By Emmanuel Ogbeche
Able Damina, pastor and preacher, has stirred the hornet’s nest in Nigeria, albeit Africa. His non-nuanced preaching against tithe, transactional gospel and staged miracles has left not a few railing and others hailing.
In short, Pastor Damina is a bundle of controversy with his preaching now a subject intense social and legacy media debate and coverage.
In other to understand the matrix of Damina’s doctrinal position, one has to delve into church history to appreciate the present and come to the knowledge that “nothing is new under the sun.” {Ecclesiastes 1:9}.
Over six centuries ago, German priest and philosopher, Martin Luther, was declared a heretic, only he wasn’t burned at the stake like less of his unfortunate fellows who challenged the authority of the Mother Church on doctrinal and scriptural issues.
It was no hidden fact then that priests and the clergy were selling indulgences and other papal abuses. This riled Luther who denounced these practices and held the belief that Christians are saved through faith and not through their own efforts.
“This turned him against many of the major teachings of the Catholic Church. In 1519 -1520, he wrote a series of pamphlets developing his ideas – ‘On Christian Liberty’, ‘On the Freedom of a Christian Man’, ‘To the Christian Nobility’ and ‘On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church’. Thanks to the printing press, Luther’s ’95 Theses’ and his other writings spread quickly through Europe.
“In January 1521, the Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther. He was then summoned to appear at the Diet of Worms, an assembly of the Holy Roman Empire. He refused to recant and Emperor Charles V declared him an outlaw and a heretic. Luther went into hiding at Wartburg Castle. In 1522, he returned to Wittenberg and in 1525 married Katharina von Bora, a former nun, with whom he had six children.” {https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/luther_martin.shtml}
To his credit, Luther gave birth to the protestant reformation which heralded this age’s Pentecostal movement with its papal incarnation of posterity gospel.
Luther was denounced. Damina is being denounced!
The charge against Damina by those who say he is an apostate is because they have failed to have a nuanced view of what his doctrinal position vis-a-vis the scripture is. Just like Luther, Damina is not the archetype of perfection. Luther with all his vaunted contributions to the spread and growth of the gospel, failed to understand that love is the underpinning of Christ sacrifice on the cross of Calvary.
Luther promoted anti-Semitism and openly canvassed for the burning and destruction of the Jews for betraying Jesus Christ and not acknowledging his sonship. He wrote in his 1543 treatise On the Jews and Their Lies: “What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. . . . I shall give you my sincere advice: First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians.”
The trouble with the Damina expose his posture of lack of discernment {Proverbs 3:5: Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.} It is obvious that rather than focus on correcting the errors of those who see prosperity gospel as the passage to God’s help and salvation, he is focusing on the individuals. Lack of leaning wholly on God!
It is about time to focus on Jesus Christ, the Author and Finisher of our faith. Any other thing is WASH! Christians should forget the prejudices against Damina and ask for leading and understanding of what is at stake.
And to do this requires a commitment to truth and a willingness to critically examine all spirits. The Bible counsels in 1 John 4:1; “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
