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
