Top 10 #Christembassy smokes, some think are without fire: Pastor Chris, as he is popularly called, and his Christ Embassy Church, are no strangers to scandals, as they have had a sizeable load of it in the past. 1) In 2008, Oyakhilome’s reputation as a faith healer was tarnished in Johannesburg, South Africa, when a man told a Soweto newspaper that Christ Embassy offered him more than $1,200 to sit in a wheelchair and pretend to be crippled until Oyakhilome prayed for him. “The man went to the media instead of taking the money, sparking concerns that healing were being faked to impress growing crowds,” said Lee Grady in an article in 2012 published by Charisma Magazine. 2) In 2010, Oyakhilome was accused of engineering a money laundering scheme in Nigeria, and questions swirled around his finances because of his glamorous lifestyle - Christ Embassy runs several arms including the Healing School, Rhapsody of Realities, and an NGO called the Inner-city Missions as well as three Christian television channels: LoveWorld TV, LoveWorld SAT and LoveWorld Plus. 3) Many pastors and theologians also excoriated Oyakhilome for his “New Creation” doctrine which many saw as heresy—a form of gnosticism that postulated that after a person became a Christian, any sin they committed was only in the body and will not affect the spirit. 4) The same year, another Nigerian pastor, Chris Okotie, had accused Oyakhilome of conniving with Pastor TB Joshua in practising necromancy as well as other unbiblical acts in order to win over a large congregation. 5) In addition, Oyakhilome had been the target of criticism by the Treatment Action Campaign for his support of faith healing to cure HIV/AIDS. 6) Similarly, allegations that Christ Embassy members were reportedly being forced to give huge sums of money in offerings, with the biggest donors receiving the biggest award, had left many people concerned. 7) Many Nigerians had also alleged that the church operates like a cult and pressures members to marry only within Christ Embassy. 8) I also remember the scandal involving Christ Embassy and Sheraton Hotel some years ago when a member of the church, who worked at the Sheraton Hotel, stole money from his employers and gave it to Christ Embassy. But when Sheraton approached the church for a refund, the church allegedly claimed that the money had been given to God and could not be retrieved. 9) Many had also excoriated Pastor Chris some years ago when the church began collecting gate fee from members for their New Year eve service. 10) More recently, Oyakhilome came under attack after he claimed that Christians were free to masturbate because it was not a sin. I pause, to note that I quite agree on this one, only that the advice was not applicable for Christians alone, rather to all faiths. But the latest scandal involving Anita and Chris, who have two daughters, Sharon and Charlene, seems to threaten the very existence of one of the biggest churches in Nigeria. However, these are vital signs because the more these things happen the more people realise that these authority figures are not saints after all. Assembles of God members are still battling their own and so are many others not reported by the lazy media. The big question is what are they really fighting for?
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 03:25:57 +0000
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