32And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free(John 8:32).
I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name(Psalm 138:2)
Pastor Imelda Namutebi Kula’s amazing striptures
A lot of theologies of imagination have been advanced in relation to the ‘whatness’(what is it) of the forbidden tree in Genesis 2:17. Some people think that the forbidden tree that Adam and Eve ate of was SEX. What nonsense!! If God had forbidden Adam and Eve to have sex, how did he expect them to multiply and fill the whole earth?
While delivering her summon on 25th July, 2009 on WBS TV at 7:30pm, Pastor Imelda Namutebi Kula argued that the forbidden tree that that Adam and Eve ate of is the tithe. Ladies and gentlemen the fall of man in Genesis was caused by not tithing according to Pastor Namutebi . Did Adam and Eve before the fall have to toil to get what to eat? Did they grow fruits, cassava, apples? If they gave God the tithe of apples, beans etc, would God consume it or would he give it to his angels???
I really pity this generation of cursed Uganda pastors under which Pastor Namutebi falls. They are very knowledgeable about striptures(they read bits and pieces of verses that promote their greed) instead of scriptures . They have turned the gospel of grace into a gospel of greed. These people claim to be mightily used by God but looks can be deceiving. Pastor Namutebi has turned his followers into zombies. As she preaches, people pour money on the pulpit expecting big financial blessings . She usually sleighs people in the spirit and some times falls under the power of the ‘spirit’ as she sleighs people. Pastor Namutebi belives the prophecy Benny Hinn gave to Uganda ie that there is going to be a RIVER NILE ANNOINTING IN UGANDA.She argued that Bill gates is very wealth because, he sends his tithe to Israel.
How can a mighty woman of God fail to interpret even the simplest scriptures?
This tithing heresy is being perpetuated by the failure of born again Christians to search God in his word. This heresy aims at sustaining the greed or rotten luxurious life styles of prosperity Pastors like Namutebi. Tithing is just pure nonsense. One time a pastor attacked me in front of the congregation in my absence of course. He said that he has never eaten my tithe. These naïve pastors spend time in things of the world. The do not have the time to rightly devide the word of truth. Their God is not Jesus Christ. Their God is MONEY, POWER AND PRESTIGE . Avoid these wells without water.
Tithing heresies debunked
And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: (Galatians 2:4 )
In the new testament period of grace we are not supposed to tithe but to GIVE. The lord Jesus Christ never told his disciples to tithe. He taught them to give(Luke 6:38). The argument that the tithe should be consumed by the pastor who is a priest and Levite is nonsense and pure blasphemy. We need to bear in mind that there is a separation between ISRAEL and the CHURCH. How can a gentile like Pastor Imelda Numutebi Kula receive tithes. If pastors like Namutebi Kula are from the tribe of Levi, which Christians in her church belong to the other eleven tribes. If the tithe in church is given to Jesus as some claim, how can Jesus from the tribe of Judah receive tithes?
1. The pastor should be given tithes because he is a priest: But the bible calls all born again believers priests. How can a born again priest like you and me pay tithes. Check out these verses
And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth. (Revelation 5:10)
And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen (Rev.1:6)
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; (1 Peter 2:9)
2. How comes that the apostles broke the tithing law.Were they under curse for not tithing?? How comes that the first Christians in the book of Acts( Acts 11:26) broke the tithing law. How comes there is no mention of the word tithing in the book of Acts. Instead of tithing the apostles told people to sell all their property and bring the money under their feet. This actually means that everything we have belongs to the God and God can demand it from us anytime to accomplish his purposes. The theology of giving God 10% and retaining your 90% is pure nonsense. Check out this verse.
34Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, 35And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. (Acts:4:34-35)
3. How comes that Barnabas, a LEVITE sold land and brought the money under the feet of the apostles. Why didn’t he stay in the house of the lord and wait for tithes?
And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet(Acts:4:36-37)
4. Was Ananias, and Sapphira his wife struck dead by the Holy spirit for not giving 10%(tithing) or for not surrendering 100 percent of the money they got from selling their land. Check out these verses in Acts 5: 11).
1But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession,
2And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet.
3But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?
4Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.
5And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things.
6And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him.
7And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in.
8And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much.
9Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out.
10Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.
11And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.
"TITHING" IS NOT FOR CHRISTIANS
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~revival/lie-4.html
A Few Financial Questions For Pastors Today
http://www.yesumulungi.com/index.php/apostasy-watch/147-A%20Few%20Financial%20Questions%20For%20Ugandan%20Pastors%20Today.html
DO NOT BELIEVE TITHING LIE: UNDER THE NEW COVENANT CHRISTIANS ARE SUPPOSED TO GIVE AND NOT TITHE. PRECISELY THE TITHING LAW IS OBSOLETE AND DEFUNCT.. AMEN
http://tekoapublishing.com/books/tithing/index.html
http://www.tithingdebate.com
You will be Cursed if you do not Tithe: OH! REALLY
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2008/02/you-are-wrong-on-tithing-pastor-peter.html
I Lied that Pastor Imelda Namutebi’s Prayers Cured my AIDS
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-lied-that-pastor-imeldas-prayers.html
UGANDA: PASTOR EXPOSES OTHER PASTORS SCANDALS
http://www.yesumulungi.com/index.php/apostasy-watch/115-UGANDA-%20PASTOR%20EXPOSES%20OTHER%20PASTORS%20SCANDALS.html
NAMUTEBI’S CO-PASTOR GRACE KITAKA SODOMISES BOY
http://www.redpepper.ug/details.php?item=1635&PHPSESSID=1979915b543d73df007c0867a44d5b4a
http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3581&Itemid=59
Is Pastor Kayanja, the Ugandan Police, and Media Obstructing Justice?
http://www.yesumulungi.com/index.php/apostasy-watch/319-is-pastor-kayanjathe-ugandan-police-and-media-obstructing-justice.html
Pastor Muwanguzi says he was Born with a bible
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2008/05/pastor-muwanguzi-says-he-was-born-with.html
Next Article
What is the article below about?
Con-man Pastor Muwanguzi now prophet cheats people through sowing spiritual politics. Offerings in his Church include; faith offering, victory offering , general offering and a sacrificial offering of 50,000 Uganda shillings.
Paasita Muwanguzi azze na nkuba mpya ku kiweebwayo
http://www.bukeddekussande.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=3&newsCategoryId=186&newsId=689054
Bya Benjamin Ssebaggala
PAASITA Muwanguzi eyakazibwako erya Kiwedde akyusizza enkuba, eyali paasita kati Nabbi ebiweebwayo mu kkanisa ye birimu emitendera okuli eky’okukkiriza, eky’obuwanguzi, eky’olukale wamu ne ssaddaaka gye bateeka mu bbaasa etakka wansi wa mitwalo etaano so nga teriiko kkomo.
Muwanguzi owa Holy Fire Ministries eyali e Namulanda mu mwaka oguwedde yafuna ebizibu ebitali bimu, ekkanisa n’agikyusa n’agizza e Mengo. Mukyala we Fina Muwanguzi y’akulembera okusaba olwo bba n’alyoka alinnya ekituuti oluvannyuma. Okusaba kwa Ssande ewa Muwanguzi kwagenze bwe kuti:
Fina Muwanguzi: Oli mu Holy Fire Ministry International ekulirwa Nabbi Muwanguzi omusajja Katonda gw’ayise mu kyasa kino. Ebiseera ebimu bwe tuyita mu bizibu twerabira nti tulibeerako obulungi mu maaso. Yesu yakemebwa era n’amala ennaku 40 nga talidde naye teyaterebuka, olumu bw’obeera tolina kyakulya awaka okemebwa naye ggwe tokemanga Mukama Katonda wo ekyo mwandikikubiddeko mu ngalo ez’amaanyi kubanga kigambo kinene nnyo. (Bakuba ez’omwanguka)
Abapya abazze mumaze okuyingira mu bunnabbi obw’okuwonyezebwa, ogenda kufuuka omukisa eri abalala.
Katonda ng’anaakuwa omukisa tekyetaagisa kiseera kinene. Mmwe mulina omukisa nti musobola n’okukwatako mu ngalo za Nabbi naye ggwe akwata mu ngalo za Nabbi n’akuteekako n’emikono, tokwekanga era tokugiranga Katonda gwe yafukako amafuta.
Situka oweeyo mu nnyumba yange nange naggula amadirisa n’ofuna. Nnaawa abaana bo ne by’okola omukisa. Njagala buli muntu aweeyo, saagala osubwe mukisa guno waayo kinene kubanga Katonda munene ate naawe oli munene. (Abantu basimba ennyiriri kumpi kuggwa mu bifo okuwaayo. Nabbi Muwanguzi we yalinnyidde ku kituuti ng’akuumibwa abantu mwenda).
‘Zibiriza wumba engalo zo tusabe, siriikirira osabe Katonda akuwe omukisa’. Yakkaatirizza nnyo eky’okuzibiriza n’okuwumba engalo era wano we yayitidde mu bagoberezi abaabadde bajjuza kkanisa ng’omukulu alambula ennyiriri z’abaserikale ku paleedi.
Oluvannyuma lw’okuyita mu bagoberezi, abantu abamu baatandise okuleekaanira waggulu ng’abatembeddwa emizimu. Nga bakkakkanye, yayise abalina obujulizi ne batandika okubuwa ng’ayogera ebitammuka amugoba n’amutegeeza nti genda olikomawo ng’ofunye obujulizi obutegeerekeka.
Yayimirizza abawa obujulizi n’alagira basituke basabe nga bayimba. Wakati mu luyimba n’ayingiramu “Basika mmunyeenye na mikisa mu ngalo zo buli ssente z’okwata zikuyitamu, tolina mukisa mu bulamu bwo olwaleero gikomawo. Muweeyo ekiweebwayo eky’okukkiriza.
Oluvannyuma yattukizza okubuulira:
Bw’oba oyagala okumanya nti olina zaabu omusuula mu asidi bw’atafa abeera mulamu. Ke muyingidde wano mumaze okuyita mu asidi. Ebizibu bibadde bikwetoolodde nga tomanyi ani anaakuyamba naye olwaleero waliwo ekyamagero ky’ogenda nakyo.
Ffe tetukyalina batutiisatiisa abaserikale, weebali amagye ne poliisi buli akutiisa mugambe nti omutima gwange mugumu’.
Yazzeemu okubalagira bazibirize basabe n’addamu okubayitamu ng’abalambula olwazze ku kituuti n’abalagira baweeyo ekiweebwayo eky’obuwanguzi ne bazitwala.
Ng’okusaba kuggwa yabalagidde banone ebbaasa ey’okuteekamu ssaddaaka. “Munone ebbaasa zino, ze nsabidde togizannyisa, tokkiriza muntu mulala yenna kugikwatako. Ataasobole kuweza 50,000/- totawaana kuginona. Twagalamu etaano n’okudda waggulu ow’akakadde oba obutaano tetumugaana ogikomyawo wano obutasukka Lwakubiri.
Buli eyafukiddwaako amafuta togenda nga tomaze kutuukako wano waliwo eky’enjawulo ky’olina okuwaayo olw’amafuta ago. Nga mugenda, Mukama Katonda abakulembere akuwe omukisa mu mirimu gyo ne mu maka go. Kiwedde mugende mirembe.
Published on: Saturday, 25th July, 2009
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
CULT WITH IN A CULT: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH CULT IN UGANDA PANICS AS SUB-CULTS INCREASE WITH IN IT
The catholic church is under panic as many of its followers have started rushing for miracles and healings of Pentecostal style. Many charismatic cults have sprung up in the catholic church in Uganda .They act contrary to the year 2000 healing guidelines from Vatican, Rome. The catholic church has come up to oppose these cults in media . One wonders why the Catholic Church was silent on the catholic Kibwetere cult or The Restoration of the ten commandment cult which killed over 2000 people. The Catholic Church was silent about the Kibwetere cult because they thought that they were going to use it against the born again Pentecostals. However, they were caught pants down, as we speak now evidence speaks loudly that this Kibwetere cult was being headed by renegade catholic priests and nuns. This is the greatest embarrassment the Catholic Church in Uganda has suffered .
Catholic church condemns Kibwetere cult ?????????????
http://www.cesnur.org/testi/uganda_035.htm
The Connection of the Mary Apparitions in Uganda to the Kanungu Genocide
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2006/12/connection-of-mary-apparitions-in.html
Catholic Deception: Queen Of Heaven Appears In Uganda
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2006/12/catholic-deception-queen-of-heaven.html
REV.FR EXPEDITO MAGEMBE MOUNT SION CATHOLIC SUB-CULT
Deceptive antics of the Catholic Charismatic renewal: Father Expedicto Magembe of Mountain Sion and Christ the King prayer Group
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2009/06/deceptive-antics-of-catholic.html
TORORO HEALING CROSS CATHOLIC SUB-CULT
Rumours that minor ailments and bad habits can be cured after kissing a giant cross atop a high hill in eastern Uganda has Catholic pilgrims flocking to the area.
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2006/12/catholic-deceptionidol-worship-in.html
BARNABAS KAZIBWE MUTUME: CATHOLIC SUB-CULT
The healing powers of Mutume
Sunday Monitor
Michael J. Ssali
April 19, 2009
Masaka
http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/insights/The_healing_powers_of_Mutume_83421.shtml
A former Sacristan at Kyassonko Sub-parish Church in the Catholic Parish of Kyamaganda in Masaka Diocese, Mr Barnabas Kazibwe Mutume, is at the centre of controversy following a number of miraculous cures in his local community and even beyond as a result of his prayers. He has attracted a considerable following and could soon be the leader of a new break-away sect from the Catholic Church.
He has been suspended from sacramental life by the Bishop, John Baptist Kaggwa, who says his healing powers are not in line with the Catholic doctrine and that he is increasingly finding it hard to guide him.
Yet hundreds of people continue to stream to Mutume’s home at Kyassonko with various physical, social, and spiritual problems to seek his help. Hundreds claim to be relieved of the problems and have told their stories to others and so the number of people going to see him keeps growing.
He helps them by praying for them, reciting the prayers normally used in the Catholic Faith, but he also asks them to pray for themselves. If they are Catholics like him he prays with them and also gives them ‘a dose of prayers’ for them to recite on their own. If they are Muslims he asks them to pray for themselves in the Muslim way and the Protestants are also told to pray in their own faith.
He sometimes uses holy water and palm leaves blessed by Catholic priests and for several years he has worked under the guidance of some Catholic priests. But on March 14, bishop Kaggwa put a ban on the pilgrimages by all Catholics, warning that whoever goes there to pray or to seek help would be suspended from sacramental life and in the event of their death no Catholic prayers would be said during their burial.
The Parish Priest of Kyamaganda, Fr Augustine Ntabana, told this reporter that the Bishop’s ban was based on a report filed by a committee of priests charged with monitoring Mutume’s miraculous cures. Fr Ntabana was actually part of the committee.
“Even if some people have been helped by his prayers, it must be remembered that Satan too has spiritual powers and he too can perform miracles,” Fr Ntabana said, repeating the same words that the bishop used in the letter that was circulated in all the parishes of the diocese.
But Mutume, who is slightly deaf and has speech problems, says that ever since he saw the first vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary some nine years ago when he was cutting grass for sale in a nearby swamp, he has sought spiritual guidance from Monsignor Lawrence Jumba and Father Dominic Kateregga who were then stationed at Kyamaganda Parish.
“I first told Msgr. Jumba about the first apparition but then my mother advised me to see Fr Kateregga also, which I did. In the apparition the Holy Virgin told me that she would meet me later with others that she did not then name.”
Mutume claims he later saw another apparition one night. In the apparition he says he saw a man who introduced himself as St. Peter. He says St. Peter took him into a hall where there were several unoccupied chairs and some people.
Among the people he says there was one who introduced himself as Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin whom he had seen in the first apparition in the swam as he cut the grass, and another man who kept his hands wide open. He goes on to say that Jesus told him in a solemn voice thus: Go and teach the people and by my power they will be relieved of their problems through your prayers.”
He says he went back and told the two priests about the second apparition.
Fr Kateregga has since been transferred to Bukalasa Seminary where he is a teacher now, while Monsignor Lawrence Jjumba is serving at Kabaale Sanje Parish.
Fr Kateregga said, “It is true that he came to see me as he has continued to do ever since.
It is my duty to guide him and I have always tried my best to do this especially to persuade him to conduct his activities according to the ways of our faith, but I am finding it difficult. Let it not appear as if I am one of his followers or supporters; rather I am merely observing him and making a study ---- a personal research.”
It was not possible to reach Msgr. Jjumba for a comment.
Mutume has, however, since become widely known as a person of unusual powers.
A thirteen-year-old girl called Stella from Katimba in Ssembabule District who was severely deformed and had to be lifted up and carried from one place to another lost the hunchback, is said to have gained the power of her legs and now walks like a normal person.
Angela Nalusiba who was coughing blood and was blind when she was taken to him testified to this reporter that her sight is back now and that she no longer coughs blood. At least seven deformed people are said to have gained the power of their limbs and now move about normally.
Mutume, 35, who only studied up to primary six, now lives in a far bigger house than he had before. He has a new motorcycle and he has a pick-up truck and several pieces of land. Hydro-electric power has been connected to his house. “I never ask for money from those that get cured through my prayers,” he said during an interview for this story. “God’s prayers are not for sale.
Nor am I the one who cures the people. Rather it is God himself. This house, the motorcycle, and everything else that I have been given, they are freely donated to me in sheer gratitude by people who realise that they have been helped by my prayers.
Those people by the way include some Catholic priests who I will not tell you so now.”
He also claims that very many highly placed people in the government and prominent business people have been to his place for assistance.
“These are the people who have donated most of the money that I have always used to contribute towards the building of sub-parish churches in Kyamaganda Parish.”
Every Wednesday Kazibwe conducts open prayers in the make shift church in his compound. On Friday everybody joins him in the Way of the Cross.
On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday he sees people individually if he does not go out to pray for some others who invite him to far off places such as Jinja, Entebbe, Kaliiro in Lyantonde District and elsewhere. Until he was banned from going to Kyamaganda Church, every Sunday he would go with all his followers to the Sunday mass at the church. Nearly everyone at Mutume’s place wears a rosary. Some wear several rosaries.
He is called Mutume, which in Luganda means Apostle. At first people referred to him as Mulabikirwa which meant: one who has seen an apparition. However the Catholic Church for several years now has been opposed to the trend of people claiming to see apparitions so they called him Mutume.
