THOSE of you who have been around within the church or students of church history know why and when the Charismatic (read Pentecostal) stopped memorial services.
They were being used as a veneer to perform traditional and cultural rituals, kurowa guva or chenura in Shona when the church leaders had left the function.
Within the African tradition and culture, the church is finding it difficult to have members draw the line in understanding their relationship with their late loved ones.
Cults who allow appeasing for the dead haven’t made things better.
There’s “soft” ancestral worship.
Members “remember” their departed loved ones through yearly celebrations of the life of departed.
It could be late parents or spouses.
In the internet age, the first culprit is social media.
Members use pictures of their dead ones as profile pictures and logos.
Someone is already saying; pastor it’s just a picture.
Yes, it’s a picture of your spiritual realm.
Without in-depth Biblical Spiritual teaching on tattoos, some have gone further to tattoo their late loved ones making a permanent mark or memorial for communion and communication with the dead.
If you’re saved, please read our teaching on New Creation to clear in your spirit with tattoos meaning nothing to the inner man.
In African tradition anyway, there are no dead people, we have the living dead.
There’s a memorial built in the mind and spirit.
To make matters worse, some Bible teachers have not been able to explain why believers should not hear from the dead.
Members are having dreams about the dead giving them exact details of things around them.
Many are led by dreams featuring their late loved one.
There has to be a concerted effort to teach the Bible truth.
Demonic or evil family monitoring spirits know all the details in the realm of what is common knowledge.
They are called familiar spirits.
They know who wasn’t married in your family history.
Never ever pay heed to dreams playing in your subconscious with imagery of those you honoured.
Some denominations and ministries have made things worse by pointing to late founders.
When you dream your late parents giving you directions as a believer, please refuse that.
The information may be very true.
Satan through demons know exactly when your late parents asked you for money or something you didn’t have.
For one reason or another you didn’t do it and now they’re dead and their images are appearing in your dreams and it’s so real to you.
Go to the Bible and listen for directions from the Holy Spirit.
You’re killing bulls, sheep and goats or even clothes to worship the dead. Wake up.
Spiritually mature people know how to discern and test all spirits.
In part the Bible says in Deuteronomy 18:11, “Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.”
In other words, don’t listen to the dead.
Isaiah 8:19 guides, Amplified, “When the people [instead of trusting God] say to you, “Consult the mediums [who try to talk to the dead] and the soothsayers who chirp and whisper and mutter,” should not a people consult their God?
Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living?”
Please read the full story where King Saul consulted a spirit medium with a familiar spirit to get advice from the then dead Samuel.
I quote 1 Samuel 28:15,19, “[15] And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do. [19] Moreover the LORD will also deliver Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines: and to morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me: the LORD also shall deliver the host of Israel into the hand of the Philistines.”
Please bring to closure your dealings with the dead.
They’re not seeing what you’re doing.
The African culture and traditions are contradictory and don’t even support dreaming the dead.
They say if you’re dreaming the dead speaking to you, they’re calling and soon you will join them.
You’re naively descending into ancestral worship and if you’re not careful you will soon be convinced to die and follow them without finishing your divine assignment and purpose in life.
Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. Grace and peace be multiplied to you through knowledge.