Stop these abusive prophets

TODAY we have a story of a 19-year-old married woman who was gang-forced into having her pubic hair shaved in a supposed religious ceremony.

That is what religion is doing to people these days. The girl child in particular and women in general are the worst affected as perverts hiding behind religious leadership are busy taking advantage of people’s fear of the deity.

Not long ago we had a gory story of how a prophet used a snake to scare one of his followers into submitting to rape.

That is absurd behavior for any man, let alone a man of cloth. Genuine prophets, pastors, apostles . . . should have their clients (or patients’) best interest at heart but a lot of unfair practices are happening at prophets’ shrines and the country is left wondering just how many — if any — of these prophets are genuine and God-fearing.

Now shaving pubic hair is considered religious? And men do it on non-concerting women?

But what is strange is that people keep flocking to these prophets and or pastors.

This is clear evidence that people are hoodwinked into thinking that there is more power in the prophet than in God. For many prophets, their churches or shrines are centred around their names or miracles and they benefit materially or lustfully, taking advantage of their usually poor and vulnerable followers.

For Zimbabwe, Christianity is the main religion and the sprouting of many new churches that promise riches shows people are using religion for self-enrichment purposes.

The Bible — which is the fundamental book that every Christian should believe came from strongly disapproves most of the things that these new churches are doing but people still flock to them because they are promised wealth.

People need to stop falling for the tricks of these prophets as the bible warned at Matthew 24:11 that “Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many.”

And they will take advantage of their followers like the prophet in today’s edition allegedly did.

Sometimes they even plant snakes at people’s homesteads and purport that they have enemies that put these snakes there.

Something needs to be done to do away with these fake, criminal prophets so that they do not continue taking advantage of their followers.

A lot of money is being lost to these false prophets and it is all under false guise.

What is most painful are the reports of sexual abuse aimed at mostly women and children by these men of cloth who blind people under the guise of religion.

People believe in god so much and they believe that he is the panacea to the many problems they face. They also believe god uses religious leaders like these prophets to reach them and for these prophets to take advantage of this faith people have is most unfortunate.