IN a bid to express his belief about the imminence of the end time and the prevalent immorality in the society, gospel artiste, Bigger Jonathan Ibekwe, has released a new album titled Rapture.
The alumnus of UNIBEN noted that he always had an interest in music, but delved into the gospel genre following inspiration from God and after several fruitless years producing secular music. His interest in music was encouraged by his mother, a composer, who introduced him to music at an early age.
“The truth of the matter is that I had struggled to come up with secular music, but I couldn’t. It was when I found Christ and I began praying that I want to evangelise with music that I really began to do it. This is my first album, but I have songs that I sold to people. There are many songs that I wrote which are now popular in the society, which I cannot mention. I sold the rights to some people,” he said.
The new album, Rapture contains four tracks, averaging about 7 minutes per track and is a direct warning about the imminence of the Christian rapture. While the track, KamZoro, translated to mean to hide or take refuge (in God) indicates the artist’s surrender to God as his bulwark, the third is titled UwaAwala (translated as The world has broken).
“The concept of rapture is to warn the adamant people in the society about the imminence of the apocalypse – the second coming of Christ. When he comes, only the people that are worthy will ascend to meet him in rapture. All of the works there are warnings. I arranged the album myself,” said the artiste, who has a degree Theatre Arts and a Diploma in Chinese Language and Culture.