I have betrayed Jesus

My poor saints of Christ, I see that your soul is very troubled and miserable because of the sins which you have committed. It pricks you like a thorn and crushes you like a heavy blow. You cannot breathe for it feels like there is a very large man sitting upon your chest and worst of all, you cannot enter into that sweet communion of your Lord. To put it simply, you feel as if you have betrayed the Lord. You feel like a Judas. After spending time in his presence and Christ was ever so good to you in bestowing to you his love and enjoyment and granting you great privileges in his kingdom, yet you have approached him with the heart of betrayal by kissing sin and embracing that which you promised to forsake. Oh miserable pitiful sinner, I feel the magnitude of your condition but I beseech you not to go and hang yourself or resolve finally to pick up your former trade because of the awful heaviness of your betrayal.

I beseech you with this considerations. Why poor sinner do you think that The Spirit of comfort gave us two accounts of betrayal in the gospels? Why any account of it at all and why two when one especially the one of Judas would have sufficed the plot. I shall tell you languishing saint, it is because of this very malady which you are currently suffering. The Spirit knowing all things and foreseeing the fragility of human nature knew considerably that many would fall in their faith who were truly regenerated. He knew that some who loved Jesus as well as any canonised saint could testify would by some measure, due to their besetting sins feel that they have betrayed their Lord. And in sinning we do betray him for we are those who have made a declaration to follow the narrow way of righteousness; to depart from evil and bid farewell to a life which bid our Lord to die. Yes we are; and every sin committed was a striking blow against the Saviour’s flesh and should we continue to strike him whom has been so kind and gentle with us? Nay! that is why the sins of the saints are like Judas’ kiss or Peter’s denial. The Spirit therefore records for us the denial of Peter to comfort us.

How is it comforting and may soothe my soul asks the poor sighing sinner. It shall comfort you in this. Have you the great privilege that Peter had in the sense that he walked with the Lord for three years, was admitted into his inward circle, was blessed with the eyes to see his transfiguration, was given the responsibility to be his shepherd to his sheep? Have you the great privileges of seeing Christ in action, of sleeping by his side day and night, of him coming into your mother’s house and feasting with him at Cana? Peter had an intimacy with the Lord that no saints here now living could ever experience even if Christ was to come to you every night because the Christ now experienced although the same Person is the resurrected Christ. You would not experience Christ in the same way but the experience of it is no less sweeter, in fact we shall enjoy him and enjoy him as closely as one knows one’s wife. Peter had an intimacy with Christ, a great privilege, and if any one knew Jesus it was Peter. Peter knew Jesus so well that it was revealed to him by the Father that Jesus was the messiah, the Son of the living God. Peter knew this and what did he do on the night that Jesus in his precious hour needed his faithful friend? I shall tell you, He betrayed him. Peter kissed him like Judas with his words, a word as untrue as the view of atheism. Peter knew the Lord but denied him out of fear of not wanting to perish with his master.

Peter committed his crime and the Spirit of grace did not shy away from recording this calamity for us. But the Spirit of truth did not leave the account here on the sinking sand of Peter’s remorse but hauls us to the scene where Peter would once again be personal with his Lord and the Lord would pronounce on him divine forgiveness by not heaping on him condemnation but affirmation to be his good shepherd to his scattered sheep.

Christ was gentle and meek with Peter, and he is meek and gentle with you. He has prayed for you that your faith will not leave you, the devil seeks with all of his might to sift you, but the prayers of Christ have more efficacy. The prayers of Christ are like a mighty waterfall upon the devil’s candle, for they quench his schemes thoroughly. Christ only asks of you poor sinner to pick up your mat and walk. Do not tie the rope to descend from the tree. Do not take up your bag to return to your former duties. No. Stand firm in the grace of God in Christ - will you make God to be a liar when it is said of him that He is faithful to forgive us if we confess? Confess now languishing sinner and your sins are remembered no more.

Peter’s betrayal is the chief of betrayal and Christ forgave him and He forgives you. You might say dear sinner, that you have betrayed him a thousand times and fear that you may betray him ten thousand more times. O sinner, is the blood of Christ not for all of your sins and will Christ not see to it about your sanctification? He will make you blameless. Think not about your sins of tomorrow but think about the sufficiency of his grace for the days ahead.

