A week ago, the National Geographic (Nat Geo) website ran an alarming report about a record plague of locusts descending on East Africa, threatening the food supply of tens of millions.
It said climate change may be to blame since human activity has caused a key ocean circulation pattern, the Indian Ocean Dipole to misbehave, with rising sea surface temperatures triggering exceptional wet weather, including rare cyclones in parts of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and extreme drought and destructive bushfires in Australia.
“East Africa is in the midst of a crisis that sounds like something out of the Book of Exodus” Nat Geo stressed, explaining that “City-sized swarms of the dreaded pests are wreaking havoc as they descend on crops and pasturelands, devouring everything in a matter of hours. The scale of the locust outbreak, which now affects seven East African countries, is like nothing in recent memory.”
Senior Locust Forecasting Officer with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Keith Cressman warned that further unusual storms will mean more such serious outbreaks. He fears that by June, the desert locusts will have increased 400-fold, leading to widespread devastation in a region extremely vulnerable to famine. Over 13 million people in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia already experience “severe acute food insecurity,” according to the FAO, while another 20 million are on the brink, Nat Geo added.
The article was cited in a post by the far-right Christian blogger, Michael T. Snyder, used by the “Third Exodus Assembly (T.E.A) Watchers” a public service page maintained by the Longdenville, Central Trinidad-based church which has branches and followers in Guyana, several Caribbean islands and elsewhere.
Led by the firebrand Pastor, Vinworth Anthony Dayal, the religious group shot into the news recently with the State’s seizure and ongoing investigation of over TT$28M in cash “tithes” when he made a last-minute attempt to exchange 29 copy-paper boxes crammed with the old hundred dollar-blue bills, for the equivalent in new polymer notes.
Themed “A Sign to The World” the church’s “Watchers” site has nothing to do with the famous 1987 suspense novel by the best-selling author Dean Koontz. Instead, the name quotes the title of a 1958 sermon, “Watchman, What of the Night?” delivered by the influential evangelist and charismatic faith healer, William Marrion Branham who also campaigned outside of his native United States of America (USA), including in Europe, Africa, and India. Branham claimed to have received an early angelic visitation in 1946, commissioning his worldwide ministry and his career. He died following a car crash in 1965.
Branham’s declaration, “The watchman also had to be on duty all times. And he was to warn the people of approaching dangers. That was his duty to watch for the approaching danger,” headlines the T.E.A page, which features other Snyder pieces, and conspiracy theories about the current coronavirus, and whether it could be a “bioweapon” from a Chinese vaccine experiment gone wrong.
Snyder feels “most of the churches in America have gotten way off track.” To his credit, he cautions, “Global events are really starting to accelerate, and things are only going to get crazier in the months ahead. So buckle up and hold on tight, because the ride ahead is going to be extremely wild.”
Like Synder, Pastor Dayal and his faithful followers of Branham, the so-termed “Seventh Messenger” believe the world is in its last days. In the Book of Revelation, the number seven is of special significance with seven angels sounding seven trumpets, each before a series of apocalyptic events as seen by John of Patmos. The trumpets blare forth after the breaking of the seventh seal, securing the doomsday document.
Predictions include the appearance of the Antichrist, great warfare, famine, a devastating earthquake and astronomical upheaval, with the final judgment featuring the darkening of the sun and moon, a plague of “demonic locusts” that torture the unsaved, and the march of a demonic army that kills a third of humanity.
In his over four decades that has seen his group expand from Laventille and Barataria, Pastor Dayal, who turns 69 in August, has sought to spread the word as Branham did, through a travelling ministry. He has gone to some 80 countries, “been around the world two or three times” having “realized how small our vision was because we had no outside exposure” making the “little church” famous, according to an online interview posted on Youtube.
Following the confiscation of the funds, he would question his congregation, “Did I ever take anything from you, did I ask you, did I beg you, did I borrow from you, did I breach you, did I put my hand in your pocket?” to a choruses of “No!” He asked, “What I ashamed for? I do anything wrong? If they can’t believe it have $28M dah is them.”
“Is you give it to me, if I get lockup, is because you give it to me and you see exactly how it spent” to a chorus of cheers. There were “bags and bags” of tithe money, and “I only open it up in the last couple of months and the last couple of days, to discover I have so many of checks that stale dated I can’t give back people that”. Dayal insisted, the “Angel of God” was with him from birth pointing to his early, impoverished days in Sea Lots and Santa Cruz, and recalling the “hole in my shoes.” With the saved tithes, “I could build homes for my children and them, I could have sent them for University education, I deprive them of all that, why? Because I believe I was a steward, at the last hour, and because I have the message…” so (I did not take) all God’s money and put it into big house, big motor car and different things…”
Last Sunday, the defiant Pastor made another of his over hour-long energetic presentations to a rapt and full congregation, plus live-streamed branches from Toronto to Guyana, with this country showing the second largest number of Assembly adherents according to the video feed. Titled “The Two Beast (sic) And The Three Angels, In The Breach Between The Trumpets And The Vials – Examining The USA Church,” it centred on the doomsayers’ favourite part of the Holy Bible, Revelations.
“We know the time, we know the season, we will be able to look with anointed eyes of our understanding and see the modern events making clear the vindicated prophecy, may you be convinced that we are in the end time, may we be certain that those doors are fixing to be closed and will close quickly…” he thundered, as his conservatively dressed-flock murmured approvingly. This is an apparent reference to the “end-times” concept of the “Rapture” when “saved” Christian believers and chosen resurrected believers will meet with their Lord.
The Pastor hammered the USA, charging it has “bewitched nations” and conquered countries and their resources, telling his people, “we have to keep aware of what is happening around you at this time, you get one picture from the (Trinidad) Guardian and Express and a scriptural one from the Book of Revelation that no newspaper or no TV station can give us…”
He contended, “you like tv she controls that, you like sport, she controls that, you like fashion she controls that…you like singing, you like Beyonce, you like Jay-z and Shakira and them, duh is (those are) her children.” Stretching out his left arm, he smiled, then chuckled, “This is where Revelation is different to reasoning, Revelation does give you understanding, reasoning does just mess up your mind…”
ID tries to reason why women would attend a church that does not allow them to preach, and worries about pastors who condemn the “immorality of modern women.”
