They Might Have Lived Longer

Copyright © 2010 by Emmanuel Oghenebrorhie.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4568-3363-3

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4568-3364-0

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Unless otherwise indicated, scriptures are from Today’s English Version (TEV) also known as the Good News Bible (GNB), New King James Version (NKJV), (New American Standard Bible (NASB), Contemporary English Version (CEV), Rotherham, and Gods-Word

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Contents

Dedication

Appreciation

Preamble

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

Author’s Other Published Titles

Dedication

This is dedicated to Mr German Etaduovie the most fantastic father whoever lived, Mr Christopher Okuguni, father of my personal editor Cletus Okuguni and Mr Joe Jackson, father of Michael Jackson, worldwide acclaimed king of pop music. Also, to all parents who sowed the seed of greatness in their famous children in every generation

Appreciation

As always, all glory to God that this is available for others to read. Lord, everything in this call and commission is your doing and it is marvellous in my eyes.

My profound gratitude goes to my late earthly father—Mr German Etaduovie, who did whatever he knew possible to make me relevant in life. I thank God for letting him leave me behind when I was already an adult. God bless Cletus Okuguni for serving as editorial assistant. Mrs Yvonne Olatunbosun, my principal editor did editorial duties and I am most grateful to her for the encouragement and experiences shared, which fired my zeal to see this work completed. May God swell your heavenly accounts richly, in Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.

Preamble

Let us commence by saying that this could have been titled They Might have lived longer and happier or My Father My Friend, My Father My Best Friend, My Father and My Faith/Fate or My Parents Continuous Contribution to My Prospective Prosperity. If parents live long they are capable of making two major contributions to a child’s life. The first is nurturing the child to adulthood and the second is advising and guiding the child behind the scenes in the child’s adult life. Also, this discourse could have as well been IGI which means I am Greater Imagination or I am Greater Injurious Imagination and Insistence. Also worthy of mention is what I call Between Valid or Vantage Values and Vulnerable Values and Value Victors and Victims of this world".

There is what I call the Fortunes of Forgiveness which is based on the fact that because David tolerated Joab, he enjoyed Joab’s support and military expertise as long as he lived, before giving Solomon his successor the necessary instructions to kill Joab. Perhaps, as we know the story, part of the reason David could not forgive Joab for killing Abner was that he had hoped that after winning Abner to his side, he would exploit Abner’s tremendous experience to his advantage during his reign. Then, there is what I call Controversial Contribution(s), Condemnable Contribution as against Commendable Contribution to anything and your making in life. If you fail in academic pursuits and determine to succeed in business to make up for your academic deficiency, you do not work against academic institutions after you would have become prosperous as a successful business man. At least you should not. Joseph’s siblings sent him to Egypt as a slave and he became greater than them there. He did not punish them as they deserved. He was kind to them later in life. A man graduated with the worst result from his department. He was the first to pass out with such result and made departmental history. He left with the determination to be successful in life in that same field. He went into professional practice and became very wealthy. In order to prove a point some years later, he bought cars to support the department and lecturers. He went to prove that despite graduating with the worst result, he was not a failure in professional practice. He did not vilify the lecturers for his performance after he became rich. The poor result was a reason he determined to work hard and become very prosperous after his disastrous education. Therefore, a perceived afflicter’s contribution to one’s success should not be trivialized. Both Jacob who loved Joseph and his siblings who hated him made their own versions of contribution to Joseph’s emergence as Prime Minister in Egypt. The sickening siblings contributed in his relocation to Egypt where God meant him to become greater than him.

I

One of my disciples who is in the academics told me of an experience several years back when he was a doctoral student. He accompanied his supervisor to the burial of the supervisor’s colleague’s mother’s burial, as is usual in most African settings. One of he professors remarked to their bereaved colleague that your mother was very beautiful going by her looks in the obituary poster that I can see. The bereaved professor did not respond until the colleague repeated his seeming compliment a third time and the bereaved professor’s response was very insightful and revealed a heart-hidden ache. He said something like, Pal, you are right, though it was her greatest bane as you can see from the names of the children listed to her credit in her lifetime. You can see that we bear different surnames, which meant that she was hopping from one man to another. It meant that she agreed to have an affair with any man that came to ask her for intimate relationship. It meant that she was not a virtuous woman. You can make your own other countless insinuations. She was beautiful, with a But and one of my younger friends would say not just a but but a Big But for that matter. This professor did not resent his mother to the extent of not joining his siblings to give her a befitting burial as much as possible.

