ABEL DAMINA IS A FIREHOSE OF HERESY (PART IV)

“The Old Testament Is Not from God”

By Akin Ojumu

Today’s commentary examines another instance of Abel Damina’s heretic teachings. It’s a review of yet another example of his perversion of God’s Truth. Claiming to want to bring his listeners to revelation knowledge, Damina makes the following blood curdling remarks:

“So, did God make the Old Testament? No. God didn’t make the Old Covenant. Jesus never authored the Old Covenant. God never did.” 

If you are wondering whether you read that right, sadly, you did; your eyes are working perfectly. In Abel Damina’s infinite wisdom, God is not the author of the Old Testament and Jesus had nothing to do with its content either.

Coming from a man who regards himself a leading theologian and an authority of Scripture, the idea that God didn’t author the Old Testament is beyond shocking. It is profoundly scandalous. 

If you actually watched the full-length video from where this clip was obtained, Abel Damina’s asinine remarks come right after he reads Jeremiah 31:32. 

“Not like the Covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my Covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 31:32).

The logical question any right-thinking Christian would ask is, “How can anyone use Jeremiah 31:32 to justify the claim that God did not author the Old Testament? How is that even possible?” 

If that question crossed your mind, you are not alone. I’m as befuddled as you are. It absolutely makes no sense. It even gets more bewildering when you read Jeremiah 31:31-32 together.

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the Covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my Covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 31:31-32).

Let’s unpack that together, shall we.

Jeremiah 31:31 - God says He is going to make a New Covenant. This means there is an existing Old Covenant.

Jeremiah 31:32 - This New Covenant will be different from the Old Covenant that “I made with their fathers…” This is the Almighty God Himself saying He made the Old Covenant, further reinforcing the fact that there was an Old Testament made by God. And this Old Testament, God refers to it as “MY COVENANT” which Israel broke. 

How Abel Damina can read all of that and then come to the conclusion that God did not make the Old Covenant is perplexing. It’s explicitly written there that God made the Old Covenant.

Although shocked by Abel Damina’s remarks, I’m not at all surprised he made them. This is part of a pattern for him. The man is a firehose of heresies. False teachings gush out of his mouth in hurricane level volumes.

This is one thing you should know. There’s really nothing novel about Abel Damina’s aberrant view that God did not author the Old Testament. It’s a modern-day rehashing of a 2nd Century heresy known as Marcionism. This heresy was based on the teachings of the 2nd-century heretic, a man by the name Marcion of Sinope, who was expelled from the church in Rome in AD 144 for his heretical teachings. 

Stephen Nichol of the Ligonier Ministry had this to say about Marcion:     

“Marcion had bought into Plato’s idea that matter is bad, and so, the God of the Old Testament, the God who created the world, was not a God that he could stomach. There needed to be a distance between God and matter in Marcion’s thinking, so the creator God of the Old Testament was not a true God or He was a lesser God. As a result, Marcion basically wrote off the entire Old Testament. He also wrote off those New Testament books that are very dependent on the Old Testament. Of the four Gospels, he really only liked Luke. And among the Epistles, he certainly didn’t like Peter or Hebrews. Marcion’s canon – his understanding of what God’s revelation is to us – was a very short canon. It consisted of Luke and ten of Paul’s Epistles, and even then he went back into some of Paul’s Epistles and excised some of his teachings.” 

Also, according to Got Questions website:

“Marcion denied that the God of the Old Testament was the same God presented in the New Testament. For Marcion, Jesus was the Son of the God of the New Testament but not the Son of the deity described in the Hebrew Scriptures. The deities of the Old and New Testaments were, from Marcion’s perspective, literally two different gods. Marcion did not deny the existence of the god of the Old Testament (what he referred to as a Demiurge). He simply classified this god as a secondary deity, one that was inferior to the supreme God revealed in Jesus.

For folks who quibble about whether it’s acceptable to call Abel Damina a heretic, I’d recommend they go study how the Bible and the Early Church Fathers define heresy.

Heresy is any teaching that contradicts and denies the teaching of our Lord Christ Jesus. Apostle Peter said as much in his letter to the diasporan Christians scattered in Asia Minor.

“There will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.” (2 Peter 2:1).

A second aspect of heresies is the rift and schism that they bring.

“I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.” (Romans 16:17-18).

The hallmarks of heresies are their contradiction to, and denial of, the teachings of Christ as contained in the Bible and the attending splits and quarrels that result from such denials. In many of the things he teaches, Abel Damina checks these two boxes. His numerous erroneous teachings are contradictions to, and denial of, the teaching of Christ.

What comes to my mind when I think of Abel Damina is surround sound. It’s an analogy that aptly captures his motif.

Many of you reading this have experienced the effects of surround sound. It’s a sound reproduction technique that uses three or more transmission channels to enhance and amplify the illusion of a live hearing. What the sound technology does is to mimic the way people experience sound in real life. When used in a movie theater, for instance, surround sound makes you feel as though you are immersed in the movie you are watching; it’s as if you are right in the middle of action. But it’s all an illusion.

And that’s exactly what Abel Damina does to people with his erroneous teachings. With bluster and braggadocio, he creates a surreal illusion of truth with his heresies. Brimming with brashness and gushing with chutzpah, he inundates his followers with a multidirectional deluge of errors. Pretending to be a serious theologian with vast knowledge of the Biblical languages, he creates a phantom imagery of veracity in the minds of those who consume his false teachings. But it’s all a façade.

Abel Damina is nothing but a bloviating surround sound heretic, don’t let him fool you by his bombast. Like all heretics, he should be marked and avoided.