GOD’s Kingdom Society, GKS, has warned secular and religious leaders who give themselves to craftiness, extortion, lie-telling, sexual immorality and other acts of hypocrisy to desist forthwith because of the dire consequences of their actions on themselves and the entire nation, reports SAM EYOBOKA.

Speaking against the backdrop of growing reports of shady practices by religious leaders, the president of GKS, Brother Godwin Ifeacho, in his Freedom Day address at Okirika, Rivers State, regretted that a number of those who claim to be in the light secretly commit those same sinful acts or works of darkness which they oppose in public.

“They pretend to be pious, and very much devoted to God, but in their hearts, despite all their pretensions, they are full of evil schemes. They are thus hypocrites, who put on masks or false appearances, feigning themselves to be what they are not,” the president said.

In the address entitled, “There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed,” delivered on his behalf by the publicity secretary, Brother Benedict Hart, the GKS president cited examples of believers in the early church, priests, kings, and believers in the Old and New Testaments who secretly gave themselves to wicked practices or works of darkness while presenting themselves to the people as “paragons of godliness”.

Such ones, he said, make “the mistake of many faithless and ungodly people (who) think they can by their craftiness hide things from God”.

He lamented that a number of religious leaders use the cover of darkness to involve themselves in idolatrous or occultic practices, as happened among the Jews in the days of Ezekiel the prophet when “the leaders of the people, those judicially bound to suppress idolatry …became its ringleaders” and salved their consciences with the reasoning that “The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth”.

Charging those who were merely pretending to be virtuous to repent or be exposed and humiliated sooner or later, Brother Ifeacho stated that God does not punish people immediately, not because He does not see, but to give the people opportunity to receive warning and repent so as to be saved.