The average person only sees corruption as the unfair and unlawful acquisition and misuse of public or private resources and privileges, particularly in low-income polities, but, it is worse than that. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines corruption as “dishonest and illegal behavior especially by powerful people.“ Corruption includes every manifestation of impunity, disdain and disregard for law and order and every deviation from the best practices and fairness observed internationally in the conduct of public and private business. As we approach the matter from this more encompassing angle and apply the definition to the household of faith, what we will see is a discovery of how humanity has treated God and thoroughly abused every trust and confidence He has reposed in His own people in recorded history down the ages till now. So-called men of God did this in the past and even now they brazenly put their fingers in God’s eyes, convincing themselves that nothing will happen.

The reign of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden probably lasted a few days or months before they repudiated God by high treason and open rebellion. His entire dispensation perished in a deluge because, “God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way on the earth.” The imagination of their heart was evil continually and Jehovah was thus compelled to end the abuse of His planet by violence and sexual depravity by flood. Unfortunately, the last act of Noah himself (heir of righteousness) was that of an inebriated drunk, who lost his senses and was found naked in his tent by his children. That was an impertinent insult to the honor of Jehovah. After him, God called Abraham and raised his posterity (Israel) as a nation of priests to evangelize, enlighten and teach the rest of the world for Him as His peculiar and wise people. But again and again Israel proved that it had one and only ambition - to be like the surrounding nations and to worship their demon gods and sacrifice to devils in open rebellion against God.

In Leviticus 10, Nadab and Abihu who were consecrated priests came into the house of God drunk and they picked up their censers to burn incense before God. They did not live to tell the story of their bare-faced effrontery to the honor of God.

In Numbers 20, Moses struck the rock twice in some unusual madness and uncharacteristic temper, instead of speaking to it as he was instructed. God sacked him from his office the same day and prevented him from entering the promised land because of that singular outrage. To whom much is given, much more is expected.

In Numbers 25, Jehovah sent a plague that decimated 24,000 of the people of Israel because they compromised the holiness of God upon the advice that Balaam gave Balak against them. While the people gathered together at God’s house weeping before the door of the tabernacle to seek forgiveness, Zimri, the son of Salu, a prince of a chief house of the Simeonites impudently came in with a Midianitish woman in the sight of Moses and the whole congregation and took her into his tent. Both of them were dispatched from the earth the selfsame hour.

In 1 Samuel 2, Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli the High Priest were called sons of Belial (another name for Satan) because of the high-handed abuse of their privileges as priests with God’s sacrifice and worse still because they were committing adultery with the women who came from all over Israel to worship God at the gate of God’s house at Shiloh. Can you imagine that level of rotten morality and unmitigated affront to the glory and honor of God before His own dwelling and the place of His manifest presence among His people? How insolent can human beings be to God? Both of them, their father and the wife of Phinehas died the same day.

In chapter 8 of the same book, it was the turn of Samuel’s sons; Joel and Abiah whom he made judges in Israel to further embarrass Jehovah. They were taking bribes to pervert the cause of justice. (It didn’t start today). The conduct of these two men was the immediate reason why the people of Israel dethroned Jehovah as their King and asked Samuel for a king to lead them to war like the surrounding nations. The consequences of Israel choosing to have kings are very well known from Ezekiel chapters 8-11. Israel and its kings and priests particularly under Manasseh, literally drove Jehovah out the temple in Jerusalem. Manasseh actually brought an idol into the temple and reared it up in the Holy Place where God’s altar of sacrifice, the laver and table of shew bread were. This was an unspeakable abomination that God could no longer stomach from that rebellious and stiff-necked nation. He left the temple for good.

You will recall that Josiah arose after this mess and carried out a wholistic and comprehensive revival and cleansing of the land of Israel, to rid it of all worshippers of Baal and practitioners of high places and all their temples and groves but Jehovah was not impressed. Hear what the Bible says: “Moreover the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images, and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord. And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him. Notwithstanding the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath, wherewithal his anger was kindled against Judah, because of the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal. And the Lord said, I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem which I have chosen, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.”

Judah, just like the northern kingdom of Israel was eventually destroyed together with the temple and Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC and its population was carried away into captivity in Babylon for 70 years. From that time and for the next 2500 years, Israel never existed again as an independent nation until 1948. But do you remember how all the tragic saga of God’s people that lasted 25 centuries started? It all started with corruption in the house of God in the days of Samuel, when the priests jettisoned the law and desecrated the holy commandments of God.

The temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt by the exiles who returned in 516 BC and endured until the days of Christ. But what did Jesus say the priests turned the house of God into? A den; a den of robbers. Can you imagine what the Master means by a den? Of robbers? Your imagination should tell you that a den is a place where the most violent abuse is visited on the most helpless and vulnerable victims. Imagine the fate of a sheep brought into the den of hungry and angry lions. What chances of survival are there for it? The character of the priests of God in the temple at Jerusalem was not in any way different from that of lions in a den with an unfortunate victim. That is how the Son of God clearly saw them.

There were three clear ways the priests turned the house of God into a money-making hovel. First, they turned the temple into a bureau de change. Israelites were coming from all over the world to worship God in the temple during seven special feasts every year. Jerusalem was always full of multitudes of foreign visitors at such times. These people were all coming from nations whose currencies are different from the shekels and gerahs acceptable in the temple. Actually, the temple in Jerusalem issued its own currency. The priests who were the owners of this business arbitrarily fixed the value of their own currency vis-a-vis other currencies. Thus the whole multitude of returning worshippers with their foreign currencies became helpless victims of the lions in God’s temple. No mercy. No pity. No fear of God. No brotherliness. No compassion. No heart. Whatever the high priest said was the exchange rate, that was the exchange rate. If you were not ready to exchange at their rate you were free to return to your country of origin with your foreign money and go and offer your offering and worship to your own god there. Robbers! Whether the pilgrims worshipped God or not was not their concern in the least. If the people were frustrated and turned away from the house of God or God Himself, so be it. The priests couldn’t care less. They must make their money.

Second, if you succeeded in changing your money at their rate to enable you buy a ram, a bullock, a goat, pigeons, flour, oils or whatever you needed to offer to God, whatever item you brought to sacrifice must be examined by a priest, to confirm its suitability for sacrifice. If the examiner said your animal was blemished, it was blemished. It is not acceptable. You cannot sacrifice it. Your animal may indeed be perfect, but the concern of the examiner is not the perfection of the animal at all, it is where or from whom you bought the animal. If you did not buy it from the “correct source,” your animal is blemished and cannot be offered. Who are the owners of the correct source? You are right, the priests. There is more. If the animal you bought from the incorrect source is returned to you, were you going to carry it back to Egypt where you came from? No, you will have to go to the correct source to buy the ‘perfect sacrifice’ and the seller there is ready to buy your blemished animal at a discount determined by him, then you add the difference to collect the perfect sacrifice. Of course the next worshipper who is looking for an animal to buy is sold your “blemished“ but now sanctified animal at the full price determined by seller or his boss, the priest. Third, remember you as a worshipper must do a number of ceremonial washings to qualify to enter the temple. So, the temple is immediately surrounded by baths with water supplied for a price. Who were the owners of the baths? Who fixed the price at which you can take a bath? Again, you are right, the priests.

You can therefore, see how profitable it was to keep this racket of worship going on from century to century and who were you to challenge them? (Do you remember one blind man who was healed and the priests required him to condemn his healer and he refused and was immediately excommunicated?) So nobody dared the priests. However, one day a radical Preacher from Galilee came into the temple with a whip in His hand and overturned the tables of the money changers and drove out the animal sellers. The priests cornered Him the following day and asked Him: “By what authority do you do these things?” He refused to answer them. The priests then called a meeting and this is what transpired: “Then gathered the chief priests and Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation. And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.” He spoke prophetically no doubt, but was the nation and its destiny his real concern? Was it Rome or the Devil who was taking the entire population of the Jews into hell? Was that the concern of Caiaphas or “ our place” meaning our business. Certainly it was the place and money making privileges being disrupted by this Radical that was the issue. They then went ahead, arrested Him and murdered him, though Pilate was minded to set Him free. In another 37 short years, both Jerusalem and that temple were leveled to the ground, leaving no stone on top of the other as Jesus predicted. The number of Jews massacred by the Romans were in millions. The remainder of the population was dispersed all over the world as Moses and the prophets predicted. There is a price to pay for abusing God.

