The following are the views expressed by Olufemi Oguntokun in the October 14, 2026 episode of the On the Lord’s Side Podcast — Christian perspectives on news and current events.
Good morning to you once again. It’s Wednesday, the 14th 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.
“Seventy-four people who can give a million, come to the altar.” A young woman filmed her heartbreak at what church had become. Scripture has a blunt name for it.
I want to begin with two accounts circulating on X. A young woman made a video about a church service she attended — she tagged it “Emotional Blackmail and Manipulation in Church.” The theme that Sunday was meant to be “keys to multiplication and fruitfulness” — using whatever God has given you to win souls and glorify Him — but, she said, the guest preacher dwelt entirely on money and sowing seed. He opened with prosperity-based prayer points: pray that your blessing will make your friends and family envy you; pray that God will remove someone in a high place so you can take their position. “Why,” she asked, “should my success be based on someone’s downfall?” Then he told a story: he had once preached on seed-sowing while a multi-millionaire sat in the congregation; when he called for ₦200,000 offerings, the man did not come out — and that night, he said, armed robbers made off with ₦5 million from that man and shot his wife, so the millionaire rang him, now wanting to sow. He rubbed anointing oil on chairs, called people forward at ₦100,000, then ₦50,000, ₦20,000, ₦5,000 — all the while saying, “I’m not begging you, I’m not forcing you, you’re doing this of your own will” — after opening with stories of misfortune befalling those who did not give. He never prayed for those who gave nothing; and he announced that everyone who came forward had exactly 48 hours to pay into the church account, which the resident clergy said was for building a guest house. “If I had come to church with an unbeliever, or someone suicidal,” she asked, “what did they learn today? What are they going home with?” And she wondered aloud whether she was the only one bothered — “Is it only me?”
A gentleman then commented with his own account. In his church, he said, the guest pastor kept repeating “seventy-four people, seventy-four people” — calling seventy-four who could give ₦1,011,000 each to the altar, then ₦511,000, then ₦311,000, then ₦211,000. After all his earnest prayers, waiting till half past one, he simply shook his head, found his way out among many others, hailed a bike, and went home — grossly disappointed.
I must say at once: these are unverified accounts from social media; I don’t know the particular churches. But if we don’t want to bury our heads in the sand, we know such things happen — and when so many would confirm the pattern from their own experience, it deserves our engagement. And my heart bleeds, because here is a young believer who came to worship God through Christ and went away disappointed in those who led the service.
So what themes can we name? The first is divination for gain — and Scripture names it exactly. Go to Acts 16: the girl with the spirit of divination “brought her masters much gain.” Luke places the supernatural claim and the revenue stream in the same breath. Whenever there is pecuniary gain riding on a spiritual service, be careful. And notice the “seventy-four” — ask yourself, why seventy-four? Some will defend it: “He received it from the Holy Spirit.” But where is the pattern in Scripture? For, as a Bible teacher once said in words that stayed with me, we are not called to do new things; we are called to follow biblical patterns. We are not building a new religion. “Ask for the old paths,” said the prophet; “contend for the faith once delivered to the saints,” said the apostle. So whenever you find something the apostles did not do, you must ask twice why you should do it. Yes, the apostles raised money — for a famine, for the poor; necessary things. But did they ever use techniques like this? In the first church, those who gave, gave willingly, of their own resources. I’ve sat in a service where the preacher, mid-appeal, said, “I’m not manipulating you” — and I thought, please. When a man has to say he isn’t manipulating you, take it to the bank that he is; he would not need to say it otherwise.
Micah 3:11 names it: “The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us?” A rhetorical question — how can the Lord be among you when all you do is for gain? And this is an ailment in the body of Christ in Nigeria, where so-called gospel singers and preachers are said to negotiate their “honorarium” before they will come; I’ve heard how angry someone grew when an event’s very first agenda item was the fee for “ministers” who would not come otherwise. And the oldest heresy of this family has a name — Acts 8 — where Simon offered money for the gift of God, and Peter’s reply is one of the hardest sentences in the New Testament: “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money… thy heart is not right in the sight of God.” That is exactly what “bring an offering and I’ll pray a blessing over you” does: it makes people offer money for the gift of God, and sends many away believing that if only they had paid, God would have responded.
Now hear me clearly: the sin is not the money. Jesus called it the unrighteous mammon — you need it in this fallen world, but use it to lay up treasure in heaven. It is not asking for money, nor raising funds, that is the sin. The apostles raised funds; in 2 Corinthians the Macedonians “gave beyond their power,” and even “begged the privilege” of giving — that is what glorifies God: people seeing His work and pleading to share in it. The sin is the mechanism. If you need to pay salaries, say so, and let people give as they are taught by God, in proportion to their love, willingly and generously. But do not use methods that do not glorify God. God needs no one’s blackmail to fund His work.
