The following are the views expressed by Olufemi Oguntokun in the October 26, 2026 episode of the On the Lord’s Side Podcast — Christian perspectives on news and current events.
And it’s good morning to you once again. It’s Monday, the 26th of October 2026, and this is On the Lord’s Side, Christian perspectives on news and current events. My name is Olufemi Oguntokun. You can follow me on X at @OlufemiOG, and you can follow GospelBells Radio on X at @GospelBelsRadio.
ON JOB: THE TITHE MYTH, AND THE “THOUGHT EXPERIMENT”
If you’ve been on Nigerian social media lately, you’ll have seen several preachers offering takes on what caused Job’s afflictions. You know the story, so I won’t retell it — but if anyone asked you what caused his suffering, I would be surprised if you couldn’t answer. One preacher suggested it was Job’s failure to pay tithes; another, that it was fear — that he so dreaded calamity that his dread came upon him. If you chose either, I’d be disappointed, because it would mean you haven’t been reading your Bible. Job’s affliction was plainly ordained by God — it’s there as clear as daylight — not because he did or failed to do anything, but because God chose to prove a point to the one identified as the devil in that account. Study to show yourself approved unto God.
I raise it again because yet another pastor repeated the tithe claim: “Job was not a tither — check all through Job; he gave to the poor, he never gave tithe; Satan dealt with him” because he did not pay tithe. Knowing the right answer is right there in Scripture, it grips the heart, and leaves only one conclusion: there are charlatans out there feathering their own nests. A dear friend sent me the clip and said, “In my opinion this is not imperfection, this is outright deceit” — and I agree, one hundred per cent, especially on a point that is not controversial at all, fully settled by Scripture. Our Lord said in Matthew 7:15, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves” — not merely wolves, but ravenous, hungry to steal, kill, and destroy, like their father the devil. And Paul wrote in Philippians 3, weeping, of those who are “enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is their shame, who mind earthly things.” We have been warned of such men; discern them, avoid them, and do not be like them. So let no one be left thinking the tithe-preacher might have had a point; and let us remember, as we said last week, that the most important thing a Christian can do is to know God for himself, and the only way is to read the Bible — the account of God revealing Himself to man.
But now to the meat of today, because a gentleman — Matuluko — engaged that same tithe-preacher from a completely different angle. He wrote: “Every Bible scholar worth their salt agrees that the book of Job was a thought experiment by Jewish theologians to grapple with the problem of evil. He was not a real person. And the Satan in the book is not the devil, but rather a prosecutor of sorts in the divine council. But someone in 2026 is building false doctrine on a 3,000-year-old thought experiment.” Now grasp the full ramification of that. He disagrees with the tithe-preacher — as we do — but for an entirely different reason, and that matters. In debate and philosophy you learn that it is not enough to agree on a conclusion; it is more important to know why you agree, because two people can reach the same conclusion from irreconcilable premises and end up not agreeing at all. We disagree with the tithe-preacher because the Bible plainly gives the reason for Job’s affliction and we may not substitute another. This gentleman disagrees because, he says, Job was merely a thought experiment — an imagined scenario invented to explore a theory. Those are not the same, and his premise is false.
So, was Job a thought experiment? First, the “consensus” claim is simply untrue. Go and read the Bible scholars — the conservative ones especially — and you will find no consensus that Job was fictional. When someone tells you “the scholars all agree,” check it. Now, the question is old; this morning I found that the Talmud — the venerated record of the dialogues of the Jewish rabbis — records this very debate (in Bava Batra): one rabbi argued Job “never existed and was never created; it is a parable,” reasoning that it reads like “a certain man” — as in a parable. And the answer the rabbis gave is the answer we on the Lord’s side can give from an informed place. In a parable you get “a certain man,” “a certain rich man,” “two men in one city” — as in Nathan’s rebuke of David, or the Good Samaritan. But in the book of Job you get far more. You get a named place: the land of Uz — a real region, named again in Jeremiah 25:20 and Lamentations 4:21, books written in different generations. You get an inventory: seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred she-asses. You get named friends with their ethnic origins — Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite. You get a genealogy — Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite. You get daughters with names. You get a lifespan — a hundred and forty years after his restoration. Nobody writing a thought experiment supplies a speaker’s ancestry.
And the clincher is the rest of Scripture. Ezekiel 14: “Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord GOD.” No one disputes that Noah and Daniel were real historical figures — so why does the prophet name Job alongside them? And James 5:11: “Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy” — James appeals not merely to a story but to what the Lord actually did in a real case. Understand, too, what collapses if you accept the “thought experiment”: it would mean Ezekiel was mistaken — and if he was wrong there, why trust him anywhere else? The truth is simpler: parables are always presented to us as parables; the Bible does not lie about its own stories. The Good Samaritan, the rich man and Lazarus, the prodigal son — all presented as parables; Job is not. And yes, Job is written in exalted poetry — but a true story can be set down by an inspired writer in the finest literary style; high style does not make it fiction. So we have here a false teaching (Job suffered for not tithing) refuted by the book itself, and then a second false teaching built on top (ignore it, because Job is only a thought experiment) — and both fall once you study the Word.