A Catholic priest who asked not to be named, however, supports his activities and said, “Most of those people condemning this man have not actually been there and prayed with him as I have. Take the case of Lourdes where the Blessed Virgin appeared to some simple girls who were looking after sheep. Divine ways are different. God can perform miracles through anybody, not necessarily the learned priests.”
When Sunday Monitor visited, Mutume was about to burn the ‘heathen worship’ regalia which some of the people brought to him after witnessing the miraculous cures. They included skins of animals, cowrie shells, gourds, bark cloth, and some money. “By the power of God I burn the items but I don’t burn the money as it belongs to the government. I have always surrendered the money to the police.”
A priest at Kyamaganda, Fr Paul Kafeero, says Mutume misuses holy objects such as crucifixes. He mentioned a health worker who discovered some crucifixes tied on a string in such a way that they hung around a woman’s private parts, allegedly on the instructions of Mutume for her to have an easy delivery. “This is certainly not the way the church works,” Fr Kafeero said. “Sometimes he has told people to recite 300 rosaries a day.
Mutume is bitter that the bishop is criticising him before even paying a visit to his place to see for himself what is actually going on. “He has a fleet of cars at his disposal; why does he not come himself and see what I am doing instead of depending on his priests who are deceiving him about my activities?”
This reporter was able to see two letters at Kazibwe’s place: one from a nearby police station and another one from the local council. They both described him as a law abiding and well meaning spiritual healer, with whom they had no problem.
CATHOLIC SUB-CULT: THE CATHOLIC DIVINE MERCY CULT IN GGOGONYA, ENTEBBE, UGANDA
Recently the Catholic Church was invaded by a group called Divine Mercy in Ggogonya . Many Catholics claim to have got healings and miracles from this place. The Catholic Church has criticized this sect for not following the year 2000 healing guidelines from the Vatican. What is interesting about this sect is the grand entrance of the priest holding a big round metallic thing(I dot not remember what it is called) with a big host inside it. They believe that this host is Jesus. As the priest passes, the faithfulls(faith follies) lay down their clothes on which the priest holding Jesus walks. This I think is an imitation of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. As host(Jesus) passes by the faithful people start to fall, weep, wail an indication that they have been touched by Jesus.
A catholic spokes person attached this Divine mercy group for being artificial. According to him all this falling and crying is just artificiality. There is no doubt that some of the miracles are stage- managed. However most of them are indeed supernatural and the god being them is satan. Scriptures says in 2Thesa.2 that the devil is coming with signs and lying wonders. We should not underrate the capacity of satan to make miracles. Our only weapon is the word of God. If you trust your experiences , you will be deceived.
Eating Jesus: The catholic Favorite verse
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2009/06/eating-jesus-catholic-favorite-verse.html
Article on Devine Mercy Cult.
E Ggogonya mu basiisita abaagala okuwonyezebwa gye beeyiwa
http://www.bukeddekussande.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=3&newsCategoryId=186&newsId=689056
Bya Juliet Lukwago ne
Edward Sserinnya
NKWANIRIZZA mu kifo kya Divine Mercy awasabirwa abalwadde awatali kusosola mu mawanga yadde eddiini. Ekifo kino ekisangibwa ku luguudo lw’e Ntebe ng’oyise e Kawuku kyatandikibwa basiisita b’ekibiina ky’omutima Omutukuvu omuddaabiriza ab’e Ggogonya emyaka ebiri egiyise.
Omu ku basabira abantu Siisita Lawrence Namata agamba: Okuyigiriza mu kifo kino kubeerawo buli Mmande ng’ekigendererwa ky’essaala eno kunyweza kukkiriza mu bantu. Ku Lwokusatu kuba kusabira balina bizibu, tewali ddagala lye tuwa bantu wabula omuntu kukkiriza kwe kumuwonya oluvannyuma lw’okuwulira ekigambo kya Katonda n’okwegayirira eri Essakramentu Ettukuvu”.
Okusaba nga kugenda mu maaso owulira abakaaba, abaseka, abayimba, abakuba engalo nga kino kibeerawo okusinziira oli Mukama bw’aba amukutteko.
Olumaliriza okusaba nga Siisita Immaculate Namuwonge, akulira okusaba mu kifo kino agamba nti abantu bwe bati mubadde mulina obulwadde bwe buti naye muwonye. Olwo n’owulira engalo n’enduulu eby’omwanguka.
Abamu ku bantu abawonyezeddwa n’abafunye ebirungi oluvannyuma lw’essaala ebasabirwa mu kifo kino bawadde obujulizi:
Simon Kizza ow’e Bwerenga: Mukyala wange yalwala abasawo ne batutegeeza nti alina ebbwa ku kataago n’ekibumba kyavunda nti ne nnabaana alina okuggyibwamu. Byatusobera nga ne ssente zituweddeko era twasalawo kubirekera Katonda. Twajja wano ne twegayirira era omukyala kati ali bulungi. Kino kinnyongedde okunyweza okukkiriza kwange n’okumanya nti tewali Mukama bulwadde bw’atasobola kuwonya kasita okkiriza.
Maria Namubiru w’e Kibuye : Nalina ebizimba mu lubuto ng’obulumi sisobola kutuula wadde okutambula. Abasawo bantegeeza nti nneetaaga kulongoosebwa ne ntya ate nga sirina na ssente.
Muganda wange yankwata n’andeeta e Ggogonya naye nga nze si bye ndimu. Yantegeeza nti tube n’okukkiriza twegayirire Mukama byonna ajja kubikwatako. Siisita Regina eyaliwo mu budde obwo yampa essaala ssatu Kitaffe, Mirembe Maria n’Ekitiibwa nga nzisoma n’obwegendereza nga bwe ng’amba Yezu nti mukwano mponya nga bwe wawonya abagenge. Nagenda okuwulira ng’obulumi bugenda mpola n’okutuusa kati sirina kinnuma. Nadda mu ddwaaliro ne bankebera nga sikyalina kizimba na kimu, kati omwaka mulamba.
Lule Musoke Kabogozza e Busaabala: Natambula mu buli kifo gye balamaga omuli Yisirayiri, Roma, Ludi n’ebirala ng’eno ng’enze ku kinyumu ng’eddiini sigitwala ng’ekikulu. Naye okuva bwe najja mu kifo kino okukkiriza kwange kweyongera ne nneesonyiwa bye nali nkola nga si bituufu era kati obulamu bwange nabulekera Yezu Kristu abulabirire.
Annet Bagenda e Kitala: Nfunye ebirungi bingi okuva bwe natandika okujja mu kifo kino mu 2007 sibitenda. Omwami wange baali baamusalayo ku mulimu n’anoonya emirimu nga buli wamu bamugamba komawo enkya, komawo eggulo. Najja wano ne ntandika okumusabira era kino kyamala emyezi mukaaga. Tuba tuli waka ne bamuyita ku mirimu gya mirundi ebiri era kati akakkalabya.
Published on: Saturday, 25th July, 2009
SPECIOZA MUKANTABANA CATHOLIC SUB-CULT
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/402-specioza-mukantabana
Specioza Mukantabana (first name sometimes spelled in news reports as Speciosa, or Preciosa), is a 36-year old woman from Rwanda said to currently be a US resident. In 1986 Mukantabana attracted followers in Uganda, based on her alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary, who she claimed gave her messages.
Mukantabana and her followers are denounced by the Catholic Church. A Uganda newspaper in March, 2000 reported that the cult's followers "teach against sex, eating pork, announce doomsday, do not accept modern medicine, don't work hard during day, all contrary to the Church."
According to a July, 1988 article in the Washington Post, Mukantabana claimed the Virgin Mary told her she would appear with a cure for AIDS.
Mukantbana has a tangential connection to the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, if only because the visions of two of her group's leaders inspired the Joseph Kibwetere, the cult's figurehead leader.
Currently (Dec. 2006) Specioza Mukantabana is again in the news, as thousands of her followers in Uganda were expecting another visitation of the Virgin Mary.
Mary reportedly did speak to Mukantabana, with a perculiar message:
Thousands of followers of Mbuye Christian faith flocked the parish church in Luanda Sub-county anticipating Mary’s visitation on Wednesday.
[...]
The leader, Specioza Mukantabana, a Rwandese residing in the US, was reported speaking to Mary, as the followers prayed and sang.
[...]
Mukantabana knelt down when it was time to hear from Mary. Speaking in English and Kinyarwanda she looked up in the sky and begun to talk.
As she prayed, Dr. Deo Luwukya from Masaka town emerged from the congregation and pricked her body with a sharp object but she did not react. She was also unhurt when he lit a match stick and let the flames lick her back.
In her alleged discussion with Mary Mukantabana was heard saying, “Why do you want me to speak in English. Yes you told me that you were going to come, so many people have been waiting for you at Mbuye.”
“Some of them have come to pray, some have come to see miracles. What should I tell the people in Mbuye.
Some of them have told me to inform you that they have problems of infertility, poverty, unemployment, sickness and some want to become rich. Please help them,” she said.
Then Mukantabana prostrated for several minutes before she rose, crying. “Why did you show me that house? You want me to drop my job. I am afraid of being idle. Okay I will resign my job. I am ready to serve you,” she said.
- Source: Police monitoring sect in Uganda, Sunday Vision, Uganda, Dec. 2, 2006
Mukantabana's followers inspire Joseph Kwibetere
During the years of 1981 through 1989, six girls and a boy in Kibeho, Rwanda, claimed to receive apparitions and messages from the Virgin Mary.
Their visions, which in 2001 received official recognition by the Catholic Church, are said to have predicted the Rwanda genocide.
Our Lady then showed the children of Kibeho what would happen in their country if people refused to believe and live her messages. All of the children screamed in horror as they saw in a vision, trees in flames, a river of blood flowing with corpses which had been decapitated and floating limbs of people, as Mary warned the children and the world that we were on 'the edge of catastrophe'. As the children described this horrific scene in these words,
"A river of blood, people were killing each other, abandoned corpses with no one to bury them. A tree all in flames, bodies without their heads. There was crying and screaming. At different times, all seven of the Kibeho visionaries experienced this horrifying vision. They saw a river of blood that formed because people were killing each other indiscriminately. "Corpses, some without heads, were strewn everywhere and were so numerous they could not be buried"
This especially saddened Agnes who saw the death of her own parents. Our lady then warned the seers to leave Rwanda, unfortunately some didn't.
What is known is that two of these seer's lost their lives in the killing fields that became Rwanda, where approximately over 800,000 people were brutally murdered as the U.N and the world watched, some with indifference, others with horror!
- Source: Our Lady of Kibeho , Approved Apparitions (blog), March 24, 2006
During and after these visions many individuals and fringe Catholic groups throughout Africa also claimed to receive apparitions of the Virgin Mary and of Jesus.
In 1986, Specioza Mukantabana, a 16 year old girl from Rwanda, moved to Uganda. At the time she reportedly claimed to have a connection with Kibeho, though she was not one of the seven seers.
In Uganda she attracted a following in the city of Mbuye.
The visions of two of her followers - Paul Kashuka, a retied Catholic cathechist who was now one of the seers associated with Mukantabana's group, and his daughter, Credonia Mwerinde - impressed Joseph Kibwetere, a former headmaster and supervisor of Catholic schools. Like Mukantabana and Kashuka, Kibwetere also claimed to receive visions from Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
In 1989 Kibwetere opened his home for a small group of devotees. The group elected twelve 'apostles,' including Paul Kashuka and his daughter Credonia Mwerinde.
In 1990, this group named itself the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.
In 1993 the group moved to Kanunga, where Mwerinde's father had donated some land. According to The East African, the site where the group settled was locally called Katate but the cult renamed it Ishayuuriro rya Maria, meaning "where Mary comes to the rescue of the spiritually stranded."
While Jospeh Kibwetere officially was the movement's 'chief apostle and prophet,' the group's true leader was Mwerinde. It is said that othing could be done without consulting her. She in turn would claim that she had to consult with the Virgin Mary. Her word was usually final and binding.
In time, the movement's leaders claimed that the world would end by Dec. 31, 1999. When these prophecies did not come to pass, many of the movement's followers rebelled. The leaders subsequently claimed that the Virgin Mary had extended the date by two months, to March 17, 2000.
On March 17, 2000, hundreds of the movement's followers were deliberately burned to death by the cult's leaders.
Investigations following this tragedy showed that earlier, hundreds more had also been murdered.
Specioza Mukantabana's group
On March 25, 2000, a Uganda newspaper reported:
The Police have camped at Mbuye parish in Rakai where believers suspected to be part of the Kanungu group have gathered to celebrate.
The Catholic Church leaders at Mbuye requested security officials to provide tight security to prevent any eventualities. The Parish priest asked that the group be disbanded because retired Bishop Adrian Dungu had stopped them from camping at the church.
However, Irene Tibaaga, the District Police Commander, who had a meeting with the church leaders, declined to use force to evict the worshippers. She said this would give the impression that the Government was dictating issues and had interfered with Church work.
District leaders had requested the church to evict the group since their worship contravenes the Catholic doctrine.
The parish priest said the cult followers, whose founder is Speciosa Mukantabana, among other teach against sex, eating pork, announce doomsday, do not accept modern medicine, don't work hard during day, all contrary to the Church.
- Source: Police Watch Cult Church, New Vision, Uganda, Mar. 25, 2000
THE LEGIO MARIA CATHOLIC SUB-SECT
Legio Maria (Latin, “Legion of Mary”) is a new religious movement among the Luo people of western Kenya which incorporates traditional Luo religious customs into a Christian framework. It is a kind of syncretic Animist/Christian cult originally prevailing only in Luoland, but ultimately spreading widely in East Africa. It originated in the early 1960s as a breakaway of the Roman Catholic Church , declared a pope ("anti-pope" to conventional Catholics), and asserted that it has replaced the "Church in Rome" as the "true" Catholic Church.
The "Legio Maria of African Church Mission" was founded by a former catechist of the Roman Catholic Church among the Luo people in Kisii Diocese of western Kenya. In 1962, Blasio Simeo Malkio Ondetto — known as "Baba Messiah" by Legio Maria followers and as the "Black Messiah" or "Black Jesus" by others — split from the Roman Catholic Church taking 90,000 adherents with him. His "second in command" was a woman known as “Mother Maria” and today revered as the true “Mother of God". Both were excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s. By 1980 the church numbered 248,000 adherents[1].
In the 21st century, total church membership has been estimated at over three million. [2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_Maria
Believing in the Black Messiah: The Legio Maria Church in an African Christian Landscape
http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/nr.2009.13.1.11
CATHOLIC SUB-CULT: CONGREGATION OF SACRIFICE IN MASAKA, UGANDA
"Probe Masaka Cult, Catholic Church Told"
http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=5616&sec=55&con=58
by Siraje K. Lubwama ("The Monitor," April 16, 2002)
The Uganda Human Rights Commission tribunal has directed the Ministry of Education and the Catholic Church to investigate a religious cult in Masaka.
Commissioner Veronica Eragu ruled after a complaint filed by Rev. Fr. David Kyeyune and his niece, Clare against Anthony Kiwanuka.
Kiwanuka, Clare's husband was accused of taking their three children to Byaana Mary Hill Boarding School, founded by a religious cult called Congregation of Sacrifice. Rev. Kyeyune and Clare said the school's religious foundation affects the children negatively.
"The relevant institutions should check the contradictions here and establish the truth. There is certainly a hidden agenda somewhere," Eragu said in her judgement.
She asked the Ministry of Education, Masaka District Education officer and the Catholic Church of Masaka to investigate the school.
Eragu ruled that the three children should be removed from the school. The school began in 1998. She said the school is not situated in a safe place and is in bad shape.
"The classrooms are not complete; they are shells - no The walls are not plastered and no doors. The windows, just open wide spaces dormitories are like prison wards," she observed.
Catholic church condemns Kibwetere cult ?????????????
http://www.cesnur.org/testi/uganda_035.htm
The Connection of the Mary Apparitions in Uganda to the Kanungu Genocide
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2006/12/connection-of-mary-apparitions-in.html
Catholic Deception: Queen Of Heaven Appears In Uganda
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2006/12/catholic-deception-queen-of-heaven.html
REV.FR EXPEDITO MAGEMBE MOUNT SION CATHOLIC SUB-CULT
Deceptive antics of the Catholic Charismatic renewal: Father Expedicto Magembe of Mountain Sion and Christ the King prayer Group
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2009/06/deceptive-antics-of-catholic.html
TORORO HEALING CROSS CATHOLIC SUB-CULT
Rumours that minor ailments and bad habits can be cured after kissing a giant cross atop a high hill in eastern Uganda has Catholic pilgrims flocking to the area.
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2006/12/catholic-deceptionidol-worship-in.html
BARNABAS KAZIBWE MUTUME: CATHOLIC SUB-CULT
The healing powers of Mutume
Sunday Monitor
Michael J. Ssali
April 19, 2009
Masaka
http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/insights/The_healing_powers_of_Mutume_83421.shtml
A former Sacristan at Kyassonko Sub-parish Church in the Catholic Parish of Kyamaganda in Masaka Diocese, Mr Barnabas Kazibwe Mutume, is at the centre of controversy following a number of miraculous cures in his local community and even beyond as a result of his prayers. He has attracted a considerable following and could soon be the leader of a new break-away sect from the Catholic Church.
He has been suspended from sacramental life by the Bishop, John Baptist Kaggwa, who says his healing powers are not in line with the Catholic doctrine and that he is increasingly finding it hard to guide him.
Yet hundreds of people continue to stream to Mutume’s home at Kyassonko with various physical, social, and spiritual problems to seek his help. Hundreds claim to be relieved of the problems and have told their stories to others and so the number of people going to see him keeps growing.
He helps them by praying for them, reciting the prayers normally used in the Catholic Faith, but he also asks them to pray for themselves. If they are Catholics like him he prays with them and also gives them ‘a dose of prayers’ for them to recite on their own. If they are Muslims he asks them to pray for themselves in the Muslim way and the Protestants are also told to pray in their own faith.
He sometimes uses holy water and palm leaves blessed by Catholic priests and for several years he has worked under the guidance of some Catholic priests. But on March 14, bishop Kaggwa put a ban on the pilgrimages by all Catholics, warning that whoever goes there to pray or to seek help would be suspended from sacramental life and in the event of their death no Catholic prayers would be said during their burial.
The Parish Priest of Kyamaganda, Fr Augustine Ntabana, told this reporter that the Bishop’s ban was based on a report filed by a committee of priests charged with monitoring Mutume’s miraculous cures. Fr Ntabana was actually part of the committee.
