https://nation.africa/kenya/life-and-style/dn2/the-new-world-of-prophet-mbithi--735114
[SIZE=6]What you need to know:[/SIZE]
[ul]
[li]Former Head of Civil Service claims that he talks to God one-on-one[/li][li]“I usually meet Abraham, Peter and Judah,” Prof Mbithi tells us. “Judah has a scar here,” he says, pointing at his cheek[/li][/ul]
When we visited Prof Philip Mbithi at his Lisa Ranch home in Konza, Machakos District, we expected to meet a mystic figure resplendent in flowing white robes and a long beard. That, after all, was the sight that wags in Machakos had prepared us for.
We had been forewarned that there would be no audience with the former Head of the Civil Service without first undergoing a series of elaborate cleansing rituals as his ranch house was now a shrine.
But nothing of that sort happened when Moses Saitoni Parsaoti, Prof Mbithi’s jovial farm manager, welcomed us to the Living in Salvation Always Ranch, for that is what Lisa stands for.
On alighting from our car, I took note of five pebbles arranged in a circle on the neat, paved compound. He would, later, tell us that they form the second of the five shrines in the ranch.
Everything else was mundane. A huge 4x4 Ford tractor and an aging Mitsubishi Canter waited silently at the parking bay. No car in sight. “My children have the cars,” Prof Mbithi explained.
Minutes later, Moses ushered us into a spacious living room, and politely told us to cool our heels as the professor was working on something.
Most powerful
So here I was, in the living room of a man who, just over a decade and half ago, was one of the most powerful figures in the land.
In between sips of some lovely pineapple juice served by a jovial Akinyi, I scour the place for anything remotely out of the ordinary, but all I can see are the usual kongoni and wildebeest antlers you will find adorning the walls of large scale farm houses — something of the colonial settler idea of interior décor, you could say.
There are also some feathers in a flower vase, while family pictures and books complete… well… the picture.
Despair is setting in. Hadn’t we been told the sociologist was a medicine man? And don’t ‘medicine people’ keep trinkets, leopard skins, dik-dik horns, eagles’ talons, lion claws and allied paraphernalia?
Fifteen minutes later, a clean-shaven Prof Mbithi emerges from his study.
“How nice to have visitors!” he beams. “You can see we have the empty nest syndrome.” Gone are the trademark dark tinted eye glasses and the afro hair-do of his university days, and in their place now are doughnut-size plain bi-focals, a plain white shirt, black trousers and slip-on shoes.
The professor emeritus has gained weight and sports a sizable paunch. He doesn’t look his 68 years, but 55. Pleasantries exchanged, he ushers us to his book-lined study.
“I have been writing for the past 13 years. I am woken up and told what to write,” he says, adding: “The other day an angel told my wife to move away so that we could talk. Angels give me instructions.” (The wife has since died after the interview, and quietly buried).
In Prof Mbithi’s words, the journey to his prophetic mission began in 1995 when he was attacked by a demon as he signed letters at his Harambee House office.
“A short man in a green suit walked in through the closed double doors, and tried to strangle me,” he explains. “I tried to free myself but those were not fingers. I told him. ‘In the name of Jesus who my wife worships, you are not going to kill me.’” (By then he was not very religious although his wife was a born-again Christian).
After the struggle, he says, his wife came into the office and said the place seemed funny. “Then one of my children, who is also a prophet, saw the man and shouted ‘there he is!’” recalls the former Head of the Civil Service.
“When I touched the cabinet where I had kept the report on Devil Worship, the short fellow disappeared through the window. That’s when I realised I had been a foolish professor,” says Mbithi. (Former President Daniel arap Moi had commissioned a taskforce to do a report on devil worship in Kenya).
After the attack, the professor called in a pastor to solve the riddle, but the man of God shouted “You are a sinner!” at the top of his voice, forcing Prof Mbithi to plead with him to lower his voice.
“It’s like he didn’t know we were in the Office of the President.”
The attack marked the start of his journey through self-discovery, but the devil was not through with him yet.
