Evangelist Helen Ukpabio, founder of Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries in Calabar, Cross River State, has urged her followers to stop wishing her “happy birthday,” declaring the phrase to be “devil’s language.”
In a viral video recorded during a church service, the preacher told her congregation that she does not celebrate birthdays in the conventional manner and instead refers to her own milestone as “thanking God at 60.”
Helen Ukpabio clarified that she is not one to engage in annual birthday celebrations, saying:
“I’m not somebody that does birthday every year like Zombie. I don’t sell out my soul to devil like that. Don’t use the language of the devil. You won’t see birthday there. You will only see ‘thanking God at 60.’”
Helen Ukpabio criticized modern birthday traditions, linking them to what she described as a form of “modern day idolatry” and spiritual ignorance.
“You see people saying happy birthday! Happy birthday!! Who is giving you happy and birthday? Those are pleasantries that people exchange in this modern day idolatry,” she said.
She also rebuked Christians who sing the “happy birthday” song in churches:
“You can even see a Christian singing happy birthday to you on pulpit. Then after that you say it doesn’t mean. It means. Energy you don’t vest spiritually, don’t say it.”
She concluded by warning against adopting cultural phrases that she believes stem from unbiblical roots:
“All these things are idolatry, Satan giving us a language and the Bible says we should not speak their language.”