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General News of Monday, 17 February 2020

Source: www.mynigeria.com

Closing your eyes during prayer is not biblical - Reno Omokri

Reno Omokri and an Orthodox Church priest Reno Omokri and an Orthodox Church priest

Former presidential aide, Reno Omokri has stated that praying with one's eyes closed is not Biblical.

In a post he shared on Instagram, Reno Omokri stated that he got to know of this when he visited an Orthodox Church in Ethiopia, one of the first countries to accept Christianity.

According to him, a priest at the Church approached him when he closed his eye for prayer.

Read below.

"I am in Ethiopia, where I went to an Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The priest asked the congregation to pray and I closed my eyes to pray. The priest came to me and asked in Amharic ‘why are you closing your eyes’. I said ‘because we are praying’. He said ‘where do you see that in Scripture’. I was speechless. Ethiopians are the oldest Christians in the world, bar none. They became Christians a year after Christ’s death (Acts 8:38). Jews and Ethiopian Christians do not close their eyes to pray. The practice is a European tradition, originating from the practice of making petitions to kings, of which protocol demanded that your eyes be closed. So many traditions we think are Scriptural, are not!".

He went on to narrate how the priest revealed why there are similarities between the Orthodox Church and Muslim traditions.

"Yesterday, at church, I was surprised at how Ethiopian Orthodox Christians pray and dress like Muslims. I asked the priest, ‘did you learn it from Islam?’. He laughed. ‘Muslims learnt many, if not most of their practices, from Ethiopia when we gave them asylum 1500 years ago’!? ‘If not for Ethiopia, Muslims would have been wiped out by the Quraysh in Mecca’. He went on to tell me, ‘when the Muslims were driven from Mecca, we gave them Asylum. They met us praying with our eyes open, but looking down, and our hands outstretched in front of us.’ ‘We pray 7 times daily.‘ He continued ‘men and women enter the church from different entrances and sit in different parts of the church. Our women cover their hair and body. Traditionally, we sit on the floor or on mats. We pray towards the East, because that is the direction Christ will come from in the Second Coming. We prostrate during worship’. I was stunned. These people have records. They know the name of their king who gave prophet Mohammed’s (SAW) followers asylum and the date and place it occurred. Ethiopia is a place to be!"