“Even if some people have been helped by his prayers, it must be remembered that Satan too has spiritual powers and he too can perform miracles,” Fr Ntabana said, repeating the same words that the bishop used in the letter that was circulated in all the parishes of the diocese.
But Mutume, who is slightly deaf and has speech problems, says that ever since he saw the first vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary some nine years ago when he was cutting grass for sale in a nearby swamp, he has sought spiritual guidance from Monsignor Lawrence Jumba and Father Dominic Kateregga who were then stationed at Kyamaganda Parish.
“I first told Msgr. Jumba about the first apparition but then my mother advised me to see Fr Kateregga also, which I did. In the apparition the Holy Virgin told me that she would meet me later with others that she did not then name.”
Mutume claims he later saw another apparition one night. In the apparition he says he saw a man who introduced himself as St. Peter. He says St. Peter took him into a hall where there were several unoccupied chairs and some people.
Among the people he says there was one who introduced himself as Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin whom he had seen in the first apparition in the swam as he cut the grass, and another man who kept his hands wide open. He goes on to say that Jesus told him in a solemn voice thus: Go and teach the people and by my power they will be relieved of their problems through your prayers.”
He says he went back and told the two priests about the second apparition.
Fr Kateregga has since been transferred to Bukalasa Seminary where he is a teacher now, while Monsignor Lawrence Jjumba is serving at Kabaale Sanje Parish.
Fr Kateregga said, “It is true that he came to see me as he has continued to do ever since.
It is my duty to guide him and I have always tried my best to do this especially to persuade him to conduct his activities according to the ways of our faith, but I am finding it difficult. Let it not appear as if I am one of his followers or supporters; rather I am merely observing him and making a study ---- a personal research.”
It was not possible to reach Msgr. Jjumba for a comment.
Mutume has, however, since become widely known as a person of unusual powers.
A thirteen-year-old girl called Stella from Katimba in Ssembabule District who was severely deformed and had to be lifted up and carried from one place to another lost the hunchback, is said to have gained the power of her legs and now walks like a normal person.
Angela Nalusiba who was coughing blood and was blind when she was taken to him testified to this reporter that her sight is back now and that she no longer coughs blood. At least seven deformed people are said to have gained the power of their limbs and now move about normally.
Mutume, 35, who only studied up to primary six, now lives in a far bigger house than he had before. He has a new motorcycle and he has a pick-up truck and several pieces of land. Hydro-electric power has been connected to his house. “I never ask for money from those that get cured through my prayers,” he said during an interview for this story. “God’s prayers are not for sale.
Nor am I the one who cures the people. Rather it is God himself. This house, the motorcycle, and everything else that I have been given, they are freely donated to me in sheer gratitude by people who realise that they have been helped by my prayers.
Those people by the way include some Catholic priests who I will not tell you so now.”
He also claims that very many highly placed people in the government and prominent business people have been to his place for assistance.
“These are the people who have donated most of the money that I have always used to contribute towards the building of sub-parish churches in Kyamaganda Parish.”
Every Wednesday Kazibwe conducts open prayers in the make shift church in his compound. On Friday everybody joins him in the Way of the Cross.
On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday he sees people individually if he does not go out to pray for some others who invite him to far off places such as Jinja, Entebbe, Kaliiro in Lyantonde District and elsewhere. Until he was banned from going to Kyamaganda Church, every Sunday he would go with all his followers to the Sunday mass at the church. Nearly everyone at Mutume’s place wears a rosary. Some wear several rosaries.
He is called Mutume, which in Luganda means Apostle. At first people referred to him as Mulabikirwa which meant: one who has seen an apparition. However the Catholic Church for several years now has been opposed to the trend of people claiming to see apparitions so they called him Mutume.
A Catholic priest who asked not to be named, however, supports his activities and said, “Most of those people condemning this man have not actually been there and prayed with him as I have. Take the case of Lourdes where the Blessed Virgin appeared to some simple girls who were looking after sheep. Divine ways are different. God can perform miracles through anybody, not necessarily the learned priests.”
When Sunday Monitor visited, Mutume was about to burn the ‘heathen worship’ regalia which some of the people brought to him after witnessing the miraculous cures. They included skins of animals, cowrie shells, gourds, bark cloth, and some money. “By the power of God I burn the items but I don’t burn the money as it belongs to the government. I have always surrendered the money to the police.”
A priest at Kyamaganda, Fr Paul Kafeero, says Mutume misuses holy objects such as crucifixes. He mentioned a health worker who discovered some crucifixes tied on a string in such a way that they hung around a woman’s private parts, allegedly on the instructions of Mutume for her to have an easy delivery. “This is certainly not the way the church works,” Fr Kafeero said. “Sometimes he has told people to recite 300 rosaries a day.
Mutume is bitter that the bishop is criticising him before even paying a visit to his place to see for himself what is actually going on. “He has a fleet of cars at his disposal; why does he not come himself and see what I am doing instead of depending on his priests who are deceiving him about my activities?”
This reporter was able to see two letters at Kazibwe’s place: one from a nearby police station and another one from the local council. They both described him as a law abiding and well meaning spiritual healer, with whom they had no problem.
CATHOLIC SUB-CULT: THE CATHOLIC DIVINE MERCY CULT IN GGOGONYA, ENTEBBE, UGANDA
Recently the Catholic Church was invaded by a group called Divine Mercy in Ggogonya . Many Catholics claim to have got healings and miracles from this place. The Catholic Church has criticized this sect for not following the year 2000 healing guidelines from the Vatican. What is interesting about this sect is the grand entrance of the priest holding a big round metallic thing(I dot not remember what it is called) with a big host inside it. They believe that this host is Jesus. As the priest passes, the faithfulls(faith follies) lay down their clothes on which the priest holding Jesus walks. This I think is an imitation of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. As host(Jesus) passes by the faithful people start to fall, weep, wail an indication that they have been touched by Jesus.
A catholic spokes person attached this Divine mercy group for being artificial. According to him all this falling and crying is just artificiality. There is no doubt that some of the miracles are stage- managed. However most of them are indeed supernatural and the god being them is satan. Scriptures says in 2Thesa.2 that the devil is coming with signs and lying wonders. We should not underrate the capacity of satan to make miracles. Our only weapon is the word of God. If you trust your experiences , you will be deceived.
Eating Jesus: The catholic Favorite verse
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2009/06/eating-jesus-catholic-favorite-verse.html
Article on Devine Mercy Cult.
E Ggogonya mu basiisita abaagala okuwonyezebwa gye beeyiwa
http://www.bukeddekussande.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=3&newsCategoryId=186&newsId=689056
Bya Juliet Lukwago ne
Edward Sserinnya
NKWANIRIZZA mu kifo kya Divine Mercy awasabirwa abalwadde awatali kusosola mu mawanga yadde eddiini. Ekifo kino ekisangibwa ku luguudo lw’e Ntebe ng’oyise e Kawuku kyatandikibwa basiisita b’ekibiina ky’omutima Omutukuvu omuddaabiriza ab’e Ggogonya emyaka ebiri egiyise.
Omu ku basabira abantu Siisita Lawrence Namata agamba: Okuyigiriza mu kifo kino kubeerawo buli Mmande ng’ekigendererwa ky’essaala eno kunyweza kukkiriza mu bantu. Ku Lwokusatu kuba kusabira balina bizibu, tewali ddagala lye tuwa bantu wabula omuntu kukkiriza kwe kumuwonya oluvannyuma lw’okuwulira ekigambo kya Katonda n’okwegayirira eri Essakramentu Ettukuvu”.
Okusaba nga kugenda mu maaso owulira abakaaba, abaseka, abayimba, abakuba engalo nga kino kibeerawo okusinziira oli Mukama bw’aba amukutteko.
Olumaliriza okusaba nga Siisita Immaculate Namuwonge, akulira okusaba mu kifo kino agamba nti abantu bwe bati mubadde mulina obulwadde bwe buti naye muwonye. Olwo n’owulira engalo n’enduulu eby’omwanguka.
Abamu ku bantu abawonyezeddwa n’abafunye ebirungi oluvannyuma lw’essaala ebasabirwa mu kifo kino bawadde obujulizi:
Simon Kizza ow’e Bwerenga: Mukyala wange yalwala abasawo ne batutegeeza nti alina ebbwa ku kataago n’ekibumba kyavunda nti ne nnabaana alina okuggyibwamu. Byatusobera nga ne ssente zituweddeko era twasalawo kubirekera Katonda. Twajja wano ne twegayirira era omukyala kati ali bulungi. Kino kinnyongedde okunyweza okukkiriza kwange n’okumanya nti tewali Mukama bulwadde bw’atasobola kuwonya kasita okkiriza.
Maria Namubiru w’e Kibuye : Nalina ebizimba mu lubuto ng’obulumi sisobola kutuula wadde okutambula. Abasawo bantegeeza nti nneetaaga kulongoosebwa ne ntya ate nga sirina na ssente.
Muganda wange yankwata n’andeeta e Ggogonya naye nga nze si bye ndimu. Yantegeeza nti tube n’okukkiriza twegayirire Mukama byonna ajja kubikwatako. Siisita Regina eyaliwo mu budde obwo yampa essaala ssatu Kitaffe, Mirembe Maria n’Ekitiibwa nga nzisoma n’obwegendereza nga bwe ng’amba Yezu nti mukwano mponya nga bwe wawonya abagenge. Nagenda okuwulira ng’obulumi bugenda mpola n’okutuusa kati sirina kinnuma. Nadda mu ddwaaliro ne bankebera nga sikyalina kizimba na kimu, kati omwaka mulamba.
Lule Musoke Kabogozza e Busaabala: Natambula mu buli kifo gye balamaga omuli Yisirayiri, Roma, Ludi n’ebirala ng’eno ng’enze ku kinyumu ng’eddiini sigitwala ng’ekikulu. Naye okuva bwe najja mu kifo kino okukkiriza kwange kweyongera ne nneesonyiwa bye nali nkola nga si bituufu era kati obulamu bwange nabulekera Yezu Kristu abulabirire.
Annet Bagenda e Kitala: Nfunye ebirungi bingi okuva bwe natandika okujja mu kifo kino mu 2007 sibitenda. Omwami wange baali baamusalayo ku mulimu n’anoonya emirimu nga buli wamu bamugamba komawo enkya, komawo eggulo. Najja wano ne ntandika okumusabira era kino kyamala emyezi mukaaga. Tuba tuli waka ne bamuyita ku mirimu gya mirundi ebiri era kati akakkalabya.
Published on: Saturday, 25th July, 2009
SPECIOZA MUKANTABANA CATHOLIC SUB-CULT
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/402-specioza-mukantabana
Specioza Mukantabana (first name sometimes spelled in news reports as Speciosa, or Preciosa), is a 36-year old woman from Rwanda said to currently be a US resident. In 1986 Mukantabana attracted followers in Uganda, based on her alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary, who she claimed gave her messages.
Mukantabana and her followers are denounced by the Catholic Church. A Uganda newspaper in March, 2000 reported that the cult's followers "teach against sex, eating pork, announce doomsday, do not accept modern medicine, don't work hard during day, all contrary to the Church."
According to a July, 1988 article in the Washington Post, Mukantabana claimed the Virgin Mary told her she would appear with a cure for AIDS.
Mukantbana has a tangential connection to the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, if only because the visions of two of her group's leaders inspired the Joseph Kibwetere, the cult's figurehead leader.
Currently (Dec. 2006) Specioza Mukantabana is again in the news, as thousands of her followers in Uganda were expecting another visitation of the Virgin Mary.
Mary reportedly did speak to Mukantabana, with a perculiar message:
Thousands of followers of Mbuye Christian faith flocked the parish church in Luanda Sub-county anticipating Mary’s visitation on Wednesday.
[...]
The leader, Specioza Mukantabana, a Rwandese residing in the US, was reported speaking to Mary, as the followers prayed and sang.
[...]
Mukantabana knelt down when it was time to hear from Mary. Speaking in English and Kinyarwanda she looked up in the sky and begun to talk.
As she prayed, Dr. Deo Luwukya from Masaka town emerged from the congregation and pricked her body with a sharp object but she did not react. She was also unhurt when he lit a match stick and let the flames lick her back.
In her alleged discussion with Mary Mukantabana was heard saying, “Why do you want me to speak in English. Yes you told me that you were going to come, so many people have been waiting for you at Mbuye.”
“Some of them have come to pray, some have come to see miracles. What should I tell the people in Mbuye.
Some of them have told me to inform you that they have problems of infertility, poverty, unemployment, sickness and some want to become rich. Please help them,” she said.
Then Mukantabana prostrated for several minutes before she rose, crying. “Why did you show me that house? You want me to drop my job. I am afraid of being idle. Okay I will resign my job. I am ready to serve you,” she said.
- Source: Police monitoring sect in Uganda, Sunday Vision, Uganda, Dec. 2, 2006
Mukantabana's followers inspire Joseph Kwibetere
During the years of 1981 through 1989, six girls and a boy in Kibeho, Rwanda, claimed to receive apparitions and messages from the Virgin Mary.
Their visions, which in 2001 received official recognition by the Catholic Church, are said to have predicted the Rwanda genocide.
Our Lady then showed the children of Kibeho what would happen in their country if people refused to believe and live her messages. All of the children screamed in horror as they saw in a vision, trees in flames, a river of blood flowing with corpses which had been decapitated and floating limbs of people, as Mary warned the children and the world that we were on 'the edge of catastrophe'. As the children described this horrific scene in these words,
"A river of blood, people were killing each other, abandoned corpses with no one to bury them. A tree all in flames, bodies without their heads. There was crying and screaming. At different times, all seven of the Kibeho visionaries experienced this horrifying vision. They saw a river of blood that formed because people were killing each other indiscriminately. "Corpses, some without heads, were strewn everywhere and were so numerous they could not be buried"
This especially saddened Agnes who saw the death of her own parents. Our lady then warned the seers to leave Rwanda, unfortunately some didn't.
What is known is that two of these seer's lost their lives in the killing fields that became Rwanda, where approximately over 800,000 people were brutally murdered as the U.N and the world watched, some with indifference, others with horror!
- Source: Our Lady of Kibeho , Approved Apparitions (blog), March 24, 2006
During and after these visions many individuals and fringe Catholic groups throughout Africa also claimed to receive apparitions of the Virgin Mary and of Jesus.
In 1986, Specioza Mukantabana, a 16 year old girl from Rwanda, moved to Uganda. At the time she reportedly claimed to have a connection with Kibeho, though she was not one of the seven seers.
In Uganda she attracted a following in the city of Mbuye.
The visions of two of her followers - Paul Kashuka, a retied Catholic cathechist who was now one of the seers associated with Mukantabana's group, and his daughter, Credonia Mwerinde - impressed Joseph Kibwetere, a former headmaster and supervisor of Catholic schools. Like Mukantabana and Kashuka, Kibwetere also claimed to receive visions from Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
In 1989 Kibwetere opened his home for a small group of devotees. The group elected twelve 'apostles,' including Paul Kashuka and his daughter Credonia Mwerinde.
In 1990, this group named itself the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.
In 1993 the group moved to Kanunga, where Mwerinde's father had donated some land. According to The East African, the site where the group settled was locally called Katate but the cult renamed it Ishayuuriro rya Maria, meaning "where Mary comes to the rescue of the spiritually stranded."
While Jospeh Kibwetere officially was the movement's 'chief apostle and prophet,' the group's true leader was Mwerinde. It is said that othing could be done without consulting her. She in turn would claim that she had to consult with the Virgin Mary. Her word was usually final and binding.
In time, the movement's leaders claimed that the world would end by Dec. 31, 1999. When these prophecies did not come to pass, many of the movement's followers rebelled. The leaders subsequently claimed that the Virgin Mary had extended the date by two months, to March 17, 2000.
On March 17, 2000, hundreds of the movement's followers were deliberately burned to death by the cult's leaders.
Investigations following this tragedy showed that earlier, hundreds more had also been murdered.
Specioza Mukantabana's group
On March 25, 2000, a Uganda newspaper reported:
The Police have camped at Mbuye parish in Rakai where believers suspected to be part of the Kanungu group have gathered to celebrate.
The Catholic Church leaders at Mbuye requested security officials to provide tight security to prevent any eventualities. The Parish priest asked that the group be disbanded because retired Bishop Adrian Dungu had stopped them from camping at the church.
However, Irene Tibaaga, the District Police Commander, who had a meeting with the church leaders, declined to use force to evict the worshippers. She said this would give the impression that the Government was dictating issues and had interfered with Church work.
District leaders had requested the church to evict the group since their worship contravenes the Catholic doctrine.
The parish priest said the cult followers, whose founder is Speciosa Mukantabana, among other teach against sex, eating pork, announce doomsday, do not accept modern medicine, don't work hard during day, all contrary to the Church.
- Source: Police Watch Cult Church, New Vision, Uganda, Mar. 25, 2000
THE LEGIO MARIA CATHOLIC SUB-SECT
Legio Maria (Latin, “Legion of Mary”) is a new religious movement among the Luo people of western Kenya which incorporates traditional Luo religious customs into a Christian framework. It is a kind of syncretic Animist/Christian cult originally prevailing only in Luoland, but ultimately spreading widely in East Africa. It originated in the early 1960s as a breakaway of the Roman Catholic Church , declared a pope ("anti-pope" to conventional Catholics), and asserted that it has replaced the "Church in Rome" as the "true" Catholic Church.
The "Legio Maria of African Church Mission" was founded by a former catechist of the Roman Catholic Church among the Luo people in Kisii Diocese of western Kenya. In 1962, Blasio Simeo Malkio Ondetto — known as "Baba Messiah" by Legio Maria followers and as the "Black Messiah" or "Black Jesus" by others — split from the Roman Catholic Church taking 90,000 adherents with him. His "second in command" was a woman known as “Mother Maria” and today revered as the true “Mother of God". Both were excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s. By 1980 the church numbered 248,000 adherents[1].
In the 21st century, total church membership has been estimated at over three million. [2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_Maria
Believing in the Black Messiah: The Legio Maria Church in an African Christian Landscape
http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/nr.2009.13.1.11
CATHOLIC SUB-CULT: CONGREGATION OF SACRIFICE IN MASAKA, UGANDA
"Probe Masaka Cult, Catholic Church Told"
http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=5616&sec=55&con=58
by Siraje K. Lubwama ("The Monitor," April 16, 2002)
The Uganda Human Rights Commission tribunal has directed the Ministry of Education and the Catholic Church to investigate a religious cult in Masaka.
