Why Joshua Selman is a False Teacher
By: Deji Yesufu
A few days ago, I received a rejoinder to the article Biodun Shotola and I published on Joshua Selman in May 2023, where we clearly showed that the man is a false teacher. In the article I received, the Reverend Canon Ewebiyi, an Anglican minister, counselled against divisiveness and uncharitable statements against a so-called brother in Christ. I will still get to Ewebiyi’s article. For now, to introduce this subject, I want to tell my readers how Shotola and I decided on writing that article. I carry out mission works at the University of Ibadan, and Shotola, who was a student there then, told me of the pervasive influence of Joshua Selman’s teachings on the Christian student population of that campus. I was concerned, but I knew very little about Selman and his doctrine. I told Biodun to research and write the article, which he did. I added a few points to it and made myself the second author to add some weight to the article. It achieved the desired result: that article remains our most-read article on my blog to date.
It is clear that a lot of people still wish to know more about Joshua Selman, and our criticism of him may have helped a few people in their search. This article is meant to be a rejoinder to Rev’d Ewebiyi’s criticism of our article. I understand that the revered gentleman is a faculty member in a seminary, and he would appreciate the place of examining an important subject like this – however on the intellectual plain. I should note however that I have not employed Ewebiyi’s counsel for charity on this matter. I hold the position that theology is the mother of all sciences, arts and politics and that the state of a nation cannot be divorced from what proceeds from pulpits in that country. I have taken a rather hard line against Selman and even Ewebiyi in this article because I am convinced that the matter being discussed here is an eternity issue – something bothering both eternal life and eternal death.
Responding to Rev’d Ewebiyi’s Article
The Canon opens his rejoinder with James 3:17. I wish to point out to him that that scripture tells us that biblical and Christian wisdom is first and foremost PURE. The church is the ground and the pillar of truth. If there would be genuine peace and other fruit that the Spirit will bear in our lives, it must be founded upon truth. Our essay on Joshua Selman contended essentially on the fact that this man is preaching error – not truth. He is a false teacher and we provided a few instances of his erroneous teachings that an article of that length could accommodate. Perhaps, one day, especially in these days of the internet, someone would be able to collate all the errors of Selman in one piece. The few we posited, however, were meant to draw the concerns of Christians who have a heart for truth in the body of Christ to Selman’s errors.
In addition to the things we listed against Selman in our article, I would wish to refer Rev’d Ewebiyi and others to a video by Dr. Motunrayo Adetola which he made on the errors of Joshua Selman. Dr. Adetola, a medical doctor, is an Anglican lay preacher serving under Bishop Kayode Adebogun in Canada. I mention these names because they can be verified. And since these men are also Anglicans, who are concerned with biblical truth preached in the body of Christ, perhaps what they have to say will carry some authority besides nonentities like Shotola and myself. In the video that Dr. Adetola made, he listed a few more errors of Joshua Selman. He said this:
1. Joshua Selman slanders the Apostle Paul, always misquoting him and reaching unorthodox positions on Paul’s statements.
2. Joshua Selman slanders Job. He stated that Job’s problems came upon him while he was feasting rather than praying.
3. John the Baptist has been the frequent butt of jokes for Joshua Selman. Selman is quoted in the video as saying that John came in the spirit and power of Elijah. But John manifested the spirit of Elijah but lacked his power. He said John was killed because he meddled in areas of ministry, like criticizing the ungodly Herod, that he was not meant to. He said that John could not have announced the coming of Jesus and at the same time be killed in the same manner he was killed.
4. Other faulty teachings of Selman, as quoted by Dr. Adetola:
a) Not everything in the Bible is the word of God.
b) The name of Jesus is too heavy, it takes resources to lift it.
c) Adam was not the first man created.
d) You do not rise by giving to the poor.
e) Selman taught that Paul encouraged adultery. Though he never provided the scriptural reference.
f) He says that God does not have authority.
g) That Jesus would not have risen from the dead had he not prayed in Gethsemane. Etc.
Rev. Ewebiyi is a Christian academic. He would do well to listen to a bit more of Joshua Selman’s teaching. If at the close of this, he still remains convinced that Joshua Selman is a true Christian teacher, I believe that the teaching credentials of the Canon should be carefully examined by his employers.
Joshua Selman’s Prosperity Worldview
The limited space afforded in the original article that Shotola and I wrote did not permit us to shed light on a more pervasive problem with Joshua Selman. Selman’s fundamental error does not arise from the frequent gaffes in his preaching. Rather, his errors are founded on his prosperity gospel worldview. Joshua Selman is a Word of Faith adherent to the core. Now, not many people are aware of the insidious, destructive, and heretical roots of the Word of Faith movement, and a brief article like this one can only scratch the surface. I will urge my readers to do their research on the subject. Suffice to say here that the Word of Faith doctrine is patently unbiblical. No one, before the 19th century and the coming of Phinehas Quimby, ever taught health and wealth doctrines to the Christian church. Men like E. W. Kenyon, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, and their Nigerian counterparts, including the late Benson Idahosa, E. A. Adeboye, David Oyedepo, Chris Oyakhilome, and a host of others have been proven by sound biblical teachers as false teachers of the Christian gospel in our time. They are false teachers because they preach a prosperity gospel that teaches that Jesus Christ died to make Christians healthy and wealthy. Their doctrines hinge on five major points:
1. Christ died and rose again to make all Christians wealthy/prosperous.
2. Christ died and rose again to heal Christians of diseases.
3. That the Christian life is alien to suffering: any Christian who suffers is living in sin.
4. That Christians possess the good things of life through positive confessions: “Name it and Claim it”
5. That Christians ought to have “faith in faith”, as against faith in God.
My hopes and prayer are that the information I have provided above is not new to the Christian academia in Nigeria, because if it is, we have a really serious problem in our hands.
