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Very very very simple: Warren Buffet! Wrong! Wrong!! Wrong!!! You have one lifeline; you may call a friend. Who do you plan to call? I would call Steve Forbes; the phone rings, a click and a little delay: Hello; hello! Am I speaking to Mr. Forbes? A female voice beams out; No, this is Mr. Forbes personal assistant; may I know who I am speaking with and why you need to speak to Mr. Forbes?

 

 

I am Lagbaja Nwachukwu Yerima from Nigeria; Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa and the largest producer of crude oil in Africa; we have….. The alarm goes on. Sorry your thirty seconds is up. If you have said Bill Gates, you would have been wrong; if you have said Carlos Slim Helu; you would have been very wrong. This is cheating; you don’t want to give out the Mercedes Benz CLK.

 

 

According to Forbes, the richest man in the world is Warren Buffet. Yes, I agree with you but not according to the Bible. What? Which report do you believe; Forbes or Bible? Don’t go philosophical on me now. I am not; just telling you the truth. You mean Forbes is lying? Well, Forbes perspective of calibrating riches is different from the Bibles and the Bible has lasted more than twenty centuries with time tested principles.

 

 

Okay, tell me who is the world’s richest man according to the bible? First things first, you have to understand riches the way the bible explains it. The bible makes a ubiquitous statement; “it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. Another account clarifies the same statement by saying it is hard for a man that trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God.

 

 

What is so special about this Kingdom that makes it a must for a rich man to want to enter? It is not as if it is the Bahamas or Macau Island where pseudo-paradise is depicted; well far from it; the kingdom of God is not even a physical or a spiritual location. It is a state of mind that recognizes that God is the king who you put your total trust in. This definition looks very easy but that is simply what it is.

 

 

In all the accounts of Jesus teaching, the kingdom was his favorite; he stresses it like no other; his stories about it are illustrative and very pointed. After reading all the stories that Jesus spoke about the kingdom, only one element was common to all; it was about sowing. The whole concept of the kingdom was tied to sowing. You may take some time out and look at the stories, it is all about sowing.

 

 

The perspective of sowing here is the ability to let go of your physical possession; this is why Jesus stressed that it is impossible for someone that trust in his physical possession to enter the kingdom. This is why the young ruler was very sad when he was asked to let go of his accumulated physical possession and follow Jesus. This is why the master was angry when the servant refused to let go of his one talent.

 

 

Letting go of your physical possession is the sure way of entering the kingdom paradigm; a total trust in God not in your physical possession. This is why Jesus admonishes his people to seek first the kingdom and every other thing they crave for will automatically come to them. The adventure of seeking the kingdom has its own dynamics which you will grasp immediately you start seeking the kingdom:

 

 

Jesus talked about a “sower” that went to sow and the different places he sowed together with the results for each of the sowing. Though Jesus analyzed it to mean how the words we hear are integrated to our lives to produce much results; the relevance of this principle to entrepreneurship is vital. How an entrepreneur decides to place his talent, energy and physical possession is vital to its success.

 

 

Let me use an empirical example of an event that took place recently; got a call from a colleague in my former work place. He wanted to run something by the side while he worked so he wanted to know about blogging; he wanted to know if he could make a hundred thousand naira monthly from Google Adsense since he heard I do well using the same program.

 

 

I told him it was possible and that the program depended on variable input to get desired output. So he asked me what he needed to do in order to start blogging. I told him all he needed to get and implement and the total cost was not more than 5K naira. Then he said something that actually made me to laugh; “what assurance do I have that when I place 5K naira into this blogging that I will get 100K naira?”

 

 

I told him point blank “NONE”; you have no assurance, it all depends on your passion, your enthusiasm, your attitude and your talent. Only you can assure that; no one can do that for you. His hesitation made me laugh once more; this was someone that earns 4.5 million a year; 375K a month; 17K a day and he is really bothered about sacrificing 5K to earn a periodic 100K a month. I just could not stop laughing.  

 

 

I gave him a free platform to blog on (wordpress.com) to increase his confidence. My colleague’s inability to release 5K for a prospective 100K a month got me really thinking of how people regard money and how true it was for people who trust in their riches to enter the kingdom of God. I was really bothered about the way he was thinking and I told him so explaining my fears for the outcome of such thought-life.

 

 

He disagreed with me so I left him at that. I am not saying letting go of one’s physical possession is easy; I am saying the only way to abundance living is not to trust that the accumulation of this physical possession will give you the life you are seeking for. The inability to let go is a huge mental disease that affects every parts of your life; career, relationship, etc. There is definitely a balance to this topic.

 

 

I am not saying you should let go of the money or physical possession you have; I am saying you should let go for your perceived dream or future. The young ruler that came to meet Jesus felt inadequate after obeying all of God’s law so Jesus told him the best way to cure his inadequacies was to let go of his obsession for his accumulated wealth. The same thing goes for my friend that wanted to earn more but cannot let go of a fraction of his wealth.

 

 

 

Truth be told, the richest man in the world is not Warren Buffet or any of the people that Forbes tell us are very wealthy because wealth is not based on the various economic assets you own ; all economic assets are subject to social-economic framework. Crude oil before the invention of combustion engine was not an economic asset; if the stock price of Microsoft increased, Warren Buffet will not be Forbes’ richest man. So wealth according to Forbes is based on market forces of your economic asset.

 

 

The answer to the richest man in the world is “UNKNOWN”. Wealth is not about how much is accumulated but how much is disseminated.