Commissioner Veronica Eragu ruled after a complaint filed by Rev. Fr. David Kyeyune and his niece, Clare against Anthony Kiwanuka.
Kiwanuka, Clare's husband was accused of taking their three children to Byaana Mary Hill Boarding School, founded by a religious cult called Congregation of Sacrifice. Rev. Kyeyune and Clare said the school's religious foundation affects the children negatively.
"The relevant institutions should check the contradictions here and establish the truth. There is certainly a hidden agenda somewhere," Eragu said in her judgement.
She asked the Ministry of Education, Masaka District Education officer and the Catholic Church of Masaka to investigate the school.
Eragu ruled that the three children should be removed from the school. The school began in 1998. She said the school is not situated in a safe place and is in bad shape.
"The classrooms are not complete; they are shells - no The walls are not plastered and no doors. The windows, just open wide spaces dormitories are like prison wards," she observed.
Ugandan Witch Rapes 600 Women
What is the story about?
In Africa many people especially women who can not conceive go witchdoctors to get babies. These women end up being raped by these witches. The witches deceive the women that the herbs they are going to administer to them will not work unless, they first have sex with the witch. Even some born again Christians still go the Jesus and the witches as well. In the story below a’fake’ witch who was arrested by police recently said that he had so far had sex with 600 of his ‘patients’. He cheated his patients by pretending to be a spirits who could free them from the bondage of the ancestral spirits and devils. There is stronghold of witchcraft in Africa. Religions such Catholicism, Islam and Anglicanism have succumbed to devil worship. Many of their followers practice both witchcraft and religion.
Omusamize asobezza ku bakazi 600
http://www.bukeddekussande.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=3&newsCategoryId=167&newsId=689021
Bya Donald Kiirya
OMUSAWO w’ekinansi Moses Kimbowa agambibwa okutemako omwana Stephen Kironde omutwe eyakwatiddwa awaawaazizza abakuumaddembe amatu bw’agambye nti abadde yaakasobya ku bakazi 600 ababadde bagendayo okumusaba oluzaalo.
“Buli mulimo gubeera n’ebyama byagwo, naye kino kye kimu ku byama bye mbadde nkuuma obutiribiri. Abakazi babadde bajja ne bansaba enzaalo okuva mu 1998 era kye mbadde nkola kwe kubasaba amazzi g’ekyama era nga gano okugafuna mbadde nnina okumala okubakozesa,” Kimbowa bwe yategeezezza abaserikale ba RRU nga n’abaamawulire weebali.
Kino kyaddiridde abaserikale bano okuzuula ekisawo mu ssabo lya Kimbowa omwabadde obuwale bw’abakazi obusoba mu 600 era bwe baamubuuzizza ebikwata ku bakazi bano nti kabe kasinge mwandibaamu abattibwa n’alyoka akinnyonnyola.
Kimbowa mu ngeri yeemu yategeezezza nti mu butuufu tabangako musawo nti wabula omulimi yagutandika mu 1998 ng’ensi emulemeredde, era ewaabwe Butambala-Mukwatiro mu disitulikiti ye Luweero.
Kimbowa yategezeza bwaati “Banange ssagala mbalimbe naye ekituufu kiri nti siri musawo wa kinnansi era ne ssaatifikeeti gye nnina nagifuna mu lukujjukujju, mbadde nfera abantu abankyalira mu masabo gange awaka ssaako n’okubanyaga ensimbi.”
Yayongeddeko nti abadde afera abantu abagenda ewuwe okubambulula n’okubasawula nti ajjanjabisa misambwa ne lubaale naye ng’ekituufu abadde akozesa ddoboozi lye ng’alifuula okubeera erya jjajja lubaale mu masabo ge. Kimbowa yategeezeza nti yasooka kubeera mukubi wa bifaananyi ebya ssente e Mbikko era bweyalaba nga ensi emunyiga nga tebifuna bulungi n’asalawo okwefuula omusawo w’ekinnansi n’asenguka ku kyalo ky’e Mbikko n’adda e Namwezi zone mu Nakibizzi.
Era yayongeddeko nti abadde akozesa ngoye okwambulula abantu nga kuzino asalirako enkoko n’okukolerako ebiragala ebirala. Ku lunaku lw’okubiri Poliisi yakola ekikwekweto n’ekwaata abantu musanvu okuli n’abasawo b’ekinansi basatu nga kigambibwa nti baali mu lukwe lw’okusala omwana Stephen Kironde nga 16/7/2009 e Namwezi-Nakibizi mu Njeru mu disitulikiti y’e Mukono.
Published on: Saturday, 25th July, 2009
In Africa many people especially women who can not conceive go witchdoctors to get babies. These women end up being raped by these witches. The witches deceive the women that the herbs they are going to administer to them will not work unless, they first have sex with the witch. Even some born again Christians still go the Jesus and the witches as well. In the story below a’fake’ witch who was arrested by police recently said that he had so far had sex with 600 of his ‘patients’. He cheated his patients by pretending to be a spirits who could free them from the bondage of the ancestral spirits and devils. There is stronghold of witchcraft in Africa. Religions such Catholicism, Islam and Anglicanism have succumbed to devil worship. Many of their followers practice both witchcraft and religion.
Omusamize asobezza ku bakazi 600
http://www.bukeddekussande.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=3&newsCategoryId=167&newsId=689021
Bya Donald Kiirya
OMUSAWO w’ekinansi Moses Kimbowa agambibwa okutemako omwana Stephen Kironde omutwe eyakwatiddwa awaawaazizza abakuumaddembe amatu bw’agambye nti abadde yaakasobya ku bakazi 600 ababadde bagendayo okumusaba oluzaalo.
“Buli mulimo gubeera n’ebyama byagwo, naye kino kye kimu ku byama bye mbadde nkuuma obutiribiri. Abakazi babadde bajja ne bansaba enzaalo okuva mu 1998 era kye mbadde nkola kwe kubasaba amazzi g’ekyama era nga gano okugafuna mbadde nnina okumala okubakozesa,” Kimbowa bwe yategeezezza abaserikale ba RRU nga n’abaamawulire weebali.
Kino kyaddiridde abaserikale bano okuzuula ekisawo mu ssabo lya Kimbowa omwabadde obuwale bw’abakazi obusoba mu 600 era bwe baamubuuzizza ebikwata ku bakazi bano nti kabe kasinge mwandibaamu abattibwa n’alyoka akinnyonnyola.
Kimbowa mu ngeri yeemu yategeezezza nti mu butuufu tabangako musawo nti wabula omulimi yagutandika mu 1998 ng’ensi emulemeredde, era ewaabwe Butambala-Mukwatiro mu disitulikiti ye Luweero.
Kimbowa yategezeza bwaati “Banange ssagala mbalimbe naye ekituufu kiri nti siri musawo wa kinnansi era ne ssaatifikeeti gye nnina nagifuna mu lukujjukujju, mbadde nfera abantu abankyalira mu masabo gange awaka ssaako n’okubanyaga ensimbi.”
Yayongeddeko nti abadde afera abantu abagenda ewuwe okubambulula n’okubasawula nti ajjanjabisa misambwa ne lubaale naye ng’ekituufu abadde akozesa ddoboozi lye ng’alifuula okubeera erya jjajja lubaale mu masabo ge. Kimbowa yategeezeza nti yasooka kubeera mukubi wa bifaananyi ebya ssente e Mbikko era bweyalaba nga ensi emunyiga nga tebifuna bulungi n’asalawo okwefuula omusawo w’ekinnansi n’asenguka ku kyalo ky’e Mbikko n’adda e Namwezi zone mu Nakibizzi.
Era yayongeddeko nti abadde akozesa ngoye okwambulula abantu nga kuzino asalirako enkoko n’okukolerako ebiragala ebirala. Ku lunaku lw’okubiri Poliisi yakola ekikwekweto n’ekwaata abantu musanvu okuli n’abasawo b’ekinansi basatu nga kigambibwa nti baali mu lukwe lw’okusala omwana Stephen Kironde nga 16/7/2009 e Namwezi-Nakibizi mu Njeru mu disitulikiti y’e Mukono.
Published on: Saturday, 25th July, 2009
NIGERIA BELONGS TO SATAN…. SORRY ALLAH: OVER 100 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KILLED IN NIGERIA
FIRST SEE:
Is the god of Islam, Allah, the same as the God of Israel and Christianity?
http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/allahyhwh.html
Pope kisses Koran ?????
http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/popekiss.html
ECUMENICALISM: EXPOSING THE CATHOLIC LOVE AFFAIR WITH ISLAM
http://www.kizitomg.webs.com/
Some of the militants follow a preacher who campaigns against Western schools. The preacher, Mohammed Yusuf, says Western education is against Islamic teaching.Mr Yusuf's followers in Bauchi are known as Boko Haram, which means "Education is prohibited". They attacked a police station on Sunday after some of their leaders were arrested. Correspondents say the group is seen locally as a fringe group and has aroused suspicion for its recruitment of young men, and its belief that Western education, Western culture and science are sinful.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8169966.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8169359.stm
Over 100 killed as clashes hit Nigeria city: witnesses
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090728/wl_afp/nigeriareligionunresttoll
Tue Jul 28, 7:34 am ET
POTISKUM, Nigeria (AFP) – More than 100 people were killed during clashes between Islamist extremists and security forces in a city in northeastern Nigeria, witnesses said on Tuesday.
Authorities have yet to confirm the toll following the clashes in Maiduguri, which occurred after fighting erupted at the weekend between security forces and extremists in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north.
"Over 100 dead bodies have been deposited at the premises of the police headquarters and more are still being brought in," Ibrahim Bala, a local radio journalist, told AFP.
Another local journalist said she counted more than 100 bodies dumped on the grounds of the police station in the city, the capital of Borno state which shares a common border with neighbours Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
Police trucks and vans were driving around picking up dead bodies off the streets.
"Fighting has stopped since last night, but bodies are still being taken to the police headquarters in trucks and vans," said Bala.
President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has placed the security forces on maximum alert.
A dusk-to-dawn curfew has been imposed in Maiduguri where a joint police-military force launched an offensive after bands of militants rampaged through the city on Monday.
Witnesses said fighting had died down in the city on Tuesday but sporadic gunshots rang out as security forces fired in the air to scare away any remaining militants.
Police said the militants had fled to forests around the town where they were being hunted down.
"Our men are now battling these extremists in nearby forests where they fled after we dealt with them here," a police official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Truckloads of armed police were seen heading in to the forests.
Haruna Dauda, another local journalist said dozens of other militants had kept a vigil around their mosque and outside the home of Mohammed Yusuf, their spiritual leader in Maiduguri.
Fighting erupted at the weekend after the self-styled Taliban militants went on a rampage, attacking police stations, prisons, churches and government institutions across four northern states in Nigeria.
In Yobe's Potiskum town, the rebels torched a police station, burnt one policeman to death and slit the throat of a firefighter, police sources said.
So far, officials have put the toll at 55 dead in Bauchi and Yobe states.
NEXT ARTICLE
Nigerian forces shell sect leader's home, mosque
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090728/wl_africa_afp/nigeriareligionunrest
by Aminu Abubakar Aminu Abubakar – Tue Jul 28, 6:05 pm ET
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AFP) – Fresh fighting broke out here Tuesday after Nigerian forces shelled a mosque and the home of the leader of an Islamic fundamentalist sect on the third day of fierce clashes that have killed more than 250 people, witnesses said.
Sporadic mortar fire and gunshots rang out as soldiers shelled the mosque and home of Mohammed Yusuf in Maiduguri, sending plumes of smoke rising over the capital of northern Borno State.
An AFP correspondent, meanwhile, witnessed soldiers shooting three young men dead at point blank range close to the city's police headquarters.
The men who had just been arrested were seen kneeling and pleading for their lives before being shot.
"The deafening sounds are from mortar shelling of the house of the leader of the Taliban by the military," a source at the police headquarters told AFP.
"The military is also shelling the mosque run by the group, which hundreds of its followers have been guarding," he said.
The shelling came as Nigerian security forces sought to end an uprising by the self-styled Nigerian "Taliban" which has said it wants to lead an armed insurrection and rid society of "immorality" and "infidelity."
The group has targeted police in four northern states since early Sunday.
Later Tuesday, the shelling stopped, but fresh fighting broke out, resident Mohammed Awwal Mujahid, told AFP, adding that he could see flashes of light and hear heavy machine gunfire.
President Umaru Yar'Adua, speaking in the capital Abuja, said the situation in northern Nigeria was "under control" and indicated that a final assault was underway.
"We have the situation under control now and I believe that by the end of the day, everything would have been taken care of," Yar'Adua told reporters as he boarded a flight at Abuja airport for Brazil.
The military operation under way would "contain them once and for all," he added.
"They will be dealt with squarely and forthwith."
During the assault security forces overran the home of the elusive sect leader Yusuf and a nearby mosque used by his followers.
"We are not sure whether he has been killed in the shelling or has managed to escape," a police officer said of Yusuf.
The fighting began Sunday in nearby Bauchi State before spilling over into Yobe, and authorities said 55 were killed in both states.
However, most of the casualties appear to have been in Maiduguri, the northeastern city known as the birthplace and stronghold of the Islamic fundamentalist group.
Clashes between security forces and radical Islamists there on Monday alone killed at least 206 people, a police source told AFP.
An AFP reporter counted 30 bodies strewn across the grounds of the police headquarters on Tuesday before 10 more were brought in. Dozens of other bodies which littered the grounds of the police headquarters earlier had been taken away.
Yar'Adua had earlier placed security forces on maximum alert late Monday as the death toll mounted.
The streets of Maiduguri which is under a dusk-to-dawn curfew were deserted Tuesday except for police patrols.
Dozens of residents fled to the protection of the police headquarters. Around 200 militant Islamists had kept an overnight vigil outside the mosque and Yusuf's home.
They were described as "fearless" and "fanatics" by Isa Azare, police spokesman for Maiduguri.
The militants went on the rampage torching churches and government buildings.
The unrest is the deadliest sectarian violence in Nigeria since November last year when human rights groups say up to 700 were killed in the central city of Jos in direct clashes between Muslims and Christians.
The fighting in the north erupted Sunday in Bauchi state, when police hit back at militants after a foiled attack at a police station, and spread rapidly to neighbouring states.
The Nigerian extremists emerged in 2002 in Maiduguri before setting up in 2004 a camp -- dubbed "Afghanistan" -- in Kanamma village in Yobe, on the border with Niger, from where it attacked three police outposts and killed police officers.
Troops then moved in to raze the camp during battles in which scores were killed. Many were arrested while others went underground. Remnants re-emerged in Maiduguri.
Northern Nigeria is mainly Muslim, although large Christian minorities have settled in the main towns, raising tensions between the two groups.
Since the return of a civilian regime to Nigeria's central government in 1999, 12 northern states have adopted Islamic Sharia law. The latest attacks, which independent security analysts say were co-ordinated, affected a third of these states.
Is the god of Islam, Allah, the same as the God of Israel and Christianity?
http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/allahyhwh.html
Pope kisses Koran ?????
http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/popekiss.html
ECUMENICALISM: EXPOSING THE CATHOLIC LOVE AFFAIR WITH ISLAM
http://www.kizitomg.webs.com/
Some of the militants follow a preacher who campaigns against Western schools. The preacher, Mohammed Yusuf, says Western education is against Islamic teaching.Mr Yusuf's followers in Bauchi are known as Boko Haram, which means "Education is prohibited". They attacked a police station on Sunday after some of their leaders were arrested. Correspondents say the group is seen locally as a fringe group and has aroused suspicion for its recruitment of young men, and its belief that Western education, Western culture and science are sinful.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8169966.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8169359.stm
Over 100 killed as clashes hit Nigeria city: witnesses
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090728/wl_afp/nigeriareligionunresttoll
Tue Jul 28, 7:34 am ET
POTISKUM, Nigeria (AFP) – More than 100 people were killed during clashes between Islamist extremists and security forces in a city in northeastern Nigeria, witnesses said on Tuesday.
Authorities have yet to confirm the toll following the clashes in Maiduguri, which occurred after fighting erupted at the weekend between security forces and extremists in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north.
"Over 100 dead bodies have been deposited at the premises of the police headquarters and more are still being brought in," Ibrahim Bala, a local radio journalist, told AFP.
Another local journalist said she counted more than 100 bodies dumped on the grounds of the police station in the city, the capital of Borno state which shares a common border with neighbours Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
Police trucks and vans were driving around picking up dead bodies off the streets.
"Fighting has stopped since last night, but bodies are still being taken to the police headquarters in trucks and vans," said Bala.
President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has placed the security forces on maximum alert.
A dusk-to-dawn curfew has been imposed in Maiduguri where a joint police-military force launched an offensive after bands of militants rampaged through the city on Monday.
Witnesses said fighting had died down in the city on Tuesday but sporadic gunshots rang out as security forces fired in the air to scare away any remaining militants.
Police said the militants had fled to forests around the town where they were being hunted down.
"Our men are now battling these extremists in nearby forests where they fled after we dealt with them here," a police official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Truckloads of armed police were seen heading in to the forests.
Haruna Dauda, another local journalist said dozens of other militants had kept a vigil around their mosque and outside the home of Mohammed Yusuf, their spiritual leader in Maiduguri.
Fighting erupted at the weekend after the self-styled Taliban militants went on a rampage, attacking police stations, prisons, churches and government institutions across four northern states in Nigeria.
In Yobe's Potiskum town, the rebels torched a police station, burnt one policeman to death and slit the throat of a firefighter, police sources said.
So far, officials have put the toll at 55 dead in Bauchi and Yobe states.
NEXT ARTICLE
Nigerian forces shell sect leader's home, mosque
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090728/wl_africa_afp/nigeriareligionunrest
by Aminu Abubakar Aminu Abubakar – Tue Jul 28, 6:05 pm ET
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AFP) – Fresh fighting broke out here Tuesday after Nigerian forces shelled a mosque and the home of the leader of an Islamic fundamentalist sect on the third day of fierce clashes that have killed more than 250 people, witnesses said.
Sporadic mortar fire and gunshots rang out as soldiers shelled the mosque and home of Mohammed Yusuf in Maiduguri, sending plumes of smoke rising over the capital of northern Borno State.
An AFP correspondent, meanwhile, witnessed soldiers shooting three young men dead at point blank range close to the city's police headquarters.
The men who had just been arrested were seen kneeling and pleading for their lives before being shot.