I wrote back to my friend with the wider lessons. First: pastors and preachers are not God, and their word is not law. The church no longer teaches that as it should, and it must. There is a place for the respect and honour due to those set over us in Scripture — but that is wholly different from treating a man as God, or his word as law. There is only one Star in the firmament of the church, and that Star is Christ, and His word. No man is to be treated as Lord over Christians. Second: Christians must be encouraged to ask questions — for the Bible tells us to test all spirits, including the spirit of your own preacher; not by your preferences or logic, but by the Word of God, asking, as the Bereans did, whether what is said has any basis in Scripture. Where that culture exists, the man tempted to say “Job suffered because he didn’t tithe,” or “everyone agrees Job was a thought experiment,” will think twice — knowing his congregation will go and check. I pray the Lord gives you the discipline to know Him, to study His Word, and so to discern when you are looking at a sheep, or a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
ON THE EXCLUSIVITY OF CHRIST
Next, a clip of a preacher who said, bluntly: “A Muslim is going to hell. There’s no nice way to put it. If we don’t start talking clearly like this, we’ll watch people literally perish. We are not serving the same God. There is only one way to the Father, and it’s Jesus Christ… one plane — if Jesus is not the pilot, you’re in the wrong place… if you are not in Christ, you are in sin, and whatever you do in sin is not good enough for God.” Two reactions were posted. One: “This preaching is not lawful; condemning another religion so openly can easily breach the peace; pastors should do better.” Another: “So childish and immature… God is not in any religion! God is too big to be trapped in one religion… but somehow you believe He loves you more than others because you’re a Christian. People need to know God for themselves and stop listening to this man.”
Do you agree with those critics? Ask yourself what your own reason would be for not preaching as this man did. I think we can all agree that if you are not in Christ, you are in sin — and if you hold the Bible as binding, you must agree, because of John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Many in the culture are angry about that verse, and so, sadly, are many in the church — many in the West who call themselves pastors argue there is no exclusivity, that God has revealed Himself in many ways; even the current Pope has reportedly said something to that effect, which is both mind-boggling and sad. But our Lord said what He said.
And consider John 3. Everyone rightly knows verse 16 — “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” — and love is truly there: love led the Father to give the Son, and love led the Son to die for us, unworthy as we are. But look closely and you find exclusivity too: salvation belonging to those who believe. If you say, “Femi, don’t read into it — don’t infer that whoever does not believe will perish,” then read on past verse 16. Verse 17: “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” Yes — love; He came to save. Verse 18: “He that believeth on him is not condemned” — exactly what the preacher said — “but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” The preacher named Muslims, which is perhaps why people took offence — but the Bible speaks generally: whoever does not believe in Christ is condemned already. We must not join those who say, “It’s true, but it shouldn’t be said.” Whatever is true should be said.
And here is a point you might not expect: this message needs to be preached primarily to Christians today, not chiefly to unbelievers. Why? Go to Romans 10. Verse 13: “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” — and, as a matter of logic, whoever does not call will not be saved. Then verses 14–15, the rhetorical questions: “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except they be sent?” — and we may add a fifth: how shall they preach unless they believe the gospel they are sent with? Here is the reason it must be preached in the church: many in the church do not believe Christ is the only way. They are in the church because they believe Christ is a way to God. Try raising it among fellow Christians and you will meet resistance: “Have you not travelled, not made friends outside the church? There are wonderful people who don’t know the Lord — are you telling me they’ll perish?” And when you ask about an unbelieving friend of another religion, the answer comes, “I believe God will save him too; he’s a good person.” But the lost will never hear the gospel unless we go and preach it; and we will never go unless we believe that those who do not believe are, as John 3:18 says, condemned already.
So the critics are wrong: this is neither childish nor unlawful — it is the true gospel of Christ. To accept Him is not merely to accept Him as your own way to God, but to accept Him as who He claims to be — the one Messiah, the only one anointed by God, the Saviour of everyone. You cannot take Him as your Saviour while denying He is the only Saviour for all; that is not yet to believe in Him. I understand that in some places Muslims may react violently to such a message, and that the culture says, “Don’t say hateful things, don’t make people feel bad.” Yet, with all those considerations, Christians have a duty to proclaim the lordship of Christ — every bit of the gospel — with courage. And those who most need to hear that Christ is the exclusive way are, counter-intuitively, Christians — because the unbelievers will not hear it unless we preach it, and we will not preach it unless we believe it. The reason so many of us never speak to, or even pray for, our unbelieving uncle, brother, father, child, spouse, friend, or colleague is that we do not truly believe that only those who believe in Christ escape condemnation. Once you truly believe it, you begin to be concerned for their souls — so start, even now, by praying for them, and the Lord will open the door for you, or for someone else, to witness and to bring them to salvation. Do you believe Christ is the only way? If you do — what are you doing about it?
I want to thank you so very much for joining us this morning on GospelBells Radio — On the Lord’s Side, Christian perspectives on news and current events. I’ll be with you again tomorrow, by the grace of God. Whatever you do today, please remain firmly on the Lord’s side.
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