*Photo:Bamidele Johnson*
Tonight, millions will gather in churches for the traditional crossover service and hungrily lap up prophecies for the new year. I attended a few New Year’s Eve services while growing up. I doubt they were called crossover services in those days. But I am certain that prophecies were not issued at them, at least in the churches I attended. I went to Methodist Church in Imalefalafia, Ibadan. I also went to Oke Ado Baptist Church. Nothing of the sort happened there either. People simply prayed for what they wanted in the New Year. Both churches operated without the flashier traditions associated with crossover in other churches.
Kids loved it because we had the excuse to light up the night with fireworks and briefly convince ourselves that the sky was under military assault.
Prophecy probably featured in churches like CAC, CCC, C and S, and the few non- denominational soosi aladani (privately owned churches) that were heavy on revelation. New Year’s Eve service was a big deal back then. For some people, it was the only day they went to church all year. Some would leave home, make a pit stop in a beer parlour, wait until 11.30pm, then rush into the nearest church. At midnight, they would shout “Happy New Year” with the congregation and head straight back to their booze. I did that a few times before deciding the service was a wastful expense of my time. o
These days, it has become an even bigger deal, largely through the charismatic movement which, over the last 40 years or so, has stamped its obsession with revelation on the day. Some churches even charge gate fees. Chris Oyakhilome’s Christ Embassy once did.
But what is served as prophecy in these churches is not revelation. It is aspiration served as insight. Strip away the histrionics and what remains are wishes, personal desires and prayers, deliberately conflated with prophecy to borrow its authority without its burden.
A prophecy, as I understand it, claims divine origin and foreknowledge. A wish is an expression of hope. A prayer expresses desire and voices dependence on God. The end of year declarations we hear belong firmly to the last two categories. “This will be your year of breakthrough.” “You will enter new levels.” “Favour will locate you.” “The enemies of Nigeria will die.” All of this, delivered to the soundtrack of shiborobo, shibaraba, kayanmata and pocotua, are not insights into the future.
At best, they are motivational slogans, carefully worded to be unfalsifiable, broad enough to fit anyone and safe enough to never be proven wrong.
That is not prophecy as I know it. It is optimism with a public address system.
The confusion is deliberate. Calling a wish a prayer places it within faith. Calling it a prophecy elevates it beyond question. Once labelled prophecy, failure is no longer evidence of error but of insufficient faith, spiritual warfare, village people, your father’s new wife or some secret sin, including having a wet dream or drinking Orijin plastic in your sleep. Responsibility is quietly transferred from the speaker to the listener. The prophet is insulated. The congregation carries the disappointment.
There is also the problem of timing. New Year’s Eve prophecies always mirror the anxieties of the moment. In hard times, the prophecy is financial abundance. In uncertain times, it is divine protection. In an election year, it is victory and peace. This cannot be heaven speaking ahead of history. It is humans reacting to headlines and projecting their longings into the coming year. When prophecy aligns perfectly with collective desire every single time, it stops being revelation and becomes mood management.
Most revealing is how these pronouncements function. They do not guide action or demand moral reckoning. They require no repentance, no structural change, no hard choices. They simply promise outcomes. Real prophecy, from what little I know of the Bible, was disruptive, often unwelcome and frequently specific enough to offend those in power.
Today’s versions, in the main, are soothing. They calm nerves, inflate expectations and guarantee a hopeful start to January offerings. Comfort has replaced confrontation. Where confrontation exists, it is often driven by political bias or greed.
I am not arguing against hope. I am not arguing against prayer. People should pray boldly and hope fiercely. But honesty matters. Wishes should be called wishes. Prayers should be called prayers. When desires are rebranded as prophecies, faith is cheapened and accountability evaporates.
The problem is not that churches encourage people to believe in a better year. The problem is pretending that belief is the same thing as divine foreknowledge.
New Year’s Eve prophecies are not messages from the future. They are mirrors held up to present fears and desires. Calling them prophecies does not make them truer. It only makes them harder to question. And we should be able to question them.