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An article in last Sunday's Houston Chronicle reports an Islamic faith healer in Nigeria has wedded 107 wives and fathered 185 children, and 133 of them are still living. The youngest child is just one month old. Bello Maasaba, 87, is currently married to 86 wives ranging in age from 19 through 64. He has buried nine spouses, and divorced another dozen. All of his current wives are obedient and submissive to his every request. One would wonders how he deals with all the mother-in-laws.
Maasaba lives with his family in an 89-room house in the city of Bida. His extended family - in-laws, cousins, nieces, nephews - now numbers about 5,000. It takes three enormous sacks of rice a day and prodigious quantities of meat and vegetables to feed his enormous clan. He's rich because of the handsome fees paid by those who come to be healed.
Maasaba's polygamist ways landed him in jail three years ago when he refused an order from Islamic authorities to divorce all but four of his wives. When the case went to trial, dozens of his spouses testified they were married of their own free will. After hearing from 57 women, the court ordered Maasaba's release.
Why did he marry so many women? Maasaba told the LA Times reporter, "I get a revelation from God telling me any woman I'm going to marry. If it wasn't from God, I wouldn't have gone beyond two."
The basic teaching of Scripture from the beginning of time regarding marriage has been (and is): one man and one woman. Not only that, it is to be for life and to the exclusion of all others. The will and power to sustain this lifetime relationship comes from Jesus, our bridegroom who comes to us with love and compassion, and gives us what we need to live a life that is abundant, and we openly and honestly esteem others better than ourselves.
"Haven't you read that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." Matthew 19:3-6
Maasaba lives with his family in an 89-room house in the city of Bida. His extended family - in-laws, cousins, nieces, nephews - now numbers about 5,000. It takes three enormous sacks of rice a day and prodigious quantities of meat and vegetables to feed his enormous clan. He's rich because of the handsome fees paid by those who come to be healed.
Maasaba's polygamist ways landed him in jail three years ago when he refused an order from Islamic authorities to divorce all but four of his wives. When the case went to trial, dozens of his spouses testified they were married of their own free will. After hearing from 57 women, the court ordered Maasaba's release.
Why did he marry so many women? Maasaba told the LA Times reporter, "I get a revelation from God telling me any woman I'm going to marry. If it wasn't from God, I wouldn't have gone beyond two."
The basic teaching of Scripture from the beginning of time regarding marriage has been (and is): one man and one woman. Not only that, it is to be for life and to the exclusion of all others. The will and power to sustain this lifetime relationship comes from Jesus, our bridegroom who comes to us with love and compassion, and gives us what we need to live a life that is abundant, and we openly and honestly esteem others better than ourselves.
"Haven't you read that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." Matthew 19:3-6