The Gospel is Prime!
I grew up in a home without a TV, but each time we had to visit our family who lived in the heart of Lagos, I'd get stuck on it like a media-starved kid consuming as much content as was available.
Even as a child, Christ Embassy's 'Atmosphere for Miracles' was something for me. It was like a church minted only in the utopian circles of my dream. The lights, the lectern, the language all struck me in awe.
Everything felt dramatic – those who felt the power of God wept or fell beneath the touch of a man with crisp yellow hands, spotless white suit and a fluent and flawless grammar! Pastor Chris was etched in my mind as the "Healer man".
I was trained to be a church skeptic... "testing every spirit whether they be of God". Once anything wasn't done in my Church, it was wrong, or at least, not helpful.
But never could I shake off this marvellous impression of Love World International even when I joined others to question the authenticity of those miracles. I didn't know better.
A few years after, Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) moved swiftly to ban the show in response to growing criticism on the church. There was an febrile outcry. One online user wrote: How do you cancel 'God' from our TVs? In retrospect, it was the best thing that happened to the Church. The Pastor responded with a more deliberate focus on teaching the word in the aftermath with Rhapsodies of Realities increasing in circulation. On-air programs stopped being the entertainment people wanted. It became a Bible study; the kind that people needed. The focus on power lessened. God's Word returned to the central ambit of the meetings. It is altogether lovely – how a seemingly bad thing became the very experience they needed to get it right.
With expanding ministries, power gifts easily become what is chased after. It brings the crowd. The miracles drive them into a frenzy. But when they come and become loyal members, all they hear is about power – not gospel, not doctrine – just results; the quick fixes that those who seek a herbalist also crave.
So we raise a generation of Christians who sense God by wonders but cannot discern Him by His word. Like Pharisees of old, we are incontinent in our sign-seeking behavior. We want proof of God. His word means very little or nothing to us. It is not enough evidence of the presence of God. But power gets us high, emotional, crazy, pliant, and we would believe anything, everything as long as 'something' happened.
Anybody can say you need money for redemption and you need a mountain for deliverance and he'll be radically believed as long as 'miracles' happen in his ministry!
Someone says "this is what the Bible says". The response easily shifts to "you haven't had as much results as my pastor, or reached his realm so just shut up". We pray for hours for power, rattling in tongues to be like Smith Wigglesworth or Kathryn Kulman but spend only a morsel of time studying scriptures. And when we do, it is to read Acts 2:8 and other passages with reference to power. It is why we have it quite wrong today in our churches where saints misunderstand their Salvation alongside the tenets of their faith and sinners just want to be healed; provided for, not saved.
Evidently, only churches with a strong Word-base stand.That's precisely why not one doctrinal relic through which Wigglesworth or Kulman ministered remains today – not even the names of their ministry!
We need more NBC-type moves, figuratively. We could use such pruning. We need power gifts in their proper place – to aid evangelism – not to replace evangelism.
The gospel is the foundation – the crux of the Church. Not healings, prosperity, business and political success, signs and wonders, or great singing.
The flower fades. The grass withers but His word (His Gospel) remains forever.
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