The Abel Damina Question
By: Deji Yesufu
The million-dollar question on Abel Damina’s neck is this: is he a false teacher, a heretic, or a God-sent reformer of our day? When the Protestant Reformation began in earnest in the 16th century, Roman Catholics often referred to them as heretics. The protestants called the Pope the Antichrist. There is never an end to name-calling between religious groups. Nonetheless, as a commentator on religion, I feel that it is incumbent on me to explain to those who read what I write what I think of Abel Damina. I have given a speech on him before on the Reformed Naija TV (RNTV). This essay will be a culmination of my thoughts on this man who has come to be quite divisive in the Nigerian religious space. At the RNTV, we extended a public invitation to Damina to come and speak to us. This is after I had sent him a private email. We got no response. It was following this that the Honest Bunch got him to speak on their podcast. While I still think many questions were left unanswered following Damina’s visit to that show, enough was said on that set for one to draw some healthy conclusions about who Damina is.
A lot can be deduced from the background of a man. I learnt that Damina is from Saminaka in Kaduna State. His parents were pastors, carrying out mission work with the Assemblies of God. Assemblies of God are some of the foremost Pentecostal denominations in the world. He explained that things were very difficult for his missionary parents – and I understand this; not from experience but from hearing stories from missionaries’ children, who were greatly deprived because their parents feared God too much to manipulate church finances and politics to their advantage. Damina also explains how he met the Lord Jesus Christ. He did not see a vision or hear from an angel. Rather, he considered carefully the religion that his parents proposed to him and made an intelligent commitment to follow Jesus Christ. He did not mention this but missionary duties may have taken him to Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. He settled to work there and God blessed his ministry. Having been in missions since 1984, and also associated with the biggest names in Nigerian Pentecostalism, including Archbishop Benson Idahosa, Abel Damina can be said to have seen it all in Christian ministry in Nigeria. Besides this, his hailing from northern Nigeria, a region that is constantly under persecution from Moslems, must have deepened his faith in Jesus Christ. Damina’s eventual renouncing of the Prosperity Message would have come from his understanding of what true Christian practices were, compared to the false Christianity of the Word of Faith movement he once imbibed.
Another positive that can be gleaned from Damina’s testimony is how he eventually renounced the Prosperity Gospel. When he spoke of being empty, and seeking something other than the wealth, fame, and attention that that kind of ministry brings, it is something a lot of us who were once in that system can testify to. One clear doctrine that Jesus Christ taught was that there are only two gods in our world: mammon and God. It can only take God the Holy Spirit for a man to renounce the god of mammon. When Damina warns against the errors of tithing, it is not so much as to condemn tithing as a practice but to point at the system of mammon that many churches can turn it into. And this spirit of mammon can be found in all denominations – it is not just the Pentecostals that are peddling it. I digress. As a friend has pointed out on Facebook, godly discernment is our ability to point out what is true even within a false system; and also, state what is false within a true system. Whatever else we may hold against Abel Damina, he is pointing at something the Lord of the Church is concerned about: money has become the all-pursuit of many churches today, and it is time that true believers repent and return to the Lord of the Church who has never made mammon the centre of his activities among his people.
As we rejoice over a few good things about Abel Damina, one must also point at some erroneous doctrines he peddles both on his pulpit and even during that interview. Abel Damina is a modalist and he also espouses hyper-grace. These theological positions are historically heresies in the body of Christ and those who have chosen to call him a heretic stand on these points. During the interview, Damina spoke of God becoming a man in the person of Jesus Christ. This statement is sound doctrine, except that Damina makes these assertions with the worldview of a modalist. Even during the interview, Damina said that God being “Almighty” means that God can become whatever he wants. If he wants to be God the Father, he simply changes to this; if he wants to take up flesh and come to earth in the person of Christ, he does so; and, if he wishes to be Spirit, he becomes the Holy Spirit. “God can do whatever he wants…” Damina asserts. This is modalism. The orthodox position on the person of God is that God is a tri-unity – Trinity. The trinity states that God is one being but three persons. There is the one being of God – which is confirmed by scriptures like Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear O Isreal, the Lord our God is one Lord”. But he is three persons in this one God, and this is especially exemplified in the New Testament, like the occasion of Christ’s Baptism when God the Father spoke from heaven, and God the Holy Spirit came upon God the Son. These were three persons, representing the one God-head. Orthodox Christianity affirms that the tri-unity of God is not a phenomenon we can sufficiently explain on this side of heaven. We however affirm what scripture says – we are loud where scripture is loud, and silent where scripture is silent.
