President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Rev. Samson Ayokunle, has advised those who think it is a good thing to build a church with illicit money to have a rethink.
He warned such donors to desist, warning that such donation incured God’s wrath, rather than attract blessings.
Ayokunle noted that people will be very wrong apportioning blame to the church, because it had no right or powers to monitor its members.
“What CAN is doing is to let people know that if they bring any money that God does not sanction, they will rather receive curse upon themselves instead of getting His blessings”, he told New Telegraph.
“Our people should stop bringing illicit money to the church, it is not acceptable to God and we should double our preaching on such thing. It is part of Christian stewardship for people to give to the Lord.
“At the point where you begin to doubt what is brought is now the problem, it is very difficult to determine the point to do so because you don’t know the worth of each individual.
“However, if someone who is a public servant or people working with organisations that have every limited capacity and if they begin to bring very outrageous amount to the church that is where the church should begin to raise concern and do what is necessary.
“If they see that the amount that you are bringing is bigger than the work you are doing then you want to know if there are other sources through which the Lord is blessing the person.
“But that may also raise suspicion because some people may begin to be very angry at the church,believing that you are nosing into their affairs or you are suspecting them for doing no wrong.
“It is a very difficult situation but the church needs to preach from time to time that people should check the sources of their money and that if anybody gets money from dubious means to the church, it would attract no blessing to the giver.
“In the case of the Ozubulu church, it is even very much difficult when that person is not within your vicinity. I don’t think the church has the blame; the person that is giving is the person that has the blame.
“The fact that they built the church does not mean that they should kill inside the church. The church didn’t sign any pact with them that if you build for us then you come and kill yourselves or other people inside the church.
“They built for the church out of their own volition so I don’t see the church doing any wrong here except you want to apportion blame where there is no blame.
“People don’t put money in tithing cards again because they say what they are giving are between them and God, so it is difficult for the ushers to know who dropped big amount.
“Then where people are working with big corporations where their earnings can be traced nobody has the right to go to the bank to say I want to see the person’s statement of account. The bank can’t allow that and no church can just walk into the bank to check the account of its members.
“With what we are seeing now in Nigeria where we know that a whole house may be used to stockpile money, how much of the money people own now that gets to the bank”.
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