And look at the public walk to the altar — it announces your bracket. Call for “seventy-four who can give a million,” and those who walk are seen to have it, while those who stay seated are seen not to — and the organisers know exactly that you will walk rather than be shamed. Who is injured when leaders behave this way? Not the man who can produce a million. The injured are those who cannot, and who go home believing they have forfeited their portion — angry with God, thinking, “Because You didn’t make me rich, I was cheated of today’s blessing.” How twisted. 1 Timothy 6:5 names it: those “supposing that gain is godliness.” Everything the culture throws at us is already answered in Scripture, if only we would read it — which is perhaps why such preachers would rather people not study the Bible, but just come to be prayed over, and manipulated. Because the gospel’s own altar call is the exact inverse: Isaiah 55, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat… without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread?” Revelation 22:17, “whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” So if you ever find yourself in such a church, and someone says this blessing is for those who pay — bypass the man at the front and go straight to your God through our Lord Jesus Christ. There is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; know that, and you will have peace.
Fake chemo drips — water sold to the dying. Whatever the law calls it, the Bible calls it something far sharper, and holds more people guilty than you’d think.
A man posted on X — reported by Nigerian blogs as one Mahmoud Ribadu, whom I cannot verify — that he had heard from a very reliable doctor that they found fake chemotherapy drips: essentially water, being administered to patients. We cannot confirm this exact story. But it deserves attention, because the phenomenon is not rumour. Fake drugs sold to patients in Nigeria is officially documented by NAFDAC. In 2026 alone, NAFDAC has flagged batches of several drugs: in public alert 16 of 2026, on the 12th of March, it alerted the public to a falsified antimalarial found in Kaduna and Gombe — the batch numbers didn’t match the manufacturer’s database, the carton carried the wrong language, misplaced braille, wrong tamper seals, and named the wrong factory, and it was sold well below the genuine price. NAFDAC also confirmed in March 2026 a falsified Avastin — a cancer drug — and, in public alert 014 of 2026, another found at LUTH, the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. So whether or not this particular “water in a chemo drip” story is true, it is entirely consistent with what the regulator has published. In most of those cases, note, there was no chemical analysis — it was observation of the packaging and confirmation from manufacturers that the serial numbers matched nothing in their databases.
This is a crime, of course — counterfeiting, obtaining by false pretences, arguably recklessness capable of causing death. But whatever name the criminal code gives it, Scripture gives it a sharper one: abomination. Counterfeit trade is not some modern regulatory matter on which the Bible is silent; it is one of the few commercial sins God calls an abomination outright. Proverbs 11:1: “A false balance is abomination to the LORD.” Deuteronomy 25: “Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights… for all that do such things… are an abomination unto the LORD thy God.” Amos 8 condemns “making the ephah small, and the shekel great… that we may sell the refuse of the wheat” — and the counterfeit drug is exactly that: selling the refuse. This evil is as old as the fall: mixing the wheat with chaff, the rice or beans with stones, so that a five-kilogram bag is four and a half of beans and half a kilo of stone.
Notice the moral logic: God legislates against the weight in the bag — the thing the buyer cannot check. That is precisely why the trickster gets away with it, and precisely why the sick person, or the family caring for them, cannot verify what they are being sold. And the counterfeiter’s defence — “I never touched the patient; you cannot charge me with the death” — Scripture does not accept. Exodus 21: the man who leaves a pit uncovered pays for the beast that falls in. Deuteronomy 22: build a house without a parapet round the roof, and if someone falls, you are liable. Liability for foreseeable harm is a real biblical category, as it is in the law of tort: if it was reasonably foreseeable that your act would cause harm, you answer for it. So if you sell water to a man who should be taking chemotherapy, and his illness runs on while he and his carers believe he has been treated, you are responsible for his death. Those so desperate for gain that they do this should be reminded: you are murderers.
And these counterfeiters choose their victims for their helplessness — a family already selling property to treat a loved one, hooked by the cheaper price. That is robbing the poor because he is poor, which the Bible condemns outright. Nor is it only the counterfeiter: the manufacturer who makes the substandard product is clearly guilty; the trader who suspects it is fake but sells it anyway is equally liable; and the regulator who turns a blind eye is responsible too — for Romans 13 says the ruler “beareth not the sword in vain,” and one given a sword who refuses to wield it answers for it. Even the patient and family carry a sliver of responsibility — not to be simple-minded, since we are now asked to check batch numbers online against manufacturers’ databases, and doctors and nurses who administer these drugs should verify them too.
