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Introduction
Pastor Mensa Otabil, Founder of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), has challenged the African Church to resist doctrinal novelty and faithfully preserve the historic Christian faith handed down through generations.
Preaching a message titled “From Generation to Generation” at the Assemblies of God General Council Meeting, Pastor Otabil argued that Christianity is not merely personal or denominational, but a transgenerational faith stretching back through 2,000 years of Church history to Jesus Christ and His apostles.
Christianity Must Move From Generation to Generation
Drawing from Psalm 145, Pastor Otabil explained that although God is eternal, human beings live within generations. God therefore perpetuates His work by entrusting His truth to one generation to transmit faithfully to another.
“The strength of Christianity is its ability to exist from one generation to the other,” he said.
According to him, Christians must recognise that their faith is bigger than their present church, denomination or generation. He noted that while Assemblies of God has existed for more than a century and ICGC for 42 years, Christianity has a heritage spanning approximately 2,000 years.
We Do Not Invent New Truth
Pastor Otabil cautioned Christians against becoming fascinated with teachings simply because they are presented as “new revelations.”
“Christianity discovers old truth and embodies it in a new and dynamic way. But we don’t discover new truth,” he declared.
He explained that movements such as the Protestant Reformation and modern Pentecostalism did not introduce new Christian truths. Rather, they rediscovered biblical realities already revealed through Christ and the apostles.
He warned that some teachings celebrated today as fresh revelation are actually “old heresies” that the historic Church confronted centuries ago.
A Warning to African Christianity
Turning specifically to Africa, Pastor Otabil expressed concern about allowing traditional African spirituality to redefine biblical Christianity. He challenged practices that make believers overly dependent on prophetic pronouncements about their destinies instead of grounding their lives in Scripture.
“If you want to hear God speak, you go to His Word,” he stressed.
Using Acts 2, he argued that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit empowered all believers to proclaim “the mighty works of God,” rather than creating a system where Christians constantly depend on particular individuals to mediate God’s direction.
He issued a particularly strong warning: “If we mess it up, the kind of Christianity we are practising in Africa today, if it gets exported to the rest of the world, it will be the death of Christianity.”
Assemblies of God Must Guard the Baton
Pastor Otabil urged Assemblies of God to embrace its responsibility as one of Ghana’s historic Pentecostal denominations and help safeguard sound doctrine.
Comparing Christianity to a relay race, he said, “Christianity is generational. I cannot run without a baton.”
Church growth, popularity and influence, he insisted, cannot replace faithfulness to Christian truth. “You can build a big church and it is still in vain. You can be popular and it’s still in vain.”
Conclusion: Grow, But Don’t Leave the Foundation
Pastor Otabil concluded with a call for the Church to pursue growth and impact without abandoning its biblical foundations.
“Grow. Do mighty works but don’t leave the foundation. Rise to the highest height but let your feet be firmly fixed on the foundations that Christ has set you.”
His message ultimately presented Christianity as a sacred baton: received from previous generations, guarded in the present and faithfully passed to those yet to come.
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