O sinner be lifted from your melancholy. Your sins have no cause, nay, they never do, to see you miserable. It's sting has been taking away, nailed to the cross. Acknowledge your sins, yes, and then nail it, bury it, yes, and burn it in the fires of hell where it shall forever dwell. The Spirit comforts you, He bids you to accept the works of Christ.

K.Oni

More Short Poems

Its paramount, tainted love

Broken down again, the story is getting old

Can’t wait for the day to end

To forget to move on

Take up my picture

See your reflection smashing the mirror 

Burn my heart let the smoke rise

Smell the incense like rose

that’s the fragrance of my love for you.

You were my good habit 
Dammit sitting where you lie
Can’t try to even understand it
Everything is smelling just like you 
Gotta walk away - forsaking all my intentions
I just wanna knock on your door
Bring you flowers, my apologies
For running you down
Now I’m wondering why 
Too late now to introduce you my grandmother’s smile
Real diamond for a real girl 
Living a real life gotta say goodbye to my true love.

You and I still under one sky

But not reunited

Same city but still two hearts

Two houses two lives 

Two dreams 

Every time we meet

there’s always a good bye.

You can cut the ropes and let me fall
Letting her go I knew she would never love me back
I am healing but its taking so long 
I turned into her 
She’s pretty contagious
We die once, live once, find true love once.

I’m busy with 

Writing and dancing

Singing and laughing

To distract me from 

thinking about this 

One sided love.

K.Oni

Preach God's Word

There is no doubt that if you were to ask those who hated Christ and his religion, they would say that Jesus Christ was a drunkard and a wine bibber. They would accuse him of starting a new religion, of departing from the way of Moses and incorporating new doctrines into the Monotheistic Jewish tradition that the prophets knew nothing about. To put it simply, they would accuse him of heresy, and as history for our sake has recorded, they crucified him. Yet, Christ maintained his doctrines and taught his disciples the way of God regardless whether the society at large loved them, understood them or cherished them. Christ would not bow down to the rule of Rome, to the cries of the masses, nor to the will of the religious rulers; but Christ did bow down to this, namely, the will of God. We see the evidence of this in Jesus’ own words “Joh 4:34  Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. And also in Joh 6:38  For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And in Joh 12:49  For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment--what to say and what to speak. And finally in  The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.

Jesus was God’s spokesman to a world who would rather follow the dictates of their own hearts and be led by their own natural light of reason. God’s will and words was too abstract for them, they could not understand it lest they leave their dark dwellings and come into the marvellous light. Christ spoke to them in the night and look how they mobbed him, they jeered him, and mocked his words. He spoke to them about the pleasant mornings, the simplicity of following him in the light and O look how they threw stones at him as if he were speaking in a foreign tongue. At last they crucified him for blasphemy for refusing this world’s orders and ways. And is it not so, that in every generation, those who had the truth of Christ and preached it with great zeal and fervency were likewise subjected to the fire of madness by the masses. Their words were like falling rain, although appealing to their consciences, they put up their umbrellas and ignored its call, warning them of the judgement to come and of the sweet eternity if only they would comply and believe the message preached.

But nay. They reject the gospel. My friends reject the gospel. This gospel alone, which has the cure to all of life’s ails and troubles, they reject. It is not sensible to them, it is not wise. My generation would not so much have Christ crucified but they would denounce him a lunatic, a mad man, or simply a good moral teacher but those who have any sense, any wisdom would not come to a conclusion of him being a mere religious teacher, they would denounce him mad or say like doubting Thomas, My Lord and My God. 

If you call yourself a Christian, preach Christ and his message. If the world hates you, good. For they hated Christ. Stand up for him in the public square, do not be silent in the workplace, give him the glory in the media, stand up for his justice, live according to his will. The world will hate you but remember this, they hated him first. While they hate you, do not hate them for the message of Christ is love. While they curse we bless, while they hate we love and we love their very souls and existence. We would do as much for them as we would for our own sons. Here is the outrageous love of God for you, that while you were an enemy, a campaigning rebel to usurp his sovereign authority, He sent his Son to die for your wicked sins, yea those terrible deeds done in darkness. Jesus died for it all.

