu and one simply called Rachael. It is not only in the entertainment community that the country saw the demise of some of her stars.
Among prominent citizens who passed away during the year were Chief Ayo Adebanjo; Dr. Doyin Okupe, politician and medical practitioner; and between last month and now, Senator Kotangora; former Inspector-General of Police and Chairman, Police Service Commission, Dr. Solomon Arase; Retired Federal High Court Chief Judge, Daniel Abutu; and Federal Capital Territory Head of Service, Mrs. Grace Adayilo.
Of course, the old will pass on, and when they do, it is celebration. What perplexes and is sobering is when the youths begin to go away as is witnessed in the community of artistes populated mainly by them. Yes, since no one is living on earth for the first or even second time, those who are youths may, in fact, be old souls rounding off their time. We won’t know how much time they had left to complete their sojourn on earth. There is a troubling long roll call of them all the same to sense there is more to the spate and suddenness of the exits.
Those who departed included Tom Njemanze, Nkechi Nweje, Moji Olaiya, Jumoke Aderounmu, Nelson Gold; Chijioke Ike; Stephen Monalisa; Tolani Akintunde; Olaoluwa Dere Lawal; Chinedu Bernard; Pat Ugwu; Olamide David; Rotimi Raji; Kodak and Mohbad to name just a few.
With such in their prime and whose lives hold much promise, the obituary announcement would read: ‘With deep sense of loss, the family of A and B wishes to announce the passing away of…’. Some could say, ‘O death, where is thy sting!” or “The enemies have done their worst!” For those who leave at a ripe old age, the obituary announcement often proceeds with: ‘The family of WYZ regretfully announces the death of their husband, father, grandfather, uncle and father-in-law which sad event occurred on so, so date’. For that class of the departed who cross the 70-year bridge before departing, are reserved the following words: ‘With gratitude for a life well spent…’ To give clear and concise expression to their thoughts, some summon the Scriptures to their side: ‘As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness, I will be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness’.
Overflowing love is exhibited in immemoriam: ’25 years in mind; today and always’; “In most cherished and affectionate memory of our dearly beloved …’; ‘In evergreen and affectionate memory…’ In the writing of epitaphs. All prose and verse and their uniqueness are brought into play. In an age love letters are forlorn, indeed completely out of fashion, the age there is a dearth of poets, in an age the few poets there are preoccupy themselves with power struggle and the economy, and of course the challenge of the digital age against the print.
There is not much of verse that leads you into the woods, that turn our gaze to behold the stars and the moon; to see the beauty of Nature; the verse that leads to the rivers, to water falls, the mountains, the summit or the slopes; the poems to get us to behold flowers with roseate hue and breathe in its sweetness and fragrance and we see ourselves as part and parcel of Nature. The epitaphs in cemeteries sometimes remind us of our humanity.
The spate of deaths and their suddenness of these times come with sting in the tail for mankind to recognize the Cosmic Turning-Point and what it portends; the blowing of Trumpets in the events these times throw up in intensification and acceleration: The judgment of the Light is not nigh, but is here.
The purification is expressed in the frequency of earth-quakes, the devastation of hurricanes, tornados and landslides; climate change and its accompaniment of excessive heat or cold depending on the hemisphere at a particular time. There is also flooding that increases in magnitude and velocity every year. There is awakening of all that is dead in man to face judgment such that there is the animation of dross leading to man’s inhumanity to man as a product of the intensification. There is also goodness, depending of what has lain buried in each person. And more!
In the revelation of these times, the Age of the Holy Spirit, the Bringer of the unique Work, In the Light of Truth, the Grail Message, Abd-ru-shin, states: ‘This earth and the whole world is now being purified’. He adds: ‘The Divine Power of the Light now strikes like lightening into all threads’.
I am informed that in the time of old, so precious were obituary notices that they formed part of the will of the departed that an attorney was duly notified to keep an eye on the portion and ensure prompt publication. The obituary should include such clauses as ‘which sad event took place in London after a brief illness’.