So, while these so-called fathers of faith have succeeded in teaching these false doctrines for about a hundred years, and some succeeded in importing it to the shores of Nigeria in the 1970s, they are effectively passing the baton to Joshua Selman. This is why many Christian thinkers of my generation consider it a sacred duty to ensure that if other generations of Christians have permitted these false doctrines in the churches in their own time, it must not continue in ours. Joshua Selman is a false teacher because he teaches the very false doctrine of prosperity that he has inherited from his fathers in the faith.
A New Reformation Needed in Our Day
Anglicanism is the product of the 16th-century reformation of religion in Europe. The Anglican Church broke out from the Roman Catholic Church when Henry VIII sought to annul his marriage to his wife, Catherine, and wanted to marry Ann Boleyn – and was denied the opportunity by the Roman Catholic Pope. Henry took advantage of the reformation fervour that was tearing through Europe at the time and pulled England out of the Roman Empire. He made himself the head of the church, and till today the English monarch is the official head of the Anglican Church.
I remind Rev. Ewebiyi of the reformation era, to also remind him of the core doctrines of the reformation. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli never taught health and wealth to their listeners. They knew nothing of power – signs and wonders in church services. They taught Christians to believe the whole counsel of the scriptures and to live their lives by biblical tenets. This reformation of religion in Europe brought both a revival of religion and an increase in learning. An increase in learning led to a revolution in the arts, sciences, and politics. The revolution of the sciences led us to the industrial revolution, and to modern times – where people are now flying to and from the moon. Reformation of religion anywhere brings about progress.
The proof that what has been taught in Nigerian churches in the past fifty years is mostly erroneous, is that it has led Nigeria to become one of the leading corrupt countries in the world. We have Christian leaders who cannot speak truth to power; we have Christian men who cannot champion the course of the oppressed; the churches sat pretty as the law was trampled upon, such that judges collect bribes, etc. The churches themselves have become a den of thieves with pastors more concerned with getting the favour of their Bishops and getting promoted, than preaching the truth in the community. If what Adeboye, Oyedepo, and Kumuyi have been preaching in the past fifty years has not changed Nigeria, young Nigerian men like me are not interested in hearing them. And even more, we are not interested in hearing their successors to ministry. Joshua Selman is a false teacher, and hopefully, my generation will know this before it is too late.
Conclusion
Rev’d Canon A. O. Ewebiyi thinks that Shotola and I lack charity in the way we wrote our article. He thinks that we should be concerned with unity in the body of Christ. Again, as James 3:17 shows, nothing we do in religion would make any sense if it is not founded on truth. When God sent Jeremiah to the Israelites, he gave him six things to do. Four were negative, and only two were positive. God told Jeremiah to “…root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down…” before he added, “… to build, and to plant…” (Jeremiah 1:10) There is a sense that every true biblical work begins this way. You pull down all false doctrines and destroy them before you can build. There will be no sound biblical church that is built on false doctrine and practices. All idols in the churches must be pulled down if Christ would be worshipped right. Joshua Selman is not an apostle. He is a false apostle. His teachings are a testament to this. I do hope that charity is practised in the churches, but it should be charity among Christians; none of Christ’s apostles showed any charity to false teachers (Matthew 24:24; Acts 13:9-11; 1Timothy 1:20; 2Peter 2:1; Jude 3;). They opposed them strongly.
I hope my rejoinder to the Reverend Canon would make some sense to him. I am particularly concerned with what has become of Anglicanism in Nigeria – although it is not a subject I can thoroughly deal with in this essay. I am however concerned that if the new generation churches with their ruderlessness have been deceived by false teachers, should the so-called “orthodox” churches not possess greater discernment? Incidentally, Rev. Ewebiyi’s rejoinder to Shotola and me was titled “A Call for Discernment”. I think that the person who needs greater discernment in this debate is the revered gentleman. If Nigerian Anglicanism thinks that Joshua Selman is orthodox, while they regard Deji Yesufu as the false teacher, we have a lot of problems on our hands.
Thank you for reading.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY.
The original article Shotola and Yesufu wrote can be read here.
Rev’d Ewebiyi’s rejoinder can be read here.
In this article, I do a synopsis of false teachers in Nigerian churches.
Dr. M. J. Adetola’s video on Joshua Selman.
My book, HUMANITY, also focuses on this subject. You may buy a copy here.
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