I struggled to understand why Jesus praised Peter so highly for identifying him as the Messiah in Matthew 16.
It felt too dramatic, like he was over-spiritualizing something obvious. Peter had been traveling with him, watching the signs firsthand. Of course he knew. The high praise didn’t make sense to me, until I meditated on it.
First-century Judea had a precise and non-negotiable job description for the Messiah: a geopolitical conqueror, a second David who would break Roman occupation over his knee.
What Peter was looking at instead was a broke, unbacked teacher from a backwater town, branded a radical by the religious elite, with no army, no treasury, and no political standing whatsoever. Every physical reality in front of them said no.
The friction ran deeper. Even John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus and heard the voice from heaven, later sent messengers from prison asking, “Are you the one, or do we look for another?” If John doubted after everything he witnessed, the disciples holding steady was not a human achievement. It couldn’t be.
So when Jesus says, “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,” he is not being dramatic, he is being precise. Left to human logic in that specific moment, concluding he was the Christ was an impossible deduction. The Father had to pull back the curtain.
Immediately after, Jesus speaks of the cross and impending tribulation, and Peter rebukes him: “This shall never happen to you.” It prompts Jesus’s harshest recorded response: “Get thee behind me, Satan.”
Peter’s spectacular crash is the ultimate proof that Jesus wasn’t over-spiritualizing things. The whiplash is the evidence. Left to his own devices for a second, Peter blunders so severely he is called the enemy. The rock instantly becomes a stumbling block. Peter wasn’t a genius; he was a blind man who momentarily had the curtain pulled back.
The Father had unveiled the identity, but not yet its meaning. Peter saw the Who before the What. Revelation is layered. You can receive genuine sight and still be blind to the next dimension because the curtain lifts in stages.
And that is the trap inside the gift of sight. When light comes, it rewrites your memory of the dark. You stop remembering what blindness felt like. Grace becomes furniture. Present, unremarkable, owned but never received.
Paul names this disease in a single sentence: “What do you have that you did not receive?”
The same Father who pulled the curtain back for you has not pulled it back yet for the person next to you, or is pulling it back slowly, the way dawn moves. That is not their failure. It asks of you not contempt but patience; not pride but the tenderness of someone who knows they were also once blind.
“Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you.”
That sentence is not praise. It is a disqualification. Jesus wasn’t honoring Peter’s perception. He was bearing witness to the Father’s action. Peter had no credit to keep, and neither do we. Every confession any of us has ever made was given, not achieved.
The only honest response to clarity you did not earn is not confidence in your own sight. It is wonder. And a tenderness toward the still-blind that only the formerly blind can carry.
For Nigerians, please don't play the game of political banter with paid APC operatives. Block them and keep stating your points against the bad governance we have had. They are a distraction that needs to be isolated.
Just praise @PeterObi and all the APC cretins will be in your mentions. The energy they have for him while Nigeria is on fire cannot be explained away by tribalism. This is a mental illness.
Currently, the problem we face in Nigeria is not just Tinubu but also the people who continue to support him.
We need to resist them like the devil that they are so they can flee.
@i_am_agbeke@RealitycheckNJ The fact that we still need to state our tribe to persuade people to vote out APC is a problem on its own.
This means some people are still standing on Tinubu's mandate because of their tribe.
It's such a shame.
I just read a powerful scripture, and the Lord has instructed me to share it with you.
“And this is a simple matter in the sight of the Lord”
II Kings 3:18 NKJV
INVESTIGATION: Inside the N1.6bn UNILAG hostel that became part of crisis it was built to solve
This BusinessDay Investigation takes you inside a taxpayer-funded hostel, now priced out of reach for the very students it was meant to help.
Read the investigation here:
https://t.co/iTWsYsQ5w7
As a civil engineer, one of the reasons incidents like this happen is because occupants don't pay attention. Buildings speak to us. They speak through cracks.
There are two types of cracks that happen to a building. Minor and major cracks.
