Churches urged to fight against odious practices

The President of the United Aladura Churches (UAC), Superior Evangelist Samson Banjo, on Wednesday urged Churches in Nigeria to desist from supporting odious practices, including lesbianism and sodomy.

Banjo, who gave the charge in Lagos at a One-day Symposium to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Celestial Church of Christ, said that the Holy Spirit was unhappy with such practices.

The theme of the Symposium was: “The Church and The Challenges of The 21st Century’’.

“As Churches, we must all know that we are expected to make the world a clean and a better place for all, instead of support things that the Holy Spirit does not want.

“We must know that the practice of Man-Knowing-Man, lesbianism, sodomy and others are odious and an aberration. God’s decision is that those who indulge in these practices be stoned to death.

“Something terrible is happening across the world today. As Churches, we should be in the forefront of making people realise the consequences of these actions,’’ he said.

Banjo said that there was currently a deliberate deviance from the Word of God in many churches and communities in Nigeria and other parts of the world.

He said that there had been serious criticism of the churches because of their inability to live up to expectation in moulding the lives of their parishioners and the community.

A Guest Speaker, Elder Israel Akinadewo, in his presentation listed challenges in the Churches to include persecution, inter-religious conflicts, internally and externally influenced extremism, funding, leadership struggles and others.

Akinadewo said that it was imperative for the churches to realise that they were the only ones expected by God to make the church what it was created to be.

The prophet and Supreme Head of the Motailatu Church, Cherubim and Seraphim Worldwide, said that if urgent steps were not taken by the churches, the church would cease to be what it was meant to be.

“Before the end of this century, the threat to the church will be more, and not necessarily from other religious bodies.

“So, the Church should emphasise the primary reason why Jesus Christ came to the world,’’ he said.

Mother Celestial, Oyin Ajibike, who recalled how Rev. SBJ Oshoffa in May, 1947 founded the Church, after hearing God’s voice, said that Oshoffa was called as an illiterate, to prove wrong the knowledge of the learned in the world.

Ajibike said that God had showed Oshoffa a monkey, a peacock and a snake for him to tell the world to humble themselves and that He, God, chose the weak to shame the strong.

The movement was founded by Samuel Joseph Bilewu Oshoffa, a former carpenter born in the Republic of Benin in 1909.

Raised as a Protestant, he had a divine revelation on 27 May 1947, during a solar eclipse, in a forest where he was lost. He felt called to pray, to heal the sick, and to raise the dead, and he founded his church in September 1947.

Having appointed himself prophet, Reverend, pastor and founder, he occupied the highest office of the movement he had just founded. The hegemony he exercised on doctrine and discipline issues made succession difficult after his death in 1985 in Lagos, Nigeria.

In 2001, it was the second largest church in Benin by the number of its practitioners (nearly half a million).