Murder Of Nackabah Pastor�s Daughter...Can Healing Camps Admits Mad Men?

Following the murder of a daughter of Twelve Apostles� Church pastor, by a lunatic on admission at that church�s healing camp, at Anwia in the Nzema East District of the Western Region, a good number of people have come out to condemn healing practices that go on in various places. In particular, healing camps that admit mad people and put them in chains so to be healed were severely castigated, since in the opinion of the critics, chaining in this respect, is inhuman and infringes upon the human freedom or right of those lunatics. In support of this claim, the District Commander of the Ghana Police Service there told the Daily Graphic (see its front page story of July 30, 2008) that the public should send their mentally ill relations to specially trained professionals for treatment. He further argued that �there are psychiatric homes with specialists. Therefore, if anything, our unfortunate brothers and sisters (those who are mad) should be sent to the specialists, while we also support them with prayers, instead of keeping them in chains at prayers camps�. That piece of advice is good, but I disagree with the Police Commander in the essentials of his suggestion. In the first place, the inference here is that he doubts the capabilities of healers to deliver the goods, making the mentally sick sane again. In the second place, his opinion is a refrain of some people�s thinking that chaining lunatics is a savage act, in view of the fact that it has the potential of causing sores to their limbs and restricting their freedom (of movement?) Of course, as I have already intimated, these are the opinions of critics. Unfortunately, these thought of critics don�t stand the practical logic of healing; and people who nurse these doubts about the capabilities of healing pastors are sadly ignorant about the powers of the Holy Spirit. There are pastors who have been healing lunatics to be well again. And by the grace of the Lord Jesus, I myself have healed a few lunatics who are still living in their right senses. Three of them had the benefit of a miracle or instantaneous healing, and the rest were healed slowly between three days and four weeks. But all of these were chained first. So what are people saying? Come to the question of chaining. Except in a few cases, most of the lunatics are brought to the healing camps (1 prefer the term �healing homes), when they had already been bound tight with heavy ropes because of their ferocious nature. You release such a violent lunatic at your peril or that of the other sick people admitted there! What the pastor can do is to quickly pray for him or her to tame him or her a bit, and gradually apply a chain on the feet and the hands followed by intensive prayers. In several cases, the Lord will show whether the lunatic will have a miracle healing or faith healing (slow healing) benefit. Sometimes, some of these lunatics don�t sleep at all during the night, and they keep talking at random and shouting, gradually disturbing other people. It is here that some sedative tablets can be applied to make them rest so that they can be prayed upon during the midnight time. I have applied �sinequan� drugs beneficially on the wild lunatics; but these days, it is difficult to come by such a drug. However, there are equally good depressants which will help the healer to get the lunatic calm so that more healing prayers can be poured on him for a quicker recovery, if the lunatic is placed under faith-healing. What happened at Anwia Healing Camp can also happen elsewhere. It almost happened in my camp once, in 1984, but my luck was that it happened in the daylight, when the loose lunatic (a man) was quickly contracted by me and commanded to bring the cutlass peacefully in the name of Jesus, which he did. In fact, the use of the three Charismatic gifts- healing, miracles and prophecy- requires constant and dedicated prayers and sometimes fastings. This is what healers should do in order to minister successfully to glorify the Lord Jesus! Unfortunately, this is what some of the faith-healing pastors don�t do. And this contributes to the long delay in healing some lunatics who are put in chains for over one month � sometimes over nine months! This suggests two things- one that the healer is a fake pastor who relies only on herbal drugs for his ministration: and two, that he is a canal-minded lazy pastor who is afraid of committing himself to fastings and prayers. Such a pastor must change his ways in order to glorify the Lord Jesus. In point of truth, most of these lazy healing pastors are in the Twelve Apostles� Church, also known as Nackabah or Awoyoh. Almost every Twelve Apostle or Nackabar is a healer and seer. And this is bizarre. God does not pour his gifts in a lone-way fashion; and it�s time these Nackabar pastors were trained properly, at least some Bible schools so they can know Charismaticism very well. Indeed, most �Awoyo� (or Nackabar or Twelve Apostles) pastors have queer ways of affecting Charismatic ministration. Most of them rely too much on herbal and sometimes drug healing, and rather less on prayers and fastings. And what is very odd with them is the fact that they �read� their clients through a cup of water. That is, they prophesy, through looking into cups of water and saying some �findings� to those who have come to them for help. But this can never be true. Did Jesus Christ look into water to prophesy? Through water? Where in the Bible can this be found? Where in the Bible can be found the practice of tying red bands on the wrist of the sick being healed! Rumours are even rife that before an �Awoyo� pastor places or stands a big cross in his �garden� or camp, he digs a hole into which he places a goat and some juju whilst reciting some incantations. The hole is refilled- all in one midnight. Did the Twelve Apostles of Christ do such a thing? All these suggest fetishism, and they reflect the status of John Nackabah who was a fetish priest before he was converted in Christianity by Williams Wade Harris, a powerful Kru man of God from Liberia. It appears that John Kojoe Baidoo, who was Nackabah�s secretary, and who founded the Twelve Apostles� Church in the 1920s, with headquarters near the Ankobra near Tarkwa, was taught some fetish methodology which he injected into his church�s system of worship and healing and prophecy. For all I know, the Tigare fetish priest looked into water to prophesy, a thing which I saw myself in the mid-1940s and 1950s when I was young. So if Awoyo or Twelve Apostles� priests look into water for prophecies, aren�t they reminiscing over Nackabah�s former Tigare fetish practices? Sometimes ago, it was rumoured the Twelve Apostles� Church was going to be headed by a graduate pastor. Yes, an enlightened person must head that church to give the Biblical light of salvation that conforms with true Christianity. But where is the graduate? If the Nackabah or Awoyo Church doesn�t change its ways, it should stop calling itself the �twelve apostle� church. It will be called a reformed Tigare sect! But let me reiterate that if handcuffing of a criminal by a policeman doesn�t constitute an infringement of his human rights, then chaining of a lunatic is also not an infraction of his human rights. Both are done for done for some purposes- that is, as safeguards against escape or against inflicting harm on others! Healing can therefore admit lunatics!