Months later the same fellow struck. Prof Mbithi was behind the wheel of his Ford tractor ploughing his land when it happened.
“The ‘thing’ grabbed my neck and I knew I was dying, especially after I had a vision of my sheep dying. Then I said nobody, and nobody, has the right to kill me! I said ‘go away in the name of Jesus Christ’, and saw a dove fly away!”
In the study, I notice a neatly hand-written manuscript entitled Lisa Handbook on End of Times: By Prophet Prof Muinde wa Mbithi, which features a diagram illustrating the various biblical epochs.
Of it, the professor says: “God gave me a beautiful analysis of the universe: He told me the stars sing.”
Strings of a guitar
Sensing that we are at sea, he explains that the sun, which is a star, is a series of nuclear explosions, and that it can’t lose its mass.
He says some of the atomic mass escapes, “vibrating like the strings of a guitar and making beautiful music, but it is pulled back by gravity.”
A professor at Leeds University in the United Kingdom has done a computer simulation of the stellar music, he explains… for the benefit of the skeptics.
“I love science and prophesy. You know I used to teach Research Methodology,” he explains.
We are now in an unfamiliar territory, so we ask him about the nature of angels, who he describes as “basically bodies on fire”. There hasn’t been any good book on angels, so he is writing one.
What about the prophets of yore?
“I usually meet Abraham, Peter and Judah,” he says. “Judah has a scar here,” he confirms, pointing at his cheek.
Later, we learn he has written 200 books on spiritual matters, some on The Rapture, Creation, Kenya, Israel and poverty alleviation.
Curiosity getting the better of me, I ask him whether he is a medicine man. Instead of the expected rebuke, I get a hearty laughter from the professor and the wife, whom he constantly refers to as “Mum”.
“Actually, I speak to God. I’m a prophet and He’s the one who dictated those books to me. I just hear a voice,” he explains in impeccable English.
Noting that we are somewhat skeptical about the talking-to-God bit, he says that is to be expected as he moves from his corner seat, behind which are placed some pebbles on an ‘altar’.
The pebbles we noticed outside form the second altar, while five more are erected outside the compound according to what he says was prophesied in the book of Isaiah.
On the wall above the study room altar is chart titled Master Diary of the Lord on which are the days of the week and the corresponding tasks to be executed.
In our conversation, it is evident that the professor’s encounters with God and His messengers are frequent. “Abraham was here,” he says. “This room is a shrine.”
But Prophet Mbithi is not your ordinary Christian. You don’t miss that unnerving confidence associated with top-notch academicians as he explains his spirituality.
“When I write, I tell God that I don’t want to be a weak–kneed prophet writing anything. I am a scholar and I know what good writing is,” he says.
By now it is clear that the professor is no ordinary Christian. So, what he does he think of Kenya’s evangelicals and their dramatic preaching?
“I have no patience with noisy preachers who don’t know that God has no hearing problems. One woman came here and I warned her against shouting,” he says.
“That one woman is among the 2,000 serious worshipers I get here, and who implement what the Lord wants them to do.”
Many of the worshipers, he says, are corporate big shots… and even bishops.
“There is no major bishop who hasn’t been to this room.”
But even then, the professor’s take on Christianity will take many aback.
“It’s foolish to walk around with a religion. We should be critical of how pastors preach it,” he says.
“You can’t tell people Jesus gives cars when he doesn’t. You should tell them that the blood of Jesus protects and how he helps.”
Prof Mbithi will not preach because “a prophet doesn’t have a church but hears from the Lord as if it’s a dictation”.
God’s instructions
He rarely leaves his house, and it be years before he goes to Nairobi. There was a time he remained indoors for four years after “God instructed me to do so.”
You, however, haven’t heard the last of this man.
“You’ll start seeing more of me. We are getting to the end of my stay here. I have been in the wilderness,” he says. But he will not be preaching, and you will not see him campaigning for a public office.
“I’m above public life. I am going to be a prophetic administrator with a special mission to assist the poor,” he says.
With that he prays for us, and off we are.
(About his 200 books, expect ripples when, eventually, they are published).