HOLY SNAKE OIL
Ten thousand poverty affected and superstitious people are drawn to attend a prayer meeting in a sports stadium.
A promise of health and wealth with 'holy oil' that is poured on the ground and in the rush and crush to be anointed, twenty are killed, including five children. Sixteen injured.

After the mayhem a short time later, the man responsible, Pastor Boniface Mwamposa, who proclaimed the miraculous power of this 'holy' oil, is found at the nearby international airport attempting, the government claims, to leave the country, and he claiming to be dutifully headed to the next prayer meeting in Tanzania. (What people? Killed where?)

And behind it all is the prosperity gospel of the apostolic Pentecostal Church, which ironically enough got its start in 1906 as a world-wide religion, through the Azura Street Revival in Los Angeles, with another pastor, one William J. Seymour, an African-American, also born and raised in poverty by his emancipated parents.

The Pentecostal church (not all, I know a minority reject it) rely heavily on the proselytising power of targeting the material desires of the oppressed. I wonder if they realise the monster they have created with this prosperity gospel bullshit? And what do they think of the unambiguous Mark 6:19-24 which ends with "Ye cannot serve both God and mammon."

I'd like to see the scripture that says their christian god will reward followers with material riches and good health in this life (see Cowper below), the new testament stuff, and not the often quoted cherry-picked old testament Judaic wish-fulfilments. No doubt their apologetic will have this covered.

"God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;"

Written by William Cowper (1731-1800) just before he attempted suicide by drowning after a depressive illness.) Mysterious ways, indeed.