The UniZulu choir performing at the inaugural Judiciary Annual Report presentation on Friday. Among other songs, the choir sang Great is Thy Faithfulness for attendees. (PHOTO:Office of the Chief Justice, @OCJ_RSA).
Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng’s wish for the Church in South Africa is for it to repent and to speak out with one voice against wrongdoing in its midst.
Speaking after the launch of the first ever Judicial Accountability Session in SA, Mogoeng said he believed the Church has become “lukewarm at best”, if not “very cold”. in that it allowed the commercialisation of faith, which paved the way for possible external interference in church governance.
United stand
He urged church leaders to take a strong, united stand against false prophets in order to deliver the Church from those who seek to regulate her, and to play a vital role in helping SA and the nations of Africa to realise their divine destinies.
“The church, barring exceptions, has focussed more on self. People boast about the size of their congregations; the important people — so-called, — who are members; how much offerings and tithes are received; how many powerful vehicles gather at their services; how many of the congregants have private jets.
Listen to interview audio of Chief Justice Mogoeng speaking on the Church
“There is a focus on money, on materialism with a result that holiness is no longer preached; love is no longer preached. There is a disgraceful amount of self-centeredness and greed that has been left to flourish by the c=Church of God. So my wish is for the Church to go back to the fundamentals,” said Mogoeng.
Early church
He pointed to the success of the very early church being built on the principle of making disciples of men based on the Gospel. He drew from Scripture on how Jesus dealt with commercialisation in God’s house and said Christians had to speak up for what is right.
He listed practices that he believes are corrupting the Gospel: “Selling holy water — whether it’s holy or not, I don’t know. Selling vaselines with the pictures of people, selling all sorts of elements and instruments — saying that they have power.
“These days, where prayer is sold, you can buy prayer for half a million. There is prayer for seven thousand, there if prayer for five hundred. That’s absolute corruption of the Gospel. We’ve got to be so sensitive to the leading of the Spirit of God that we pray individually and corporately for God to expose, uproot, and destroy those End-Times false prophets — the antiChrist masquerading as disciples of Christ.”
Headlines
In SA, a number of churches have made headlines for reportedly feeding congregants anything from snakes to insecticide.
The impassioned chief justice spoke out vehemently against those who “feed people with snakes and rats and ants and petrol and diesel, just to be seen to be relevant, just to be seen to be different, just to be seen to be gathering huge crowds just because of the melodramatic approach to matters spiritual.”
He called on the body of Christ to not shy away from condemning such practices and to become united in the process.
“We’ve got to be so sensitive to the leading of the Spirit of God that we pray individually and corporately for God to expose, uproot, and destroy those End-Times false prophets — the Antichrist masquerading as disciples of Christ.”
According to Mogoeng, the Church has only itself to blame for being pursued.
“I think if the Church of God can be proactive in ensuring that the right thing happens and speak out against wrongdoing, then those who are inclined to clip the wings of the Church of God would retreat because then we would be united and they would know, since the majority of the citizens of this country are Christians, that if you touch them united as they are, you might not get the vote that you want if you regulate them in a manner that does not accord with their preference as inspired by the Spirit of God,” he said.
“We need to pray urgently for love to set in, caring to set in, holiness to set in, and obedience to the commandments of God to set in. That way we will be able to become that critical force that is needed, especially now, in South Africa and Africa to have the dream, the vision of God about these nations to come to pass.”