… Advices him to release man arrested for challenging his claims
Frontline human rights activist, Chief Patrick Osagie Eholor has described the claims of Apostle Johnson Suleiman to manifest money from angels to his members as the worst kind of mockery against God and the Christian church.
Eholor spoke to journalists on the telephone, while responding to the arrest of a young man who made a YouTube video to challenge the prophet over the claims.
In the said video, Apostle Suleiman is seen in a church in Atlanta Georgia, in the United States, saying that angels whispered to him that they want to credit people’s accounts with money. He then started praying, asking members to hold up their phones. After a while, several members began to run out to the pulpit, claiming that they received alerts, some from completely unknown sources. As a matter of fact, an usher even claimed that a particular member received a sum so huge that the bank blocked her account!
But in his message to journalists, Eholor expressed regret that in this age of Nigeria’s development, citizens would still allow themselves to be used to caricature God and the Christian faith. He asked Suleiman to stop such childish deceit, which he said mocks God, and mocks Christians.
His words “This is a shame. How can anybody even discuss this? How can anybody say an angel is crediting an account and someone debunk it, and you are detaining the person? How can the police fall for this and detain any person? The police needs retraining, it needs orientation. The world is laughing at us.
“You cannot arrest someone for saying what Apostle Suleiman did was wrong, because angels don’t credit accounts. This is not good. They are ruining the Christian faith. They are making a mockery of us now. The heads of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) should call Suleiman out. We should be reinvent Rwanda. Go to Kigali and see what they have done with good governance. Pastors are not allowed to run wild. They check their backgrounds before they are given licences. But there are a few good ones among them. That is why we must challenge these people that call themselves pastor. The government has failed us, and that is why everybody is looking for miracles, in churches and every where. These gullible, innocent people have fallen victim to the likes of Apostle Suleiman, Pastor Adeboye of Redeemed, Oyedepo of Winners, Odumeje, and so on.
“This thing has become a business, our father’s house has become a den of thieves, as was prophesied several years ago.
“Supposing that he really command angels, why would that those angels not credit the account of Nigeria to pay off its debts? Why would those angels not wipe out Boko Haram? Why didn’t those angels not end the Covid-19?
“How long would we allow people like Suleiman continue to deceive our children and pollute our environment, and the heart of our children by saying that we don’t need to work, that angels will credit our accounts? A laborer deserves his wages, it’s in the Bible. God commanded that we sweat before we eat. So, the likes of Apostle Suleiman are encouraging ritualists, are encouraging Yahoo boys and making our youths lazy. A lot of people have suffered. Remember he is in every scandal. He was also the one in the scandal with Stephanie, the lady from Canada. He is always using the likes of Abba Kyari and his gang.
“We should never allow that again. I think they should regulate the church. It’s not all those that call ‘my Father that God answers. A lot of things happen to various women in that church and other churches. People have been humiliated, people have been raped, people have been abused, and lost their sanity. A lot have gone into depression because of the likes of Apostle Suleiman.
Eholor also asked, “The question you must ask is, can somebody be more holy than the pope? Why is it that it’s only these pentecostal churches that wake the dead and command thale angels to pay into accounts? Why are these things not happening in Rome? Do they have special angels they command? Or is this just to decieve gullible Nigerians? Nigerian Christians, it’s time you must worship God in spirit and in truth to stop giving out money and stop sowing seeds to these churches. They are nothing but a bunch of thieves as God has described them before in the Bible, that ‘My House has been turned into a den of of robbers’.
“Unfortunately, most of these people are motivational speakers. You cannot change motivational speaking into fraud to start defrauding people, they are empty, and were not called by God”.
In closing his argument, the human rights defender, also known as Ultimate Equals quoted the Bible from 2nd Peter, 2,1to 5, saying, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of”.