Why is the Charismatic Movement Thriving in Africa?

Many explanations have been given for the explosion of the Charismatic movement in Africa. Many have seen this as a powerful visitation of the Holy Spirit. Whereas there is probably more than one reason, I want to add my own observation to this for what it is worth. In this blog post, I do not refer to the old conservative form of Pentecostalism once represented by the Assemblies of God churches. I have in mind the current extreme form that is mushrooming literally under every shrub and tree in Africa. How can one explain this phenomenon?

I think that one reason why the Charismatic movement in Africa has been like a wild bushfire is because it has not challenged the African religious worldview but has instead adopted it. It has simply baptised it with Bible verses and Christian words that previously meant something totally different.

The African Spiritual Worldview

 

Let me explain what I mean. The African spiritual worldview consists of four tiers.   Continue at Conrad Mbewe

 

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“Touch Not The Lord’s Anointed”

If there has been a phrase in the Bible that has been recently tortured until it confesses a lie, it is the phrase, “Touch not the Lord’s anointed.” I hear it a lot in Christian conversation today. Usually, the phrase is meant to caution anyone who is criticising the questionable teaching or way of life of a famous preacher or church leader. That is meant to be a no-go area.

The popular understanding of this phrase is that if you say negative things about “an anointed servant of God,” something nasty will happen to you. You might even die a horrible death. This is African traditional religion creeping into the church through the back door. In Africa, you do not say anything negative against an elderly person or a chief or a witchdoctor. If you do, something nasty will happen to you. You can even grow a beard at the back of you neck!

Where this teaching is found
“Touch not the Lord’s anointed” is found in Psalm 105:15 in the first person. Its full statement is, “When they [the Israelites] were few in number, of little account, and sojourners in it, wandering from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people, he allowed no one to oppress them; he rebuked kings on their account, saying, ‘Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm!’” (Psalm 105:13-15). Here it referred to Israel as a nation and, more specifically, the prophets whom the Lord had sent to minister among his people.

This is illustrated a number of times in the life of David when he had already been anointed as the next king of Israel. King Saul did not want him to succeed him and so he tried every trick in the book to kill David. Through a turn of fortunes, it was David who ended up with a number of opportunities to kill Saul. However, David desisted from doing so saying, “The LORD forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the LORD’s anointed, to put out my hand against him, seeing he is the LORD’s anointed” (1 Samuel 24:6, see also 24:10, 26:9-11, etc.)   Continue at Conrad Mbewe

The Curse Of Motivational Speaking

Last Sunday, a young man came to see me after our church service. He is the kind of guy who shows up at church once in a while and then disappears for a season. My guess is that he goes around churches sampling sermons and looking for answers. On this visit, he asked that I help him to overcome a failure in his life, and it was a failure to progress. He said that his greatest problem is that he does not believe in himself. Could I help him believe in himself so that he could become successful?

I asked him whether he was a Christian. His answer was, “Do I really need to be a Christian in order to be successful? Are you telling me that all those successful people out there are Christians? Aren’t there general principles that I can apply to my life—whether I am a Christian or not—that can catapult me to success?” I challenged him to answer that question himself. After all, I was sure he had done enough rounds among motivational speakers to have the answer.

 

“That is the problem,” he said, “I have been told that such principles exist and I have tried them. They seem to work for a while and then I am back to my old self again. I want you to help me find that formula that will help me go forward and never slide back to the place where I do not believe in myself.” To cut the long story short, I finally persuaded him of the need for reconciliation with God before anyone can break free from the frustrating rut that God locks unreconciled sinners in.

 

I gave him a booklet to read, entitled, What is a Biblical Christian? When we met the following day, he was honest enough to tell me that he was disappointed with what he read because it was not telling him what he wanted to hear. “What I want to know is how I can be successful. This booklet did not say anything about that.” I repeated what I told him earlier. What he needed was not belief in himself but belief in a Saviour sent from heaven. He needed forgiveness as a foundation for his life.   Continue at Conrad Mbewe

A Warning To Professing Christians

Some thirty years ago, when I was a university student, I came across a statement by Bishop J C Ryle that powerfully riveted itself to my mind. I made a small A4-size poster of it and put it up on the notice board in my room. I lost it when I graduated from university. Since then I have looked for it and failed to find it. I have tried to Google it, but even that has not yielded the desired fruit. I finally found it today (13 January 2012).

