Comments on: Victorious Pentecostal Assembly (VPA) sell blackcurrant cordial as miracle cure for cancer and HIV

By: Gordon

Gordon — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 14:17:08 +0000

Not often I agree with you Goy, but when you’re right, you’re right!

By: Goy

Goy — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 10:39:03 +0000

“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.

By: Fr Richard

Fr Richard — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 09:21:07 +0000

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!

By: Gordon

Gordon — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 07:33:19 +0000

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.

By: hennie laubscher

hennie laubscher — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 03:23:50 +0000

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

By: Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 01:53:37 +0000

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?