Minor cracks are very thin, almost like a strand of hair on the wall, and they do not run deep. You will usually spot them on the surface of the plaster or the paint, often in the middle of a wall or right where a block wall meets a concrete pillar. They are mostly cosmetic and not a direct threat to your life.
On the other hand, major cracks are wide and deep. And sometimes you can see the bare blocks or the inside of the wall through them. They often form a jagged staircase pattern or run horizontally across a solid surface.
You need to look for these on the structural bones of the house. Check the pillars, the beams above your doors and windows, and the main corners of the building. If you see deep, wide cracks there, it is a sign that the skeleton of the house is failing.
There are other signs for this type of crack. For instance, if a door that used to close perfectly suddenly starts jamming, scraping the floor, or refusing to lock, it is a sign that the ground underneath the house is shifting and sinking unevenly. You might also notice a visible, growing gap between your floor tiles and the bottom of your wall.
If you are sitting in your living room and you frequently hear loud snapping, popping, or groaning sounds coming from the walls or the ceiling, it is a subtle sign that the internal concrete and steel are breaking under heavy pressure.
Also, if you stand back and notice your wall has developed a slight "belly" pushing outward, or that your ceiling looks like it is drooping in the middle, it means that the structure can no longer carry its own weight.
Buildings don't just collapse on a blue moon. It must have been giving them enough signs over time. Unfortunately, many don't pay attention to it.
May the Almighty grant the victims' families the fortitude to bear their loss.
Kindly like and repost for others to benefit.
PRESS STATEMENT
In the last 24 hours, social media has exploded over my interview with Mehdi Hassan, albeit with varied opinions. Let me set the record straight.
When I signed on to the privileged job granted to me by Mr. President, I was well aware of its implications. Selling ice cream, looking fine, and seeking the praises of men were never part of it. Some of the fiercest critics of my interview can not even stand local TV anchors. But the task of promoting and defending the President and his administration is what I do with ease and joy. I am prepared to appear before any interviewer, anywhere in the world, any day and at any time, to defend this government and its policies.
I have never, and will never, subscribe to ducking or dodging interviews on matters that concern promoting and defending the administration I was appointed to serve. It is the least of what is required of me.
Head to Head contacted me requesting an interview, stating that they wanted to challenge our government on security, the economy, and corruption. Nowhere in our almost six months of communication did they mention that they were going to challenge my past. If that had been their plan, ethically and professionally, they were supposed to inform me so I could prepare my response. But that’s okay, ethically, that is on them, not on me.
I refused to swallow the pill of Mehdi’s “opposition research-style journalism,” and even today, if you carefully compare what he read as quotes from organisations and groups, you will see that many were inaccurate and some were outright fake news. But I will leave that for another day.
As for what I said about President Tinubu in the past, I am glad those were things I said when I was in the opposition saddle with such zeal. It is all politics. Half of Donald Trump’s cabinet is made up of people who once spoke against him, and quite a number of people in our own cabinet also spoke against President Tinubu in the past. Those things do not bother him if you care to know.
The majority of the naysayers are members of the opposition and their sympathisers. It does not bother me one bit. Their temporary excitement over the interview has not lasted and will not last, because it does not take away their obvious problem of lack of vision, mission in conducting and managing a political party; yet they seek to manage Nigeria. Clearly they have no path to victory and no alternative policies or program for the Nigerian people. And if they say they do, they can as well go to head to head and be interrogated on that; as the saying in Hausa goes “Ga fili Ga doki”
I conclude by thanking the many Nigerians and non-Nigerians who sent in their commendations over my brave defence of our government in an interview where the anchor would hardly let you answer a question unless it suited his narrative.
I still have admiration and respect for Mehdi Hassan as arguably the best debater on the planet. I look forward to part two of the Head to Head interview, and I am glad that by then questions about my past will no longer be news so that we can focus on our administration’s policies, programs and what we have achieved so far.
Stay tuned.
– D.H Bwala
Special Adviser to President on Media and Policy Communication
(State House)
Saturday March 7, 2026