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Christianity in Nigeria is at crossroads, as the real enemy of the Christian faith seems to be within. The interpretation of the Scriptures among men of the faith, which is brazenly tearing the fabric of the religion is at the heart in ongoing controversy.
Involved in this crisis are Pastor Abel Damina of Power City International, who is also Founder and President of Abel Damina Ministries International, and a relatively unknown Christian body called Supreme Council for Ecclesiastical Affairs, which claims to be akin to Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Nigeria.
The body lashed out forcefully at Dr. Damina, and asking him to recant on what they called “unscriptural teachings” of his. But Business Hallmark’s findings showed that the body is just three years old and relatively unknown. Many of the top officials of the group are not popular faces we are familiar with in Christian circles, some of them are academics. In an open letter the group berated Damina for allegedly preaching gospel messages with an “alarming rate of theological errors and heresies.”
In the open letter to Pastor Damina, dated 15 October, the group said Damina’s messages constitute “hate speech and cybercrime against the Christian faith.”
“Dr. Abel Damina, you have crossed the line, and you are, therefore, no more a representative of Christianity (The Body of Christ) in Nigeria,” the group said in a letter signed by the secretary of its elders’ council, Funmilayo Adesanya-Davies.
Adesanya-Davies, a bishop and professor, said the letter serves as a disclaimer to the “heretical messages” spread by Mr Damina.
According to the letter, “Heresy is a belief or opinion contrary to orthodox Christian doctrine and any belief, teaching or practice that explicitly undermines the gospel,” while citing several Bible passages to support their position.
The cleric highlighted some message titles allegedly preached by Mr. Damina, which her organisation has issues with. The messages include “There is no heaven”, “You don’t need God to Succeed”, “Jesus is not coming back”, and “Heaven is scam.”
The cleric said that most of the topics are mere “fallacies and heretics,” laced with unsound arguments, targeted at attracting an audience to Mr. Damina through “content creating hype rather than being correct and spiritual.”
“They are bunch of jokers seeking relevance”, Damina fires back
In a live Facebook video, responding to the allegations against him, Mr. Damina said he had served as the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria National Youth President for eight years and that he had never heard of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Ecclesiastical Affairs.
He said the group did not send him the letter directly, but someone drew his attention to it based on his response so that the public is not misled.
“I am not even aware of its existence. It is a situation of notice me by force,” he said, describing the group as a “bunch of jokers” seeking to be relevant.
Damina said the entire group needed to join his discipleship class to listen to his teachings because their conclusions mean they have never listened to any of his teachings completely.
“They are looking at how to malign me. They said I am heretic; therefore, they have decided that I am no more a representative of the Body of Christ in Nigeria. What a laugh – what an effrontery – what audacity.”
Damina refutes claim that “there is no heaven”
“I have never said there’s no heaven. I only said the heaven the Bible teaches is not the heaven in the sky. The heaven the Bible teaches is the heaven of the immaterial. So, for this body to say I said there’s no heaven it means this body is a bunch of jokers.”
He also refuted the claim that he said “Jesus is not coming back” and offered explanations to what he said.
“I never said that Jesus is not coming back but I took time to explain the concept of Jesus’ coming back as an appearance. The Bible says He will appear. They who seek for the Lord, the Lord shall appear. We that are with him shall appear with Him in glory and I took time to explain the appearance of Christ which is what we called the rapture or the second coming of Christ,” Damina said.
“They said that I also said “you don’t need God to succeed. Yes, I said that but that is the conclusion of the argument and the explanation was that when it comes to material things and material wealth God doesn’t get involved in making people succeed.
“Because when you said it is God who made people materially rich and others materially poor, therefore, it means God is responsible for class in society and we never saw such teachings from Jesus nor did we see such teachings from the apostle.
“They also said that I said heaven is a scam. I never said that. What I said is that heaven at last is a scam. Again, they are quoting me out of context and saying what I never said. They are a bunch of un-serious people,” he said.
The group is yet to respond.
Over the years, preachers always hide under a scripture in to engage in all manner of immoralities and iniquities and manipulatively put the congregation into fear of God’s wrath if they question the atrocities of their pastors or general overseers.
As expected, Damina’s actions have subjected him to hate and personal attacks from his fellow preachers, including accusations of heresies, as they see his new teachings as a titanic blow to their livelihoods, puncturing their prolonged fraudulent practices in the pulpit.
