Today being a public holiday, Bishop David Oyedepo organised a prayer meeting to seek God’s intervention over the affairs of the nation. After the prayers, he preached a sermon he titled The Mystery of Vengeance. In that sermon, he made a strong case for why Christians should be angry about the works of evil men in Nigeria, and why we should lift our voices to invoke vengeance and lay curses on them.
He revealed that we are allowed to curse them because the room for repentance is closed for them and none of them will go to heaven. According to him, it is just like the case of Esau; he repented, and sought his father’s blessing with tears, but it was too late.
His basis for making this statement was the statement Jesus made in Matthew 12:31-32 concerning blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. This scripture says;
“Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.
“And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.”
Like you saw above, blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is the sin that can never be forgiven, and Bishop Oyedepo interpreted it to mean doing anything to stop the move of the Holy Spirit, or trying to come against the work of the Holy Spirit in the world today.
He explained that when the Holy Spirit came at first, he killed Ananais and Sapphira for telling lies about a property that was originally their own, and that if the Holy Spirit would not forgive them for lying to him, how would he forgive the killers who went to his church and killed the people there?
“If the Holy Ghost refused to forgive Ananais and Sapphira for lying, for a property that was even their own, how will he forgive those people for touching his bride, for the church is the bride of Christ,” he said.
“Among the people they killed was a couple who got married the day before. They cannot escape. Nobody should pray for them. They cannot go to heaven. The room for repentance is closed for them,” he revealed.
Anybody who loves righteousness will naturally be angry at the evil act, but I believe that we are bound to pray for their repentance no matter how dastardly their act is.
For example, do you remember how Saul of Tarsus persecuted the church in the book of Acts? He was the leader of the group that killed Stephen, and he began to go to the house of the Christians, as well as their meeting places, to kill them or arrest them for torture in prisons. What is the difference between what Saul did and what these guys are doing today? He also killed Christians in churches remember?
However, on his way to Damascus to cause more havoc on the body of Christ, he had an encounter with Jesus, and he became Paul the apostle, who wrote majority of the New Testament scriptures!
Imagine if the early Christians were praying for him to die, or declaring that the room for repentance is closed for him. Or even if they were praying for him to die, imagine God answered their prayers and killed him, would he have lived to write all the books that developed Christian theology? Would he have spread the gospel all over Asia and parts of Europe? Would he have become one of the greatest apostles?
I’m just saying we should not jump to conclusions. God can save the worst of the sinners, because Jesus himself died for everybody; the least sinner and the worst of sinner included.