Another trouble with Damina is his hyper-grace. While he did not mention it in the interview with the Honest Bunch, it is replete in his sermons. Damina discourages Christians from repentance. He explains that the moment you are saved, you need not repent again. Now, this is hyper-grace. They are the ones who teach an extreme of the love of God and give the impression that there is no wrath with God. Damina mentioned in the interview that it was not God who sent down fire on men through Elijah. He explained that when God became man in Jesus (modalist worldview), he did not tolerate such a perspective from his disciples in Luke 9:55. Why would he now be the one to do it in the Old Testament? Damina confuses the attributes of God here. The same God who is loving is also perfectly just. The Bible teaches that there is a time for everything – the day God brought fire down on men in the time of Elijah was a day of judgment. When Jesus came to the earth, it was a time to save sinners. The same Jesus will return to judge the world and this time, he will be sending sinful men to an eternal hell – judgment. Jesus the same yesterday, today, and forever, means that the same Jesus who judged men in the Old Testament will judge them in the days to come. And, even in the New Testament, we did not have to wait till the end of time to see Christ judge men: Christ killed Ananias and Saphira for lying to the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. That was judgment. When Damina denies the truth of God’s wrath, he espouses hyper-grace and he is teaching false doctrine. What then do we say to all these?
My position on Damina is essentially subjective. I put myself in his shoes. There is nobody who learns Bible doctrines by himself: we are all products of our reading and teachers. When Damina explained that his first port of encounter, as he doubted the messages he had been professing, was Andrew Wommack, I understood him perfectly. Wommack is a Pentecostal and a Word of Faither – but he is one that you will regard as “tamed” – not on the extreme at all. I believe that Damina has since graduated from Wommack and has been listening to some hyper-grace teachers, along with some people who teach modalism. When I left the Pentecostal religion, my first port of call was dispensationalism, through the teaching of R. B. Thieme Jr. I have since left dispensationalism and now I am confessionally reformed Baptist. I grew in my understanding based on the teachers God sent my way. This is why I argue that Damina is “Apollos” and not a heretic. Damina needs teachers and not those who will condemn him. The Bible talks about a pastor being “able to teach”. I believe that the ability to teach is not necessarily possessing great Bible knowledge, but being able to carry doctrine in one’s lifestyle with grace, humility, and respect. Preachers are men with very strong opinions. If you are going to convince a man against what he previously holds to be true, you are not going to do it by winning an argument with him. It takes patience, time, and lovingly conveying your views to him. Damina learnt his new-found doctrines from people who spoke respectfully to him in a way he could assimilate their messages. If those of us who are reformed, who condemn Damina as a heretic, will win him to our side, we will have to reach him and his followers with a different modus operandi. There is no doubting the fact that hyper-grace and modalism are heresies, but you will never convince anyone about the errors of their religion by beginning with labelling them heretics. Even when Paul the Apostle was speaking to the Athenians, he did not call them idolaters. He spoke to them with respect: he said that the God they call unknown is the maker of heaven and earth.
Let me end this essay by introducing two men that those of us in the reformed community know. They are John MacArthur and Derek Prime (late). MacArthur is well known, and Prime is little known; but both are reformed teachers, however with two different flavours. While MacArthur is the fiery type, Prime is not. And both have been used by our Lord to bring great good to our world of religion. I think we can all learn to speak the truth with love. We can all learn to convey a difficult message with grace and respect. And we can all trust Christ to do a work in men, a lot more than our criticism will do. There is no doubting the fact that calling a man a heretic will protect the sheep of Christ from being deceived by him; there is also the place where you understand that this man is growing in his understanding of the Christian message, and we must convey an already offensive message with a lot less offence from us.
I hold the position that Abel Damina is not a heretic. He is a man who Christ is doing a work on, and the true church holds a duty to him to pray for him and his followers and to lovingly convey the truth to them. Damina has a great platform, and the revival of religion that we have all been praying for in our nation can begin with him and his listeners. Those of us who hold to sound doctrine can position ourselves to help these people have a better grasp of the Saviour in the days to come.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY.
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