The founder of Abel Damina Ministries and Power City International, Pastor Abel Damina, has stirred conversations after saying that smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol are not sins.
During his New Year’s Eve sermon on Tuesday, Pastor Damina challenged popular beliefs, emphasizing that these acts are often misunderstood as sinful.
“I’ve told you alcohol is not a sin. I’ve told you cigar is not a sin. If you like, put it on newspaper headline, I said it,” he declared during the sermon.
However, he clarified that he was not promoting smoking or drinking, urging his audience to act wisely.
“Am I saying you should smoke? You should have sense from your father’s house to know that cigar will cut short your life,” he explained. “Am I saying you should drink alcohol? You should know that if you drink alcohol, you will lie down inside a gutter. Your shirt and trousers will disappear. You should have the sense to know that.”
Pastor Damina also addressed theological interpretations of sin, using the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to make his point. He questioned the traditional belief that their sin was tied to eating the fruit of the forbidden tree.
“Adam and Eve ate nothing,” he argued. “Adam and Eve didn’t eat anything. Were you there? You were not there. So how do we know whether they ate something or not? Jesus was there. Was Jesus there in the Garden of Eden? Yes. Can Jesus explain to us what happened? Yes.”
Quoting Mark 7:18-21, he emphasized that sin stems from the heart, not from what a person consumes.
“If they (Adam and Eve) ate, it’ll go to their stomach. It’ll digest and go to toilet. They’ll be free,” Damina said. “There’s nothing a man eats that enters his heart. It’ll go to the digestive system, and it’ll go out somehow. It is what comes out of a man that defiles a man, not what goes in. What makes you a sinner is what you’re thinking, not what you’re eating.”
