Your Heavenly Mandate on Earth by Dr. Seth Antwi Ofori, Adwinsa Publications, 2017, 61pp. Paperback. ISBN 978 9964 6 3111-1
Reviewer: Dr. Peter Vakunta
Ofori’s work titled Your Heavenly Mandate on Earth is a work of divine inspiration. It is a trove of religious dogmas and dictums intended to provide clarity and sense of direction to the Christian’s existential trajectory. This book adumbrates and sheds ample light on the Christian’s mandate on earth. In sixty-one pages, Ofori delves into a myriad of themes, not the least of which is the concept of divine omnipresence: “Even when we think He is not with us, He is with us, for He never abandons His own. Our Father is right with us in this life’s furnace and so knows and shares our every pain.”(4) Notice that Ofori resorts to the use of a metaphorical expression, ‘furnace’ in a bid to paint a captivating picture of the incessant travails that render the Christian’s task on earth rather tedious. The concept of Christian earthly travail is manifest in the temptations that Satan constantly puts on humanity. Ofori observes that “Satan deceived the very people he had been sent to redeem to disrespect and to maltreat him all in an attempt to undermine his authority as a son of God on earth.”(37) But no sooner had he pointed that out than he provided an antidote to the problem: “One cannot come to any meaningful solution of one’s problems without total submission to the Spirit of God where our liberation is.”(5) He further expatiates on the concept of divine omnipotence as follows:" It is only God who has the answers to the future we need. He will lead us to His answers to the future we need, not the future (or the tomorrow) we want, for the future (or tomorrow) is not ours, but His. Tomorrow belongs to God and to God only and it is Him only who can guide us securely into it…."(5)The triple themes of divine omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience constitute the undercurrent that runs throughout Ofori’s work. This author truly believes that God is the font of all knowledge and invites believers to seek Him for salvation at all times. As he puts it, “God invites us to climb up high to Him in knowledge, understanding and performance…”(6)
Your Heavenly Mandate on Earth is a seminal work in the realm of religious studies on several counts, notably the elucidation concerning the paternal role of God as a spiritual father. In Ofori’s own words, “God, as a Father, is exemplifying to us how to be responsible citizens of this earth.”(12).This paternalistic role that God assigns to Himself is morphed into the duty of a good shepherd. As Ofori would have it, “God is, by this act, teaching and instructing us to engage all forms of ungodly and hopeless conditions everywhere to transform them to His glory and honor. God is teaching us to counter acts that contradict who He is or what He has done.”(13)The author is driven by the conviction that good shepherding derives from wisdom and perspicacity. He sums this up as follows: “In His wisdom, He has fashioned His creations to be interdependent and, by so doing, has justified their co-existence and, therefore, mutual relevance…” (14) It is noteworthy that Ofori enjoins readers to dwell on the qualities of God as a loving father. He describes God’s unconditional love for mankind as follows: “His love for mankind is beyond comprehension…” (14) A little further the author reflects on the theme of divine love as follows:"The universe is God’s handiwork and love for us. He has made the world available to us in expression of His love for us. His love is revealed in the fact that He has made available in us the potential to operate just like Him, which is His evidence of our sonship. It is the will of our God that we dwell on this earth happily to His glory and honor." (16)In a bid to underscore the notion of divine love, Ofori refers readers to the gospel according to Luke: “… Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind… (Luke 10:27)
Your Heavenly Mandate on Earth is also a reflection on Divine fortitude. To Ofori’s mind, God is an indefatigable combatant. He observes:"God simply does not give up on anything under any condition and expects us to be just like Him. God did not run away from the imperfections of the earth but worked on them to bring them to His standards. God has standards and so must we... His activities are goal-oriented and so must ours…"(15)Ofori is, nonetheless, not oblivious of the presence of evil on earth. In this light, he notes, “Any contradiction in the realm of the spirit is deception; and deception is the technique of only one, Satan.”(17)He urges believers to resist all temptations stemming from the principalities of evil. In his own words, “We drive Satan into the abyss that God has prepared for him from the foundation of the world as more and more of us resist Satan’s ways and become of God.”(18) The writer contends that it is in partnership with God that Christians will be able to conquer Satan. Ofori dwells on the concept of heavenly mandate throughout his book. In this vein, he is emphatic: “Our mandate is to sustain and advance the will of God on earth for our wellbeing and therefore to God’s glory and honor.” (21)To buttress his point, the author refers readers to the Book of Genesis: “And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” (30) The writer contends that mankind has been empowered by God to fill the mandate given them by Him. This implies fully engaging all human capabilities to this end. As Ofori puts it,"In his wisdom, God has empowered us to be able to engage to understand the strength of our capacities—both our physical and spiritual capacities—and also, had made available to us through His word and His handiwork the means to enhance these capacities for our wellbeing and, therefore to His glory and honor."