![\"Miracless\"](\"https:\/\/nyamewaa.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/08\/miracless.jpg?w=610\")
<\/p>\nAll these years I had been sacrificing to honour my folks and love my neighbor, I wish someone had told me I could have taken a shortcut by lying, cheating and stealing to make $5,000 and pay for blessings. This is basically the sum of the argument of the folks fiercely defending what I have decided to call the Otabil debacle. To them and others who believe in the seed-faith doctrine, one can give and compel God to bless them. Easy right, except the Bible says something entirely different.<\/p>\n
Anyway, If we\u2019re honest, no one is truly shocked by the menu of miracles. We have seen some version of the blatant merchandizing of the work of the Holy Spirit in many churches across Ghana. Obinim and others have been selling the works of the Holy Spirit in the form of anointing olive oil and gallons of water on national television for years. The shameless exploitation of the people and the Gospel has been going on since the Prosperity Gospel arrived in Ghana.<\/p>\n
The honest-to-God truth is, no one was really surprised by last week\u2019s unveiling of a menu of dollar-priced miracles at the International Central Gospel Church\u2019s Greater Works conference. The surprise isn\u2019t because the menu had weirdly named and arbitrarily priced miracles like \u201cmillionaire status,\u201d which was pegged at $5000, \u201cseed of completion\u201d for $520 and 24-hour miracles for $240.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The amazement is because it occurred at the International Central Gospel Church, a church run by one of the nation\u2019s most respected pastors. Pastor Mensa Otabil is a man who has built his brand and ministry by giving Ghanaian Christians practical tools to live godly lives. He doesn\u2019t dabble in the \u201cyour-mother-is-behind-your -sickness\u201d kind of theology. He is respectable and seemingly above what educated and worldly Ghanaians consider as the crassness of Obinim. No one was expecting to ever read that he, too, believed that one could buy \u201cmillionaire status\u201d at $5000 or \u201cseed of completion\u201d at $540.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just wrong, and if one wants to stretch it, a con. The menu suggests that God requires our sacrifices to bless us. The one thing that is distinctly clear in the Bible is that God does not require our sacrifices before granting us miracles. Okay, perhaps not that clear from the Old Testament where there were rules on how, who and when to give. But the Bible makes it abundantly clear in John 3:16 that \u201cfor God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.\u201d After Christ\u2019s death, God stopped dealing with Christians based on the old covenant, also known as the Old Testament. We\u2019re now living under the grace.<\/p>\n
There is no argument about the salvation and the blessings therein for us, the Bible makes it clear that by accepting Jesus Christ as our lord and savior, he will bless us. And as the Apostle Paul noted in Ephesians 1:3, God\u2019s blessings are all-encompassing: \u201cPraise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.\u201d Ergo, financial, spiritual, health and material well-being are taken care of as believers. Romans 11:29 makes it clear \u201cfor the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Contrary to the arguments being manufactured to defend this ginormous faux pas, and I\u2019m being generous here, there is no ethical, moral, spiritual and biblical justification for this tacky, expensive miracle menu. No Christian worth the blood of the lamb should be caught defending something so gross. Nowhere in the Bible is there proof that the Holy Spirit can be summoned and ordered to produce miracles at will. God will cease to be immutable if we, mere mortals, can compel him to produce a 24-hour miracle at $240. If he is easy to bribe, what would be the essence in fearing his wrath?<\/p>\n
For the record, the problem here isn\u2019t the act of giving, which is one of the core principles of Christianity. We\u2019re not just to give, we\u2019re mandated to give, but freely. The act of giving to support the ministry is a long-held practice in the Ghanaian community of churches. It is the contribution of church members that built schools, hospitals and orphanages and sustain pastors across the country. Ghanaian Christians have been supporting the church since the colonialists arrived with the Bible. Even unbelievers know it is good and worthy to give, how much more those of us saved by Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n
The problem is the suggestion that one can buy financial and spiritual blessings at special rates in dollars. No amount of dollars can make you a millionaire if you do not get off your bed and work. Again, the Bible is definite on this: 2 Thessalonians 3:10 \u201cFor even when we were with you, this we commanded you: that if any would not work, neither should he eat.\u201d It\u2019s that simple. There is no evidence in the Bible of a correlation between one\u2019s generosity and the blessings of God. Everything is free, heck, we didn\u2019t even pay to have Christ die for our sins, how much more simple things like financial and material wealth (which by the way shouldn\u2019t be the focus of good Christians)<\/p>\n
If we\u2019re to listen to those fervently defending \u2018Otabil mess,\u2019 there is absolutely nothing wrong with the merchandising of miracles in church. The same thing that caused Jesus to sweep through the temple with a whip. But this is Ghana, where men of God are highly esteemed over the God they serve, some Christians have been straining to defend the mess. Suddenly, that which is wrong and evil when done by Obinim is suddenly defensible because Pastor Otabil is involved. Let me be clear, the Obinim comparison is only in the light of selling miracles, not the other crazy things.<\/p>\n
The argument that \u201cfaith defies logic,\u201d while true, doesn\u2019t apply here because Jesus didn\u2019t charge per piece when he fed the five thousand with two loaves of bread and fishes. The seed-faith theory doesn\u2019t hold either, because the seed as by Jesus and the disciples was a metaphor for the word of God. While I love the notion that folks can do what they want with their money (because that\u2019s what feminists and gay rights advocates have been saying since the beginning of time about people\u2019s sexuality), these pay-as-you go rates are just indefensible.<\/p>\n
It is heartbreaking Pastor Mensa Otabil allowed this to happen on his platform and sought to justify it when the story broke. It is the sort of thing one expects callow and unread preachers to do, not someone in his position who cares about the implications of corruption on national development. Where does he think poor church members will be getting money to buy these miracles? His actions justify that of the condemnable acts of preachers who do this regularly and teach young preachers that it is alright to sell the blessings of God. It also blatantly excludes the poor in the church, the very group Christ loved and cared for. Which makes it even sadder. He can do better.<\/p>\n
Come to think of it, $5,000 is not the price of miracles; it\u2019s just the investment you make if you want to become a millionaire here on earth without any work. Seen through that lens, it\u2019s not a bad investment. That if they can guarantee the returns.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: nnyamewaa.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All these years I had been sacrificing to honour my folks and love my neighbor, I wish someone had told me I could have taken a shortcut by lying, cheating and stealing to make $5,000 and pay for blessings. This is basically the sum of the argument of the folks fiercely defending what I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[374,11],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n