K.Oni

Miscellanies 48: There is a fountain flowing for the soul unclean

My friends have you not heard that there is a fountain flowing for the soul unclean, that is, if you have any filth, any guilt, any unclean thing inside of you that you know is unclean and that you feel yourself to be a wicked person, then let me tell you that there is a fountain flowing for you. There is a fountain as big as the ocean and deep as the sea that no matter how filthy your uncleanness is, there is enough to wash it all away. Do you feel yourself to be full of envy, strife, jealousy, deceit, maliciousness, slanderers, haters of God, and insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless? Or do you feel yourself to be sexually immoral, a failure, worthless, to put it simply a sinner, then there is a fountain flowing for your soul unclean. The fountain my sinful friends is the blood of Jesus Christ. It is spotless, clean and without any blemish. In our world when anything unclean, let’s say that you were to add a piece of mud to a clean cup of water, the clean cup of water becomes unclean and therefore unfit to drink. But in the science of heaven, it is reverse. When you at last take the courage to dive into the sea of the blood of Christ, your uncleanness is dissolved and cleansed by his clear water. Your sins do not stain it one bit, it makes you white as snow, and it makes you pure and righteous and it implants in you the spirit of freedom rather than that of condemnation. O sinner, friends with souls unclean, will you not this very minute jump into the fountain of Christ. O why linger where you ought not, why stay in prison, why nurture unbelief - O sinner jump with faith; the fountain is deep enough, it is wide enough to accommodate you and Christ invites you. Jump dear sinner, jump and be cleansed. Have your soul unclean cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

K.Oni

Nothing could ever cure it

(A rap)

Take a look outta window watch the rainfall

Your granddaddy use to tell me heavens crying all the things wrong

You gone, not for long baby I’ll be coming home soon

Wait for me cuz the sadness killing me quickly

Quicker than making money, aint nothing much now

I used to live it up with you now I’m running round

Chasing life round the corner, coroner close the casket

I used to hold your basket now we looking up to the sky

Like we had it. Your granddaddy,

I still see him don’t worry he misses you like me

Say my prayers eat my dinners aint blessed

My heart throbbing with pain what’s there to gain

Ball nights, cinema dates, declared together by fate

Now all there’s left is hate

Regrets and mistakes I shouldn’t have made.

Look at your name set in stone ingrained in the frame

In silence and tears we parted left me broken hearted

I love to hear you speak, O heaven a goddess release

Let me for one night please, see the love that changed me

Hark; how often my sorrow and tears be

The first day was bliss; I recollect it in the morning

Catching your smile so bright, cooled the evening

I touched you like a rose drawing near to hear your soft taken breath

Our summers weren’t fading, the earth was ours

Now I’m grateful for the past I wish it lasted

If ever two was one we were perfect illustrators.

I loved you with passion, freely, and purely, nothing could ever cure it.

Never could love again, I’ve reached the height, die now as a lonely man

Plan to be nothing better than what I was with you

Because I’ll do injustice to whoever wants to be with me

Cannot love you like I love her,

What’s a woman’s heart without her?

K.Oni

Women of the Bible: Eve

Adam called the first woman Eve because she was the mother of all living. Is there anything living with which we shall not properly say that Eve was its mother. Adam endowed with an uncorrupted mind came to this conclusion and him being wiser than we, shall we not also agree.

Eve was created after Adam because out of all the living creatures living who were created from dust there was found no suitable companion for poor Adam. God in his infinite wisdom abandoned the idea of making again a creature from the dust but rather thought it splendid and perfect that a suitable helper for man should come from Adam's own flesh. So God caused Adam to sleep and took a rib and formed it into a Woman. Adam woke and found in his presence a beauty which surpassed the angels, his dear wife Eve. At once with a sparkle that fades the Sun, Eve smiled, with Adam reaching out his arm to collect his bride as a gift better than all of Creation. And do we not see Christ as the priest leading this ceremony which was to ultimately be the perfect illustration of his unity with his Church. See how the angels cheered and danced at the introduction of this new feminine excellence of God's glorious image; with the angels drinking wine that makes one not loose their senses but to culminate the joy of their beholding. And how God the Father in unity with the Spirit and Son at last declared the whole creation very good.

