By Thami Zwane
Anyone intending to come to SA or heading this way is given this tried-and-tested recipe for making a quick buck and achieving instant fame: Establish a church. Self-styled Prophet Shepherd Bushiri and Pastor Timothy Omotoso did exactly that with distinction.
God-fearing South Africans regard a church as a sacred place for worshipping God. Criminals know that to avoid curses, they need to stay away from the place of God.
All that dissipated with the influx of charlatans. Religious entrepreneurship and the devil takes the hindmost attitude kicked in. That drove immorality down the abyss, producing a new South African generation of copycats who couldn’t stand by and fold their arms while strangers got money for jam.
It is for this reason the farting Pastor Christ Penelope jumped on the bandwagon. Surely, he must be indicted for some charges of human rights violation?
The gullibility of churchgoers has reached alarming proportions. Christian believers meet adverse circumstances with trust in God’s Word. Healing comes by faith in God’s present power, not by rituals or formulae of human acts or willpower.
One can also be cured through treatment by His instruments such as medical practitioners.The church, led by God’s Spirit, has a duty to condemn things that are considered wrong and immoral. The breaking of wind to heal is unacceptable.
“He who rebukes a man will find more favour afterwards than he who flatters with the tongue,” Proverbs 28:23, KJV. The same applies to the Methodist Church in Meadowlands, perceived as the religious wing of the ANC, which President Cyril Ramaphosa visited on Good Friday.
John the Baptist denounced King Herod, the tetrarch, for marrying Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife. And he was beheaded for his stance.
Ramaphosa ought to have been publicly rebuked for widespread corruption that’s trapped the masses in a vicious cycle of poverty. Encouraging unity in the ANC is promoting criminals-in-arms. Did we pray for the unity of the apartheid regime? Are we not applying a double standard?
The Star