Please Call Pastor Chris Okotie To Order - CIWA

Let somebody call Pastor Christopher Okotie of the Household of God Church to order. If not, he will set the whole country on fire. 

His unguarded utterance during his preaching sessions is put on the conveyor’s belt. It is going round and round. Prophet T.B. Joshua was the first to snare Okotie’s baggage of poisoned dish. Now it is the turn of the Catholic Church. No one knows whose turn it will be tomorrow. I hope Okotie will not say something someday that will cause religious crisis in Nigeria. Last Sunday smoke came forth from his nostril, fire from his mouth. For him all Catholic members in the world are on the way to hell because they worship Satan and are led by an anti-Christ Pope who is a friend to the Devil.

Okotie described the Catholic Church as a counterfeit church, which Satan sets up and that Catholics bow to idols and crucify Jesus every Sunday when they eat bread claiming they are eating Jesus’ body. He believed Catholics are not Christians and they do not know Jesus. For him the Pope is an anti-Christ who does the job of the devil and very soon Catholic Church will pledge allegiance to the devil. By implication the Catholic Church is yet to pledge the allegiance. Okotie has long been known as a stuntman and that is why his congregation was bewildered as he spoke. When I was browsing the Internet for a character we can compare Okotie with, the search engine presented the name: Florida Pastor, Terry Jones.

Here is a pastor in the United States of America who is also controversial. Jones organized a Koran-burning event in Polk County, a small town in Florida, to commemorate the death of nearly 3,000 Americans in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The Police arrested him and never allowed the Koran-burning event to take place. Similar event he organized in 2011 triggered riots throughout the Muslim world. A video posted on YouTube, which he promoted triggered anti-American violence across the Middle East involving mob rioting at United States missions in Tunisia, Sudan and Morocco.

The common denominator is the penchant of both men to desecrate other people’s belief through their words and actions. Okotie tries to achieve three objectives trying to destroy the Catholic beliefs and practices:

•To populate his church with Catholic members. He encouraged his church members to evangelize Catholic followers.

•To pretend to have the skill about Catholic doctrines and beliefs

•To pretend to be radical for Christ, hence his attempt to make Catholic Church appear satanic.

Though Okotie is popular for the wrong things like penchant to desecrate other people’s faith and marrying twice and divorcing twice, the Catholic Church will not join issues with him. The history, belief and practices of the church articulate the church’s vindication. Skill acquisition is about digging deep to understand your subject. Okotie did not give a hoot. He would rather rely on shallow intuition for his preaching. What he has done is regarded as heresy in learned parlance, a false teaching to water down the basic tenet of other people’s belief. Of course he was not talking about the Catholic Church I was born into, a church that bred me, but rather about a Catholic Church of his wildest imagination.

What is today the belief of the church started as basic statements made in the apostolic preaching of the New Testament. These simple statements then went through a long period of subjection to clarifications, elaborations and interpretations coming from differences of opinions. This endeavour became necessary in order to sift the pure and sound teaching from the erroneous. Hence, the doctrines on papacy, Eucharist, Mary, veneration of Saints and sacred images, and purgatory among others, were not obtained overnight. All have the authority of the scriptures behind them. We are talking of a church whose existence has spanned more than 2000 years founded by Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Unlike other churches, the Catholic Church has no proprietor. Jesus is its proprietor and that is why it will continue to endure. The death of a pope cannot bring about the end of the church because it is a divine institution. The Pope is the Vicar of Christ on earth. He is the visible leader of the church working vicariously for Christ, the head of the church. He is the successor of St. Peter, the prince of the Apostles. The supreme pontiff of the universal church remains an integrated symbol for Catholics. He remains the conscience of the world. His office stands for world justice, world development, and world peace. The Pope is a world leader per excellence. His office reminds the world of a suffering servant who came for the emancipation and salvation of the people: Jesus is the suffering servant who came so that we can have life and have it to the full. Jesus came so as to redeem humanity from bondage to ignorance, selfishness, greed, and sin. Hence the pope’s office promotes a common humanity redeemed and a world in solidarity: people of all races, creed and tongue working together for the good of our world.

The pope works for world peace. As a practical demonstration of this, Pope Francis is currently meeting with the leaders of both Israel and Palestine to ensure that peace reigns where there are pockets of trouble and crisis. Insecurity anywhere is insecurity everywhere. Jesus himself is the king of peace. His kingdom is a kingdom of peace, joy, love and righteousness. His name reveals his identity and mission. Jesus in Hebrew language means ‘God saves.’ This is the name the angel Gabriel gave him at the annunciation. The name ‘Jesus’ reveals his mission of salvation, his coming to save men and women definitively from their sins thereby opening the doors of heaven to humanity through his suffering, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven (Jeremiah 1: 29; Luke 1: 26 and The Creed: Summary of my faith by Fr. Dr. Emmanuel Ojo pg. 58).

The name, ‘Christ’ means the ‘anointed’. The Greek word ‘Christos’ is a translation of the Hebrew word ‘messiah’. Jesus is the messiah of the world (cf. Luke 2: 11; Matt: 20). God the father anointed Jesus, God the son, with the spirit who is the anointing (Matt 16: 16). While Catholics worship God, the creator of the world and author of human life, and Jesus Christ, the redeemer of man, we honour Mary, the mother of Jesus: not worship her. We are not to be blamed for honouring Mary; Okotie should rather blame angel Gabriel who was the first to honour her by calling her blessed (Luke 1: 28). All we say of Mary is related to her role as the Mother of our Saviour. This is the same way Okotie honours his biological mother. Mary is not only a biological mother, but also a spiritual mother. If I can hang my mother’s portrait in my living room as a reminder of the deep feelings we shared together, nothing stops a sane person hanging a portrait of Mary same way to remind us of the deep biological feelings Jesus shared with his mother as well as deep spiritual feelings we shared with her as the mother of our saviour. The honour Catholics give to Mary neither reduces Jesus as a dignified person nor removes his merit as the Saviour of the world.
 

Jesus remains essentially the centre of our faith and worship. He is the patrimony of the scriptures for the Catholics. We do not worship Satan. We are not on the way to pledge allegiance to Satan. Newspapers are constrained by space. If not, we would have enlightened Okotie on other aspects of the church’s belief highlighted in this piece. However, these few lines serve to affirm the foundation of our faith, the fact that we are not for Satan, not on the way to hell. Next time Okotie is on the pulpit, he should concentrate on subjects that will enhance the relationship of members of his church with their God, not on petty subject as condemning and judging other people and their belief. Judging people is against the tenet of Christianity. Jesus is the only one with right to judge.

•Kehinde is a Lecturer, Catholic Institute of West Africa (CIWA) Port Harcourt, but wrote this article from Lagos. E-mail: kennyat70@yahoo.com