What is death? This is a question which has perplexed mankind for millennia. It often sends cold shivers down the spine of many a man for what is regarded as its suddenness, definitiveness and finality. A man does not have to be manifestly ill before he is called away and be seen in the family or community no more. Doctors are later to say he died of cardiac arrest.
Nothing yet known to man has thrown him into such helplessness and resignation as death has. It is not only to the ranks of public figures, eminent people, famous artistes or scholars, the nobility and the powerful that death throws its punches. Children die; it has been known that a child could die after a few moments it was born. Children born in the morning have been known to have died in the evening. No parliament nor emperor has successfully legislated against death, to banish it from his territory.
So much myths have been woven around death. In the process, its obscurity has only increased. Death, however, strikes so much terror in the hearts of the majority of mankind to the extent that many avoid funeral processions and cemeteries and many wear dark glasses if they must participate in the procession or be present at the grave side. Many suppress any thought of death, unable to bear the inevitability that stares all in the face day after day, hour after hour and second after second. There is also the fear of where the path of a person leads him after death.
The grief is aggravated when the closeness of relationship between the departed and the bereaved is brought back to memory, how his companionship and valued advice or helpfulness will be missed, or when the reality of final separation dawns on relations. The primary consideration is hardly for concern of where the departed heads for but in most cases the material wellbeing of the bereaved. Does he head for the dark regions (hell) or to the light spheres of joy and happiness?
What then again is death? A person is said to have died when he is motionless and speechless brought about by the absence of his animating core. His relations can no longer hear him or get him to see them as they have been accustomed. He can no longer participate in their activities and his body cannot move of its own. He can no longer protect himself from harm, nor can he be seen to inflict harm on others. Death does occur through illness—brief or protracted—accidents, in the air, on the road or in the sea; through cardiac arrest, out of hypertension, fear or exhaustion.
Death occurs through old age. Some could be shot deliberately or in error. It is well known that children who have not suffered from any of the foregoing also die. Some depart minutes after they were born, even before their mothers returned from the washroom.
Death will cease to be a riddle only when man has the right knowledge of who he is. All the myths and misgivings about it are borne out of ignorance. Man is more than flesh and blood. We come to the recognition of this in our sayings. When a person dies, it is announced that his remains will be buried on a certain day. It is clear that it is what remains of him that will be buried. The other part will not be buried. It is also either that it is only his remains which have died and the other part is not dead, otherwise it should be available for burial as well, or it is dead but cannot be found because it is invisible.
However, if we were to go by the expression of the bereaved, it is only the remains which are dead, hence motionless; the man himself though not visible to the physical eyes, is not dead. Hit by the pangs of pain, relations have been heard asking the departed ‘Why do you do this to us? You did not give us notice’. The word ‘departed’ itself connotes that someone other than the remains has exited.
In traditional societies, the departed man is said to be summoned to throw light on a disputed property. Kings are said to be warned on their departure against what not to eat in the beyond. In the days of old, many had buried by their sides wives and servants believed would continue to minister onto the kings in the beyond.
Masquerades are regarded as the departed who have come visiting their relations. The relations dance round the village or town in exceeding joy and masquerade handlers jump fence in frenzy at the presence of the august visitor. But to drive home the point that the departed cannot be seen, there are veils over them which then become known as masquerades. In all the cases, the remains are buried.
The error as to details are not under consideration but the recognition that there is man and there are his remains. Relations also ask the departed to ‘sleep in perfect sleep’. It is the living that can sleep not the dead. The doctor emerges from the theatre and announces mournfully: ‘We have lost him’! Yet the body lies on the bed. Whom have they lost? It must be something else other than the body.
Sometimes statements are made to this effect: Whose body? My body. That is a body belonging to me. Who is me is then the logical question. The remains are the physical body. One of the commonest expressions when a person dies is, he has passed on. That is an entity has crossed the border line to somewhere else. But about who the man is many a man has not gained clarity.