Now, truth be told from the onset, it is impossible for a man to live on earth without his or her own version of blemish except for them that died at infancy. The great philosopher, the wisest and richest in his generation and ever respectively, King Solomon, son of the great King David and the greatest king that ever ruled made allusion to this fact. Firstly, quoting Solomon, I Kings 8:46, II Chronicles 6:36, Proverbs 20:9 and Ecclesiastes 7:20 say—

46 "When they sin against You (for there is no one who does not sin), and You become angry with them and deliver them to the enemy, and they take them captive to the land of the enemy, far or near;

36 "When they sin against You (for there is no one who does not sin), and You become angry with them and deliver them to the enemy, and they take them captive to a land far or near;

9 Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?

20 For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin. (NKJV)

Then, furthermore, Genesis 6:5, Psalms 14:3, 130:3, Isaiah 53:3 and 6, 64:6, Micah 7:2, Luke 18:19, Romans 3:23 and I John 1:8 and 5:19 say—

5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

3 They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, No, not one.

3 If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?

3 He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

6 But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

2 The faithful man has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among men. They all lie in wait for blood; every man hunts his brother with a net.

19 So Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God.

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

19 We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. (NKJV)

We shall not digress into the fact that Genesis 6:5 affirms that the human heart tend towards evil continually, which sparks the thought of what I call The Condemnable Continuum. It suggests that man is a Certified Evil Doer or Chartered and Certified Sinner. Therefore, only the grace of God can make a man to be acceptable to Him. Only God can condition us to be good and acceptable to Him and be kind or fair or both to our fellow man. Yet, this is not an excuse for anyone to be badly behaved indiscriminately. On the other hand, it means that none should go about with the ungodly holier than thou mindset. Jesus used the parable of the Good Samaritan reported in Luke 10:30-37 to make an allusion to this fact. One significance of this is that the fact that all are sinful does not exempt sinners from suffering their due punishment. Therefore, the level of sinfulness or wickedness at which one becomes due for suffering is very important. Saul, like David, sinned, but while David got a reprieve, Saul cannot be said to have and therefore, the reason for such seeming different treatment should interest any wise person. Much as Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus, so also, Peter denied him; yet, while Jesus forgave Peter and even prayed for Peter, He cursed Judas for his misdeed.

For those who are familiar with famous Bible stories, they would remember Absalom for two main reasons (1) He was said to be the most handsome man in his nation of Israel in his lifetime. He was like Saul, son of Kish of his generation. His handsomeness seemed his God-given endowment that neither his father, sibling nor peers had, and which could not be taken from him by any man. Since he was a prince, it meant that he had the means to polish the God given good looks to shine like polished pure gold. Technically, his father contributed to the pleasant polishing of his good looks because his father’s kingly position made it possible for him to be a prince that provided the means or resources to bring out the good looks glamorously. God sowed the seed of handsomeness while his father watered or added manure or fertilized it to bear irresistible fruits for everyone to emulate. (2) and this is very unfortunate and though depending on individuals, we can say that he defied God’s commandments in Exodus 20:12 and 21:17, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 5:16 and 27:16 that children should respect their parents, he sought to seek the death of his father David so he could become king in place of him. This commandment is repeated in Matthew 15:4, 19:19, Mark 7:10 and 10:19, Luke 18:20 and Ephesians 6:2-3. He disobeyed God by determining to destroy his father. Destroying his father is like uprooting his roots so he could live or cling to the top of the tree and we know that it is logically impossible. If a tree is uprooted, it falls down, so the leaves and branches which used to be high up would be down as the tree now lies prostrate rather than standing upright. If Absalom killed his father, he would have uprooted his own roots and he should be down rather than remain up. But he seemed not to understand this profound principle. Proverbs 23:22 says that without his father, he would not have had the God-given privilege to live. Therefore, Absalom defied the two most important personalities in his life—God and his father—they constitute his roots because God conceived the idea of his existence while He used his father and mother to implement it. II Samuel 15 tells the preposterous story of David’s escape from Jerusalem for fear that Absalom would destroy him and his loyalists. It meant that those loyalists were better acquaintances of David than his own son Absalom. Verse 30 says—

30 So David went up by the Ascent of the Mount of Olives, and wept as he went up; and he had his head covered and went barefoot. And all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up, weeping as they went up. (NKJV)

