Zim oil deposits: why followers needed to hear it from their own prophet

By Bishop Dave Chikosi

A five year Mobil oil exploration was conducted in Zimbabwe’s Cabora Bassa basin between 1989 and 1993. The explorers concluded that there was nearly “100 percent potential of gas” and a high possibility of oil occurrence in the region.

These tentative findings were corroborated by BGR, a German geological survey team.

I say tentative because of the language used. Words like potential, possibility etc. suggest that nothing definitive or concrete was discovered. If it was, wouldn’t drilling have already begun?

Now fast forward to Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa’s Judgement Night of August 28, 2015. Speaking to a crowd of over 150 000 people, the popular Zimbabwe prophet recounted a vision he had in which the existence and location of oil deposits were revealed to him.

Unlike the geological survey aforementioned, there was nothing tentative or speculative in the language used to describe the divine encounter. “I will tell you the place” the UFIC leader even dared his audience.

The local press, including the Sunday Mail, thought this was newsworthy and so they published the story in greater detail than we have space to go into here.

Those media reports have since sparked heated debates on social media the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Mavhunga diesel prophecy debacle.

So what’s the big deal?

Opponents have not only questioned why such stories are given prominent media coverage. They have also questioned the purpose of the prophecy itself. We already know from Mobil and others, that there is oil somewhere, so what’s the big deal?

In response we will begin by examining what the prophecy did not say.

The prophecy did not say all current or future oil exploration or drilling must be suspended pending further instructions from the office of the prophet. As far as we know, folk can continue looking and sniffing around for oil like they were doing before August 28.

What the UFIC leader simply did was what all Biblical prophets did in the past i.e. convey what they see and hear and let the chips fall where they may. Hearers have two options: take it or leave it. Heed it or ignore it.

No-one will be forced or coerced to do or believe one thing or the other.

Secondly there is no basis, in my view, to assume that this prophecy was a postdiction (declaration after the fact is known) and not a prediction. Bear in mind that not everyone reads newspapers – and this has nothing to do with the silly myth about Africans lacking the cultural habit of reading.

No, it has everything to do with the fact that multitudes of Christians have absolutely no appetite for secular daily news, which is largely bad news, not good news.

I personally know a ton of church leaders who have no use for the daily paper for this reason.

Most Christians want to be edified by the Good News, not fed a steady diet of depressing news, which in Zimbabwe’s case includes daily helpings of sometimes very shameful dog-eat-dog political shenanigans.

This is why I postulate that when the media first broke the news of the Mobil oil explorations in the ‘90s, multitudes of Christians would have missed it altogether. Which is also why the oil prophecy came as breaking (good) news to many in the audience.

And as for those who already knew of the inconclusive work by Mobil, the prophecy served as a seal and confirmation of what science was slow and too bashful to establish. But that’s the difference with science. Prophecy is bold and brazen.

Now all this may appear to suggest that there is tension and conflict between science and the prophetic. But nothing could be further from the truth. Christians in general and Pentecostals in particular are not anti-science. Not at all. Any attempt to portray them as such is at best mischievous and at worst Luciferian.

No, Pentecostal believers do not reject science & technology. What they reject is the over-the-top reverence that some have for the scientific enterprise. We just don’t share the overconfidence of those who think that science is the answer to everything. It isn’t. God is.

And God, being the prime First Cause of all things, is the very reason why scientific investigation is even a possibility in the first place.

Therefore it’s foolhardy for anyone to think that the same God has nothing to say to His servants about the existence and whereabouts of the mineral deposits that He has hidden in the ground for us His Blood-bought, Blood-washed children. They are hidden for us, not from us.

Science does have a history of getting some of its prophecies wrong

I have no idea why we humans have this habit of uncritically assuming that science is a collection of immortal and immutable facts received from heaven above. It is not. The truth is that science is a human construct characterized, as all human constructs are, by flaws.

Sheila Jasanoff, a Harvard professor, has argued that science and scientific facts are socially constructed, shaped more by power, politics and culture (what she calls “the prevailing paradigm”), than by societal needs or pursuit of truth.

No, we cannot put all our trust in science. It has a history of getting many of its predictions wrong.

Did not even the great Albeit Einsten himself get it wrong at one point? “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable”, Einsten once opined. “It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”

Admiral William Leahy, working on the U.S. Atomic Bomb project boldly declared, “The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.” Oh how I wish he had been right!

“That virus is a pussycat!” declared Dr. Peter Duesberg in 1988. He was a molecular biology professor at U.C. Berkeley. The virus? HIV.

And what about all those failed dire global cooling prophecies of the ‘60s and ‘70s? According to these theories the world was supposed to become colder by 11 degrees, such that by the year 2000 we would all be living in an Ice Age. Really folks?

What about the crazy global warming prophecies that predicted that by 2010 there would be some 50 million “climate refugees” frantically fleeing from “unlivable” regions around the globe due to surging temperatures. All of which would spark resource wars and all sorts of other horrors.

This is 2015 folks. Where are the climate refugees?

Hopefully readers can now understand why followers and subscribers to the prophetic put more stock in divine prophecy (from tried and tested oracles) than in scientific predictions. It’s not a mark of ignorance. Far from it.

Concluding postscript

Prophecy comes in two forms: with a cut-off date and sometimes without (or open-ended). Skeptics don’t like them but open-ended prophecies are not unusual. The Bible is full of them.

We waited, for instance, for over 2500 years to see Isaiah’s open-ended Messianic prophecies come to fulfilment. We are still waiting for many other open-ended prophecies in the Book of Revelation to come to pass.

But whether a prophecy has a cut-off date or is open ended, skeptics need to heed the little Pauline axiom that says: “Therefore judge nothing before the proper time” (1 Cor 4:5).

My friend and fellow writer, Learnmore Zuze recently wrote a brilliant article entitled, “There is no margin of error in prophecy.” There is only one problem: it makes absolutely no sense when you consider that in the New Testament prophecy can, and should be, judged.

St Paul says: “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment” (1 Cor 14:29). This is the prophetic version of science’s peer review system. Prophecy is to be judged, not by scientists or lawyers or journalists, but by other prophets.

This Pauline verse begs the question: if there is no margin of error in prophecy, what then is there to judge?

(Bishop Dave Chikosi can be reached by email at [email protected]. You can watch his YouTube videos at https://www.youtube.com/user/faithcoach4u. He also blogs at http://davechikosi.blogspot.com)