Bishop J C Ryle

All along I had been searching in the wrong place. I knew that the statement had something to do with a warning to Christians. Hence, I kept looking in Ryle’s A Warning To The Churches. I literally searched the book, sentence by sentence, several times over. Now that I have found it, I realize that it was in Ryle’s Holiness. The statement is found in the chapter, “Visible Churches Warned.” I will not reproduce the whole chapter here, as the book is readily available on the Internet. In fact, you can even read a PDF version of the chapter HERE. It is chapter 14 in the book.

 

The first paragraph below is the statement that shocked me out of my socks some thirty years ago. I have added a few more paragraphs to make this a fuller blog post and to also give my readers some more of the heart of this great bishop. I wish that all bishops today—including myself—could write and preach like this!  Continue at Some thirty years ago, when I was a university student, I came across a statement by Bishop J C Ryle that powerfully riveted itself to my mind. I made a small A4-size poster of it and put it up on the notice board in my room. I lost it when I graduated from university. Since then I have looked for it and failed to find it. I have tried to Google it, but even that has not yielded the desired fruit. I finally found it today (13 January 2012).  Continue at Conrad Mbewe

When A Pastor Commits Suicide

“Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (Zechariah 13:7)

I am on my way home from the funeral of a fellow Baptist pastor who committed suicide. I got the news on Thursday morning (which explains why my usual Thursday or Friday blog post is absent; I was too deeply affected to do anything). The news came as a shock to me—and indeed to everyone else who knew the pastor. He had been an intern at Kabwata Baptist Church for a few months over ten years ago. He was a very fine man and slightly younger than me. I last met him two months ago when I was preaching at a pastors’ annual retreat. He has left behind a wife and three young children, plus a devastated congregation.

 

When a pastor commits suicide, apart from the emotion of shock there is also a lot of disappointment and dismay. As one member lamented, “Pastor was the one who always encouraged us to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ when overwhelmed by the challenges and difficulties that confronted us. How could he fail to handle whatever it is that made him take his life?” Some people who heard were even questioning his salvation: “Can a Christian commit suicide?” Others found in this the proof that the pastor was a hypocrite all along.   Continue Reading >>>

Nigerian Religious Junk!

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.  You will recognize them by their fruits... So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit…Thus you will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:15-20).

I begin this blog by apologizing to all my Nigerian brothers and sisters for its title. At first sight it is rather offensive, but I hope that as you read on you will see why I elected to still use it as a title. As nations or tribes or social groupings we take on a certain characteristic that is not true about each person in the group but which we come to be identified with. Hence, Paul could write, “One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.’ This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith” (Titus 1:12-13). In the same way, we tend to (rightly or wrongly) identify Americans with arrogance, Kenyans with marathon running prowess, West Africans with fraudulent activities, Afrikaners with racism, etc. Keep Reading...

See also - Already Not Yet

Submission and Authority in the Home

Conrad Mbewe continues his exposition of biblical submission and exercise of authority, based on 1 Peter. This message – #4 of 6 – focuses on the family. We see here that rebellion against parents is not a narrow issue which one can work around. As with proper teaching about the broad intent and application of the 10 Commandments, biblical instruction about our responsibility to submit to God’s Word is comprehensive and our ability to obey is wretched. Hence, the Word convicts us of our need of Christ, in every area of our lives.

Messages 1 – 3 can be found here.

Beware “Nigerian Religious Junk”

That’s the warning from Pastor Conrad Mbewe.  He reports on a meeting of evangelical church leaders from southern African countries.  Mbewe explains:

I feel very sad to write about this, but by “Nigerian religious junk” I mean the phenomenon of churches that are personal-to-holder. They exalt the personality of their founding father, who is still alive somewhere in Nigeria (or elsewhere) and is treated with the aura of a state president. It does not matter which country you go to, the bill boards of these churches do not have the faces of the local pastors of the congregations in those towns but of the founding father in Nigeria—or wherever he has since relocated. It is all about image and power. This “man of God” claims to hear the voice of God and proceeds to minister to you accordingly. If you do not obey him you are resisting the ministry of God into your life. So, the churches are often called “ministries” rather than churches. And to make them even more impressive, the term “international” is often added to their name. Keep Reading>>>

We need to reform Christian Weddings