"The deafening sounds are from mortar shelling of the house of the leader of the Taliban by the military," a source at the police headquarters told AFP.
"The military is also shelling the mosque run by the group, which hundreds of its followers have been guarding," he said.
The shelling came as Nigerian security forces sought to end an uprising by the self-styled Nigerian "Taliban" which has said it wants to lead an armed insurrection and rid society of "immorality" and "infidelity."
The group has targeted police in four northern states since early Sunday.
Later Tuesday, the shelling stopped, but fresh fighting broke out, resident Mohammed Awwal Mujahid, told AFP, adding that he could see flashes of light and hear heavy machine gunfire.
President Umaru Yar'Adua, speaking in the capital Abuja, said the situation in northern Nigeria was "under control" and indicated that a final assault was underway.
"We have the situation under control now and I believe that by the end of the day, everything would have been taken care of," Yar'Adua told reporters as he boarded a flight at Abuja airport for Brazil.
The military operation under way would "contain them once and for all," he added.
"They will be dealt with squarely and forthwith."
During the assault security forces overran the home of the elusive sect leader Yusuf and a nearby mosque used by his followers.
"We are not sure whether he has been killed in the shelling or has managed to escape," a police officer said of Yusuf.
The fighting began Sunday in nearby Bauchi State before spilling over into Yobe, and authorities said 55 were killed in both states.
However, most of the casualties appear to have been in Maiduguri, the northeastern city known as the birthplace and stronghold of the Islamic fundamentalist group.
Clashes between security forces and radical Islamists there on Monday alone killed at least 206 people, a police source told AFP.
An AFP reporter counted 30 bodies strewn across the grounds of the police headquarters on Tuesday before 10 more were brought in. Dozens of other bodies which littered the grounds of the police headquarters earlier had been taken away.
Yar'Adua had earlier placed security forces on maximum alert late Monday as the death toll mounted.
The streets of Maiduguri which is under a dusk-to-dawn curfew were deserted Tuesday except for police patrols.
Dozens of residents fled to the protection of the police headquarters. Around 200 militant Islamists had kept an overnight vigil outside the mosque and Yusuf's home.
They were described as "fearless" and "fanatics" by Isa Azare, police spokesman for Maiduguri.
The militants went on the rampage torching churches and government buildings.
The unrest is the deadliest sectarian violence in Nigeria since November last year when human rights groups say up to 700 were killed in the central city of Jos in direct clashes between Muslims and Christians.
The fighting in the north erupted Sunday in Bauchi state, when police hit back at militants after a foiled attack at a police station, and spread rapidly to neighbouring states.
The Nigerian extremists emerged in 2002 in Maiduguri before setting up in 2004 a camp -- dubbed "Afghanistan" -- in Kanamma village in Yobe, on the border with Niger, from where it attacked three police outposts and killed police officers.
Troops then moved in to raze the camp during battles in which scores were killed. Many were arrested while others went underground. Remnants re-emerged in Maiduguri.
Northern Nigeria is mainly Muslim, although large Christian minorities have settled in the main towns, raising tensions between the two groups.
Since the return of a civilian regime to Nigeria's central government in 1999, 12 northern states have adopted Islamic Sharia law. The latest attacks, which independent security analysts say were co-ordinated, affected a third of these states.
Taking Catholics back to the ‘upper room’: Oh! really
FIRST SEE:
Deceptive antics of the Catholic Charismatic renewal: Father Expedicto Magembe of Mountain Sion and Christ the King prayer Group
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2009/06/deceptive-antics-of-catholic.html
Taking Catholics back to the ‘upper room’
Sunday Life | July 26, 2009
http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/sunday_life/Taking_Catholics_back_to_the_upper_room_88656.shtml
Scores of Catholics flocked the Namugongo Martyrs shrine for a week recently to attend a conference, led by one of the people that were present during the small retreat that saw the birth of the Catholic Christian Revival, writes Vicky Wandawa.
Ms Patti G. Mansfield was one of the 25 university students that attended the retreat in Pittsburgh, which led to an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and thus a renaissance in the Catholic Church.
She was the main speaker at the conference at Namugongo Martyrs shrine, for which the theme was, “Return to the upper room,” in other words beseeching the participants to boost their spiritual lives. The conference attracted people from all walks of life. Naturally, large gatherings usually attract traders as well. Along the pavements in the compound were numerous traders ranging from those selling African jewellery, rosaries, t-shirts and herbal medicines.
A number of dioceses all over the country were represented, such as Hoima, Teso, and Fort Portal among others. Each day, a different diocese led the mass through prayer and singing. The members of that particular diocese made a joyful procession through the crowd, amidst singing and dancing. Most of the participants from upcountry spent their nights at the grounds, right from the first day of the conference to the last. This explained the spectacle of mattresses, mats, bed sheets, travelling bags, and cooking gadgets, spread among the crowd.
One mother, Margaret, who spent the nights at the Namugongo grounds during the conference, said: “I came on a truck from Fort Portal and have spent the whole week here. I had no worries about my baby sleeping outside because I knew that with God, she would not fall sick. I am a born-again Catholic and I could not miss this conference for anything in the world. I feel like I have received spiritual healing and witnessed miracles. Many people have been healed.”
The conference attracted different classes of people including the working. Lydia, a catering manager, said: “I am a charismatic Catholic but there are times I feel that my faith has reduced. I now feel rejuvenated. Though I am so busy, I have been commuting from work to here for the past two days. From Patti, I have learnt that with humility, God will surely lift me up.”
Mansfield got the crowd excited as she occasionally tried to exchange places with her Luganda interpreter and mentioned some Luganda words. She moved the crowd when she said someone once told her that the most beautiful and delightful people are found in Africa, and that she had proved it true.
Among the Christian principles she preached about was humility. “If you are filled with your own plans and ideas, you will live empty. Therefore, in order to get a great response from God, we have to embrace humility. God will lift up the lowly,” she said, quoting a verse from Luke, chapter 1.
Mansfield took the crowd through her life history. She was born to an Irish mother and Italian father, both Catholic, and had big dreams. “Just like any other girl, I dreamt of marrying a rich man and living in a castle and I always prayed to God to “send me a French man, make sure he is rich, I want to live in a castle,” a prayer she later called selfish because it wasn’t asking for the will of God. On she went to a Catholic university, and it’s here that she experienced the renewal.
At university, she joined a small group of other students who used to study the rosary daily and extensively. During one of their prayer sessions at the university chapel, the young people experienced what Mansfield described as close to what the apostles in the Book of Acts experienced, they were baptised in the Holy Spirit. “As I knelt down in front of the tabernacle where Jesus was, I started to tremble. I had a sense of the awesome presence of God.”
Following the incident, she went to one of the priests at the chapel and described what she had experienced, only to be told her that the exact thing had happened to a prayer-mate of hers. She prayed for more of her prayer-mates to get the experience she had gone through and after a while, the congregation was all baptised by the Holy Spirit.
“None of us had any idea that what happened at that chapel, to a group of very ordinary students, would begin a renewal of the Holy Spirit that has gone all over the world.” Mansfield says that currently, there are 119 million members of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in 235 countries, including those in Africa.
Deceptive antics of the Catholic Charismatic renewal: Father Expedicto Magembe of Mountain Sion and Christ the King prayer Group
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2009/06/deceptive-antics-of-catholic.html
Taking Catholics back to the ‘upper room’
Sunday Life | July 26, 2009
http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/sunday_life/Taking_Catholics_back_to_the_upper_room_88656.shtml
Scores of Catholics flocked the Namugongo Martyrs shrine for a week recently to attend a conference, led by one of the people that were present during the small retreat that saw the birth of the Catholic Christian Revival, writes Vicky Wandawa.
Ms Patti G. Mansfield was one of the 25 university students that attended the retreat in Pittsburgh, which led to an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and thus a renaissance in the Catholic Church.
She was the main speaker at the conference at Namugongo Martyrs shrine, for which the theme was, “Return to the upper room,” in other words beseeching the participants to boost their spiritual lives. The conference attracted people from all walks of life. Naturally, large gatherings usually attract traders as well. Along the pavements in the compound were numerous traders ranging from those selling African jewellery, rosaries, t-shirts and herbal medicines.
A number of dioceses all over the country were represented, such as Hoima, Teso, and Fort Portal among others. Each day, a different diocese led the mass through prayer and singing. The members of that particular diocese made a joyful procession through the crowd, amidst singing and dancing. Most of the participants from upcountry spent their nights at the grounds, right from the first day of the conference to the last. This explained the spectacle of mattresses, mats, bed sheets, travelling bags, and cooking gadgets, spread among the crowd.
One mother, Margaret, who spent the nights at the Namugongo grounds during the conference, said: “I came on a truck from Fort Portal and have spent the whole week here. I had no worries about my baby sleeping outside because I knew that with God, she would not fall sick. I am a born-again Catholic and I could not miss this conference for anything in the world. I feel like I have received spiritual healing and witnessed miracles. Many people have been healed.”
The conference attracted different classes of people including the working. Lydia, a catering manager, said: “I am a charismatic Catholic but there are times I feel that my faith has reduced. I now feel rejuvenated. Though I am so busy, I have been commuting from work to here for the past two days. From Patti, I have learnt that with humility, God will surely lift me up.”
Mansfield got the crowd excited as she occasionally tried to exchange places with her Luganda interpreter and mentioned some Luganda words. She moved the crowd when she said someone once told her that the most beautiful and delightful people are found in Africa, and that she had proved it true.
Among the Christian principles she preached about was humility. “If you are filled with your own plans and ideas, you will live empty. Therefore, in order to get a great response from God, we have to embrace humility. God will lift up the lowly,” she said, quoting a verse from Luke, chapter 1.
Mansfield took the crowd through her life history. She was born to an Irish mother and Italian father, both Catholic, and had big dreams. “Just like any other girl, I dreamt of marrying a rich man and living in a castle and I always prayed to God to “send me a French man, make sure he is rich, I want to live in a castle,” a prayer she later called selfish because it wasn’t asking for the will of God. On she went to a Catholic university, and it’s here that she experienced the renewal.
At university, she joined a small group of other students who used to study the rosary daily and extensively. During one of their prayer sessions at the university chapel, the young people experienced what Mansfield described as close to what the apostles in the Book of Acts experienced, they were baptised in the Holy Spirit. “As I knelt down in front of the tabernacle where Jesus was, I started to tremble. I had a sense of the awesome presence of God.”
Following the incident, she went to one of the priests at the chapel and described what she had experienced, only to be told her that the exact thing had happened to a prayer-mate of hers. She prayed for more of her prayer-mates to get the experience she had gone through and after a while, the congregation was all baptised by the Holy Spirit.
“None of us had any idea that what happened at that chapel, to a group of very ordinary students, would begin a renewal of the Holy Spirit that has gone all over the world.” Mansfield says that currently, there are 119 million members of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in 235 countries, including those in Africa.
The Devil Worshippers who control Buganda Kingdom: Inside the world of the abasamize(witches)
FIRST SEE:
THE WITCHES BEHIND CHILD SACRIFE IN UGANDA
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2009/01/reaction-to-mwambutsya-ndebesas-article.html
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN UGANDA IS IN BED WITH WITCHCRAFT PROMOTING KINGDOMS
http://www.yesumulungi.com/index.php/apostasy-watch/118-The%20threat%20of%20the%20church%20from%20without%20is%20Satanism.html
Women found tied with chains Ndaula’s shrine
http://www.bukedde.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=2&newsCategoryId=60&newsId=534816
http://www.bukedde.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=2&newsCategoryId=62&newsId=534921
Police opens file against Ndaula, the satanic priest
http://www.bukedde.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=2&newsCategoryId=61&newsId=535066
Inside the world of the abasamize
http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/sunday_life/Inside_the_world_of_the_abasamize_88661.shtml
Sunday Life | July 26, 2009
They have been labelled as people who practice witchcraft and have been accused of trying to take over the Buganda Kingdom, but the leader of this religious sect say all he wants to do is redeem his people, Edwin Nuwagaba writes.
The Uganda Convention for Community Development in Rubaga may seem like another business at first glance. They repair cars, sew clothes, have a school and a community bank, hold training sessions to learn math and science, and run a large security business.
But step inside, ask a few questions, and a deeper spirituality becomes apparent. These are the followers of Jjaja Ndawula, a spirit that has shown its followers a new way: a path of miraculous healing, religious rituals, and intellectual empowerment.
A few weeks ago, having asked Omulangira Ssuuna how he came to name his studio Maureen, the artiste led me to this area in Rubaga - the base of abasamize, spirit worshippers. Maureen, as I found out, is a spirit that most members of the sect take on for their businesses. You perhaps have heard of Maureen Security, which is hired when there is an international artiste in town. It is one of the businesses they own.
I was introduced to the leader of the sect, John Musoke Sendawula, above - a short, dark-skinned man in sandals; the man who has drawn over 2,000 members to the sect. His followers refer to him as Jjaja because he is the intermediate for Jjaja Ndawula, the chief spirit.
Ndawula was one of the first kings of Buganda about 200 hundred years ago. Other spirits or guardian angels possess Sendawula and other members during rituals.
Past the bank and community shop, past men hammering metal and women sewing clothes, the smell of incense pierces the air and wafts through more than 20 shrines. Inside these shrines are spears, dolls, dimly lit lanterns, small flower pots, and other items typical of traditional shrines.
I tried to resist the cold chill running through my body, but this is not just an ordinary place, and yes, there is something totally strange here. No wonder Ssuuna told me the reason he came here with other members of a well known band was because they needed blessings.
While some of the members left shortly after because they were not comfortable with the happenings, Ssuuna stayed on to train other members of the community when Sendawula recognised his talent. “Most people come here sick or mad and on healing, decide to stay,” says Roushitrah Matovu, a student of Geology at Makerere University.
Roushitra himself came in a terrible condition, but says he was healed by the spirits. Although people at school misunderstand him, he feels at home here and knows he is doing the right thing.
Every shrine here has a different spirit that inhabits it, like Jjaja Mukasa and Jjaja Walumbe. But the most eye-catching shrine of all belongs to Jjaja Walumbe, which has a coffin-shaped box wrapped with a crystal-white cloth and is surrounded by flowers and a number of small spears and teddy bears.
Some people come to the compound occasionally for a visit, while others make their homes there and stay permanently. As I stood there, a beautiful young lady dressed in school uniform crossed and went into one of the shrines.
This was just an introduction to the followers of Jjaja Ndawula. Outside, a van was heading to Buwali in Wakiso District at the sect’s headquarters, where the leader of the sect was going to inspect a few things. I saw this as an opportunity to get a more intimate look into the sect. While in the vehicle, I discussed a number of things with the 47-year-old leader of the sect. He told me that he did not choose to start the sect.
“It is the Jjajas who possessed me,” he said. “I started getting sick and later I started hearing strange voices; I was then told that there were people who were going to start joining me. That is why you see all these people.”
The spirits sent him to Kongogye at Nakibinge Omulwanyamuli, Jjaja Ndawula’s grandfather’s place, where he was sworn in by the spirits.
Society, he says, carries many misconceptions about the community. “They relate us to witchcraft, which is not true,” he said. “We do not even sacrifice animals.” In a sad tone, Sendawula said that black people have been fooled, and their traditions have been tarnished by foreigners, who mislabel them as witchcraft.
But he said Jjaja Muwanga has come to redeem his people. Perhaps this is why these people work hard all day, have numerous gardens of maize, own a chain of cars and run a number of companies like Bukasa Telecom, which Sendawula brags will be the leading telecom service provider in Africa within five years.
Roushitra told me that Jjaja Ndawula compels them to study as a way to get themselves out of poverty and ignorance. A number of their young followers have been sent to universities in China, the US and other foreign countries to study modern technology.
Sendawula went on to say that there have been conspiracies by traditional healers to stop him, simply because his leader, Jjaja Ndawula, does not concede with the practices of traditional healers.
“A man came to me one day and told me he was a policeman. He had a rope that a person had used to hang himself and wanted to sell it to me, but I chased him away,” he said.
He also told me of a certain prince in the Buganda Kingdom who once alleged that the sect leader wanted to take over the kingdom. “But look at me, who am I to take over the Buganda Kingdom?” Sendawula’s eyes zero on his sandals, and he laughs at himself.
In the middle of this chaos, President Museveni invited him to State House and asked him about the allegations. “I told him we are just doing the work of our balubaale (ancestors), and he referred me to the late Noble Mayombo, who found us innocent,” he recalls. Sendawula said the reason why the prince could have shown fear is because Jjaja Ndawula falls in the lineage of Buganda kings.
When one has stayed in the community for some time, they change their names to suit their new identity. For instance, the accountant in the community bank calls herself Alicentre, because she is at the centre of most activities. Members also abstain from eating meat and drinking alcohol.
The following Monday, with a photographer, I went to see how these people worship at the sect’s headquarters. And, as we travelled to the shrine, the members told me that Jjaja Ndawula had told them never to dismiss any spiritual book. They believe that both Mohammed and Jesus were messengers of God who have now turned into spirits, just like Jjaja Ndawula.
While they believe in misambwa, also known as djiin (spirits), these people also read both the Bible and the Quran, and they refer to them often. Emerolds Mukasa claimed he understands the Bible better than many church-frequenting Christians. They keep these two books in their shrines and use them as books of wisdom.
Another man, Ezaya Ngabo Kiggundu, argued that most people with spiritual possessions rush to churches instead of seeking ritual interventions, and that is why there are many mad people. If they performed the duty that the spirits want them to, he said, they would be healed. I asked him to give me an example, and he told me:
“For instance, your grandfather could have left his spear somewhere and your ancestors tampered with it, so all he needs is for you to go and replace that spear, and that’s all.”
We finally arrived at the central shrine for all the spirits that these people have tapped into their lives. This time the place was brightly lit with lights. Cars slowly arrived, carrying people who had gone home to freshen up for the all-night event.
Men and women hugged each other as if they had spent a long time without meeting. Inside the temple, the leader of the sect played the keyboard as the choir members rehearsed the worship songs. These songs are in a wide variety of languages and are composed by members of the sect.
Outside at one of the shrines, two men served fruits; Mukasa told us they were sent by the spirits to do that task. “The spirits can tell you to do anything,” he said. The hut for serving the fruits is called eya abalongo, the shrine for the spirits of children who passed away at a tender age. The shrines here are bigger than those in Rubaga, and they have grass-thatched roofs.
In the temple, everyone gets possessed differently. One woman cried out loud, while two women in a corner held their cheeks, as another man, all dressed in red, bowed at the altar.
