Lawn Again Christians:s African Preacher Makes Congregationeat Grass
ADEMOLA ADEGBAMIGBE
Pastor Lesego Daniel of Rabboni Centre Ministries, in Garankuwa, due north of Pretoria, S Africa, early this month, turned his church members to herbivores by asking them to eat grass for them to be "closer to God". The report, entitled "Backyard Again Christians" (a twist of Born Again Christians), was published by the Mail on eleven January 2014. While this human action was widely condemned in the media (information technology fifty-fifty went viral in the social media), analysts desire Nigerian church goers to look at themselves because they too take been made to eat grass one way or the other by their ain pastors, because of their conventionalities that the liturgical approach of their religious leaders cannot be questioned. In other words, pastors must be obeyed implicitly!
According to the Mail, the Pastor Daniel's controversial methods accept drawn criticism from thousands of people "although members of his congregation swear past his methods – he is said to take claimed that humans tin consume anything to feed their bodies and survive on whatever they choose to eat."
Another medium, Times Live, quoted a 21-year quondam law educatee, Rosemary Phetha, justifying her pastor'southward club: "Aye, we eat grass and nosotros're proud of information technology because it demonstrates that, with God's power, we tin can practise annihilation," adding that she had been battling a sore throat for more than than a twelvemonth, but information technology "was healed after she ate the grass."
Another church member, Doreen Kgatle, 27, of Ga-rankuwa, claimed that she suffered a stroke two years ago and could not walk "but shortly after eating the grass, as the pastor had ordered, I started gaining strength and an hr afterward I could walk again."
It was a re-enactment of how Rex Nebuchadnezzar walked on all fours and, to teach him a lesson for his arrogance, ate grass for seven years before he was restored on his throne.
Notwithstanding the defensive testimonies of some of the faithful, not a few members started vomiting after the practice.
However, Daniel has not made whatever comment in his own defense force, simply he posted on his Facebook wall: "God is at work and His people are testifying correct now at the… TO GOD BE THE Celebrity."
In Nigeria, analysts say that there are many way pastors take asked their church building members to swallow grass. 1 of these is the expensive universities built with the contributions of the members. Only church members shortly realised that they laboured for zilch: the universities were non built for them, as they cannot afford the fees when the institutions open for employ. It is like an embrace with poverty and ignorance for the present and future generations of members, said a commentator.
A member of Winners Chapel who did not want his proper noun in print narrated: "My wife and I carried head pans when structure of the academy was going on. It was an alternative given by the church for those who did not have cash. But when the university opened, I could not send my son and my nephew in that location because I could not afford the fees."
The aforementioned thing goes for Redeemed members. A pastor had to resign and set his own church afterwards he was transferred out of Lagos. In his new location in Ondo State, he had to send text messages to people to assist him pay his son's school fees at the Federal University of Engineering science, Akure. "If I could not afford FUTA fees, how could I, a pastor, pay for my children'south education at Redeemers' University?," he lamented to P.M. News.
One thing that analysts indicate out is the danger in obeying pastors' instructions that fly against common sense. "Wait at what happened to the followers of Jim Jones", a member of Winners Chapel in Lagos told P.M. News.
On 18 Nov 1978, Reverend Jim Warren Jones fabricated over 900 members of his church, the People'due south Temple religious cult to commit mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, South America.
Co-ordinate to Wikipedia, The leader of the cult, James Warren Jones, was born on 13 May 1931, the son of a Ku Klux Klansman in Lynn, Indiana. After establishing his church in 1953, and believing a nuclear Armageddon was coming, he moved his congregation to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965.
Trouble started in 1977 when a New West magazine article charged Jones with "faith-healing fakery, physical abuse of his parishioners and questionable finances." He moved to his jungle state in Guyana which he bought for a "People's Temple Agronomical Project," with about a select yard members.
Withal when, in June 1978, the San Francisco Chronicle published People's Temple defector Deborah Layton'south business relationship and affidavit on the cult (weekly drills for mass suicide), this prompted the visit, on 17 Nov 1978, of Representative Leo Ryan to find out things for himself. Initially, Jones received the parliamentarian warmly, but when some members who were fed upward with life on the camp wanted to leave with Ryan, they were murdered at the airstrip on orders from Jim Jones. When he knew that more trouble was in the air for him, Jones ordered his people to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-laced juice, which he called a "revolutionary suicide."
This and worse may happen if church members practise not develop a critical listen.
If critical thinking was absent in the church, Christianity which went through a lot of evil and heresy in the middle ages would have been long dead. A member of the Redeemed Church building pointed at what Martin Luther did in Europe "without which in that location would have been no Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity."
Tired of the bad practices in the Catholic Church when pastors would collect coin from church building members before "forgiving them their sins" (the indulgences), Martin Luther, a reverend father and a professor of Theology, on 31 October 1517, wrote a thesis ("Disputation of Martin Luther on the Ability and Efficacy of Indulgences,") to his bishop, Albert of Mainz, protesting the auction of indulgences.
Co-ordinate to a historian, he nailed a copy of his document publicly on the door of his church building. He wrote that, since forgiveness was God's alone to grant, "Those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error."
What analysts said essentially is that for the preservation of Christianity for the nowadays and future generations, Nigerian church goers need to point out what is wrong in the church building. Keeping tranquillity in the name of "touch not my anointed and do my prophet no harm" will do more injury than skilful to the Trunk of Christ
Source: https://pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/01/18/news-analysis-in-nigeria-pastors-make-us-eat-grass-too/
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