Church, State should not mix but crack law whip if need be – Rev Markwei

The General Overseer of Living Stream International Church, Rev Dr Ebenezer Markwei, has called on the state to deal with churches that act contrary to the law but must be wary not to interfere in church matters.

To curtail the excesses of some churches and the harm they cause their members, Rev Markwei called on Ghanaians to pray for the spirit of discernment to be able to distinguish the real men of God from the fake ones.

“I’m bothered by congregants who just obey anything and throw away reasoning, they throw sanctified common sense downhill. Yes, our faith is a spiritual thing but it doesn’t mean we should throw away our sanctified common sense. The Bible even goes on to say that: ‘Be, therefore, transformed by the renewal of your mind’, so, God is also interested in our mind…” he told Kofi Oppong Asamoah on the Class Morning Show on Class91.3FM on Tuesday, 20 April 2021.

He added: “In the days of Moses, two different rods were put down. One was the rod of truth and the other was the rod of magicians; that was the rod of deception but with time, the rod of truth swallowed the rod of the magician; that is deception…”

Sometimes, Rev Markwei noted, “we, as Ghanaians, are not very discerning, we can’t see through, we can’t see behind”.

“Like Jesus said: ‘I’m going to die’ and Peter says: ‘You won’t die’ and Jesus said: ‘Get thee behind me Satan’. That means Jesus is saying it is not Peter who is talking, it is someone else apart from Peter talking, so, it’s heartbreaking and heart-wrenching” to see Christians being led astray by so-called men of God.

According to Rev Markwei, a lot of Christians are being deceived because “people are chasing after quick, fake solutions. Instead of going through different stages, they are going through fake, quick solutions.”

Explaining further, he said: “Let me sound a word of caution; sometimes, they quote the Bible and say Jesus spat on the ground and mixed it with clay to heal. We call those things the peculiarities, which are not normal, which are not ordinary but they are the supernatural and supernormal. When somebody engages in those things, it must be immediately followed by results. If there are no results and the results are not immediate, it creates room for doubt and it creates faith challenges for the recipient of that so-called miracle and for you yourself, the source of that miracle…”

Sharing his views on the role of the state in dealing with the excesses of some pastors, Rev Markwei intimated: “We have the state and we have the church. Definitely, state and church should not mix. There are laws in the land and they are laws enacted many years ago and those laws must be made to work”.

“By Executive Instrument, we were made to observe covid-19 safety protocols and, therefore, if I’m not practising it and I say by faith, my people shouldn’t wear a mask, they shouldn’t do this, the law provides solutions to these kinds of nonsense and I can’t say because of my faith, I’ll endanger the lives of people”.

“So, there are laws and those laws must be looked at; either we may fine-tune them but I’m against legislation against the church; that is interference. We must be made to self-govern and there are laws and if those laws are being broken, we have institutions that have been empowered to make sure the laws are not been broken and those institutions must rise up and do their job…”