The Sun News Paper 11th June, 2013. READ: If there is any verse or two that directly captures the substance of a new book by Bishop Humphrey Erumaka, ERA OF ERRORS: Rumbling in the Temple, which I happen to have reviewed, it will probably be taken from Paul’s letter to his spiritual son, Timothy, which states: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in the latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy…” (1Timothy 4:1-2) Surely, the Nigerian church or a substantial section of it, has come to a point where there is a spiritual warfare between the Biblical Christianity and a hodge-podge of strange and weird spiritual practices perpetrated in the name of Christ. It is these spiritual and doctrinal deviations that Bishop Erumaka seeks to tackle frontally in a highly engaging epistle to the Nigerian churches. My friend, Mike Awoyinfa, whom I usually describe as Nigeria’s best headline caster alive, read the advance copy of the book and declares that it should have been entitled, EPISTLE TO THE NIGERIAN CHURCH. I agree, recalling that some of Paul’s powerful epistles like those to the Corinthian or Galatian churches or John’s vision for the Seven Churches in Asia Minor were usually responses to permeation of spiritual errors in the churches. But watch your back, Bishop, for in our clime, emotionalism often trumps truth and accuracy in these matters. Some are going to throw stones first before they even get a chance to read the book and when they read – if they ever do – some may do so with thick religious and commercial blinkers on. It is, perhaps, important to note that Bishop Erumaka and this writer belong to Pentecostal churches and, therefore, had nothing against Pentecostalism. I thought I should enter the above caveats ahead of time before the introducing this explosive book. ERA OF ERRORS, published by Global Epistle Communications & Printing Limited, is a book of 205 pages made up of 14 sizzling chapters. The author is no new comer to the trade, having written nine other books – enough to acquire the necessary gravitas to separate between the wheat from the chaff. The author starts by exploring the dynamics of faith and prayers, drawing out models from the life and examples of the early patriarchs, including heroes of faith like Abraham, David, Solomon, to prophets like Daniel, then Jesus and the early Apostles. From the examples of these saints, the author sets in proper perspective what prayers and faith are all about, what motivates the saints to prayers, how these heroes of faith prayed even in the extremity of challenging circumstances and the secrets of answered prayers. The author recommends their models for our examples, substantiating his views with deep and incisive insights that validate his calling as a great teacher of the Word. Set against these excellent biblical models, the viral pervasions, distortions and deviations from Biblical Christianity that now loom prevalent in so many of our churches come into sharp, tragic and comical relief. If Paul or any of the early Apostles were to attend some supposed prayers sessions, sermons and sundry practices in some of the new fangled churches in Nigeria today, they may be so stunned or amused to learn that these are presumed to be part of the church that Jesus Christ died to save! But in Nigeria, things are falling apart in many of our churches in terms of doctrinal rectitude. Indeed, Bishop Erumaka’s book easily spotlights “a sea of wrong doctrines and unfathomable fables” that has seeped into the modern church. The parlous state of our economy seems to be breeding army of acute pseudo-believers, seeking either emotional catharsis or for easy scapegoats to unleash their anger and frustrations on, and some ignorant or unscrupulous spiritual merchants are exploiting such psychological traumas and feeding their failures with imaginary enemies to fight against. Prayers are turning into psycho-dramatic physical exertions rather than spiritual exercise. Erumaka describes this blight spreading through some churches as “dangerous prayer pattern”, culminating in “an amazing sea of confusion with high tempest of calamity.” Erumaka describes a spiritual parody whereby some churches have become the “arena where the fishers of men have become killers of men” in the name of prayer. Nothing, the author argues, illustrates this spiritual cankerworm in the Nigerian churches better than the growing popularity of fire and brimstone prayers against an endless list of enemies everywhere. The author writes: “The fire-for-fire and eye-for-eye phenomenon is now the norm. Forgiveness is eschewed during back-to-sender vigils of hate and acrimony. The numbers of tyrants grow in the name of churches. Here, everybody is considered a suspect. The older ones are considered witches or wizards outright.” A liturgy of “unhealthy prayer gymnastics” that are at times backed up with symbolic actions that are truly weird and