David put on a sign of grief or his head bowed low because he had never been defeated by enemies. Secondly, he was an established warrior, yet his son, a supposed small boy had compelled him to flee from his homestead because he was taken unawares. He was taken unawares because this plot was by his own son—what I call Unexpected Attack by an Unexpected Enemy. If any other person attacked him, we could understand, but how do you explain that of his son? When Psalms 127:3-5 says—

3 Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward. 4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. 5 Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, but shall speak with their enemies in the gate. (NKJV)

This passage can be interpreted to mean that Absalom needed to stand up to defend his father from any external aggression, but he turned around to be the one attacking his father, and outsiders had to defend his father against him. II Samuel 3:33-34 says that David’s song of lament for Abner implied that he blamed Abner for letting down his guards for Joab to kill him cheaply. They were all warriors and understood that caution is their first most important law or survival principle and practise. Meanwhile, Abner was caught unawares because he had presumed that just like he had obeyed Saul to a fault, so also Joab would obey David at all times. Therefore, David knew how to deal with known enemies but not this unknown enemy—one of his own sons. If a father did not expect his son to plot against him, it only meant that David could never have plotted against his son for any reason. As to why David did not expect Absalom’s rebellion or seeking his destruction, he never plotted against his father Jesse. He did not sow plotting against his own father, so he should not have reaped it from his own son. When Absalom killed Amnon in II Samuel 13, it was understandable that he was avenging the rape of his younger sister. But here, we are saying there is nothing David did to justify Absalom’s attack. However, David did not understand that his son had spent some years in his maternal hometown and might have had a diabolic orientation during the period. Absalom began to live a lifestyle he never had before he went to live in Geshur.

There is what we can call Annoying Absalom and Annihilating Ambition or Absalom’s Annoying Annihilating Ambition. He forgot that his father might have attacked and annihilated others to become great but never attacked his own parents to became accomplished in life. His father worked for the wellbeing of his grandfather Jesse, not otherwise. He wanted his father David to reap what he never sowed and God never approved of that. His father did not deny him the chance to use every princely privilege available to brighten his God-given handsomeness. II Samuel 13-14 confirm that when necessary, his father forgave him freely. These meant that his father fulfilled his fatherly obligations to him, but Absalom refused to reciprocate. And we can say that as a result, II Samuel 17:14 and 18:1-16 say—

14 Absalom and all the Israelites said, Hushai’s advice is better than Ahithophel’s. The LORD had decided that Ahithophel’s good advice would not be followed, so that disaster would come on Absalom.

1 King David brought all his men together, divided them into units of a thousand and of a hundred, and placed officers in command of them. 2 Then he sent them out in three groups, with Joab and Joab’s brother Abishai and Ittai from Gath, each in command of a group. And the king said to his men, I will go with you myself. 3 You mustn’t go with us, they answered, It won’t make any difference to the enemy if the rest of us turn and run, or even if half of us are killed; but you are worth ten thousand of us. It will be better if you stay here in the city and send us help. 4 I will do whatever you think best, the king answered. Then he stood by the side of the gate as his men marched out in units of a thousand and of a hundred. 5 He gave orders to Joab, Abishai, and Ittai: For my sake don’t harm the young man Absalom. And all the troops heard David give this command to his officers. 6 David’s army went out into the countryside and fought the Israelites in Ephraim Forest. 7 The Israelites were defeated by David’s men; it was a terrible defeat, with twenty thousand men killed that day. 8 The fighting spread over the countryside, and more men died in the forest than were killed in battle. 9 Suddenly Absalom met some of David’s men. Absalom was riding a mule, and as it went under a large oak tree, Absalom’s head got caught in the branches. The mule ran on and Absalom was left hanging in midair. 10 One of David’s men saw him and reported to Joab, Sir, I saw Absalom hanging in an oak tree! 11 Joab answered, If you saw him, why didn’t you kill him on the spot? I myself would have given you ten pieces of silver and a belt. 12 But the man answered, Even if you gave me a thousand pieces of silver, I wouldn’t lift a finger against the king’s son. We all heard the king command you and Abishai and Ittai, ‘For my sake don’t harm the young man Absalom.’ 13 But if I had disobeyed the king and killed Absalom, the king would have heard about it—he hears about everything—and you would not have defended me. 14 I’m not going to waste any more time with you, Joab said. He took three spears and plunged them into Absalom’s chest while he was still alive, hanging in the oak tree. 15 Then ten of Joab’s soldiers closed in on Absalom and finished killing him. 16 Joab had the trumpet blown to stop the fighting, and his troops came back from pursuing the Israelites. 17 They took Absalom’s body, threw it into a deep pit in the forest, and covered it with a huge pile of stones. All the Israelites fled, each man to his own home. 18 During his lifetime Absalom had built a monument for himself in King’s Valley, because he had no son to keep his name alive. So he named it after himself, and to this day it is known as Absalom’s Monument. (TEV)