At around 5a.m. early the next morning, is when the main spiritual activities take place. There is a tall building here called the white house. The leader goes there, gets possessed, and comes down to speak to his people. We did not stay long to see all this, but we were told that the sect leader, who during the day seemed strong, walks with difficulty, and speaks in a shaky voice with a frowned face after getting possessed.
Followers sit inside, listen to him, and ask him questions. Mukasa told us that they learned before any other person that the twin towers in the USA were going to be crashed into because the Jjaja had prophesied it. And because the spirits tell them that they are fighters naturally, there is a ritual in which they all pick spears and act like they are piercing themselves.
One thing about this sect is that with all the mystery that surrounds their practices, they are peaceful people who carry out their beliefs in secret while working hard and producing fruitfully.
THE WITCHES BEHIND CHILD SACRIFE IN UGANDA
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2009/01/reaction-to-mwambutsya-ndebesas-article.html
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN UGANDA IS IN BED WITH WITCHCRAFT PROMOTING KINGDOMS
http://www.yesumulungi.com/index.php/apostasy-watch/118-The%20threat%20of%20the%20church%20from%20without%20is%20Satanism.html
Women found tied with chains Ndaula’s shrine
http://www.bukedde.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=2&newsCategoryId=60&newsId=534816
http://www.bukedde.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=2&newsCategoryId=62&newsId=534921
Police opens file against Ndaula, the satanic priest
http://www.bukedde.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=2&newsCategoryId=61&newsId=535066
Inside the world of the abasamize
http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/sunday_life/Inside_the_world_of_the_abasamize_88661.shtml
Sunday Life | July 26, 2009
They have been labelled as people who practice witchcraft and have been accused of trying to take over the Buganda Kingdom, but the leader of this religious sect say all he wants to do is redeem his people, Edwin Nuwagaba writes.
The Uganda Convention for Community Development in Rubaga may seem like another business at first glance. They repair cars, sew clothes, have a school and a community bank, hold training sessions to learn math and science, and run a large security business.
But step inside, ask a few questions, and a deeper spirituality becomes apparent. These are the followers of Jjaja Ndawula, a spirit that has shown its followers a new way: a path of miraculous healing, religious rituals, and intellectual empowerment.
A few weeks ago, having asked Omulangira Ssuuna how he came to name his studio Maureen, the artiste led me to this area in Rubaga - the base of abasamize, spirit worshippers. Maureen, as I found out, is a spirit that most members of the sect take on for their businesses. You perhaps have heard of Maureen Security, which is hired when there is an international artiste in town. It is one of the businesses they own.
I was introduced to the leader of the sect, John Musoke Sendawula, above - a short, dark-skinned man in sandals; the man who has drawn over 2,000 members to the sect. His followers refer to him as Jjaja because he is the intermediate for Jjaja Ndawula, the chief spirit.
Ndawula was one of the first kings of Buganda about 200 hundred years ago. Other spirits or guardian angels possess Sendawula and other members during rituals.
Past the bank and community shop, past men hammering metal and women sewing clothes, the smell of incense pierces the air and wafts through more than 20 shrines. Inside these shrines are spears, dolls, dimly lit lanterns, small flower pots, and other items typical of traditional shrines.
I tried to resist the cold chill running through my body, but this is not just an ordinary place, and yes, there is something totally strange here. No wonder Ssuuna told me the reason he came here with other members of a well known band was because they needed blessings.
While some of the members left shortly after because they were not comfortable with the happenings, Ssuuna stayed on to train other members of the community when Sendawula recognised his talent. “Most people come here sick or mad and on healing, decide to stay,” says Roushitrah Matovu, a student of Geology at Makerere University.
Roushitra himself came in a terrible condition, but says he was healed by the spirits. Although people at school misunderstand him, he feels at home here and knows he is doing the right thing.
Every shrine here has a different spirit that inhabits it, like Jjaja Mukasa and Jjaja Walumbe. But the most eye-catching shrine of all belongs to Jjaja Walumbe, which has a coffin-shaped box wrapped with a crystal-white cloth and is surrounded by flowers and a number of small spears and teddy bears.
Some people come to the compound occasionally for a visit, while others make their homes there and stay permanently. As I stood there, a beautiful young lady dressed in school uniform crossed and went into one of the shrines.
This was just an introduction to the followers of Jjaja Ndawula. Outside, a van was heading to Buwali in Wakiso District at the sect’s headquarters, where the leader of the sect was going to inspect a few things. I saw this as an opportunity to get a more intimate look into the sect. While in the vehicle, I discussed a number of things with the 47-year-old leader of the sect. He told me that he did not choose to start the sect.
“It is the Jjajas who possessed me,” he said. “I started getting sick and later I started hearing strange voices; I was then told that there were people who were going to start joining me. That is why you see all these people.”
The spirits sent him to Kongogye at Nakibinge Omulwanyamuli, Jjaja Ndawula’s grandfather’s place, where he was sworn in by the spirits.
Society, he says, carries many misconceptions about the community. “They relate us to witchcraft, which is not true,” he said. “We do not even sacrifice animals.” In a sad tone, Sendawula said that black people have been fooled, and their traditions have been tarnished by foreigners, who mislabel them as witchcraft.
But he said Jjaja Muwanga has come to redeem his people. Perhaps this is why these people work hard all day, have numerous gardens of maize, own a chain of cars and run a number of companies like Bukasa Telecom, which Sendawula brags will be the leading telecom service provider in Africa within five years.
Roushitra told me that Jjaja Ndawula compels them to study as a way to get themselves out of poverty and ignorance. A number of their young followers have been sent to universities in China, the US and other foreign countries to study modern technology.
Sendawula went on to say that there have been conspiracies by traditional healers to stop him, simply because his leader, Jjaja Ndawula, does not concede with the practices of traditional healers.
“A man came to me one day and told me he was a policeman. He had a rope that a person had used to hang himself and wanted to sell it to me, but I chased him away,” he said.
He also told me of a certain prince in the Buganda Kingdom who once alleged that the sect leader wanted to take over the kingdom. “But look at me, who am I to take over the Buganda Kingdom?” Sendawula’s eyes zero on his sandals, and he laughs at himself.
In the middle of this chaos, President Museveni invited him to State House and asked him about the allegations. “I told him we are just doing the work of our balubaale (ancestors), and he referred me to the late Noble Mayombo, who found us innocent,” he recalls. Sendawula said the reason why the prince could have shown fear is because Jjaja Ndawula falls in the lineage of Buganda kings.
When one has stayed in the community for some time, they change their names to suit their new identity. For instance, the accountant in the community bank calls herself Alicentre, because she is at the centre of most activities. Members also abstain from eating meat and drinking alcohol.
The following Monday, with a photographer, I went to see how these people worship at the sect’s headquarters. And, as we travelled to the shrine, the members told me that Jjaja Ndawula had told them never to dismiss any spiritual book. They believe that both Mohammed and Jesus were messengers of God who have now turned into spirits, just like Jjaja Ndawula.
While they believe in misambwa, also known as djiin (spirits), these people also read both the Bible and the Quran, and they refer to them often. Emerolds Mukasa claimed he understands the Bible better than many church-frequenting Christians. They keep these two books in their shrines and use them as books of wisdom.
Another man, Ezaya Ngabo Kiggundu, argued that most people with spiritual possessions rush to churches instead of seeking ritual interventions, and that is why there are many mad people. If they performed the duty that the spirits want them to, he said, they would be healed. I asked him to give me an example, and he told me:
“For instance, your grandfather could have left his spear somewhere and your ancestors tampered with it, so all he needs is for you to go and replace that spear, and that’s all.”
We finally arrived at the central shrine for all the spirits that these people have tapped into their lives. This time the place was brightly lit with lights. Cars slowly arrived, carrying people who had gone home to freshen up for the all-night event.
Men and women hugged each other as if they had spent a long time without meeting. Inside the temple, the leader of the sect played the keyboard as the choir members rehearsed the worship songs. These songs are in a wide variety of languages and are composed by members of the sect.
Outside at one of the shrines, two men served fruits; Mukasa told us they were sent by the spirits to do that task. “The spirits can tell you to do anything,” he said. The hut for serving the fruits is called eya abalongo, the shrine for the spirits of children who passed away at a tender age. The shrines here are bigger than those in Rubaga, and they have grass-thatched roofs.
In the temple, everyone gets possessed differently. One woman cried out loud, while two women in a corner held their cheeks, as another man, all dressed in red, bowed at the altar.
At around 5a.m. early the next morning, is when the main spiritual activities take place. There is a tall building here called the white house. The leader goes there, gets possessed, and comes down to speak to his people. We did not stay long to see all this, but we were told that the sect leader, who during the day seemed strong, walks with difficulty, and speaks in a shaky voice with a frowned face after getting possessed.
Followers sit inside, listen to him, and ask him questions. Mukasa told us that they learned before any other person that the twin towers in the USA were going to be crashed into because the Jjaja had prophesied it. And because the spirits tell them that they are fighters naturally, there is a ritual in which they all pick spears and act like they are piercing themselves.
One thing about this sect is that with all the mystery that surrounds their practices, they are peaceful people who carry out their beliefs in secret while working hard and producing fruitfully.
Ecumenicalism : Bukenya Calls for Unity Among Religious Groups
FIRST SEE:
what is ecumenicalism/ecumenism
www.kizitomg.webs.com
PASTOR IRENE MANJERI'S CONFUSING WORLD
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2009/04/pastor-irene-manjeris-confusing-world.html
Prof. Bukenya Calls for Unity Among Religious Groups
http://allafrica.com/stories/200907280017.html
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/19/689314
Joyce Namutebi
The New Vision , 27 July 2009
Kampala — THE Vice-President, Prof. Gilbert Bukenya, has called for unity among the different religious groups in the country.
Addressing born-again Christians during the International Christian Conference at Bethel Church in Kitende, Kitovu in Masaka district over the weekend, Bukenya noted that unity was crucial for development.
A statement issued by the Vice-President's office said Bukenya warned that divisionism would breed hatred and derail the national development priorities. People must love one another irrespective of their different tribes, religious beliefs, looks and political affiliations, the VP said.
He commended the born- again Christians for their devotion to God and asked them to pray for an end to the rampant cases of child sacrifice, murder and witchcraft. The conference dubbed "Wheat Barley and Vines Harvest Overnight" was organised by Pastor Irene Manjeri, the founder of the church.
The VP toured an orphanage run by the the church and planted a tree at the church premises in a move to encourage people to plant trees. Manjeri commended the NRM Government for ushering in the peace and pledged her support to the Government programmes.
She said the church urgently needed water, power and a road to run its projects. Bukenya promised to help the church to get electricity and water.
what is ecumenicalism/ecumenism
www.kizitomg.webs.com
PASTOR IRENE MANJERI'S CONFUSING WORLD
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2009/04/pastor-irene-manjeris-confusing-world.html
Prof. Bukenya Calls for Unity Among Religious Groups
http://allafrica.com/stories/200907280017.html
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/19/689314
Joyce Namutebi
The New Vision , 27 July 2009
Kampala — THE Vice-President, Prof. Gilbert Bukenya, has called for unity among the different religious groups in the country.
Addressing born-again Christians during the International Christian Conference at Bethel Church in Kitende, Kitovu in Masaka district over the weekend, Bukenya noted that unity was crucial for development.
A statement issued by the Vice-President's office said Bukenya warned that divisionism would breed hatred and derail the national development priorities. People must love one another irrespective of their different tribes, religious beliefs, looks and political affiliations, the VP said.
He commended the born- again Christians for their devotion to God and asked them to pray for an end to the rampant cases of child sacrifice, murder and witchcraft. The conference dubbed "Wheat Barley and Vines Harvest Overnight" was organised by Pastor Irene Manjeri, the founder of the church.
The VP toured an orphanage run by the the church and planted a tree at the church premises in a move to encourage people to plant trees. Manjeri commended the NRM Government for ushering in the peace and pledged her support to the Government programmes.
She said the church urgently needed water, power and a road to run its projects. Bukenya promised to help the church to get electricity and water.
Museveni admits using witchcraft in bush
FIRST SEE:
President Museveni Perfoms Satanic Ritual
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/58/60/527983/Museveni%20in%20Sudan
President Museveni bathes in Prophet Kakande’s well- HOLLY WATER???????????????????????
He wanted to win the election
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/58/60/495375/NABBI%20Samuel%20Kakande
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2009/01/reaction-to-mwambutsya-ndebesas-article.html
http://www.yesumulungi.com/index.php/Response_to_Mr_Ndebesa_on_Evangelicals_and_Human_Sacrifice.html
Museveni admits using witchcraft in bush
http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/news/Museveni_admits_using_witchcraft_in_bush_88828.shtml
News | July 29, 2009
Charles Mwanguhya
Munyonyo
President Museveni surprised delegates attending the Smart Partnership Dialogue at Munyonyo yesterday when he confessed that he was convinced to use witchcraft during the 1981-86 bush war that brought him to power.
Mr Museveni said traditionalists convinced him to use witchcraft which he reluctantly accepted.
“When I was in the bush, I even dealt with our traditional religions,” the President said. “They cut the throat of a chicken and told me to jump over it three times. They thought it was very important to appease the ancestors to bless our struggle. They said now even if you go with only one gun you will be able to capture Kampala.”
Speaking during the second reverse dialogue session where journalists and presidents swapped roles with the latter fielding questions and journalists providing the answers, Mr Museveni criticised the media for serving a political agenda, being dishonest and failing to listen to the other side.
Mr Museveni said: “It is a fact that both foreign and local media tend to have a political programme and to push that programme, they give negative coverage to the person they don’t like. I have never worked in the media because I have more important things to do. I look after cows, that’s how I feed my family and contribute to the wealth of the country. When I am not doing that I pick a gun and chase away people who want to make disturbances.”
He was reacting to challenges raised against the government’s treatment of the media as the Fourth Estate and its internal communication mechanisms.
A similar session was held on Monday. In yesterday’s session, Mr Museveni attacked what he called, “very low calibre of journalism with a lot of dishonesty.”
He accused the foreign media of executing their agenda with an “element of racism.”
Veteran journalist, now turned publisher, James Tumusiime told the presidents that the challenges facing the media are not different from those of the rest of the society just as the practitioners are selected from the same society.
President Museveni Perfoms Satanic Ritual
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/58/60/527983/Museveni%20in%20Sudan
President Museveni bathes in Prophet Kakande’s well- HOLLY WATER???????????????????????
He wanted to win the election
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/58/60/495375/NABBI%20Samuel%20Kakande
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2009/01/reaction-to-mwambutsya-ndebesas-article.html
http://www.yesumulungi.com/index.php/Response_to_Mr_Ndebesa_on_Evangelicals_and_Human_Sacrifice.html
Museveni admits using witchcraft in bush
http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/news/Museveni_admits_using_witchcraft_in_bush_88828.shtml
News | July 29, 2009
Charles Mwanguhya
Munyonyo
President Museveni surprised delegates attending the Smart Partnership Dialogue at Munyonyo yesterday when he confessed that he was convinced to use witchcraft during the 1981-86 bush war that brought him to power.
Mr Museveni said traditionalists convinced him to use witchcraft which he reluctantly accepted.
“When I was in the bush, I even dealt with our traditional religions,” the President said. “They cut the throat of a chicken and told me to jump over it three times. They thought it was very important to appease the ancestors to bless our struggle. They said now even if you go with only one gun you will be able to capture Kampala.”
Speaking during the second reverse dialogue session where journalists and presidents swapped roles with the latter fielding questions and journalists providing the answers, Mr Museveni criticised the media for serving a political agenda, being dishonest and failing to listen to the other side.
Mr Museveni said: “It is a fact that both foreign and local media tend to have a political programme and to push that programme, they give negative coverage to the person they don’t like. I have never worked in the media because I have more important things to do. I look after cows, that’s how I feed my family and contribute to the wealth of the country. When I am not doing that I pick a gun and chase away people who want to make disturbances.”
He was reacting to challenges raised against the government’s treatment of the media as the Fourth Estate and its internal communication mechanisms.
A similar session was held on Monday. In yesterday’s session, Mr Museveni attacked what he called, “very low calibre of journalism with a lot of dishonesty.”
He accused the foreign media of executing their agenda with an “element of racism.”
Veteran journalist, now turned publisher, James Tumusiime told the presidents that the challenges facing the media are not different from those of the rest of the society just as the practitioners are selected from the same society.
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
PASTORS BLAST GADDAFI
PASTORS BLAST GADDAFI
Wednesday 22, July, 2009
http://dailyguideghana.com/newd/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4533&Itemid=245
A group of Pastors in Kumasi has vehemently condemned the intended coronation of Brother Muammar Al-Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, as “King of Kings” in Ghana, describing it as blasphemous.
Addressing a news conference yesterday, spokesperson of the Men of God, Rev. Duncan Nuakoh, Senior Pastor of the Emmanuel Assemblies of God, Kumasi, insisted that the title “King of Kings” belongs to Jesus Christ only, thus it is sacrilegious to crown Al-Gaddafi as such.
The proposed visit by the Libyan leader to be conferred with the title at the maiden conference of Traditional Rulers in West Africa had dominated the airwaves and newspaper headlines in the last few days.
Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports say government has kicked against the Libyan leader’s visit to the country on grounds that it would darken the country’s investment prospects enhanced by the US President who left the country barely a week ago.
The government is said to be connected with the controversial coronation in exchange for oil, which the yet-to-be-crowned king promises the country.
In a press release jointly signed by Rev Joseph Asante, General Overseer of the Maranatha Evangelistic Ministry, Rev Kwadwo Pianim, Snr. Pastor of English Assembly, Resurrection Power and Living Bread Ministry, they observed that the impending coronation of Brother Gaddafi has spiritual, socio-economic and political implications on the country.
“The bone of contention here is that the title “King of Kings” belongs to only one person, Jesus Christ; thus, it will be blasphemous to crown Al-Gaddafi as such,” they insisted.
The press release cited Revelations 1:5, Revelations 17:14, Revelations 19:16 and 1 Timothy 6:13-16 as scriptures which describe Jesus as the only King of Kings.
The spiritual leaders further argued that the title connotes the sovereignty of God and if any one dares to assume that position, God’s wrath will come on that person and his descendants since He is a jealous God.
“So if the coronation of the Libyan leader is allowed to take place in Ghana, God’s wrath will befall the country because we have allowed the event to take place here,” the statement warned.
The pastors also quoted scriptures as saying that “not only the usurper attracts the wrath of God but all his collaborators and accomplices as well.”
