It’s a Sunday morning. A healing and deliverance miracle service is on at Alleluia Ministries International church, north of Joburg. The ministry, founded in 2002, is led by Pastor Alph N. Lukau, who many will certainly remember because of his “Vice President Constantino Chiwenga’s prophecy”.
During the service, the cleric encouraged congregants to keep praying for their miracles.
“Keep on receiving, you are going home with your miracle,” he kept telling congregants as he prayed in tongues.
It is wonders after wonders as wheelchair-bound congregants are rising and walking and those who struggle to walk and use crutches toss them aside and run.
But something much bigger is about to hit.
While these miracles were still going on inside the church, a Kings and Queens Funerals hearse pulls up outside, with weeping family members in tow.
A woman ran to the stage and shouted:
“Pastor Alph, something is happening outside. There is a family that is about to take a corpse to Zimbabwe… they are saying something is happening, man of God. As the funeral parlour drove over the church door, their neighbour said it seemed like the fingers of this dead corpse were beginning to move.”
The cleric is called outside to tend to the mourners, who’ve brought a deceased man in a coffin. He’d allegedly been dead since Friday and according to the deceased’s landlord, he’d gotten sick and started “coughing a lot”.
“We took him to the hospital, and they said they could not help him because he did not have papers, so we took him to the doctor and he died there,” Pastor Lukai heard.
The landlord added that the family then took the body to the mortuary where it was kept until Sunday. He has only been identified as Elliot from Zimbabwe.
Pastor Lukai went outside and spoke to the deceased’s older brother before the coffin was taken out of the hearse. Once it was out, he asked the workers to open the coffin.
The coffin is opened, with thousands of eyes now watching, and thanks to the digitally savvy folks, someone watched it in the lenses of a camera.
Pastor Alph then asked the congregants to lift their hands and pray.
A few minutes later, the cleric lays his hands on the dead man in a white suit.
“Rise up!” he shouted.
And boom, the man got up and sat in the coffin, looking confused, like a modern-day Lazarus. The man is brought back to life.
The congregants and Elliot’s family lose it. A miracle has happened right before their eyes and in broad daylight.
“The coffin is empty,” he said as the congregants jumped and screamed for joy.
“Can you see what happened? This man died since Friday, he was in the mortuary,” Lukau said to loud cheers and applause. “This is a sign that no matter what the devil’s done it is over. Devil, I told you wherever I find you I will kick you.”
Following the prayer, the man was ushered into the church where he was given water. A woman could be seen feeding him his first meal as congregants sang in celebration.
A clip of the ‘miracle’ was posted on social media, it sent users into a frenzy over the authenticity of this alleged act of God wrought through the hands of Pastor Alph.
Too Many Questions, Not Enough Answers
Questions from the public have varied and they happen to outnumber the answers by far.
Is this real? Why did the man not look like someone who’d been dead two days? Where is his death certificate? Why was he not immediately tended to by a health care professional?
None have been answered.
A report by SABC on Monday, however, established that the Kings and Queens Funeral Services has distanced itself from the stunt performed by a charismatic church.
In an afternoon edition news, the reporter, Mike Maringa, said they can say beyond any doubt that the miracle could have been stage-managed, owing to several discrepancies into the story.
“There is something missing,” he said, appealing to the family to come forward to truthfully tell what transpired.
“They must come forward. They should produce documents. There should be a death certificate because what we’re told is that he died on Friday. He was in the morgue on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. He was taken for burial and if we look at the procedures in South Africa there is no way you can die on Friday and you had post-mortem done, and you’d have everything arranged 2 days after.
There is something missing, someone is not telling the truth and I believe at this stage it could be the church or the people who transported the corpse to the church,” he added.
No Stranger To Controversy?
Pastor Lukau may be unfamiliar to some, but he is no stranger to controversy.
In 2016, he made news headlines and was even the subject of an investigation by eNCA’s Checkpoint after he held a gala dinner at the Gallagher Conference Centre in Midrand, Johannesburg where thousands of single and divorced women were invited to come and be prayed for so they could find their soulmates and get married.
This gala dinner did not come cheap though. The cheapest ticket was R450, while R5,000 got attendees a seat at the VIP section.
The following Sunday at his church, a mass wedding was held with women who’d attended the dinner getting married to their partners.
Pastor Lukau has also raised eyebrows for claiming to heal HIV/Aids, TB, and other illnesses.
However, unlike his counterparts Prophet Shepherd Bushiri and Timothy Omotoso, Lukau has not faced any criminal charges nor been referred to the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Cultural and Religious Rights (CRL).
He has, however, been embroiled in a legal battle with South African-based Nigerian journalist Solomon Ashoms after Pastor Lukau sued Ashoms for defamation of character after the journalist claimed he was a fake preacher via his Facebook account.
Kings and Queens Funeral Sues Prophet Lukau!
While the prophet might be trending over the viral video, the Funeral Parlour whose hearse was hired has rubbished the claims and is now taking legal action over the “malicious damage” to its image.
Advocate Prince Mafu, speaking on behalf of Kings and Queens, Black Phoenix and Kingdom Blue, said the parlours were used through various forms of misrepresentation to suit a particular outcome.
Mafu said people linked to the church approached the parlours individually, buying a coffin from one, stickers from another and hiring a hearse from another one.
“It is with regret that the outcome of such a plot has adversely affected our reputation as service providers.
“We have reported the matter at Jeppe police station for further investigation,” Mafu said.
Kings and Queens Funeral Parlour manager in Polokwane, Vivien Mponda, told the press that the hearse used to transport the man had been booked for a mechanical service in Johannesburg.
“We are also not part of the people being raised from the dead. We don’t have the records including the death certificate of the alleged deceased.
“I have been struggling to get hold of the driver to explain what had happened,” Mponda said.
She said her operations manager later informed her that the hearse had been hired by the church for R2,000.
Now Prophet Lukau’s Church Backtracks…
As the church continues to find itself in hot water with funeral parlours that “were apparently duped into taking part in the miracle stunt” and have reported it to the police, Alleluia International Ministries is now backtracking from its “resurrection miracle”.
The church said the “dead” man was actually “already alive” when his “body” got to the premises, according to SowetanLive.
The Alleluia International Ministries branch in Kramerville, Sandton, now says that Lukau had only “completed a miracle that God had already started”.
Amid mounting pressure, church leaders hurriedly sought to change their tune on the incident yesterday, saying the man identified as Elliot in the video had arrived alive and kicking inside a coffin at the church gate.
Church minister Busi Gaca and pastor Rochelle Kombou described how the hearse driver ran away in fear after hearing rattling noises coming from inside the coffin upon arriving at the church.
Gaca said church leaders were alerted that a hearse had just arrived at the gate when Lukau decided to go and inspect.
“As soon as they got here they started hearing movement coming from the coffin. And you know [in] our culture if a person is dead and you start hearing movement people get scared,” she said.
Gaca said the man’s relatives who had been travelling in a separate car had explained that they were on their way to Zimbabwe for the man’s burial when they decided to visit the church.
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