In the days of Paul, corruption reared its ugly head in the church again. In Philippians 3, the blessed Apostle said: “Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as he have us for an ensample. For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.” Since Paul is talking about examples and followership, he is clearly referring to leaders in the household of Christ here. They are leaders but they were the enemies of His cross. Not just enemies but they were undoing the power and effect of the cross in the lives of men. Their conduct has become the reason many were quitting or avoiding the faith. They were themselves headed for hell. The god they worshipped was their ungodly appetite. They took pride in what a man of God should ordinarily be ashamed of. Their minds were constantly on earthly things, instead of being occupied by heaven and godliness. The congregations these leaders presided over were home to scandals of sexual, financial abuse, corruption and moral failure of a kind that was keeping outsiders away from the cross. All these were happening between 40 AD and 62 AD when Paul died. We are really talking about the infancy of the church and pastors and deacons were already stabbing Jesus in the back repeatedly and brazen-facedly. How can people be bishops, deacons and elders in the church and the same time enemies of the cross of Christ? Choices. The moral choices they made were sometimes of the sort that even the heathen abhorred. For example, a man took over his stepmother as wife from his own father and the church leadership at Corinth was comfortable living with it and they did nothing about it. In the same church, certain people were coming to holy communion meetings drunk and no one rebuked them or chastised them but an outsider. In that same church people considered strong in the faith were eating food sacrificed to idols. That church was also divided into four different warring groups and ministers of God like Paul was constantly under the tongue-lashing of its members. Members of that church were defrauding and suing each other before secular courts with reckless abandon. Their women dressed inappropriately to church and sought to seize authority over men in the church. Does a church acquire the character of its leadership? I think so.

All of these paint a picture of the rottenness and corruption in the church in our day. What is it that men of God have not done in the name of the Lord in Nigeria? Is it murder, adultery (there is a terribly disgusting Iginla soap opera currently playing on the internet), divorce and remarriage, sheep-stealing, bribing of government officials, taking money and gifts from the government under questionable circumstances, accepting stolen money for tithes and refusing to give it back after the theft was discovered, compromising, even the lives of Christians massacred in Nigeria, the worship of money and their own appetites, pride in what they should be ashamed of and unmitigated covetousness and materialism?

The question is, who should cleanse this Augean stable that is now the church of God? Who should bring the church leaders to their senses? How can the body of Christ rid itself of strange leaders whose tongues speak vanity and whose right hands are the right hands of falsehood? They are cancer that is slowly eating up the body, according to Paul. Do you recall a Diotrephes in 3 John?

In the days of Samuel, God expected Eli the Senior Pastor to call his sons to order, God even sent a prophet to warn him but did he do anything? Did Samuel do anything about his own sons who were corrupt judges? Picture Noah the man of God lying drunk and naked in his tent. Who was qualified in the world then to correct him? Notice also in these stories that when men of God became incorrigible, Jehovah Himself stepped in with very dire consequences. (Moses, Aaron, Eli and the unnamed young prophet from Judah who was torn by a lion).

In the days of the kings, rulers like Jehu the son of Nimshi, Hezekiah and Josiah were Veritable Instruments of God to restore true worship and the fear of God in the church. Jeremiah in Chapter 23 of his book and Jesus in Matt 23 seriously denigrated priests and religious leaders for their shenanigans. But all that does not leave the average church members off the hook.

In 2 Cor 11 vs 18-20, Paul said: “Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory also. For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise. For ye suffer, if a man bring you into bondage, if a man devour you, if a man take of you, if a man exalt himself, if a man smite you on the face.” Paul uses sarcasm here to shame the church. Let us amplify this passage. “For since many boast of worldly things according to the flesh, I will glory (boast) also. For you readily and gladly bear with the foolish, since you are smart and wise yourselves! For you endure it if a man assumes control of your souls and makes slaves of you, or devours (your substance, spends your money) and preys upon you, or deceives you and take advantage of you, or is arrogant and puts on airs, or strikes you in the face.” Is it not a wonder how the body of Christ which is made up of very intelligent and informed people, takes nonsense from so-called men of God who are clearly bearing the wrong fruit and taking advantage of them to enrich themselves and their posterity and clearly plan for their sons to succeed them in ministry, as if the body of Christ is a family business. Where do we leave our sense of judgment and reason? How is it we don’t see we are being conned? How is it we allow deceit to mature and bear fruit and we don’t speak up? Paul is showing the congregation at Corinth its naivety and the need to excise the leaven before it leavens the whole lump. That is not all.

In 2 Thes. 3 vs 6-9, Paul again said: “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walks disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you; Neither did we eat any man’s bread for nought; but wrought with labor and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you: Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us.”

We have to leave off this discourse. What men of God have done to the trust He has reposed on them in His house throughout the history of the church in the wilderness, in the nation of Israel and now in the body of Christ is to say the least, unspeakable. But the fact that a man has a gift of the garb does not not make a Demi-god of him. He is a man and every member of the body owes God a duty to speak up and act up wherever and whenever we see the name and honor of God being dragged in the mud.

By:Isaac Okpanachi