Like King Herod and King Nebuchadnezzar, President Gaddafi is trying to take the glory of God for himself; a dangerous development which will have grave consequences on the Libyan leader and his associates.
The Men of God are therefore calling on the National House of Chiefs, the government, the Christian community and the nation as a whole to stand against the proposed coronation in Accra. This way, the wrath of God will be reverted.
Considering the cruel past life of the Libyan leader and the circumstances that led to his ascendancy to the presidency, the spiritual leaders believe that Gaddafi does not deserve the title, which emphatically belongs to Jesus Christ only.
From Yasme Asamani Danquah, Kumasi
Wednesday 22, July, 2009
http://dailyguideghana.com/newd/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4533&Itemid=245
A group of Pastors in Kumasi has vehemently condemned the intended coronation of Brother Muammar Al-Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, as “King of Kings” in Ghana, describing it as blasphemous.
Addressing a news conference yesterday, spokesperson of the Men of God, Rev. Duncan Nuakoh, Senior Pastor of the Emmanuel Assemblies of God, Kumasi, insisted that the title “King of Kings” belongs to Jesus Christ only, thus it is sacrilegious to crown Al-Gaddafi as such.
The proposed visit by the Libyan leader to be conferred with the title at the maiden conference of Traditional Rulers in West Africa had dominated the airwaves and newspaper headlines in the last few days.
Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports say government has kicked against the Libyan leader’s visit to the country on grounds that it would darken the country’s investment prospects enhanced by the US President who left the country barely a week ago.
The government is said to be connected with the controversial coronation in exchange for oil, which the yet-to-be-crowned king promises the country.
In a press release jointly signed by Rev Joseph Asante, General Overseer of the Maranatha Evangelistic Ministry, Rev Kwadwo Pianim, Snr. Pastor of English Assembly, Resurrection Power and Living Bread Ministry, they observed that the impending coronation of Brother Gaddafi has spiritual, socio-economic and political implications on the country.
“The bone of contention here is that the title “King of Kings” belongs to only one person, Jesus Christ; thus, it will be blasphemous to crown Al-Gaddafi as such,” they insisted.
The press release cited Revelations 1:5, Revelations 17:14, Revelations 19:16 and 1 Timothy 6:13-16 as scriptures which describe Jesus as the only King of Kings.
The spiritual leaders further argued that the title connotes the sovereignty of God and if any one dares to assume that position, God’s wrath will come on that person and his descendants since He is a jealous God.
“So if the coronation of the Libyan leader is allowed to take place in Ghana, God’s wrath will befall the country because we have allowed the event to take place here,” the statement warned.
The pastors also quoted scriptures as saying that “not only the usurper attracts the wrath of God but all his collaborators and accomplices as well.”
Like King Herod and King Nebuchadnezzar, President Gaddafi is trying to take the glory of God for himself; a dangerous development which will have grave consequences on the Libyan leader and his associates.
The Men of God are therefore calling on the National House of Chiefs, the government, the Christian community and the nation as a whole to stand against the proposed coronation in Accra. This way, the wrath of God will be reverted.
Considering the cruel past life of the Libyan leader and the circumstances that led to his ascendancy to the presidency, the spiritual leaders believe that Gaddafi does not deserve the title, which emphatically belongs to Jesus Christ only.
From Yasme Asamani Danquah, Kumasi
Friday, 24 July 2009
THE RISE AND FALL OF NIGERIAN PROSPERITY PASTOR SUNDAY ADELAJA
First see
Prophetic Warming for the Nigerian Prosperity church
http://www.yesumulungi.com/index.php/apostasy-watch/356-a-cursed-generation-of-nigerian-pastors-are-they-ripe-for-judgment.html
The Rise and Fall of Pastor Sunday Adelaja
By Femi Aribasala
May 18, 2009 09:20PMT
http://www.234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5410523-146/ARTICLE_OF_FAITH:_The_rise_and.csp
A few years back, Mosun Layode of Leap Africa drew my attention to a special programme organised by a network of Christians in corporate Nigeria.
The keynote speaker was one of Nigeria’s great evangelical ambassadors, Pastor Sunday Adelaja of the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations. I politely declined to attend. Jesus teaches that we should be sceptical of mega-pastors.
He warns “what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” (Lk 16:15) Adelaja’s popular credentials are impeccable.
Branches established by Nigerian churches abroad usually attract mainly Nigerians expatriates and few of the locals. But Adelaja started a church in one of the most unlikely of places, the Ukraine; a foreign country hardly on the map for Nigerians going overseas.
Today, it is, by all accounts, the biggest church in the country, with a membership said to be of over 250,000 in 30 odd cities. He claims to have planted 300 churches in over 35 countries, and to have a television programme reaching over 100 million viewers in Africa, Europe and Russia.
He is also said to have written over 80 books and, on his website, to have been responsible for over one million “salvations” in the first eight years of establishing his church; with an average today of “over 10,000 salvations a year.”
The question is how did Adelaja achieve this mega status, in spite of Jesus’ insistence that only a few will be able to enter the blessed kingdom of God? (Lk 13:24) According to The Telegraph, a British newspaper, he employs a lot of razzmatazz, including encouraging his congregants to “shake their booty and praise the Lord.”
Reporting on one of his services, the newspaper observes that: “As ‘Pastor Sunday’ prepared to make a grand entrance, the choirgirls shook their pompoms, the disco lights started to flash and a fanfare sounded. The lights cut out, and Mr. Adelaja emerged from a shroud of dry ice. Children holding flags of the world wafted round him and the choir bellowed ‘Sanctus!’”
But there is another critical ingredient in Adelaja’s phenomenal success; he is a prosperity pastor. He tells his congregants that God is going to make them slum-dog millionaires, provided they give some of their hard-earned cash to his church. This casino-Christianity strategy has provided the basis of the success of many mega-pastors. It now appears to have led to Pastor Sunday’s downfall.
On 29th December, 2008, a number of prominent evangelical leaders in Ukraine signed a public statement which reads: “We radically dissociate ourselves from Sunday Adelaja and his activity. We condemn (his) aspirations to create a cult of personality; methods and the activity, based on self-advertisement, exaggeration of personal merits and on lies; the false doctrine of prosperity, the sin of love of money; practice to curse the church members and parishioners who disagree with his opinion.
Sunday Adelaja evaded from the pure evangelical doctrine and is currently in spiritual seduction and error. We address all the church leaders to abstain from brotherly fellowship with Sunday Adelaja.” In March 2009, Ukrainian law enforcement agents formally charged Sunday Adelaja of complicity in defrauding members of his congregation of millions of dollars.
He is charged with “financial machinations in especially large volume,” and faces a sentence of 5 to 12 years in prison if convicted. He was indicted as one of the ringleaders in an international ponzi scheme, which funnelled funds from Ukrainian churchgoers into a fraudulent corporation called King’s Capital, on the promise of unsustainable returns.
King’s Capital has now gone bust, taking with it over 100 million dollars of the life-savings of thousands of Ukrainians.
It was alleged that Adelaja frequently asked his church-members to invest in King’s Capital, assuring them its management were “godly men.”
One impoverished church-member made the following allegation against the pastor: “I personally heard you saying at a church meeting ‘who is against King’s Capital is against me personally.’ I saw you bringing a board to the stage and showing in a drawing how to put in pawn a flat and invest in King’s Capital. You did it at each meeting for the last two years.”
Adelaja has denied the prosecutor’s charges, claiming the Ukrainian government is targeting him on racial grounds because of his church’s popularity. Nevertheless, his predicament should serve as a warning to other prominent prosperity-preaching mega-pastors at home and abroad. Jesus says: “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets.” (Lk 6:26)
NEXT ARTICLE
Ukraine-based Nigerian pastor in fraud charges
http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-252009.0.html
EZRA IJIOMA
Pastor Sunday Adelaja, left, prays with parishioners before delivering his sermon at a service in Sacramento, Calif., on Sunday, Nov. 18, 2007.
Flambouyant Nigerian pastor and apparently Ukraine’s most prominent Pentecostal leader, Sunday Adelaja, has been indicted on fraud charges. Pastor Adelaja is the senior pastor of the largest church in the Ukraine, "The Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations, Kiev."
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry has accused him of defrauding citizens of money, the ministry’s Department for Media Liaison and International Activity said. Sunday Champion gathered that the amount is over $100m.
"The investigator has brought charges against Nigerian citizen Sunday Adelaja, who permanently resides in Ukraine and is a senior pastor at the Embassy of God church. The charges were brought under Part 4, Article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (the embezzlement of funds in very large amounts via fraud)," the ministry said.
Last month, several church members went to authorities saying they were unable to recover the money they invested, which left many of them bankrupt. Police later arrested one of King’s Capital leaders, Aleksandr Bandurchenko, on suspicion of fraud.
Speculation about Adelaja’s involvement with King’s Capital grew after reports surfaced that he was part of a bank in Nigeria known as GS Microfinance Bank Limited. Some speculated that Adelaja, a native of Nigeria, invested funds from King’s Capital in the African bank and planned to leave the country.
Adelaja, however, said those accusations are unfounded. He said he has never been involved with King’s Capital but denied that it is a Ponzi scheme, which uses later investments to pay dividends to earlier investors.
He said King’s Capital was a legitimate business that failed under the pressure of the global financial crisis. He said because the company poured most of the investment capital into real estate, which decreased in value, it has been unable to pay investors.
"When the economic crisis came, all the real estate is no more selling. The land is enough to pay back the money owed. , The problem is , everything is stopped in the country--nothing is selling now in Ukraine,’’ he said.
Adelaja said Interior Affairs Minister Yurii Lutsenko accused the church of involvement because he wants to undermine the evangelical movement in Ukraine. With several thousand members across the nation, God’s Embassy is one of the most influential congregations in Ukraine.
"(Lutsenko) is in a very bad situation," Adelaja said. "He’s got to prove now that (King’s Capital) is a pyramid scheme, but he cannot."
Adelaja said he never encouraged his church members to invest in the company and cautioned them to invest in businesses that offer insurance. "Of course , if you invest with insurance you get less percentage," he said. "What happened was many people said they didn’t need insurance because the (King’s Capital leaders) were Christians."
He acknowledged being affiliated with GS Microfinance, but said he invested his name and influence in the bank, not millions of dollars. He said GS Microfinance was formed to give small loans to poor Nigerians as a way of lifting them out of poverty. "It’s not about what you can get, but the vision of the program is to elevate and get as many people out of poverty as possible," Adelaja said. "That is one of my lifetime passions , because I grew up in poverty."
Although Adelaja has repeatedly denied any involvement in King’s Capital, which has not officially been deemed a fraudulent business, Pentecostal and charismatic leaders across Ukraine are calling on him to repent, saying they heard him encourage church members to invest in the company on several occasions.
"He was not a president of this company, but he was the No. 1 spiritual leader, and he told them what they have to do," said Bishop M. S.Panochko, leader of the All-Ukrainian Union of Pentecostal Churches of Evangelical Faith, which is comprised of 1,500 churches across the nation. "He can do everything to tell them that he is not involved, but all the leaders have a lot of facts, and we have a lot of video of when he was pushing people, and he encouraged people to invest in this business."
Panochko was one of 10 leaders who met with Adelaja last Tuesday to confront him about his alleged support of King’s Capital and the negative impact some of his actions have had on the evangelical church in Ukraine.
The Pentecostal bishops, who together represent more than 2,500 congregations, listed seven items of concern and said Adelaja has a pattern of making exaggerated statements. They pointed particularly to his alleged claim that he led the 2004 Orange Revolution--when Ukrainian voters protested a presidential election many considered fraudulent--and his reports that God’s Embassy has 100,000 members across the nation. The bishops say those and other statements are untrue.
After the meeting, Adelaja issued a statement saying he did not organize the Orange Revolution, though his congregation participated in the demonstrations. He also asked forgiveness for the negative impact the King’s Capital scandal has had on Ukrainian churches, but he added that he did not personally have any involvement in the company.
Despite the statement, Panochko said the bishops would continue waiting for Adelaja to apologize for allegedly endorsing King’s Capital. If he does not repent, Panochko said the bishops would issue a statement to Christians in Ukraine and abroad, and to the Ukrainian government, denouncing Adelaja and claiming no affiliation with him.
Moscow-based pastor Rick Renner, founder of the Good News Association of Churches and Ministries for Russia, Latvia and Ukraine, said Adelaja’s claims are hurting Christians in the former Soviet Union.
If convicted, Adelaja may spend up to 12 years in imprisonment, according to Part 4, Article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
http://odili.net/news/source/2009/mar/21/806.html
Prophetic Warming for the Nigerian Prosperity church
http://www.yesumulungi.com/index.php/apostasy-watch/356-a-cursed-generation-of-nigerian-pastors-are-they-ripe-for-judgment.html
The Rise and Fall of Pastor Sunday Adelaja
By Femi Aribasala
May 18, 2009 09:20PMT
http://www.234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5410523-146/ARTICLE_OF_FAITH:_The_rise_and.csp
A few years back, Mosun Layode of Leap Africa drew my attention to a special programme organised by a network of Christians in corporate Nigeria.
The keynote speaker was one of Nigeria’s great evangelical ambassadors, Pastor Sunday Adelaja of the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations. I politely declined to attend. Jesus teaches that we should be sceptical of mega-pastors.
He warns “what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” (Lk 16:15) Adelaja’s popular credentials are impeccable.
Branches established by Nigerian churches abroad usually attract mainly Nigerians expatriates and few of the locals. But Adelaja started a church in one of the most unlikely of places, the Ukraine; a foreign country hardly on the map for Nigerians going overseas.
Today, it is, by all accounts, the biggest church in the country, with a membership said to be of over 250,000 in 30 odd cities. He claims to have planted 300 churches in over 35 countries, and to have a television programme reaching over 100 million viewers in Africa, Europe and Russia.
He is also said to have written over 80 books and, on his website, to have been responsible for over one million “salvations” in the first eight years of establishing his church; with an average today of “over 10,000 salvations a year.”
The question is how did Adelaja achieve this mega status, in spite of Jesus’ insistence that only a few will be able to enter the blessed kingdom of God? (Lk 13:24) According to The Telegraph, a British newspaper, he employs a lot of razzmatazz, including encouraging his congregants to “shake their booty and praise the Lord.”
Reporting on one of his services, the newspaper observes that: “As ‘Pastor Sunday’ prepared to make a grand entrance, the choirgirls shook their pompoms, the disco lights started to flash and a fanfare sounded. The lights cut out, and Mr. Adelaja emerged from a shroud of dry ice. Children holding flags of the world wafted round him and the choir bellowed ‘Sanctus!’”
But there is another critical ingredient in Adelaja’s phenomenal success; he is a prosperity pastor. He tells his congregants that God is going to make them slum-dog millionaires, provided they give some of their hard-earned cash to his church. This casino-Christianity strategy has provided the basis of the success of many mega-pastors. It now appears to have led to Pastor Sunday’s downfall.
On 29th December, 2008, a number of prominent evangelical leaders in Ukraine signed a public statement which reads: “We radically dissociate ourselves from Sunday Adelaja and his activity. We condemn (his) aspirations to create a cult of personality; methods and the activity, based on self-advertisement, exaggeration of personal merits and on lies; the false doctrine of prosperity, the sin of love of money; practice to curse the church members and parishioners who disagree with his opinion.
Sunday Adelaja evaded from the pure evangelical doctrine and is currently in spiritual seduction and error. We address all the church leaders to abstain from brotherly fellowship with Sunday Adelaja.” In March 2009, Ukrainian law enforcement agents formally charged Sunday Adelaja of complicity in defrauding members of his congregation of millions of dollars.
He is charged with “financial machinations in especially large volume,” and faces a sentence of 5 to 12 years in prison if convicted. He was indicted as one of the ringleaders in an international ponzi scheme, which funnelled funds from Ukrainian churchgoers into a fraudulent corporation called King’s Capital, on the promise of unsustainable returns.
King’s Capital has now gone bust, taking with it over 100 million dollars of the life-savings of thousands of Ukrainians.
It was alleged that Adelaja frequently asked his church-members to invest in King’s Capital, assuring them its management were “godly men.”
One impoverished church-member made the following allegation against the pastor: “I personally heard you saying at a church meeting ‘who is against King’s Capital is against me personally.’ I saw you bringing a board to the stage and showing in a drawing how to put in pawn a flat and invest in King’s Capital. You did it at each meeting for the last two years.”
Adelaja has denied the prosecutor’s charges, claiming the Ukrainian government is targeting him on racial grounds because of his church’s popularity. Nevertheless, his predicament should serve as a warning to other prominent prosperity-preaching mega-pastors at home and abroad. Jesus says: “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets.” (Lk 6:26)
NEXT ARTICLE
Ukraine-based Nigerian pastor in fraud charges
http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-252009.0.html
EZRA IJIOMA
Pastor Sunday Adelaja, left, prays with parishioners before delivering his sermon at a service in Sacramento, Calif., on Sunday, Nov. 18, 2007.
Flambouyant Nigerian pastor and apparently Ukraine’s most prominent Pentecostal leader, Sunday Adelaja, has been indicted on fraud charges. Pastor Adelaja is the senior pastor of the largest church in the Ukraine, "The Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations, Kiev."
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry has accused him of defrauding citizens of money, the ministry’s Department for Media Liaison and International Activity said. Sunday Champion gathered that the amount is over $100m.
"The investigator has brought charges against Nigerian citizen Sunday Adelaja, who permanently resides in Ukraine and is a senior pastor at the Embassy of God church. The charges were brought under Part 4, Article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (the embezzlement of funds in very large amounts via fraud)," the ministry said.
Last month, several church members went to authorities saying they were unable to recover the money they invested, which left many of them bankrupt. Police later arrested one of King’s Capital leaders, Aleksandr Bandurchenko, on suspicion of fraud.
Speculation about Adelaja’s involvement with King’s Capital grew after reports surfaced that he was part of a bank in Nigeria known as GS Microfinance Bank Limited. Some speculated that Adelaja, a native of Nigeria, invested funds from King’s Capital in the African bank and planned to leave the country.
Adelaja, however, said those accusations are unfounded. He said he has never been involved with King’s Capital but denied that it is a Ponzi scheme, which uses later investments to pay dividends to earlier investors.
He said King’s Capital was a legitimate business that failed under the pressure of the global financial crisis. He said because the company poured most of the investment capital into real estate, which decreased in value, it has been unable to pay investors.