And there is a theological angle, which ties to our first story. If a counterfeit drip is wicked because it takes money from the dying and gives them nothing with any active ingredient, then so is its spiritual version — the “prophet” who tells a cancer patient to stop his drugs and let him pray, or the merchant selling anointing oil “that will cure any ailment,” when God has directed none of it. I pray the Lord arrests these evil people and turns their hearts of stone to hearts of flesh — for that is the heart of the matter: a man who says, “As long as I make the money, I don’t care whether the patient dies,” is one whose heart has been hardened against the voice of the Holy Spirit. And a word for those who did everything they could for a loved one who still did not recover, and now wonder whether the medicine was fake: do not beat yourself up; do not let guilt take hold. The Lord rules over all, and He has said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay” — and it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. May He expose all who are in this horrible trade, and send a revival that turns hearts of flesh across our land, in Jesus’ name.
Billy Crystal lost his home and his best friend, then said: “I don’t trust God anymore.” How do you answer that?
Finally, the story of Billy Crystal — the 78-year-old entertainer, still well known in Hollywood. He has said something about God: “No, because I don’t trust Him. Too many bad things have happened, and I don’t trust Him anymore.”
Look at the bad things. In January 2025, the Palisades fire in California took the home he and his wife Janice had lived in for 46 years — where they raised their children and their grandchildren played, a place he called magical, burned to the ground. “I stepped onto the ground and fell to my knees, and I wailed,” he said. “I had not cried like that since I was 15 years old, when I was told my father had just died.” And then in December 2025, his closest friend of half a century, the director Rob Reiner, and his wife were — according to police — killed by their own son. Crystal and Reiner had been together at a holiday party the night before; they said goodbye, and then this. So when an interviewer gently asked whether he had been talking to God, he answered: “No, because I don’t trust Him. Too many bad things have happened.”
Picture the gravity of that moment — and the forthrightness of it. How do you respond to a man like that? I think the answer is that we must not answer at all. He has not asked a question; he has described a wound. A man once said to God directly, “I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me… thou art become cruel to me” — that was Job, in chapter 30, accusing God of cruelty to His face. And yet at the end of the book God turns, not to Job, but to Job’s religious friends: “Ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.” God did not condemn the man who questioned Him; He reproved the men who rushed to explain Him. There is a show Billy Crystal built years ago around conversations with God — he called it “700 Sundays,” roughly all the Sundays he had with his father before he died — which is why the interviewer asked. And he is not alone. The psalmists cried the same. Many psalms begin in darkness and resolve by the end — “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? … hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him.” But Psalm 88 begins in darkness and stays there, with no resolution to the last verse. Jeremiah said, “O LORD, thou hast deceived me.” Naomi came home from Moab and said, “Call me not Naomi” — call me Mara — “for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.” Billy Crystal is in company the Scriptures know well.
So how do we minister to such a man — five ways. First, and hardest: do not defend God. God can defend Himself; He has not asked us to. When Job’s friends first came, they did the right thing — Job 2:13 — “they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him.” Second, sit with him and listen, and feel the gravity of it; some platitudes do more harm than good. Third, do not try to explain what happened — unless God has actually shown it to you, do not presume to tell a grieving man what God “had in mind” when his house burned or his friend was killed. Fourth, weep. Romans 12:15 — “weep with them that weep.” The shortest verse in Scripture, at the tomb of Lazarus: “Jesus wept.” He did not say “stop crying”; He stood in the graveyard and cried, grieving the ruin that death and the fall brought on humanity. And fifth, stay with him, and pray.
So what do we say to Billy Crystal? Nothing. We sit on the ground, we stay quiet, we come back in a year — and if he is still angry, we let him be angry. Because the alternative is that he stops saying it aloud, bottling it up and drifting ever further from God; a man who says it out loud is, in a strange way, still in the conversation. And this much we know: the great Comforter can comfort His people. What we can do is pray for the hurting, weep with those who weep — and never minimise, trivialise, or explain away another’s suffering, nor pretend we know what God is doing, for most of the time we don’t; and let our hearts truly break for those passing through the horrors of this life. I pray the Lord spares you such bitterness; and if you have known it, that He turns your mourning into dancing and gives you beauty for ashes. I pray for Billy Crystal at 78 — that the Lord spares his life to see his story turned around, and that one day the world reads another report, of him acknowledging the goodness and the lordship of God. I do not know how that would come to be. But what is impossible with men is possible with God.
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