But there was one who despised this happy matrimony, who from seeing the merriment of Adam with his wife Eve and their sweet communion with God, entertained with great jealousy, anger and wisdom the destruction of this blessed communion. The devil, understanding Adam's total love for Eve, saw Eve as his Achilles’ heel thus venture to tempt Adam through Eve for it was written “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression".

Eve at first appearance must have sat next to Adam and learned in quietness - Adam would have taught her the ways of paradise and instructed her in the names he gave to all the animals, so that in turn, she may teach it to their children and instruct all the new born animals of the free rules of paradise. She was a helper and Adam must not lord it over her and in all true graces, yea, that sweet grace, fine and tuned distinct in that of womanhood, surpassing flowers and colourful birds in eminence, she was the crown of his glory, and the golden crown of creation.

Then an evening came, the woman in all her loveliness musing by the streams of eternal life, resting with the rabbits was suddenly intruded upon by a creature whose nature had been made deplorable. The serpent with its cunning ways tempted Eve to break God’s command. Eve at last succumbed to the devil’s lies for she was of a delicate kind, less well adapted to offering resistance to such a foreigner as Adam would have. But Adam is not to be excused, for he was by her but granted her the liberty to deal with such a beast when He should have known better and pried into their conversation. The woman being deceived then dragged Adam into her sin. She must have said to him, ‘Adam the desire of my soul, see, the fruit of the tree is good for food, it is delightful to the eyes like I am to you, and able to make us wise like God, and do not worry my dear about God’s prohibitions, we will not die but live and be like God, knowing good and evil’. Eve must have said such words with great sweetness yet innocent of its great consequences. Her transgression became essential in the sin with which she caused Adam to sin. If Christ had an Eve, would the devil not have employed the same tactics - he would not have tempted Christ directly but send his Eve -it would be her in that garden of Gethsemane; but Christ being greater than Adam would have done what Adam should have done at first, that is, follow the will of God regardless from whose lips betrayal is spoken forth from. 

Paradise was lost. Eve’s dwelling in this blissful earthly garden was short lived. She was banished to live the rest of her years in a world of thorns and thistles. Poor Eve was now to be mastered; she was to be all her life a slave to her passions for her husband. Society would suppress her kind, childbearing would become painful, this weaker vessel would be treated harshly by her master, she herself a paradise was now a paradise lost.

History may have wished to forget you Eve or treat you as vile and hold you as the queen of seduction bringing ruination to Mankind but God, your God as not despise you for it pleased him, yea it pleased Christ, to be found in you. At the end of God’s awful cursing towards you because of your treacherous sin, the God who created you and formed you from the Man’s ribs said “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

Inside the uterus of this cursed woman was release from her universal curse to be found. Her seed will one day reverse the paradise which she caused to be lost and her seed will free her from her own tainted depravity. Eve was fixated upon this promise that when Cain was born she supposed that he was the promised seed for she said when she conceived him, “I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD”. Miserable Eve! O how she must have lamented when she watched the growth of Cain, how depraved his ways were. Her sorrows only increased for she must have set her hope again on Abel, who was more a friend of nature and of God but died at an untimely hour at the hands of Cain. She must have rued that unpleasant hour when she yielded to the devils hands - for the result of her sin was now the loss of two sons from her womb. Eve must have died in sadness and only repeated in lamentable speech the glory of that heavenly paradise which she substituted for this barren desert where her husband must toil day and night.

But God is faithful. After many millennia the Angels of God acknowledged the seed of Eve in the Child of Mary. Jesus was the blessed seed to reverse the curse and how Eve must have longed to see His day. She saw it by faith and was glad, and through the eyes of Mary she nurtured him and placed all her hopes in him. 

K.Oni

Are you alive or dead?

If biblically life and death is defined by our relationship to God, where do you stand my friend? Do you have life, that is do you have communion with the living God, the Father, Son and Spirit or are you dead - that is totally estranged from him, not knowing his voice, knowing nothing of the comfort of His Spirit nor the satisfaction of the death of his Son. Are you alive or dead?


