Considering the fact that I have been waging a one-man war against pastorpreneurship in this column for close to a decade now, readers who have been following my crusade must be wondering why it has taken so long to say something about the cold war simmering in the money-making arm of the body of Christ known as the Pentecostal system.
I have been following the fireworks and counter-fireworks going on via the various social media platforms lately. Pastor (Dr.) Damina, now freed from the shackles of commercial gospelism, is fighting his ‘unrepentant’ fellow travellers hammer and tongs.
Do not reach for your dictionary. You may not find gospelism there. The word is my coinage, though it is self-explanatory. It simply means the commercialisation of the gospel… a deviation from the doctrine Jesus Christ handed down after his earthly ministry. While the Founder of Christianity spent three solid years to preach salvation and repentance, our generation of (Pentecostal) pastors, apostles, general overseers, bishops, reverends, presbyters, etc., have turned their churches into business enterprises, selling all manner of goods and services such as anointing oils, creams, handkerchiefs, among others.
Pastor Damina, by turning against his one-time fellow pastorpreneurs, is playing Christ. He wants to drive them out of business. Most of these so-called men of God veered into the ministry to escape poverty and fly into opulence, using the resources of their gullible followers as their magic carpets.
In the New Testament, a story is told about commercial activities thriving in a synagogue. Enraged, Jesus Christ stormed the venue, wielding koboko. As He whipped them, he punctuated every lash with these words: “…ye have turned my Father’s House to a den of thieves!” Note that he said den of thieves and not market place. It goes without saying that those so-called men of God who are mercantalistic in words and deeds are, to call a spade a spade, thieves. Yes, thieves that weaponise their tongues and antics to fleece their hapless congregations of their hard-earned possessions.
I have been following Dr. Damina’s theology lately and how he has been fiercely attacking his colleagues who have enriched themselves at the expense of their brainwashed followers. When I began to watch Dr. Damina newfound approach after his rebirth, I was a bit confused. This was because I have known him way back in the mid-90s when he used to visit his protégé, Pastor Joshua Talena. I never had any personal contact with him, but I have met Talena personally a couple times in Jos.
Back then, they were like David and Jonathan… both mired in the prosperity gospelism. I attended a service in Jos where Pastor Talena was a guest speaker. Gallivanting on the altar as most Pentecostal pastors are fond of doing to the envy of musicians on the stage, he told the congregation how a naval officer engaged him to cancel his transfer from his juicy post at the Naval Headquarters in Abuja. Pastor Talena gleefully told his enthralled audience how he billed the officer N250,000 to do the job. That was good cash then. He said when he sighted the cash, the anointing in him went on an overdrive. To dwarf a long story, the officer’s transfer was cancelled. Whether it was a true story or fabu, I would not know. All I know is that the Pentecostal pulpits are replete with make-believe stories fit for the Nollywood movies.
Among the areas of beef Dr. Damina has against these prosperity pastors are whether or not tithing is relevant after Christ as well as the miracles we have been witnessing in the church auditoriums and crusade grounds. A typical Pentecostal pastor can tolerate your aversion to any other shenanigans they are known for but not tithing which is their main IGR or internally generated revenue.
I remember one Pastor Joshua Egbagbe who preached against tithing in his Jos Church. The Plateau state branch of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) went after him with the ferocity an angry lion would descend on its prey. Pastor Egbagbe had to abandon his flock and run out of town under the cover of darkness.
Gospel singing maestro, Pastor Panam Parcy Paul, once preached as a guest in a Pentecostal church in Jos where I was the acting president of the Men’s Fellowship. After thrilling the audience with some tracks from his popular hit songs, he went on to preach that God does not need our physical cash as tithes but 10 per cent of our time to be in his presence, praising and worshipping Him. The resident pastor was uncomfortable with that layer of theology. He was anxious for his guest to drop the microphone. The moment he took back the mic, he rubbished the musician’s doctrine right in his presence. The pastor could not wait for his guest to depart. I think he did not want the seed Panam sowed to germinate in the hearts of his congregants, knowing how influential he was.
In the wake of the recent hardship Nigerians have been going through, Pastor William Kumuyi advised his members to channel their tithes towards helping their hungry neighbours. All the tithe predators were furious with him but because of his iroko-like status, they could give him the Egbagbe treatment.
I am no great shakes as a sacerdotalist, but I know that tithing is an Old Testament thing that has no place in the New Testament from where Christianity sprang up. Christ never preached tithing throughout his theology here on earth. Christians are brain-washed that if they do not pay their tithes, things would be tight for them and that the devourers would see to it by eating the whole 100 per cent of their earnings. Dr. Damina has rubbished all that and I am in sync with him. I rescued myself from the hyena called tithe a long time ago.
A relation was robbed along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway some years back. What came out of her lips after the incident was: “And I have been paying my tithes o.”
Another beef Dr. Damina has with his fellow pastors are fake miracles. He has been asking questions such as “Why are the wheelchairs and crutches used by miracle seekers always looking new?” It means that the equipment are warehoused somewhere and used when necessary.
A Nigerian pastor went to South Africa some years back taking along a handful of PLWDs or people living with disabilities… and they are in millions in this country. While the razzmatazz was going on, one of the PLWDs, stationed in a corner, was pressed by nature. He did not know when he leapt out of the wheel chair and headed for the loo. One of the ushers watching over them was livid with anger and told him he should have alerted him so that he could be wheeled to the toilet. But the gullible South Africans who witnessed the leap screamed to high heavens… that miracles had started happening.
Some years back, a man lost his life in the course of being used for a miracle stunt at a crusade. He was to play the dead and was offered one million naira for his effort with a down payment of 500k and the balance to be paid after his ‘resurrection’. The wife pocketed the cash on his behalf. His body was loaded into a coffin and ferried to the National Stadium, Abuja, venue of the crusade. The miracle workers did not factor in the harsh Abuja heat. Before they got the ‘dead’ to the crusade ground, the man had been asphyxiated in the coffin.
Lately, we heard a high-profile man of God claiming that he used a handkerchief to bring an 11-day old cadaver back to life. And the whole world did not hear. That feat relegated Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead after three days. There are many funny things happening in the Christendom which Dr. Damina is raving about like a lunatic. He has been labeled as an outcast and a heretic. But the combative crusader is not backing down.
Many Christians are beginning to ask questions behind their pastors and among themselves regarding Dr. Damina’s theology and expose on the scripture. Some of his teachings one may not agree with but the man is a delight to watch. His knowledge of the Bible is sound and deep. Surely, he is a menace to these pastorpreneurs, a pain in their arse. He is a provider of fresh air in the suffocated wing of the Christendom.
More saliva to his mordant tongue!
