KABULETA’S WEEKLY RANT: Pastors and their abusive relationship with the President

Ugandan pastors have been too long in an abusive relationship with President Museveni that they wouldn’t know freedom if it flew in their face. An abusive relationship, since you asked, is one in which one party gets all the benefits while the other makes all the sacrifices.

One of the most surreal things about the 2016 election was the way the President rented crowds to follow him across the country; buses and trucks ferrying paid people dressed in yellow to make an audience decent enough for newspaper pictures. Yet even then, there was one newspaper which took the extra step of using Photoshop to create a bigger crowd. But the guy who did it wasn’t that good because half of the ‘mammoth’ crowd were facing away from the president’s platform.

But when it came to Balokole, he didn’t have to pay a cent. He simply commandeered their platforms and campaigned at various night prayers on New Year’s eve of 2016. I have never understood what it is about pastors and Museveni. He ridicules them, spits in their collective faces, incessantly tells them how he disagreed with them in 1968, but like battered side-kicks, they always run back to him for more of the same.

After campaigning on their platforms at the start of 2016, that same year he used the occasion of the National Prayer Breakfast, a Christian function to which many church leaders are invited, including yours truly, to pour more scorn on pastors. Of course I didn’t attend because playing second fiddle to washed up politicians like…you know who… is not my idea of a fun breakfast.

After quoting a few scriptures from the Gospel of Matthew, the President went on to tell his Christian hosts that they should embrace witchdoctors because when he was a guerilla fighter, the war had stalled until he accepted to do some demonic rituals. That is kajoogo of the highest caliber. It’s like a man telling his wife how good a time he had with another woman.
When the President meets witchdoctors, as he often does, he has enough sense not to tell them about Jesus and the Bible. But he can tell pastors anything and they will keep coming back.

As if that’s not enough control, that woman Jezebel (I am sure readers of this rant know her by now) wants to encapsulate her hegemony through a policy being promoted by Ethics and Integrity Minister Fr Simon Lokodo.

When it first came out, I petitioned against it and we used media exposure and legal means to stay it.
I met a number of pastors and showed them how the policy would kill the church as we know it.
After two years of trying, some church leaders rose up and joined the struggle. A big gathering of about 800 pastors met at Imperial Royale to voice their disapproval.

I was happy.

Finally, the battered wife was waking up to her rights.

But to my utter dismay, the main convener of the meeting, Bishop David Kiganda, wound up making a plea to Museveni to fire Fr Lokodo. These guys have sucked up to the President for too long they can’t see beyond him. They don’t realise that Fr Lokodo is just a messenger used to execute Jezebel’s sinister plans. The real adversaries are the people to whom they are running for help.

The next gathering was an even bigger one; this time pastors invited the President and were all prepared to present to him signatures they had gathered and, ostensibly, renew their request that he fires Fr Lokodo.
The President foxed them.

Perhaps he should have sent Fr Lokodo to represent him, just to show how much he holds them in contempt. But he sent some State House official to communicate the fact that he is busy and will let them know when he can fix time for them.

That was early February. They are still waiting. And just like that, the fire, the momentum, the head of steam that had been built was extinguished.

Now some of the pastors who spoke at the gatherings are being called and told to avoid me like the plague. Others are being invited to preach in the ‘First Church’ (insert laughing emoji) called oba Covenant what what. And they are so flattered by the association they go running.

But I will stand and fight that policy (alone if I must) because it is from the bowels of hell. And best way to do so is by educating church leaders on the dangers of joining the Inter Religious Council (IRC) because we know its origins and its destination.

Pastor Joshua Lwere, overseer of the National Fellowship of Born Again Churches, is completely sold out to Jezebel and is firmly in her pockets. She has deployed him to trick unsuspecting pastors into supporting a demonic program. He was in Hoima recently and left a divided church.

But his best efforts couldn’t stop us from having a very successful full-day conference at the Riviera Hotel in Hoima town last Saturday, April 6th. I gave church leaders valuable lessons on eschatology; the Antichrist, the Mark of The Beast and the One World Religion. I also taught them that it is time for the church to take dominion and for the kingdoms of this world to become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ (Rev 11:15).

I told them that if their umbrella body joins the Inter Religious Council, they should quit it. One of the top Bishops in the district, Jackson Mugisa, confessed that he had been lured into the IRC because he didn’t know what it was about. But after the teaching, he dramatically knelt down, asked for forgiveness and said he is pulling out of the IRC (picture attacked).

In these End Times, the best defense against deception will be knowledge of the truth. So I will move around the country and equip believers and church leaders with the Bible truth so that they aren’t sold into slavery by their leaders.