Stories by Sunday Ani (nichsunny@yahoo.com)
The things happening in some churches around the world remind one of what happened to the followers of Reverend Jim Warren Jones. It was reported that on November 18, 1978, the American cleric made over 900 members of his church, the People’s Temple Religious Cult, to commit mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, South America.
Jones, born on May 13, 1931 to a Ku Klux Klansman in Lynn, Indiana, ordered his followers to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-laced juice, which he called a “revolutionary suicide.”
In Kogi State, North-Central Nigeria, the Pastor and General Overseer of Zion International Christian Church, Idah, simply identified as Kingsley, was alleged to have impregnated an 18-year-old girl, in the guise of delivering her waist and private part from satanic possession. He was said to have convinced the innocent girl that she was afflicted with demons in her waist and private part, which could only be exorcised through sexual intercourse. The poor girl believed the preacher out of fear and surrendered herself to him, but she became pregnant after the exercise.
According to the girl, who joined her parent from the village in November 2015, when the pastor saw her in the church he ordered her to see him after the church service for deliverance because she had a wild demonic spirit in her waist and private part. She said: “He told me that my waist and private parts had been ravaged by demons and until deliverance was carried out, I might not be able to have any child in life. He said he would only cast out the demons from me through sexual intercourse but warned me not to tell anybody about the mode of deliverance.
“I was afraid that if the demons were not cast out, I might not be able to have children, as he said. So, I went to him for the deliverance. After praying into an olive oil, he asked me to undress while he rubbed my waist and private parts with the anointing oil mixed with some other substances. He later undressed and used the same oil on his private part before he descended on me.
“But I discovered that I was pregnant when my mother noticed changes in my conduct and began to ask me questions. I had to reveal everything to her even though the pastor warned me not to tell anybody.”
However, the 37-year-old pastor was said to have denied the allegation, insisting that all he did was to cast out the demons that possessed the girl, using anointing oil.
The Kogi State Commissioner of Police, Seidu Madawaki, who paraded the suspect, was reported to have said: “After impregnating the girl, he attempted to abort the pregnancy but the girl refused to drink the concoction he gave to her for that.”
Also, a Nigerian pastor based in Kenya established a church where he sucks women’s breasts as a way of deliverance. The church has only women as members, who freely offer their breasts to the pastor to suck out the demons in them. The pastor, who was simply identified as Chijioke, admitted that he ‘delivers’ women by sucking their breasts. “I suck ‘demons’ out of women’s boobs,” he was quoted to have said.
According to him, he named his church ‘Breast and Honey Harvest’ because the spirit lies in the breasts of ladies. “The more you suck the breasts, the more you get the fulfilling of the Lord,” he was reported to have said.
In the same vein, Reverend Njohi of the Lord’s Propeller Redemption Church in Dandora, instructed his female church members to attend church service on Sundays without wearing pants so that they could be closer to God. He told them that doing so would also give God easy access into their body for proper cleansing.
And in compliance with his instruction, the female congregants of the church were attending church on Sundays without pants or brassiere. “Ditch your bras and pants while coming to church, so that God can enter your body,” he told his female church members.
Another pastor also asked unmarried ladies in his church to strip, so he can plant in them, a holy kiss that would make their husbands to locate them. Single women of a church in the Caribbean were taken to a beach by their pastor, who asked them to get naked and bend over so he could plant a “holy kiss” on their butts.
This holy kiss, according to the pastor, would enable the ladies to find their husbands wherever they are. As if there is a special blessing in asking women to strip naked, another young pastor in South Africa asked the female members of his church to get naked for total healing.
Not too long ago, another South African pastor, Lesego Daniel of Rabboni Centre Ministries, in Garankuwa, north of Pretoria, turned his church members to herbivores by asking them to eat grass for them to be closer to God. Following the barrage of criticism that trailed the development, he defended his action, saying: “Humans can eat anything to feed their bodies and survive on whatever they choose to eat.”
Members of his church stoutly stood by him. Defending her pastor, Rosemary Phetha, 21-year-old law student, said: “Yes, we eat grass and we’re proud of it because it demonstrates that, with God’s power, we can do anything. I have been battling a sore throat for more than a year, but I got healed after I ate the grass.”
The same pastor was reported to have commanded a woman to enter inside a deep freezer that was on a high freezing point and fall into a deep sleep. When the woman was asked to come out of the freezer 30 minutes later, she was reported to have said that the ice in the deep refrigerator was, indeed, very hot and that she didn’t feel cold.
Indeed, not a few shepherds are feeding their flock with strange doctrines or menu, which they consume veraciously. It is the same story in many parts of the world.
In Lagos, women searching for the fruit of the womb are made to worship naked at a church.
A church at Egbeda, Lagos, has discarded the 10 commandments in the Bible, maintaining that the leader of the church, King Olutanmole is Jesus Christ that will take them to heaven to meet God. According to them, this is the reason the ministry is called Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
At a time, it was reported that ladies were using cucumber to masturbate, a Zimbabwean prophet, Walter Magaya, allegedly sold anointed cucumber in his church. His church members, especially the ladies, reportedly patronised him heavily. It was reported that after the pictures of the service emerged online, some facebook users criticised the pastor, calling him fake for selling cucumbers in the house of God.
And the other day, a bishop reportedly turned cold water to hot water in Ebonyi State. In a bid to replicate Jesus Christ’s miracle in Canaan in Galilee where He turned water into wine, a bishop in Ebonyi State, Sam Zuga, reportedly turned cold water to hot water. Cold water became hot water after the prayer of Bishop Zuga in Onicha Local Government Area of Ebonyi State. The Igwe of the community and other people from the crowd were said to have tested the cold water to confirm that it had actually become hot.
While some people maintain that these are the signs of the end of the time, others insist that with faith, as little as the mustard seed, mountains can be moved.
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