"When the economic crisis came, all the real estate is no more selling. The land is enough to pay back the money owed. , The problem is , everything is stopped in the country--nothing is selling now in Ukraine,’’ he said.
Adelaja said Interior Affairs Minister Yurii Lutsenko accused the church of involvement because he wants to undermine the evangelical movement in Ukraine. With several thousand members across the nation, God’s Embassy is one of the most influential congregations in Ukraine.
"(Lutsenko) is in a very bad situation," Adelaja said. "He’s got to prove now that (King’s Capital) is a pyramid scheme, but he cannot."
Adelaja said he never encouraged his church members to invest in the company and cautioned them to invest in businesses that offer insurance. "Of course , if you invest with insurance you get less percentage," he said. "What happened was many people said they didn’t need insurance because the (King’s Capital leaders) were Christians."
He acknowledged being affiliated with GS Microfinance, but said he invested his name and influence in the bank, not millions of dollars. He said GS Microfinance was formed to give small loans to poor Nigerians as a way of lifting them out of poverty. "It’s not about what you can get, but the vision of the program is to elevate and get as many people out of poverty as possible," Adelaja said. "That is one of my lifetime passions , because I grew up in poverty."
Although Adelaja has repeatedly denied any involvement in King’s Capital, which has not officially been deemed a fraudulent business, Pentecostal and charismatic leaders across Ukraine are calling on him to repent, saying they heard him encourage church members to invest in the company on several occasions.
"He was not a president of this company, but he was the No. 1 spiritual leader, and he told them what they have to do," said Bishop M. S.Panochko, leader of the All-Ukrainian Union of Pentecostal Churches of Evangelical Faith, which is comprised of 1,500 churches across the nation. "He can do everything to tell them that he is not involved, but all the leaders have a lot of facts, and we have a lot of video of when he was pushing people, and he encouraged people to invest in this business."
Panochko was one of 10 leaders who met with Adelaja last Tuesday to confront him about his alleged support of King’s Capital and the negative impact some of his actions have had on the evangelical church in Ukraine.
The Pentecostal bishops, who together represent more than 2,500 congregations, listed seven items of concern and said Adelaja has a pattern of making exaggerated statements. They pointed particularly to his alleged claim that he led the 2004 Orange Revolution--when Ukrainian voters protested a presidential election many considered fraudulent--and his reports that God’s Embassy has 100,000 members across the nation. The bishops say those and other statements are untrue.
After the meeting, Adelaja issued a statement saying he did not organize the Orange Revolution, though his congregation participated in the demonstrations. He also asked forgiveness for the negative impact the King’s Capital scandal has had on Ukrainian churches, but he added that he did not personally have any involvement in the company.
Despite the statement, Panochko said the bishops would continue waiting for Adelaja to apologize for allegedly endorsing King’s Capital. If he does not repent, Panochko said the bishops would issue a statement to Christians in Ukraine and abroad, and to the Ukrainian government, denouncing Adelaja and claiming no affiliation with him.
Moscow-based pastor Rick Renner, founder of the Good News Association of Churches and Ministries for Russia, Latvia and Ukraine, said Adelaja’s claims are hurting Christians in the former Soviet Union.
If convicted, Adelaja may spend up to 12 years in imprisonment, according to Part 4, Article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
http://odili.net/news/source/2009/mar/21/806.html
Money, The Holy Spirit, and The Church
Arthur Owiti | Posted July 23, 2009
Since when did people pay money to attend conferences that promise the outpouring of the Holy Spirit? Even in the days of Wesley the people heard the word of God outdoors, for all to hear. Peter sharply rebuked Simon the sorcerer for believing that he could purchase the gift of God!!
This 'Simon syndrome' is the hallmark of the so called Christian market's 'music industry', TV ministries and church ministry in Christendom-- who say, ‘You will have heavenly things if you only give money’.
The episode of Simon and Peter is very interesting because Simon had just been baptized meaning he believed in the gospel .But when he made request for the power, Peter declared that his heart was not right with God despite his being baptized. His heart was filled with bitterness and iniquity because of the thought of buying the gift of God, the Holy Spirit.
Was it that Simon wanted the power for his own gain and glory since he was already a famous sorcerer? Did he believe that riches can buy heavenly gifts of God like the tithe proponents believe that paying tithe is assurance of our Heavenly Father blessing the giver?
Like Simon, many believe that since money is the answer for everything, it can also move God. That money is one way of access to God. This is wrong, a big lie.
This is the basis of the tithe teaching today and sow a seed teaching. One so called preacher dared to say that tithe is God's protection money like that in a mafia ring which Christians must pay to get his protection-utter BLASPHEMY since he is replacing the gift of God by which we can all draw near to him , with money--the gift of man.
Money is the foundation of most of church ministries instead of Jesus Christ and his doctrine. Not that ministries and the church do not need money. Good use of money can help in many needy areas and aiding true gospel ministry. The issue is money should not be the oxygen of the church as this seems to be the case in most of Christendom.
The Word of God revealed by the Holy Spirit, is what should sustain the life of the church first. Money is an accompanying necessity in ministry, one that should not hinder the work of ministry. Or when it runs dry, the church can still function, not today’s overdependence on money (love and worship of money). We should master money’s deceptive power and not be slaves of money. Godliness with contentment is great gain.
Some churches cannot function without money. With the economy of the world facing hard times, ministries that were money based have closed shop. This should not be the case for the gospel does not need money to work but the Holy Spirit.
With the Levitical order having been wrongly restored in Christendom, money has taken the driving seat in the church. In the Old Testament the priests used money for temple maintenance. This has been erroneously employed by many churches using the order as a justification of asking for money for everything. But must this be the excuse for asking money? Is it not better to ask and give for the needy amongst us or for gospel materials like bibles for many saints in who are in need of them today?
It is doctrinally wrong to claim that church workers are today’s Levites as we are all priests under the order of Melchizedek with Jesus as the High priest. Moreover tithe was a command which is not present in the New Testament Teachings of which we are under. Why just open up and say people need salaries instead of abusing the word of God?
MONEY AND MINISTERS
Money is the door to qualification in ministry instead of the Holy Spirit evidenced by godly conduct and sound doctrine. Some buy their way to ministry simply because they got a PHD from a prominent theological school, where only a rich fellow or sponsored student can reach such a level.
The PHD, not godly conduct or sound doctrine, will earn him the place in ministry. A stark departure from the apostle’s traditions which should be the church’s standard today. Ministry money provided by the church is enticing and some have fallen into temptation by defrauding in the name of love gifts and donations. Instead of keeping up with the goal of true ministry many Ministries are created in churches so as to share the gains made. I used to serve in a ministry where swindling was subtle and habitual yet the ignorant givers gave, knowing it was for God’s work.
In fact the moment the ministries started receiving church money, their spiritual life collapsed. We served only when the church had money. We could not sacrificially travel to a rundown place and minister because we did not get any money from our ‘superiors’. Money, not the Holy Spirit was the leader of ministry.
In other quarters, some ministers from the West say that they cannot come to Africa because of the costs, when all it will need is an air ticket in the economy class.
What they mean is that they will only come if there is a chance of recovering the costs and in the end get profit and fame and expansion. Sacrificial love, hazarding one's life are strange terms to them, but profits, the love of money and the world are not.
‘Anointed musicians' are those whose CDs are selling well or need to sell well. The more the sales the more the ‘anointing’, the more the awards, the more the videos -- the more the exposure the more the sales, the more the ‘anointing’.
‘Anointed’ pastors are those who have large crowds and mega churches, because the more the numbers, the more the money to pay for airtime on TV , the more the books become best sellers.... Why don’t we just call these people by their profession – BUSINESSMEN AND BUSINESSWOMEN, shrewd ones for that matter, instead of abusing words such as ‘anointing’?
In Kenya, some Christian TV programs have quickly adopted the new technology of mobile phone-banking accounts where one can quickly send money to the ministry to the flashing number on the screen. Some Christians have said they are being distracted, focusing on the flashing numbers instead of receiving the ministry of the word. You can forget the word but not the number because the number is the door to ones deliverance and blessing. God have mercy on us all!
However there are some struggling Kenyan ministers of the gospel who after being hard hit with the economic down turn are coming up with self employing jobs because ministry giving and partnership money has gone down. This humility is commendable and such ministers do need encouragement as it is not easy for them to carry the burdens of the church and their own family.
Such need our prayers and help especially if they are preaching the true gospel. They also need to learn the true church ministry standards provided for in the word of God and unlearn the deception of New Testament ministers who belong to the Melchizedek order, living Old Testament lives under the Levitical order.
MONEY AND THE POOR CHRISTIAN
So what happens to the poor Christian, the one who can say 'silver and gold have I none'?
They cannot receive the Holy Spirit because they could not pay 50 dollars? They cannot have the presence of God because they did not buy a musician's 'anointed' CD. They are not allowed to come and worship the Lord in a concert because they could not pay the tax at the door?
They need to break the curse of poverty to enjoy the things rich Christians enjoy such as outpourings, prayer cloths, newsletter teachings, things only available to the partners of the ministry?
They cannot fellowship in a specific church because at that church you are only recognized as a member if you pay a certain tithe --hence the sad vocabulary such as 'rich churches v. poor churches 'because the love of money has caused class divisions, cliques and clubs in the church.
This division is similar to the Levitical order where only the Levites could minister before God--- in our case those who have more money have access to the ‘man of God’ but the majority have no access to him therefore are not justified by quid.
Yet these things such as teachings, prophecies, healing and baptism of the Holy Spirit are heavenly gifts, gifts that only come from God to them that believe. How can we put price tags on gifts no man can give? Unless those things which are being given are gifts of men falsely called gifts of God, business in sheep’s clothing. Such falsehood is taking the name of the Lord in vain, doctrines of demons
Thus if that is the way things are to go, the poor Christian is far from God because he has little money to be near him. This is not what the Holy Scriptures support or say.
As the book of James says the poor Christian is rich in faith ,---without which no man can please God ; faith, which is part of the fruit of the Spirit according to Galatians 5. So how did the poor Christian get the Holy Spirit, without money or paying for a Holy Spirit conference ? Because of faith in Jesus Christ by which one is justified by God. Man's gifts, like money which the poor Christian does not have, cannot justify anyone before God.
When the global economy collapses the true church will not disappear. Only those churches that have money as their foundation will fall; churches: Where people attend church hoping to get more money through planting seeds and tithes, so as to gain the world and riches; Where people serve God as ministers for the main aim of getting money to gain the world and riches.
The Love of money has replaced the love of and for God in the lives of many, leading them to the path of destruction, which Peter had pronounced on Simon. We judge ourselves and others by the amount of money and success in the world we have, instead of the word of God and the life and sayings of Jesus Christ.
The Life of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit in the church and a Christian is what matters, not the size of the bank account. The Holy Spirit is given to those who obey the gospel and not those who have enough money to buy his power. You cannot serve both God and money/mammon. Please God, despise mammon in the name of Jesus Christ.
Abiding in the Word,
Arthur Owiti
Since when did people pay money to attend conferences that promise the outpouring of the Holy Spirit? Even in the days of Wesley the people heard the word of God outdoors, for all to hear. Peter sharply rebuked Simon the sorcerer for believing that he could purchase the gift of God!!
This 'Simon syndrome' is the hallmark of the so called Christian market's 'music industry', TV ministries and church ministry in Christendom-- who say, ‘You will have heavenly things if you only give money’.
The episode of Simon and Peter is very interesting because Simon had just been baptized meaning he believed in the gospel .But when he made request for the power, Peter declared that his heart was not right with God despite his being baptized. His heart was filled with bitterness and iniquity because of the thought of buying the gift of God, the Holy Spirit.
Was it that Simon wanted the power for his own gain and glory since he was already a famous sorcerer? Did he believe that riches can buy heavenly gifts of God like the tithe proponents believe that paying tithe is assurance of our Heavenly Father blessing the giver?
Like Simon, many believe that since money is the answer for everything, it can also move God. That money is one way of access to God. This is wrong, a big lie.
This is the basis of the tithe teaching today and sow a seed teaching. One so called preacher dared to say that tithe is God's protection money like that in a mafia ring which Christians must pay to get his protection-utter BLASPHEMY since he is replacing the gift of God by which we can all draw near to him , with money--the gift of man.
Money is the foundation of most of church ministries instead of Jesus Christ and his doctrine. Not that ministries and the church do not need money. Good use of money can help in many needy areas and aiding true gospel ministry. The issue is money should not be the oxygen of the church as this seems to be the case in most of Christendom.
The Word of God revealed by the Holy Spirit, is what should sustain the life of the church first. Money is an accompanying necessity in ministry, one that should not hinder the work of ministry. Or when it runs dry, the church can still function, not today’s overdependence on money (love and worship of money). We should master money’s deceptive power and not be slaves of money. Godliness with contentment is great gain.
Some churches cannot function without money. With the economy of the world facing hard times, ministries that were money based have closed shop. This should not be the case for the gospel does not need money to work but the Holy Spirit.
With the Levitical order having been wrongly restored in Christendom, money has taken the driving seat in the church. In the Old Testament the priests used money for temple maintenance. This has been erroneously employed by many churches using the order as a justification of asking for money for everything. But must this be the excuse for asking money? Is it not better to ask and give for the needy amongst us or for gospel materials like bibles for many saints in who are in need of them today?
It is doctrinally wrong to claim that church workers are today’s Levites as we are all priests under the order of Melchizedek with Jesus as the High priest. Moreover tithe was a command which is not present in the New Testament Teachings of which we are under. Why just open up and say people need salaries instead of abusing the word of God?
MONEY AND MINISTERS
Money is the door to qualification in ministry instead of the Holy Spirit evidenced by godly conduct and sound doctrine. Some buy their way to ministry simply because they got a PHD from a prominent theological school, where only a rich fellow or sponsored student can reach such a level.
The PHD, not godly conduct or sound doctrine, will earn him the place in ministry. A stark departure from the apostle’s traditions which should be the church’s standard today. Ministry money provided by the church is enticing and some have fallen into temptation by defrauding in the name of love gifts and donations. Instead of keeping up with the goal of true ministry many Ministries are created in churches so as to share the gains made. I used to serve in a ministry where swindling was subtle and habitual yet the ignorant givers gave, knowing it was for God’s work.
In fact the moment the ministries started receiving church money, their spiritual life collapsed. We served only when the church had money. We could not sacrificially travel to a rundown place and minister because we did not get any money from our ‘superiors’. Money, not the Holy Spirit was the leader of ministry.
In other quarters, some ministers from the West say that they cannot come to Africa because of the costs, when all it will need is an air ticket in the economy class.
What they mean is that they will only come if there is a chance of recovering the costs and in the end get profit and fame and expansion. Sacrificial love, hazarding one's life are strange terms to them, but profits, the love of money and the world are not.
‘Anointed musicians' are those whose CDs are selling well or need to sell well. The more the sales the more the ‘anointing’, the more the awards, the more the videos -- the more the exposure the more the sales, the more the ‘anointing’.
‘Anointed’ pastors are those who have large crowds and mega churches, because the more the numbers, the more the money to pay for airtime on TV , the more the books become best sellers.... Why don’t we just call these people by their profession – BUSINESSMEN AND BUSINESSWOMEN, shrewd ones for that matter, instead of abusing words such as ‘anointing’?
In Kenya, some Christian TV programs have quickly adopted the new technology of mobile phone-banking accounts where one can quickly send money to the ministry to the flashing number on the screen. Some Christians have said they are being distracted, focusing on the flashing numbers instead of receiving the ministry of the word. You can forget the word but not the number because the number is the door to ones deliverance and blessing. God have mercy on us all!
However there are some struggling Kenyan ministers of the gospel who after being hard hit with the economic down turn are coming up with self employing jobs because ministry giving and partnership money has gone down. This humility is commendable and such ministers do need encouragement as it is not easy for them to carry the burdens of the church and their own family.
Such need our prayers and help especially if they are preaching the true gospel. They also need to learn the true church ministry standards provided for in the word of God and unlearn the deception of New Testament ministers who belong to the Melchizedek order, living Old Testament lives under the Levitical order.
MONEY AND THE POOR CHRISTIAN
So what happens to the poor Christian, the one who can say 'silver and gold have I none'?
They cannot receive the Holy Spirit because they could not pay 50 dollars? They cannot have the presence of God because they did not buy a musician's 'anointed' CD. They are not allowed to come and worship the Lord in a concert because they could not pay the tax at the door?
They need to break the curse of poverty to enjoy the things rich Christians enjoy such as outpourings, prayer cloths, newsletter teachings, things only available to the partners of the ministry?
They cannot fellowship in a specific church because at that church you are only recognized as a member if you pay a certain tithe --hence the sad vocabulary such as 'rich churches v. poor churches 'because the love of money has caused class divisions, cliques and clubs in the church.
This division is similar to the Levitical order where only the Levites could minister before God--- in our case those who have more money have access to the ‘man of God’ but the majority have no access to him therefore are not justified by quid.
Yet these things such as teachings, prophecies, healing and baptism of the Holy Spirit are heavenly gifts, gifts that only come from God to them that believe. How can we put price tags on gifts no man can give? Unless those things which are being given are gifts of men falsely called gifts of God, business in sheep’s clothing. Such falsehood is taking the name of the Lord in vain, doctrines of demons
Thus if that is the way things are to go, the poor Christian is far from God because he has little money to be near him. This is not what the Holy Scriptures support or say.
As the book of James says the poor Christian is rich in faith ,---without which no man can please God ; faith, which is part of the fruit of the Spirit according to Galatians 5. So how did the poor Christian get the Holy Spirit, without money or paying for a Holy Spirit conference ? Because of faith in Jesus Christ by which one is justified by God. Man's gifts, like money which the poor Christian does not have, cannot justify anyone before God.
When the global economy collapses the true church will not disappear. Only those churches that have money as their foundation will fall; churches: Where people attend church hoping to get more money through planting seeds and tithes, so as to gain the world and riches; Where people serve God as ministers for the main aim of getting money to gain the world and riches.
The Love of money has replaced the love of and for God in the lives of many, leading them to the path of destruction, which Peter had pronounced on Simon. We judge ourselves and others by the amount of money and success in the world we have, instead of the word of God and the life and sayings of Jesus Christ.
The Life of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit in the church and a Christian is what matters, not the size of the bank account. The Holy Spirit is given to those who obey the gospel and not those who have enough money to buy his power. You cannot serve both God and money/mammon. Please God, despise mammon in the name of Jesus Christ.
Abiding in the Word,
Arthur Owiti
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