Victorious Pentecostal Assembly (VPA) sell blackcurrant cordial as miracle cure for cancer and HIV
We first came across Victorious Pentecostal Assembly (VPA) back in October when Ofcom ruled against Believe TV. Here’s the original complaint naming VPA:
A complainant alerted Ofcom to two alleged claims of serious illnesses being cured. These were broadcast on Believe TV on 25 June 2011. The claims were included in a programme which lasted around 20 minutes promoting the work of the church known as the Victorious Pentecostal Assembly (“VPA”). The claims appeared as onscreen text while images of the pastor of VPA, Alex Omokodu, were shown giving “healing” to followers at the church. The onscreen text claims referred to by the complainant were shown on the bottom third of the screen in white lettering on a black background: “HIV IS HEALED” and “CANCER IS HEALED”.
This complaint came against the backdrop of the harrowing story of three people in London with HIV dying after they stopped taking life saving drugs on the advice of their Evangelical Christian pastors.
Today brings fresh revelations of the same nature relating to Victorious Pentecostal Assembly:
Cancer and HIV patients have been told to buy bottles of ordinary blackcurrent squash and olive oil for £14 by a church claiming the blessed goods are a ‘miracle cure’ for their illnesses.
The Victorious Pentecostal Assembly (VPA) sells the over-inflated goods with the claim that once blessed by a pastor they can cure a host of serious health conditions.
Undercover reporters found members of the VPA congregation in Manchester were told that if a terminally-ill person drank a mixture of the specially blessed litre of squash and 500ml bottle of olive oil, which were being sold at double their real value, their ailments would disappear.
A church leader who identified himself as Pastor Mbenga also claimed to have previously cured diabetes and a brain tumour using the concoction.
He said the mixture would ‘do what no man can do’ through divine intervention and guaranteed the cancer would be cured.
‘God will take over with divine intervention and the cancer will disappear,’ Pastor Mbenga told the reporters from Manchester Evening News.
The church’s founder, Pastor Alex Omokudu, who lives in a £1.8million mansion in Hornchurch, Essex, has also regularly appeared in television adverts claiming, ‘doctors do not have the answer – we have got the answer. We have got the answer to healing’.
The products sell in several supermarkets for less than £6.
Now a cancer charity has warned the practice is deliberately targeting the vulnerable and could stop patients from seeking proper medical treatment.
These charlatans and snake oil peddlers may indeed profit in this life off the desperate misery of the vulnerable, but rest assured, there is a special place of darkness in hell reserved for these evil bastards.
Tags: Christianity, Law Moral Ethical, News, Religion Society, Science & Medical
August 10th, 2012 at 2:53 am
I hope the story is straight — the reporting is a tabloid. But if true this would be blasphemy and simony on the part of the man responsible: using the name of God to drum up business and shift product.
If they are sincere, why do they sell this stuff? Rather than give it away?
August 10th, 2012 at 4:23 am
Typical african cure. Normally they also add penis enlargement, blessed marriages, how to get a girl friend, etc and some other african “muti” medicine, and the poor suckers fall for it
August 10th, 2012 at 8:33 am
Roger, they have “previous” in this regard so the reporting is probbaly not far wrong. The one thing I would say though is that these things tend to be targeted at members of the group. Like a lot of things in cultish churches they only seem plausible within the group. When opened up to outside scrutiny they just seems silly. Which is why that type of group gets very upset by publicity.
August 10th, 2012 at 10:21 am
I have worked with many in London’s African community and I find much of the Christianity I’ve encountered there is viciously acquisitive – I pray to God that he will give me material prosperity and physical health (in addition to bigoted and self-serving!). I’ve recently been working with a woman who ended up having a massive stroke (aged 46) because she wanted a new house, so decided that if she fasted, God would give her the house. The fact she had lupus and very high blood pressure was something she didn’t concern herself with – not eating all day and neglecting to take her blood pressure medication – which of course led to a brain haemorrhage. The result is that she is going to need care for the rest of her life and her three children have rather less of their mother than they did a few months ago. As is often the case with African families, the father exited years ago (single parent family by ethnicity in the UK goes, Afro-Caribbean then African – despite both groups having a higher than average level of conservative Christian belief and practice). If someone is going to put their life on the line because of garbled theology, then they are also going to buy snake oil cures.
I start a new palliative care post next week in central London and I know that I will come across people hoodwinked – through desperation, muddled theology or both, into buying quack cures (you should see some of the New Age rubbish out there!). Yet it is important not to get too snooty about these miracle cure pastors and their money making schemes. The Shrine, Relics and Indulgence trade of medieval Europe was no better and many a cleric, church or monastery made (and in some cases still makes) a fine living on the back of other people’s faith and desperation!
August 10th, 2012 at 11:39 am
“When opened up to outside scrutiny they just seems silly”
When there is a clear case of deceit is it not then the responsibility of rational christians to challenge such heresy on the ground.
The claim to the commanding and bending of divine providence is not far off Iain Duncan Smith’s christian justification for the destruction of the subsistance welfare state.
The claim to commanding divine providence is prevalent in U.K. political thinking, a capital heresy that has gone unchallenged and unrecorded by both christians and secularists.
August 10th, 2012 at 3:17 pm
Not often I agree with you Goy, but when you’re right, you’re right!