Detained By The Grave

Man was formed out of the dust of the ground. The Bible tells us that in Genesis 2: 7. Also animals and plants were formed from the ground (Genesis 2:19). But later, God cursed the ground (Genesis 3). You discover too that all the elements in the body of man can be found in the soil. That is why the Bible says in Philippians 2:10 that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, of things on earth and of things under the earth. So, it follows that most of the things we see now around us are underneath the ground. The only major thing that comes from heaven is the spirit, which is inside a man. Wood, iron, clothes, steel, etc. come from the ground. In John 3: 31, Jesus says, “He that cometh from above: is above all, he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all.” Therefore, there are certain things that come from the earth and certain things that come from heaven. I Corinthians 15: 47 –48 says, “The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.”

The Bible itself, sometimes addresses the ground as a person because there are spirits within it which it refers to as the powers of the grave. In Numbers 16, Moses said, “O God, if you would do a new thing and let the ground open and swallow.” What happened? The ground heard what Moses said and opened up. So, there are powers within the earth we call the powers of the grave. A knowledgeable black man understands this very well, much more than a white man. For example, blacks pour libation on the ground to demons of the ground. This is why evil people remove sand from underneath people’s feet and use it against them. It is also the same reason herbalists pay homage to the ground. Some people swear by the earth and use the soil as charm. Some people inquire their future from the earth by pressing sands. It is these spirits from the grave that answer them. They believe in the power of the earth. When I was a small boy, my school was close to a burial ground. So we were warned that whenever we saw unusually short creatures on our way to school, we should take some sand and pour it on them and they would disappear. I never saw one. But my friends used to say they saw them and poured sand on them and they disappeared. Why do you have to pour sand on them? It is because they are powers from the earth.

In a church I used to attend, we had a very unusual pastor. Unusual in the sense that five minutes into a prayer meeting, he would start sweating because he prayed aggressively unlike the one before him who would call prayer points and sit down to pray. One day, I sat at the back and suddenly, the pastor ran to the back as a woman came in, dancing and clapping with a baby strapped at her back. The pastor looked at her and in anger, said to her, “Turn over. Why should you come to the house of God walking on your head?” I did not see her walking on her head. I saw her standing straight and carrying a baby and dancing. But the woman knew that the pastor could see what she really was. She said, “Sorry sir,” and entered the church. Why was she walking upside down? She was communicating with these powers underneath the earth. During one Power Must Change Hands programme, somebody was caught trying to pack sand from the church premises. He was asked what he wanted to do with it and he said, he wanted to go and use it so that people would be coming to his own church in large numbers. We told him that he would have made a mistake because it would have meant him pouring liquid fire there and causing more problems for himself. Also, there was a certain man who was told to come and bury charms in MFM and he accepted. All he did was to accept. He had not even come when trouble started until he was brought to the same MFM.