General Overseer of Charisma Ministries International, Prophet Ian Genesis, has appealed to the Zambian government to allow preachers into quarantine health care facilities holding COVID-19 patients so that they can pray with them.
Speaking in a video shared on his Facebook platform, the charismatic preacher who has been vocal about the coronavirus disease and even gone to the lees of prophesying when the pandemic will “end”, said spiritual healers were to be granted access to patients, just as medical practitioners were given unlimited ingress.
“I’m the man that’s carrying the genesis mandate, demonstrating the Lord God of the beginning and the now. Listen to me, the bible says in the book of Mark chapter 16 verse 17 and 18, “And these signs shall accompany them that believe: In my name they will drive out the devils,” he said.
“My main emphasis of that scripture when you begin to read it, it says on one portion, “they will lay hands on the sick and the sick shall recover”, continued Genesis. “This is the time that the government of Zambia must begin to allow us, the prophets to enter into quarantine to pray for the people that are quarantined in the name of Jesus, and Jesus will heal them.”
“The same way that doctors are going in and going out of quarantine, that is the same way we can go in and go out of quarantine. If they are worried about us, let them give us their protective gear, the same way they give other people to visit those people. It is time for men of God to be given the opportunity to pray for these people who are in quarantine in the name of Jesus. Listen to me; Jesus has never failed; He is the same yesterday, today and forever,” he added.
As it stands, there have been growing calls by clerics to visit their parishioners in COVID-19 quarantine facilities.
Last month, Handsboro Baptist Church pastor Joey Bennett said ministers of the Word were being denied their “religious liberty to be able to minister and free exercise of religion under these conditions”. He said, “hospitals should find a way to allow us to get in without just a blanket, ‘no you can’t come in.’”
The need to control the spread of the coronavirus has led hospitals to eliminate visitors, but preachers have said it is important for parishioners to have their own clergy present.
“There’s something comforting and healing to have your minister there, or in the case of grief, to be able to help them in the moments when the person dies, and we’re not being allowed to do that,” Bennett told WLOX.
Bennett said he hopes the government and hospitals can find a solution. He suggested training clergy in hospital procedures and screening them for the virus to allow them into hospitals.
In recent months, numerous Christian clerics have been in the limelight for demonising the coronavirus pandemic and their deep denial over COVID-19’s danger.
The while, figures compiled by Worldometers.info, which says its data is trusted and used by the United Kingdom government, New York Times and the British Broadcasting Corporation, among others, indicate that over 4,400,000 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed globally by Thursday, May 14, with 301,914 recorded fatalities.
Zimbabwe has so far tested 23 927 people and 37 were positive. Twelve have since recovered and four have died.
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