Is he a soul or is he a spirit? Before the questions are answered, having established, even if partially for now that there is an entity beyond the body, it will be helpful to establish that there is pre- existence before birth on earth. If it were not so, how come we talk of a ‘sent leader’? A good leader with uncommon standards and achievements is often said to have been sent by the Creator. Where was he when he was sent? In the rural communities, an expectant mother is sometimes told by clairvoyants who the child she is carrying is, that he will bring peace and prosperity and joy to his people. The details of the séance are not the point but the knowledge of pre-existence beyond earthly life. Here is a child that is unknown to the mother, father, neighbours or the community as a whole.
Where did it get its testimonial from that the seer has read to its parents? In the days of old, there were promises of prophets and some other leaders who were coming, to be born among mankind. From where were they coming? Who was sending them?
Examples abound of properly recorded cases which incontrovertibly, if considered deeply and objectively, prove pre-existence. We can talk about John the Baptist of whom it was written: There was a man sent from the Creator whose name was John. Since the Creator does not live in this world, it follows that John must have been sent from a sphere other than this earth. The same point can be made for Elijah and Jeremiah who was reported as saying while narrating his appointment as a prophet: ‘Now the word of the Lord came to me saying ‘Before I formed thee in thy mother’s womb I knew thee, and before thou art consecrated and I appointed thee as a prophet to the nations’.
And of course, about the Lord Himself, it was prophesied that He would come to save His people from their sins. And of the great Prophet of the Most High, Mohammed, it was written: ‘Verily, we have sent to you a Messenger, who is a witness over you’.
Two points have been made which should shed light on the subject at hand—death. These are that there is pre-existence and there is life after the so-called death, that is there is life after life since it has now been established that man does not die.
What is generally regarded as death is the passing of a man from one plane of existence to the other. He merely discards the body at the point of passing on. The body, it can now be seen, is a dress, a vital and indispensable one at that. This can be likened to a man who is travelling down to Nigeria from the artic region. He will have to remove his over-coat because he will not need it in Sokoto.
He may even need to remove his vest and coat on reaching Yola and will still be regarded as properly dressed. But when returning to the cold region, he will put these dresses back on his body to match the demands of the weather back in his native land.
Man is a traveller whose native home is spiritual realm more universally referred to as Paradise. But who is man himself? Man is a spirit, a native of the Spiritual realm, but his body is a native of this earth. ‘Dust thou art and to dust thou shall return’, we hear this said by the graveside during interment. He left home, Paradise, to be a sojourner on earth, and better put, to be a student in the school that the earth is. He can graduate and get certificated only after he has passed his examinations. At any session he fails a class he repeats the class (reincarnation) and resits his papers.
If he has passed there is no point his having to resit any examination. He returns home with the certification that he can be trusted with responsibilities; he will cause no harm to co- inhabitants and will develop his environment and the areas of activities. In the course of studies, however, as he moves from one class to another, he is delivered into the hands of different teachers. Each of the teachers builds on what his predecessors have taught his student.
There is no true and genuine teacher who will tell his student to disregard what his predecessors have taught him. And what he may have learnt from the predecessors is his if he brings it to life in his spirit, or put differently, if he experiences it.
In the course of his development in the material world man has been availed teachings of how he should develop, that is how he should think, speak and act—by many teachers. Regrettably, however, the teachings were turned into religion no sooner the teachers departed. The teachings were also distorted. Consequently, dissension, struggle for position, hate, violence, and chaos ensued.
Retrogression set in, so did decay. The state of man is worse today than it was thousands of years ago. The students are obstinate, they have been failing their examinations and have brought about devastation to the school property, have broken doors and windows. There is no regard for the rules and regulations. It is ugliness everywhere.
The time of forbearance is over; the Proprietor has set in motion machinery to cleanse and repossess his school. Hence the running Helter skelter to escape the Holy Wrath of the Proprietor, which finds expression in the spate and mostly the suddenness of deaths in the world, including Nigeria.