Ah you might now say that you are dead. That as things stand you are completely alienated from him. You may have heard of him through speech and know something of his counsel and have a degree of knowledge as to his being, but you do not know him at all. By way of an example - I am sure that you have heard of the queen, you have seen her pictures, and perhaps you are accustomed to her behaviours and manners but knowing all this does not imply that you know her at all. Supposing you was walking down the aisle in Sainsbury’s and the queen is shopping for her beloved goats cheese, and you were to walk by her, will she say ‘hey Fred how are you’ - no. she would not pause. You might pause but she would look at you a stranger, that is because you have no relationship with her. Suppose it was William or Harry whom passed by her at the aisle, would she not have stopped and greeted her grandchildren. Of course she would have. Likewise if God should pass by you, and yea, when he came in His Son, the world did not recognize him and I suppose that you would not recognize him either because you have no relationship with him. God would say hello but you would look at him with a blank expression - it is because you are dead in your sins - or your reaction might be like that of the apostle Paul when blinded by the Lord, he could only say ‘who are you Lord’. 


Contrast Paul’s reaction to Peter’s when Peter sitting upon his own sorriness was once again called upon by the Lord. Peter upon hearing the voice of the beloved disciple saying to him that it is the Lord, immediately put on his outer garment and threw himself into the sea. Then the disciples all sat and ate with Jesus and none of them dared ask him, ‘who are you,’ for they knew it was Jesus.  You see, they all knew it was Jesus because they were alive but Paul did not know that it was Jesus because he was dead. 


Are you still dead, still stuck in the graveyard of life? Because if you are, you are in danger; there is a storm that is coming your way and unless you can rise from your casket and escape to the safety shores, you will perish in the storm forever. My friend, you are as to say it ever so gently, hopeless, for you are without God in this world. My friend you may say that I am very comfortable and need not to be alive; but if you had eyes to see you would know of your awful situation. This world as to say will be all of your heaven and what a poor heaven it is. It is a heaven laden with strife, envy and jealousy. I am sure that your own soul bears witness of a better place, of another season where this dreary earth is replaced with the everlasting presence of God’s unimpeded goodness. It is coming I tell you and there is a very solid reason to believe this, that is, that Jesus Christ once came in the flesh to suffer and rise again therefore He is coming again to make a renewal of this despondent earth; and do you not will to come into his rest? You may say my friend that you desire no such thing, that is because you are dead. If you had eyes to see, or if you were alive and had any communion with the living God, you would say and curse your own soul for swimming in a mud puddle laden with skin eating bacteria when you could swim in a clear blue warm ocean with all the beautiful creatures of the sea to your hearts content.


You see my friend, whilst you are dead you cannot see or rather you set at nought the excellencies and glory of Jesus Christ. You give him no honour to whom all honours are due, you are not sensible of his deserving of praise therefore you do not seek his glory and praise in anything that you do. All day you shut him out, while he knocks at your door. You show him a great contempt by refusing to accept him, you will not believe his words especially when he says that He has come to give life to the full. It is all because you are dead.


But contrast your position to that of a person who his alive - you see they are very sensible to the excellencies and glory of Christ. They know that Jesus is of better worth than gold and silver, that in fact He is the holy one of God and they make everything of it. They sing of his praise, they open the door for him, they rejoice in him and give him the honour and glory due to his divine person. They have hope as sure as the sun rises in the morning, they have left their filthy puddle for his ocean, they know of joys and happiness in this world in as much as it comes from him, and they walk this hell with both eyes fixed on the heaven to come. A soul alive to God is much happy in God but a soul dead to God thinks nothing of him; they only think of him perhaps in what benefits he can do to them as in a business dealing but never actually love him for who he is. Their best enjoyments here have no room for him, no, he is looked upon as they looked upon him at first, a man of sorrows and of no joy. It is because they are blind and dead, unmoved to his wonderful sweetness and heartful promises made in his book. Those alive are contrary, they read of his steadfast promises and bind it upon their hearts, they feast upon it in the dry seasons. 


O I wish that you were alive, that you were like me sensible to the sweet things of the Lord. O I wish that you could see the folly of your desertion that like me you can come to his house to dine. But you are dead, dead in sins and transgressions and my hope for you are anchored in my heavy prayers for you, that God, who is the one that calls the dead to live may call your name with an effectual call that at last you may beat your chest and mourn the years you have spent away from him and rejoice in the many eternities you will spend with him. 


K.Oni