Charismatic Alleluia Ministries International founder Pastor Alph Lukau made headlines recently after a video clip of a ‘dead’ man brought ‘back to life’ from inside a coffin during a church service went viral on social media.
The church and its leader enjoyed hefty attention as both South Africans and Zimbabweans took turns to mock the bizarre and rather poorly choreographed stunt, which many believe was a mere attention-seeking act.
Although the church has since retracted on their unusual “resurrection miracle” story amid withering criticism, the damage was already done. Not only to Alleluia Ministries International and Pastor Lukau, but to the whole wave of contemporary evangelical movements, notorious for their sometimes unusual healing and deliverance exercises, and scandals that range from rape, extortion, mine and farm wrangles among others.
Top analysts and leaders of mainstream churches who spoke to the Daily News said Zimbabweans also needed to be more careful when dealing with self-proclaimed prophets and other like-minded charlatans who are making a lucrative business out of the gospel of Jesus Christ, popularly known as the Jesus Industry.
Obert Gutu, lawyer and politician, said while the country’s Constitution allowed freedom of conscience among other freedoms, the proliferation of dubious churches led by so-called prophets called for a review of some enabling regulations.
Section 60 of the Constitution guarantees freedom of conscience by stating that every person has the freedom to propagate and give expression to their thought, opinion, religion or belief — whether in public or in private, and whether alone or together with others.
It would appear that this fundamental human right and liberty has been routinely abused by criminals masquerading as genuine pastors and prophets,” he said.
The fact of the matter is that millions of unsuspecting and gullible people are being hoodwinked and swindled by these latter-day ‘prophets’ and crooks. Zimbabweans should be on the lookout for these crooks who masquerade as ‘prophets’ when in actual fact they are philanderers, murderers, pathological liars and in some cases, serial rapists.
I strongly advocate for the regularisation of churches in tandem with the provisions of the supreme law of the land in order to protect innocent Zimbabweans from these marauding crooks and criminals,” Gutu added.
Zimbabwe Council of Churches Secretary-General Rev. Dr Kenneth Mtata said: “there has been a rise in people given different titles in the past decade and who have redefined conventional Christians at a number of levels”.
They claim to have special knowledge about God … because of the special insight allegedly given to them by God … and since they have some special knowledge, their followers must depend on them for decisions, be it in business, politics and family life.
It is this group of people who have found a way of manipulating many people who are desperate … and have managed to tap into the African Traditional Religion where the understanding among Africans is that for someone to succeed there must be some supernatural influence from outside, and if someone is not succeeding it means that there is some negative supernatural forces that must be overcome,” Mtata said.
So, there is an interesting syncretism that has developed in the last 15 or so years, and this kind of Christianity is the one we are seeing manifesting in different forms of chicanery and manipulation and the miracles that are purported to have been performed as we have seen. Regulating religion is very difficult especially if your Constitution allows the freedom of religion and worship, and so to put restrictions on religion will be against the Constitution.
What could be put as a requirement is that all churches should affiliate to one of the mother bodies, so that there is mutual accountability. This is what I think could address the problem,”
Mtata added.
“A miracle according to an English dictionary is a supernatural occurrence caused by a divine agent. Having said that it is quite critical for one to note that the present-day Pentecostal and charismatic movement leaders are under pressure to come up with microwave miracles which at times are an insult to human intelligence,”
Acting President of Impact Training Institute Pastor Elias Chakabatwa told Hmetro:
“Since time immemorial Christianity has been marked with works of a deity and resulted in masses reception of healings or demons being cast out of people.
The leaders who have been used in the past to do these miracles were not some sophisticated elite preachers from some movie house; no they were men and women who were very simple and would direct people to God.
The issue under discussion is very disturbing and it has worked against the testimony of Christ in the sense that people who witnessed it are no longer sure whether miracles are real or all is fake.
We must be careful that we don’t throw the child away with the bath water.
The fact that someone tried to stage manage a miracle does not mean miracles no longer exist.
The so-called prophet did not study his script well if I may say, the supposed dead person, to begin with, was not dressed as is supposed to be done e.g. putting cotton in the nostrils and other openings, his mouth was ajar yet it’s a taboo in African culture to leave the mouth of a deceased person ajar,” Pastor Chakabata added.
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