If
you have ever lived as I have done most of my life where the equator
sits astride the earth, you would have seen the lesser and the
greater light in their full glory. There the sun burns with such
energy and power you cannot but feel a certain awe even if you are
atheist.
When
the peripatetic moon orbits itself to receive the fullness of light,
the glow of our natural satellite becomes an incandescent
performance.
Folk
belief has it that at full moon everything fills out. Babies born at
such times are believed to be chubby and big. Even animal and human
organs are thought to swell with health at full moon. Verifiably, the
seas swell and heave from the pull of the moon.
As
I sit here writing this column, I am feeling like a full moon —
and with good reason. The night after this article appears, my third
and last son will have returned from serving at the Washington D.C.
North Mission. The first two had served at Lagos, Nigeria, and
Springfield, Illinois, Missions. Now you know why I am feeling not
only like a full moon but also like an enlarged coast.
More,
I am feeling like a man who has returned a big favor. I am feeling
like a man who has paid back a burdensome debt. I had benefitted from
missionaries who left behind their parents, dates, and sacrificed
school or career development just so they could share the blessings
of the restored gospel. Getting my sons to return the favor had been
one of my most cherished dreams.
It
is tempting to think I am bragging, but I am witnessing to a prophecy
fulfilled. Back in 1994, when my family was contacted by
missionaries, I was such a wearying cynic they had to throw
everything at me to get my attention. I remember that during one of
their visits they brought Dr. Christopher Njor Odock, then a ranking
federal government official and the Calabar Nigeria district
president.
Though
a brilliant political scientist, Dr. Odock is not given to talking
much. As he sat listening to the discussion and watching me make a
fool of myself arguing against what I later found out to be the
truth, he smiled and prophesied that my sons should serve missions. I
hadn’t even accepted the gospel the missionaries were teaching
me and had no idea what their district president was talking about.
At
the time my first son was eight and his brother six years. The third
was due in a month, so what could he possibly mean? Even when I
finally joined the Church I had no desire for my boys to spend two
years walking the street chasing after folks who thought they were
better off without God.
My
dream for them was to pursue college degrees and then get on with
their lives and leave home so that I too and their mother could catch
up with fun that my humble beginnings never gave me a chance to
enjoy.
With
time, however, that perspective gave way as I gained more and more
insights into the gospel and thus came to appreciate the need for
missionary work. How else could one truly become like the Savior
without first of all becoming an under-shepherd?
Missionary
service, I soon learned, was a calling to participate in Deity’s
work to bless humanity not only with immortality but to bring all who
are willing to accept the fullness of his love, back to His divine
presence.
This
insight came with a certain sense of urgency to surrender my puny
will to the will of the Savior. In our family council we discussed
what was of eternal consequence in our lives and the privilege we had
to build the Lord’s kingdom on earth.
Before
long, as the boys came of age they all made the decisions by
themselves to go on mission. The path to this choice was not easy,
but everyone agreed it was the thing to do.
Fortunately
an orphaned cousin we brought to live with us had not only accepted
the gospel too but went ahead to serve a mission, thus setting a
wholesome example for my sons who were much younger. Soon another kid
who also came from the village to live with us after his father
passed also joined the Church and went on mission. We were already a
home with two returned missionaries.
One
of my sons who had already finished college chose to serve a mission
before gunning for a career or graduate school. Before long his two
kid brothers dropped out of college to do same.
I
endorsed their decision because as a teacher I had spent my entire
life dispelling ignorance and superstition. There were so many quirky
folk beliefs that passed off as truth and weighed down the lives of
so many people.
During
my discussion with the missionaries I was able to see through some of
the mind-boggling sophistry and deception I had accepted without
questioning. Some precious truths in the Bible, as I came to realize,
were twisted out of socket. Deity, for example being Spirit, was
everywhere present but having no body of flesh and bone, could not
and has not been seen by any man.
In
addition, He had cut off communication with mankind ever since the
last ink of His last revelation to John, as we were taught, dried up.
No one ever ask if indeed the Book of Revelation was actually the
last revelation to be received and written in the Bible. Also either
due to deliberate omission or miseducation not much attention was
paid to the wording of the end of John’s prophecy:
“And if any man
shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God
shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy
city, and from the things which are written in this book.”
(Rev. 22:18–19).
This
prophecy was used to teach us to hate and reject the Book of Mormon.
Though
the definite article, “this” is clearly used to indicate
John’s specific prophecy, the injunction was in my culture
generalized to cover the entire sixty-six books of the Bible. It did
not matter that similar warnings occurred elsewhere way back in the
very first books of the Bible.
This
misperception of the truth was what early European missionaries
taught us when they started scouring our West African coast long
before Christopher reached the Americas in 1492. When I interrogated
the false teaching, I was mindful that part of the package the
Europeans brought was the apostate religion available to them at the
time.
It
was our responsibility to unlearn the falsehood. Maximilien
Robespierre had it going for us when he observed that, “The
secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of
tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.”
This
was one of the reasons I strongly felt my sons were right wanting to
be part of team Light. And with the three of them out and back, I am
feeling as fulfilled as when a lesser light receives a fullness from
a greater light.
Imo Ben Eshiet was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Raised in his village, Uruk Enung, and at
several cities in his country including Nsukka, Enugu, Umuahia, Eket and Calabar, Eshiet is a
detribalized Nigerian. Although he was extensively exposed to Western education right from
childhood in his country where he obtained a PhD in English and Literary Studies from the
University of Calabar, he is well nurtured in African history, politics, culture and traditions.
Imo is currently a teacher in the high priests group in the Summit Ward of the Greensboro North
Carolina Stake.