The controversy involving VeryDarkMan and Apostle Arome Osayi has opened a theological question Nigerian Christianity should not evade: What happens when prayer for divine judgment becomes a public test of who truly speaks for God?
In a video reported on October 4, Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan, challenged pastors who regard him as evil to pray that God take his life before Monday. His argument was deliberately stark: if he remained alive, he suggested, their claim to divine authority should be questioned.
The episode is bigger than another confrontation in Nigeria’s increasingly combustible religious space. It forces Christians back to Scripture and to a difficult question: Does the Bible permit believers to ask God to destroy their enemies? The answer is uncomfortable. Scripture contains such prayers. But whether those prayers provide a model for Christians today is a far more complicated question.
The Psalms contain some of the Bible’s strongest appeals for divine judgment. Psalm 109, for example, calls upon God to act against an adversary, while Psalm 137 ends with an exceptionally severe expression of judgment against Babylon. These passages are commonly described as imprecatory prayers—appeals for God to judge those perceived as enemies. They emerge from a world of oppression, violence, injustice and profound human anguish.
That matters because dismissing every prayer for judgment as unbiblical would be poor theology. The Psalms give believers language for bringing anger, grief and a longing for justice before God. Yet the psalmist ultimately appeals to God as Judge. He does not thereby acquire a divine licence to execute judgment himself.
Jesus introduces an even more demanding ethic. In Matthew 5, He tells His followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. The command is not merely to refrain from retaliation. It calls believers to desire the good even of those who oppose them.
The crucifixion makes that teaching painfully concrete. According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them.” Stephen, as he was being killed, likewise asked God not to hold his attackers’ sin against them. The Christian story therefore places forgiveness at the centre of the believer’s response to hostility.
Paul carries the principle into the life of the early church. Romans 12 instructs Christians to bless persecutors rather than curse them, refuse personal vengeance and leave ultimate retribution to God. He then offers an astonishing alternative: feed the hungry enemy, give drink to the thirsty and overcome evil with good.
This does not erase the imprecatory Psalms. Christian theologians have wrestled with their place for centuries. Some regard them as legitimate appeals for God’s righteous judgment; others argue that the teaching and example of Christ fundamentally transform how Christians should appropriate such texts. The debate is real, but neither position gives Christians permission to confuse divine judgment with personal vengeance.
John Calvin’s interpretation is instructive here. His reading of the imprecatory Psalms emphasised God’s providence and justice rather than private retaliation. The believer could entrust an enemy to God’s judgment without taking vengeance into his own hands.
That distinction is particularly important in Nigeria, where religious language carries enormous public influence. There is a profound difference between saying, “God, judge this matter according to Your righteousness,” and making another person’s death the test of one’s spiritual authority. The first surrenders the outcome to God. The second risks turning divine judgment into a contest between human beings.
This is where the VDM challenge becomes theologically revealing. His argument appears to reverse the logic of the death prayer: rather than asking God to destroy his critics, he challenges them to ask God to destroy him. If nothing happens, he treats his survival as evidence against their spiritual claims.
But Christianity cannot safely be reduced to such a supernatural scoreboard. Survival does not automatically prove righteousness, just as death does not automatically prove that those praying against someone were acting on God’s behalf. Scripture does not establish human life as a laboratory experiment for validating competing claims to divine authority.
There is a deeper danger in making death the desired evidence of spiritual legitimacy. If a preacher asks God to kill an opponent and that person later dies, what exactly has been proved? That God answered the prayer? That the prayer was righteous? That the preacher was genuinely sent by God? The event itself cannot establish those conclusions.
Christianity demands something harder. The question is not whether God can kill. Christians affirm God’s sovereignty over life and death. The question is whether human beings should presume to know that another person’s death is God’s desired verdict.
That distinction matters enormously when public figures and religious leaders speak to large audiences. Words spoken in God’s name do not remain private emotions. They shape how followers perceive critics, opponents and dissenters. When disagreement is consistently framed as spiritual warfare, theological language can become a vehicle for dehumanisation.
The imprecatory Psalms should therefore neither be removed from Christian theology nor casually converted into weapons for modern disputes. They demonstrate that believers can bring rage, injustice and anguish before God. But Jesus and Paul impose a demanding discipline on that anguish: love enemies, bless persecutors, reject personal vengeance and entrust final judgment to God.
Nigeria’s church does not need less conviction. It needs greater theological precision. Christians can condemn wrongdoing without demanding death. They can defend truth without demonising opponents. They can pray for justice without appointing themselves God’s executioners.
The ultimate Christian test, therefore, is not whether a preacher can pronounce a dramatic prayer against an opponent. It is whether, when confronted by hostility, the believer can practise the harder command of Christ: love the enemy, pray for the persecutor, refuse personal vengeance and leave judgment to God.
If Christians genuinely believe that God is the righteous Judge, they should not need to prove His authority by demanding someone’s death. God does not become more sovereign because a human being wishes another human being dead. And faith does not become more powerful simply because vengeance is given a religious vocabulary.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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