Why silence is not always golden, By Ayo Akerele

The evil of silence is unparalleled. There is nowhere in the Bible where God’s people, either in the Old Testament or  the New Testament, are told to look away from evil. In all cases, God commands us to speak out, expose evil, or approach the evil doer to correct them in love. Keeping quiet when evil is raging will multiply the evil in scale and in scope. This is the root cause of the massive destruction of our nation by evil politicians. Why? They know that the people will not react.

A few days back, I was on a long call with a man of God in Nigeria, who chose to speak to me about a development he considered really troubling. According to him, he attended a Believers’ conference at a popular place in the South-West part of the country, and to his shock the host was teaching them how not to pray in the name of Jesus and still get answers to their prayers. The man called it a new revelation of son-ship. In effect, he said that, “we are all sons of God as much as Jesus and do not need the name of Jesus to do anything again”. The place was filled up, and at the end of the meeting, the host decided to impart the attendees with this unique grace of son-ship. I told him in plain language that the minister was working for Satan and is misleading the Church. But here is the problem: Nobody is talking about it. The church is silent. He is having a nice day.

He is now carrying along with him thousands of Nigerian youths, some of whom will also become pastors and further amplify his errors. Following this experience, another dear sister contacted me with something similar, and even much worse. According to her, a generation of ministers has emerged in her location who have very huge followership of thousands of youths, and are teaching that the Bible is flawed, incorrect and not to be trusted as the word of God. Now, how do you keep quiet in this kind of environment? How do you mind your own business when the church of Christ is being taken over by jackals and false teachers, all of whom are having huge followership? If you care about your children, the next generation and the entire body of Christ, and you don’t want to depopulate heaven for hell, you will rise up and raise your voice beyond the four walls of your room and beyond the four walls of your churches. 

One of the major plagues that is crippling the African society is that of silence. Ours is a culture deeply rooted in silence. We equate silence with dignity. We equate silence with divine approval and spirituality — even in the face of evil. Consequently, evil continues to grow in leaps and bounds in our society, and even much worse in the church. An average Christian in Africa is taught to look away from evil. Don’t talk about it. Leave it to God.

If you’re a man and woman of truth, keeping quiet and focusing on your work and ministry alone will spell doom in this season. God did not raise you up for your congregation alone, but for the entire body of Christ. It is this lack of understanding that is making a lot of us to keep quiet and adopt the approach, “face your ministry”. There will be no ministry when the body of Christ is taken over completely by jackals and hyenas. Eventually, some of the people you call your members will be influenced by these false ministers through the media and other platforms. If you can talk on the radio, speak out to the nation and the body of Christ. If you can write books, write plenty of these and speak out the truth you know for the sake of the next generation. If you can hold talk-shows and documentaries on TV, please do so, and teach the truth that you know. But do these in love.

One of the major plagues that is crippling the African society is that of silence. Ours is a culture deeply rooted in silence. We equate silence with dignity. We equate silence with divine approval and spirituality — even in the face of evil. Consequently, evil continues to grow in leaps and bounds in our society, and even much worse in the church. An average Christian in Africa is taught to look away from evil. Don’t talk about it. Leave it to God. Let God correct it. And what have these practices brought us? Massive decay of values in our societies and the proliferation of false prophets, false doctrines and evil practices in our churches. It is a very serious error! The consequences also transcend our societies and churches to our homes. There is plenty of abuse in many of our marriages, and even when those abuses can potentially lead to violence and disastrous consequences for the parties involved, many are told to keep quiet, pray for your wife/husband; leave her to God. Consequently, many Christian homes suffer needless violence, divorce, and untimely death of one or all of the parties in the marriage.

In the Bible, when people are in error, God would send prophets to warn them. Sometimes, God will ask that their evil be made public. In the New Testament, the Bible tells us not to be part of evil, but to expose it. Why? Silence is the natural habitat of evil. I am not talking about witch-hunting or gossiping about people. I am talking about walking in love, to the extent that we care so much about the Church of Christ…

The evil of silence is unparalleled. There is nowhere in the Bible where God’s people, either in the Old Testament or  the New Testament, are told to look away from evil. In all cases, God commands us to speak out, expose evil, or approach the evil doer to correct them in love. Keeping quiet when evil is raging will multiply the evil in scale and in scope. This is the root cause of the massive destruction of our nation by evil politicians. Why? They know that the people will not react. They will rather say, “Let’s leave him to God”. And this negative virtue of silence has now grown worse in the church, with enormous consequences on our doctrines and practices as a body of Christ. We must think the “Kingdom”. Every Christian must think about the “body of Christ”. We must not be self-centered in our view of things in the Church. This is the missing link. For the most part, we’re more concerned with our own thing, our own ministry, our own calling, our career. It doesn’t concern me. God will do it. Face your ministry. Leave him with God. That is not the scripture.

In the Bible, when people are in error, God would send prophets to warn them. Sometimes, God will ask that their evil be made public. In the New Testament, the Bible tells us not to be part of evil, but to expose it. Why? Silence is the natural habitat of evil. I am not talking about witch-hunting or gossiping about people. I am talking about walking in love, to the extent that we care so much about the Church of Christ that we can’t look away from evil doctrines or evil practices whenever we see them. We speak out against those evil practices in love. We approach the evil doer to correct him/her in love if we have such privileges and authorities. And if the evil doer refuses to change, we take disciplinary actions against him/her for the salvation of his/her soul. If we refuse to do these, and we continue to pass it over to God, our churches will continue to grow worse; our societies will continue to grow worse; and there will be nothing left for the next generation, they will be massively damaged.

Ayo Akerele, a leadership and system development strategist, and minister of the word, writes from Canada and can be reached through ayoakerele2012@gmail.com.