Among his new teachings that are intensely shaking Christendom is the doctrine that mandates the congregation to part ten percent of their earnings to the pastor and his church as a tithe. The other one is against ‘First- Fruits’ that began a few years ago, which demands total earnings in January every year to be surrendered to the pastor and his church.
Another one is on ‘Widows Mite’ which requires a congregation member to give all in his possession, as a poor widow in the Bible gave all she possessed. Another is a sacrificial offering that requires giving something very valuable in worth and painful enough to attract heavenly blessings. Next is the seeds-sowing, which requires congregations to sow as expected in return (he who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will reap bountifully).
After the seed-sowing comes the ‘Seed-watering’ (in perpetuity) to water the seeds to germinate for the expected harvests. For every member’s needs: marriage, job, healing, car, promotion at work, et cetera, there is a seed to follow. And even when there is no need,’ sowing in and out of season follows, alongside the prophet’s multidimensional offerings.
Outside the above fund-raising schemes, the partnership arms in most of these ‘prosperity’ churches are countless, all for Machiavellian fund-raisings using all manner of tactics and nomenclatures.
The most agonizing thing is that even facilities such as schools, universities, bakeries, and others established with the members’ raised funds are not available for the benefit of the congregations that contributed the funds but for outsiders, politicians, and non-members who can afford the outrageous prices.
Even the poor members who may not have money to contribute to the buildings may be tasked to render physical services, such as carrying sand, cement, planks, and other building materials as their seed for a heavenly reward.
In the olden days before the prosperity preaching and tithe-mongering era, all schools, assets, and properties owned by churches were for congregations and society at large, unlike these present days, when those things are for the edification of the founding pastors, whose ultimate target is to upgrade their lives, live big, have the best of everything, and acquire private jets at the detriment of the poor, vulnerable members that enrich them out of pain and naivety.
Still, these flamboyant pastors will gang up against the government for exemption from paying taxes to the government like other business organisations and non-government organisations.
The group has yet to respond to Dr. Abel Damina’s sound-bites against them.
Many Nigerians, including clerics, who spoke with Business Hallmark are of the view that it’s a case of pointing at speckles in another person’s eyes while ignoring the wool in one’s own eyes. In simpler terms, a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Heresy or false doctrines means practicing what was not practiced in the New Testament…or practicing what is against the scriptures according to Jesus’ teachings and lifestyles.
Pastors are supposed to be men of God filled with grace and caution as they carry the messages from God and deliver them to the people for them to live godly lives. Their utterances must be in line with what the Bible teaches.
For instance, Colossians 4:6 says “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man,” and Ephesians 4:29 says “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.”
In recent times, some prominent Nigerian pastors have uttered words that shocked many of their followers and set the internet on fire with sharp criticism.
Dr.( Pastor) Samson Akinpelu of the Living Church told this medium “Though there are quite some of Damina’s teachings that are not biblical, the man says the truth and is sound. How many of his accusers are clean and follow Christ’s teachings? Is it scriptural to emphasize prosperity and play down salvation? Is it biblical to sell oil in the church to your members? Is it biblical to say without paying tithes believers will not make heaven? So many of the pastors criticizing Damina are also guilty of heresies.”
Dr. Delẹ Olorunnibe of the Department of Religion, University of Ilorin told Business Hallmark that “many pastors have departed from the faith teaching doctrines of men rather than doctrines of God. The world has entered Nigerian Christianity, all manner of unscriptural practices permeate many churches today. Damina may have erred in certain respects, but others are worse. They are angry with him because he has exposed them, put under scrutiny some of their teachings that are not right, such as tithes.”
In history, there have been so many ecumenical councils to determine the substance and doctrines of the Faith.
The idea of an ecumenical council is that it is a gathering of leaders of the whole church (oikoumene – inhabited world or household in Greek) to determine doctrine and/or practical matters. There were many councils in the ancient world and disputes about some of them being “ecumenical”.
First Four Ecumenical Councils
First Council of Nicaea (325 CE) – against Arianism, homoousios (same substance as the Father), adopted Nicene Creed and established a date for Easter
First Council of Constantinople (381 CE) – against Arianism, Apollinarism, and the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which required the rewording of the Nicean Creed into the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed
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