The Asante Mampong Area branch of the Apostolic Church, Ghana, has launched its 80th anniversary festivity with a call on Ghanaians to be humble, steadfast and contribute diligently to building a prosperous nation.

The Church also advised Christians to personally make use of the divine healing powers conferred on them by the Holy Spirit and avoid frequenting prayer camps for solutions to their physical and spiritual problems.

Pastor Stephen Darko, Mampong Area Pastor said: “I wonder why people move from prayer camp to camp when God has bestowed gifts of healing in everyone.”

Preaching on the theme: “Celebrating Christ, Consistent Companion,” Pastor Darko said the Apostolic Church – Ghana, described ‘as the mother of Pentecostalism,’ had experienced many breakaways of members and challenges, which were sufficient to collapse the Church but Christ had been their consistent companion.

In spite of the separations, he said, “Today, the Church has over 3,000 branches in the country, and we will continue to stick to its principles as enshrined in the bible.”

The Church, he said, thrived on the tenets of the unity of God - the trinity- the utter depravity of human nature; the necessity for repentance and regeneration and the eternal doom of the unrepentant.

Pastor Darko said, therefore, the purpose of the Church was to preach “the Gospel of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ according to the Holy Scriptures as originally written, and the teaching of the Scriptures conformable to our understanding.”

Giving the background of the Church, he explained that in 1904-5, Wales experienced an outbreak of Revival through the Holy Spirit, which had tremendous effect on many parts of the British Isles.

As a result, there sprung up Pentecostal groups worldwide, which also believed that the gifts of the Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers of Ephesians, should operate in the Church together with the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit spelt out in 1 Corinthians.

The Apostolic Church was, therefore, born in 1915 in Penygroes, South Wales, United Kingdom.

He said in 1935, Pastor George Perfect, a British missionary, who was posted to Nigeria, was directed by the Missionary Office in Bradford, England, to visit the Christian group at Asamankese.

Eventually, the Asamankese group accepted to become members of The Apostolic Church and wholeheartedly embraced the Tenets of the Church.

Pastor George Perfect formally ordained the leader of the group, Peter Newman Anim, as the first African Pastor of The Apostolic Church, Gold Coast.