unchristian are now gaining more grounds than the normal prayer models by Christ and the Apostles. The author cites many examples that range from “Sand Deliverance” where the land is to be delivered or liberated at a good fee, to other variants of “Pentecostal witchcraft” described in the book where people are instructed to fill a bottle with sand and in the middle of the night stand at crossroads, pronounce the name of their perceived enemy inside the bottle, cork it and then smash the bottle while at the same time, invoking the sword of Jehu upon the enemy. Weird? Well, wait until you attend the “Koboko Night” whereby members go to church with whips to flog Satan and some imaginary enemies and, or “Razor Night” where people spend the night, slashing the air in an attempt to inflict wound on their enemies, among other weird practices. The author argues that some modern day off-spring of Balaam set on making merchandise of the gospel had created a mushroom industry of so-called “Prayer Warriors” who go about, collecting fees from ignorant families and cities, purporting to be breaking ancestral bondages often hidden in the compounds, waiting to be excavated, breaking yokes and liberating cities from territorial spirits, hovering over them. The author points out that these practices negate the essence of grace and salvation and in any case, flies in the face of examples of the Apostles like Paul, who won over cities of Ephesus, Corinth and Athens not by staging fights against their territorial powers, like Diana and Apollon, but simply Christianised the place by preaching the gospel and teaching the word in faith. Bishop Erumaka is worried that the sundry fundamental errors in our churches are breeding negative attitudinal and behavioural Christian culture that totally negates the gospel of Christ where the fruits of the spirit like love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, forgiveness, faithfulness and self-control are required. In the end, the exponents of such brand of Christianity, brewed from a concoction of old traditional African practices, sprinkled with distorted Bible texts, become victims of a siege mentality. In turn, the siege mindset breeds bellicose disposition that contradicts the beatitude of Jesus Christ, which is an eternal model for all Christians. In such situation, the author writes: “Christianity is practised with incredible hatred and palpable suspicion that has saturated our hearts with murderous tendencies against those that offend us.” At the heart of this epistle is the author’s effort to debunk the unhealthy and erroneous fixation on “Holy Ghost as a weapon of destruction.” Now, today’s Christianity has a growing culture of “enemy-killing prayer warriors”, sending Holy Ghost on assassination errands to kill perceived enemies – an error that has become so humongous that it has spawned unending vigils of Holy Ghost Fire, turning some churches into a sort of “slaughterhouse against all perceived enemies.” Even the more sedate orthodox Churches, erroneously thinking such warfare prayers were the secret of the explosion of Pentecostal Churches, are blindly copying these strange practices but these are spiritual aberrations rather than a reflection Pentecostal doctrine. The author argues very convincingly that the notion of “Holy Ghost Fire” as instrument of individual’s private warfare is simply a gross misnomer, for “God is not obligated to kill anybody for you,” precisely because God “is not anybody’s hired killer.” The author warns that those who are addicted to such forms of dangerous prayers are dangers to themselves because “a praying man without love is like a naked wire with full voltage that will not bring life but sorrows.” The book canvasses for proper education about the purpose and potency of prayer, arguing that maturity in prayer can only come about by a deeper and organic understanding of the dynamics of prayer. The author reorients readers with a thesis on healthy prayer, with emphasis on the importance of forgiveness as one of the underlying principles of acceptable prayer. In this wise, Era of Errors, becomes a compass for Christians, who are ‘lost in the wilderness of militant prayer”, to find their way out of the pit of “religion without knowledge,” onto a life of prayer, according to the teachings of Christ. He counsels that “instead of devoting 12 hours of prayer on Satan-related issues, develop your prayer life towards the sound knowledge of God.” In place of these errors, Erumaka recommends a return to biblical model of Christianity and pleads with the churches to “back off those errors and go to the Bible for the real Pentecost experience.” In this book, Bishop Erumaka is waging a bold and courageous battle against a tidal sea of errors even in the high places in some Nigerian churches.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:44:25 +0000
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