The picture above is from Pastor Alph Lukau’s bio – cool background, bro.

Also on the bio: “through his ministry, people are saved, healed, delivered, we have seen families restored and many miracles have taken place”.

Yep – miracles. Like the one where he brought a very-much-alive man called Brighton back from the dead, posted it on YouTube, and outed himself as a fraud.

He did start an internet challenge, so that’s something, I guess.

The fake resurrection has caused so much controversy that even the South African president has decided to weigh in.

Here’s TimesLIVE:

Speaking at the launch of the ANC’s Western Cape election drive in Cape Town, Ramaphosa suggested that a solution was needed.

“How can we work together to ensure that we rid our country of bogus religious leaders who are taking our people for a ride? [People] who are doing things that are just completely shocking of trying to hoodwink the whole nation and saying that somebody has been raised from the dead? [People] who are actually [taking]the name of the Lord, of God and of churches into disrepute?” he asked.

Good questions. Let’s see if the offending pastor – who finally broke his silence over the whole mess – has anything to say about this:

During an interview on PowerFM on Wednesday afternoon, Lukau said the only time he had restored life was to an unborn child whose mother had alleged that she had been told the child had died in the womb.

“The heartbeat could not be detected before but after the prayer, they [were] told the child is fine,” said Lukau.

The pastor who found himself in the middle of mass criticism from the public and other men of the cloth, added that he had no power to resurrect a person from the dead “except if God used him as an instrument”.

He also claims that he doesn’t know Brighton (who was called Elliot during his resurrection performance), which is an outright lie because he’s supposedly performed a “miracle” on him before.

The pastor claims that he was not involved in any kind of scam, but simply prayed over someone that he assumed was dead before joining in the rejoicing when he came back to life.

Maybe he can use his powers to resurrect his career when all of this blows over.

[source:timeslive]