While David was still thinking Absalom could live, God said enough is enough of this curious child’s injurious indulgence. God meant that David should take consolation in his other surviving sons and daughters. Sons like Absalom do not deserve to live a minute longer. He constrained God to make him die before his time. This case means that longevity is subject to God’s discretion, like many other things in life. There is what I have come to consider as Abolishable Absalom or Annullable Absalom. He represents all those who desire that their God-ordained source of life could be destroyed for them to prosper. God’s decision that Absalom should die for seeking to kill his father suggests, and in fact strongly suggests that God meant that any son who gets to the point of wanting his father dead is not fit to live in the first instance. Also, such a son should die in place of his father and should not be pitied or none should mourn for such a person.

There is what I call SDD—Self Destructive Deception. But firstly, the fact that God took sides against Absalom is a very serious matter. Here was God who did not take sides with David when he killed Uriah to have his wife Bathsheba fully despite that Uriah was a Hittite. God did not consider that David was His favourite. He doled out David his due punishment. Therefore, for God to turn against Absalom is a serious matter. The other crucial point is that there is no doubt that spiritually or causatively, it was because David masterminded the death of Uriah that God decreed that there would be uprising against David from his own household. Therefore, in fact, Absalom was God’s agent to punish David, like Jeremiah 27 confirms that Nebuchadnezzar was God’s agent to punish nations which He adjudged disobedient. It makes this case more critical. Why should or would God use a man and destroy him for doing that very assignment? It seems that it is an assignment that God expected Absalom to have abhorred by all means—in other words, God never expected Absalom to be pliable or vulnerable to this because though I Samuel 2:12-17 and 22-36 confirms in verse 31 that—

31 ‘Behold, the days are coming that I will cut off your arm and the arm of your father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in your house. (NKJV)

I Samuel 22:16-19 says—

16 And the king said, You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father’s house! 17 Then the king said to the guards who stood about him, Turn and kill the priests of the LORD, because their hand also is with David, and because they knew when he fled and did not tell it to me. But the servants of the king would not lift their hands to strike the priests of the LORD. 18 And the king said to Doeg, You turn and kill the priests! So Doeg the Edomite turned and struck the priests, and killed on that day eighty-five men who wore a linen ephod. 19 Also Nob, the city of the priests, he struck with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and nursing infants, oxen and donkeys and sheep-with the edge of the sword. (NKJV)

This means that when it was God’s appointed time to fulfil the punishment of Eli’s descendants Saul’s bodyguards were too godly or reverenced God too much that they could not be used and it was Doeg, an Edomite who was pliable to do it. This suggests that though Ecclesiastes 3:14-15, 6:10-11 say—

14 I know that everything God does will last for ever. You can’t add anything to it or take anything away from it. And one thing God does is to make us stand in awe of him. 15 Whatever happens or can happen has already happened before. God makes the same thing happen again and again.

10 Everything that happens was already determined long ago, and we all know that a man cannot argue with someone who is stronger than he. 11 The longer you argue, the more useless it is, and you are no better off. (TEV)

God still uses man to do the kind of assignment that the individual has the natural propensity to do. As for SDD, Absalom deceived his father repeatedly and apparently, because he had gotten away with the earlier deceptions, he thought that he could do so always. He did not know that God was seeing whatever he did and would react to it. Most unwise persons quickly conclude that they can do whatever they like and get away with it. They do not know that God would catch up with them soonest and that they would be worse off. II Chronicles 16:9, Job 34:21, Proverbs 5:21; 15:3; Jeremiah 16:17, 17:10 and 32:19 say—

9 "For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him . . .

21 "For His eyes are on the ways of man, and He sees all his steps.

21 For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and He ponders all his paths.

3 The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.

17 "For My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their iniquity hidden from My eyes.

10 I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.

19 ‘You are great in counsel and mighty in work, for your eyes are open to all the ways of the sons of men, to give everyone according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings. (NKJV)

Apparently, Absalom was never conscious of God in his dealings with his father. That is the way of the wicked. All those that refuse to consider God in their dealings with fellow man are ungodly as