African Plume

“Poju Oyemade Peeps and Mutters Like Spiritists and Wizards ” By Akin Ojumu Meditation is a subject near and dear to Poju Oyemade’s heart.  Over the years, he has devoted at least four distinct multi-part teaching series to the subject. The number becomes considerably larger when standalone sermons, conference messages, and other teachings on meditation are included. And he is still teaching it. Just this month, Oyemade commenced yet another series on meditation. This time, the focus is “The Practice of Meditation,” a series that presently contains at least two parts. What exactly does Poju Oyemade mean by meditation? That is the question this series will examine. MUTTERING UNTIL “LIGHT” BREAKS FORTH In a June 17, 2015 sermon titled “Unlocking the Power of Scriptures Through Meditation,” Oyemade taught that when God reveals the intended end of a matter, the believer should meditate on the relevant Scriptures and repeatedly “mutter” them until “light”—that is, insight or revelation—...

“The Spiritual Dangers of “Spirit Versus Soul” Theology” Watchman Nee’s rigid trichotomy system is fraught with serious problems—and those problems are far from merely academic. When this tripartite view of human nature is turned into a method of spiritual guidance, it can profoundly distort the way Christians think about reason, emotion, revelation, discernment, and obedience. The believer is taught to imagine the inner person as a three-storey spiritual building: 1. the body occupies the ground floor, 2. the soul lives somewhere in the middle, 3. and the spirit enjoys privileged access to the penthouse where God supposedly communicates directly. The soul becomes the suspicious department. The mind, emotions, personality, and will are all treated as potentially obstructive. The spirit, meanwhile, is presented as the superior internal faculty through which divine knowledge supposedly arrives. The result is a theology that encourages Christians to distrust their God-given faculties whil...

“Do the Trichotomist Proof Texts Actually Prove Trichotomy?” By Akin Ojumu The elaborate tripartite view of human nature popularized by Watchman Nee rests primarily upon a handful of biblical passages. The most frequently cited are 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Hebrews 4:12, and Genesis 2:7. These passages certainly use the words body, soul, and spirit. But using biblical vocabulary is not the same thing as proving a theological system. Wielding vowels and consonants together to form words does not validate the body-soul-spirit human anthropologic speculation. The real question is not whether those words appear in Scripture. The question is whether Scripture assigns them the rigid definitions, exclusive functions, and separate operations demanded by Watchman Nee–style trichotomy. Scripture most certainly does not. The strongest argument for trichotomy remains:  1 Thessalonians 5:23 “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kep...