(33)Intricately linked to the foregoing is the theme of divine/human binary interdependence that permeates the length and breadth of Ofori’s book. He points out that “Jesus understood our binary nature—man as a son of man (i.e. of the earth), and as a son of God (i.e. of heaven…” (33) This observation underscores the fact that God does not trivialize any aspect of human anatomy. He acknowledges the fact that our bodies have a role to play in our endeavor to accomplish our earthly mandate. Ofori sums this conviction up in the following citation: “Knowledge of the body and how it works, and knowledge of the best practices to improve upon its constituent members… is equally important.”(34)
Your Heavenly Mandate on Earth is an account of Jesus’s triumph over Satan and his diabolical machinations on earth. Ofori notes that Jesus undermined Satan’s temptations by abiding in His father; by refusing to submit to the whims and caprices of the devil. The writer observes that Jesus “undermined every discouraging situation meted out on him by Satan, by not submitting to and, therefore, glorifying the pain it was meant to inflict, but by trusting and submitting to the promise and the healing which are available in the Word of God for those who solely depend on Him.”(38) This book is to all intents and purposes an inspirational work, the more so because the theme of man’s conquest of evil appears to be a recurring theme throughout the book. It is hard to read Ofori’s book without reminiscing on the vendetta that transpired between David and Goliath in the Book of Samuel. Goliath is portrayed in this book as a Philistine giant that was defeated by the young David in a single combat. David’s victory over his gigantic foe is attributed to his deep faith in God. Ofori dwells on the fact we tend to grow in strength as soon as we develop deep faith in God. In his own words: “If we are of the father, then we can be successful in our life obligations because we have access to His Kingdom…To have life is to have God, and to have God is to acknowledge and act on the Word of God to God’s glory and honor.”(42-43)
Your Heavenly Mandate on Earth sheds ample light on man’s wholesome dependence on God. This life is full of misery, Ofori notes, and no matter how hard we endeavor to sail through it single-handedly, we are doomed to fail. We are reminded by the writer that “Without the life of God… without the word of God or obedience to the Word of God… it is better if one had not been born, for it is the life of God that will sustain everything beyond the current existence.”(43) It is discernible by reading this book that faith in God is the bedrock of successful human in existence. Without faith man is likely to cling onto the serpent, an incarnation of Satan, for safety. This is an eventuality against which Ofori seems to caution his readers. He observes that deep faith in God engenders truth and alienation from Evil: “Through him, we have come to know the truth, the truth about who we are and the truth about what is indeed of God and what is of Satan.”(41) Embedded in the recurrent theme of divine truth is the theme of forgiveness. The writer links salvation with forgiveness. Ofori appears to be telling his readers that there is no future without forgiveness. He enjoins readers to emulate the example of Christ: “On the cross, he had the permission to forgive eternal sin by calling on his Father and our Father to overlook our shortcomings and to embrace us once again as sons and daughters.”(47) In this light readers are urged by Ofori to seek Jesus and bond with Him in a bid to fulfill their heavenly mandate on earth.
In a nutshell, Your Heavenly Mandate on Earth is a clarion call to all believers to harken God’s call. Ofori’s invitation to commune with God is loud and clear. He speaks to all and sundry: “Brothers and sisters… do not withhold yourself from the Lord. Avail yourself to Him through obedience to His word. Avail yourself to Him through the working of His works. Allow yourself to be coalesced with Him in works….” (52) The term ‘mandate’ as used in this book may seem ambiguous. However, to disambiguate it, Ofori employs it as an invitation to know God’s truth. This semantic connotation is evident in the following citation from the book: “ … know God’s truth concerning your life, in the name of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, put on your heavenly mantle, which is your obedience to the Word of God …”(54)
All in all, this book is a priceless resource for pastors, students of the Bible and Christians in general. Its germaneness resides in the author’s deliberate choice of familiar words and comprehensible phraseology.
About the reviewer
Dr. Vakunta, former Chair of the Department Global Language and Cross-Cultural Studies at the University of Indianapolis, now works as Associate Professor of French language and culture at the Defense Language Institute, Language Teaching Detachment in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA. He is author of several books in the domains of second language acquisition, translation theory and literary criticism.
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