A Showdown Between Elijah and Baal?

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

It's been quite a while now, but I still remember the epic and miraculous showdown story between the prophets of Baal, the supreme deity of the ancient Canaanites, and the radical revolutionary Yahweh-loving Prophet Elijah. I guess my Christocentric persuasion dictates the forgone conclusion of Yahweh's trumping of Baal. In this particular instance, however, the contest of wills is between Prophet Isaac Owusu-Bempah, widely described in the Ghanaian media as a "controversial" figure, on the one hand, and Barfuor Asabre Kogyawoasu Ababio III, described as the principal/head of the Spiritual Division of Asanteman (aka The Nsumankwaahene).

The last time that I read something about him in regard to the preceding, in the press, Prophet Owusu-Bempah was widely alleged to have dared the equally controversial, albeit far better known, Nigerian-born charismatic religious figure Prophet T. B. Joshua to a contest of prophetic deliverance of some sort. It was never quite clear to me; what was clear to me, or rather, became clear to me back then, was the desperately pathetic nature of the entire gauntlet. I am hereby, of course, alluding to the curious fact of how a Nigerian-born charismatic religious leader came to assume center-stage of the charismatic Christian religious circuit in Ghana. It still staggers my imagination.

One thing, though, is clear beyond dispute. And it is the rather disturbing fact that Ghanaian Christians, for the most part, continue to pathologically exhibit an abject sense of moral and cultural diffidence as to desperately look up to the "divine" messengers of other lands for intercession with their own God, even a God as putatively universal as the Christian God.

The latest impasse involving Prophet Owusu-Bempah revolves around the purely subjective claim of the latter's allegedly having interceded on behalf of His Majesty, The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei-Tutu II, to avert the purportedly revealed imminent demise of the most influential Ghanaian monarch and his mother, The Queenmother of Asanteman, Nana Afia Kobi. Naturally, the Nsumankwaahene of Asanteman is deeply incensed by this early morning publicity stunt of Prophet Owusu-Bempah, or so it seems to the head-priest of the Asantehene.

In other words, Prophet Owusu-Bempah clearly and flagrantly appears to have strayed into the liturgical territory of Otumfuo's principal spiritual adviser. Which is simply to say that by the public revelation of his purported intercession before the Christian God on behalf of His Majesty, The Asantehene, Prophet Owusu-Bempah appears to have rudely and summarily effected the proscription of the office of the Asantehene's spiritual adviser. In the annals of Asante culture, no religious affront could be at once more blasphemous and heretical. And this clearly appears to be the main reason for the official demand of unreserved apology from Prophet Owusu-Bempah by Barfuor Asabre Kogyawoasu Ababio III (See "Rev. Bempah Dares Manhyia: I Will Not Apologize" MyJoyOnline.com 2/12/14).

In flatly refusing to apologize to the traditional seat of Asanteman, Prophet Owusu-Bempah riposted that while, indeed, his Asante sub-ethnic identity was well beyond moot, nonetheless, when it came to the confession, and profession, of his Christian faith, the gods of Asanteman far paled in significance. The sticky question that remains and is unlikely to go away anytime soon is as follows: Precisely who gave Prophet Owusu-Bempah the right, and authority, to purportedly intercede with Yahweh on behalf of the existential prolongation of the Asantehene?

Put tersely another way, does the Asantehene not reserve the inviolable, and inalienable, right to flatly refuse to allow Prophet Owusu-Bempah to take undue credit for His Majesty's recovery from an apparently, albeit publicly unspecified, life-threatening malady? A rather interesting proposition, isn't it?

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Feb. 12, 2014
E-mail: [email protected]
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