CAN can’t speak for Christians, Okotie insists

PASTOR of the Household of God Church, Lagos, Reverend Chris Okotie yesterday restated his earlier viewpoint that the Christian Association ( CAN) cannot speak for Christians, especially as it concerns their well being in the COVID- 19 era.

In a statement issued yesterday by his Media Adviser, Ladi Ayodeji, he said “CAN is an amorphous organisation sustained by a Christian appellation. It is bereft of any authority to speak on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ. Arrayed in Episcopalian vestments, the leaders are the modern day Pharisees who arrogate divine honors to themselves.

“They have a form of godliness and yet hobnob Nicodemus ( ly) with enemies of the Lord Jesus. The true ministers of the sanctuary must recognise CAN’S treachery and reprehensible Phariseeism. That which a man spits against heaven shall fall back upon his face. We shall not bow to the idol called Coronavirus. Jesus is Lord.”

Okotie also condemned CAN’S proposed recommendations of distancing in the seating arrangement in churches as “blasphemous infidelity” and desecration of the Church of Jesus Christ.

He explained that he was in total support of social distancing and other safety measures ordered by the Federal Government to contain the spread of the COVID 19 pandemic.

However, he rejected the extension of social distancing to Churches because it compelled the reordering of seating arrangements and the determination of the size of congregational worship per service for fear of spread of the virus, arguing that to accept such arrangement was to nullify the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, which involved healing.