OLUSEGUN ISAAC BLOG

MESSIAH  “ What about you?” he asked them (His disciples), “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. ”  (Matt.16:15-16 GNB) .          In 1960 as a young lad stepping into the magnificent edifice of Christ Church Cathedral, Marina, Lagos for the first time  I couldn't stop marvelling at the superb, intricate Gothic architecture, hardly able to concentrate on our confirmation through hand-laying ceremony that was going on. Of greatest interest to me was the glass-stained colourful picture of Christ on the cross prominently displayed up above the back of the altar. To me it was like really seeing and knowing the Person of Christ, the Saviour of the world!       We read in John's gospel, 'One of the two who heard John speak, and (who) followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon, and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is trans...

ALPHA AND OMEGA “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” (Rev. 22:13).      The first letter in the Greek and Hebrew alphabets are 'alpha' and 'aleph' respectively. In the animal kingdom, the first in any group of the same species is named the alpha, and is usually the dominant male. He is the head of the herd, the respected and acclaimed leader whom all the others fear and to whose authority they submit. Like the king, the alpha male rules, defends and judges the others in the group, quick to free the innocent from the oppression of the wicked, and punish the guilty one. He stands in the forefront and defends their territory in the event of  any external attack. He is the image of Jesus Christ in that animal kingdom. Jesus is the King among men, His own kingdom. He is The Alpha!       Jesus is also The Omega - the last letter in the Greek alphabet, thus He will be the end of it all! By the same setting, the d...

  LOVING " Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.  " (I John 4:7-8 NKJV)       The loving nature of God was illustrated by Jesus in the story of the prodigal son. The younger one of two sons walked up to their father one day and demanded that all his own inheritance be given him. The father gave him, he left home, went abroad and squandered his fortune. After living in penury for a while, he came to his senses and went back home. The father, who all the while had been longing to have back his lost son, sighted him first, ran out and welcomed him back with tears and open arms. The father slaughtered his treasured fatted cow (most likely to atone for the sins of the lost son) and threw a party.         Writer James Banks, in Our Daily Bread devotional, quipped, "God doesn't love us for who we are, what we have done o...

  Painting by Tolunimi Ojosipe-Isaac GOD IS MERCIFUL   And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord  God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth..."  (Exodus 34:6 NKJV) ‬‬       One Saturday decades ago, the annual Intercollegiate Debate in Western State took place in a foremost secondary school in Ibadan, and because of the well-groomed girls usually in attendance, four of us broke bounds from our boarding house in Ijebu Ode and came to the attractive gathering on our own, not as part of the school's team. On Monday morning to our chagrin, we were arraigned before the principal during morning assembly. Normally the  offence attracted two weeks suspension at home, but instead we were sentenced to weeding our overgrown athletics field, for which I was still thankful! Else, how would I have explained my rascality at home?        In the bible, the Lord God described Himsel a...

Worship Devotional.  Sunday March 17, 2024.   GOD IS JUST‬    Then Peter opened his mouth and said: “In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him.  (Acts 10:34-35 NKJV).      There is this saying, 'Spare the rod and spoil the child', but I was not that sort of father to my children while bringing them up. I introduced a practice that meted out punishment commensurate with the offence. For instance, acts of disobedience, mischief, 'two-fighting', beating or bullying your younger one, breaking or spoiling something valuable in carelessness all fetched punishments depending on the gravity of each offence. And we all accepted the practice as fair!       The Hebrew word translated as justice - Mishpat , actually means more than just fairness in court. It describes God as just – because He is Holy, He sets the ultimate standard. He determines the beginn...

  Worship Devotional.  Sunday March 10, 2024 GOD IS SELF-EXISTENT  Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.    ( Psalm 90:2 NKJV)                We dug a fish pond on my site, then let water into it and treated the water ready for stocking with fish. I asked the fishery attendant when we will do the stocking, and he said when enough micronutrients had come up in the pond. I asked him when and from where and he said, "I don't know; they come from nowhere; they just appear!" True to that statement, in a few days, the water started turning green before our eyes until it was ready for stocking with fingerlings!        Scholars define God’s self-existence as His Aseity, derived from the Latin words _'a'_ and _'se'_ which may be translated 'non' and 'being', saying God's existence is derived from Himself, having...

  Worship Devotional.  Sunday March 3, 2024.    GOD IS IMMUTABLE   “ For I am the Lord , I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob... " Malachi 3:6 NKJV.       The dictionary defines immutable as 'not subject or susceptible to change, unchanging through time; unalterable; ageless.' The immutability of God is His constancy in character, purpose and utterances. He does not waver nor veer in His ways.        I remember one incidence in my student days in the UK. It was late Saturday night and we were returning from an all-night party when suddenly a police siren started blarring behind our car driven by one of us, the owner. One of the two policeman politely asked our driver to follow their car to the police station. He brought us before the desk officer and reported that he found our car "veering dangerously on a major road". To check that we were not riff-raffs, they asked to see our ID cards, then tested ...

   GOD IS OMNIFICENT   The Lord is the One who by His power made the earth. He is the One who by His wisdom established the world. And by His understanding He spread out the skies. Jeremiah 10:12 NET.               If you ask the average American who the world's greatest inventor is, He will easily say, Thomas Edison. He would justifiably be right, for Edison himself who developed many devices in fields such as the incandescent light, electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures, was quoted as saying, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."         But deeper thinkers and historians would name Thales of Miletus who lived in the 6th. century before Christ as the world's greatest inventor of all time. A Greek philosopher, mathematician and astronomer from Ionia (now Turkey), He was perhaps the first to define the substance or substances of which all m...

1. GOD IS OMNIPRESENT   'Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are  there.' (Psalm 139:7-8 NKJV).       Have you ever intentionally done something wrong, then foolishly thought the Lord couldn’t see you or wouldn’t take note? The truth is, God is watching everything everywhere. Like a complex spiritual closed circuit system, He has the whole universe continually under His gaze. He sees both the evil and the good (Prov. 15:3). The darkness we hide in is as light to Him—we will never escape His loving, caring and correcting presence (Jer. 23:24).       The Greek word 'omni' means 'all'.       Omnipresent means all present, so to describe God as omnipresent is saying He is everywhere. When the bible says in Matthew 18:20: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” The young b...

  JEHOVAH NISSI   And Moses built an altar and called its name, The- Lord -Is-My-Banner; for he said, “Because the Lord has sworn: the Lord  will  have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” (Exodus 17:15-16 NKJV).        The Commonwealth Institute, London was founded in 1962 to promote the Commonwealth of Nations, an association of 54 countries working towards shared goals of prosperity, democracy and peace. In the seventies, the Commonwealth Secretariat on High Street Kensington London proudly displayed an array of 54 hoisted flags of member countries. I felt proud to see the Nigerian flag blowing gently in the summer breeze in a long line of flags of nations headed by the domineering British 'union jack'. But by 2015, the flags had been lowered and the proud banners of nations, disappeared. The kingdom had fallen like others before her. Only God's Kingdom banner shall remain standing forever.          In Exodus...