By Abuchi Obiora
The recent death of one of Africa’s greatest soldiers of Jesus Christ and philanthropist Prophet Temitope Balogun Joshua came as a rude shock to Nigeria and the international community who benefited immensely from the Prophet’s selfless life. Before I discuss the lessons from the death of the great man of God to the body of Christ, let me briefly say a few things I know about the great Prophet of God.
Responding to the promptings of my late wife, Eghosa, my nuclear family comprising myself, Eghosa, and my three children then were among the first set of people who attended the Synagogue Church Of All Nations (SCOAN) in the early nineties. That was when there were no other building structures there than the warehouse type of Church auditorium with red earth (no concrete work) on the floor of the church.
The office of the man of God then was one of the rooms erected in an elevated patio inside the church auditorium with alter placed at the center of the Church auditorium.
Right from Benin, Eghosa was a great newshound for wherever any strong spiritual power was being exhibited, no matter the source of the power, so it was not a surprise that she quickly discovered SCOAN as soon as she joined me in Lagos from Benin in 1989, heavy with the pregnancy of Oguchi, my son.
The membership of the Church then was just building up as most people who come there were not permanent members of the church but were there to secure one form of miracle or the other. At that time, too, a greater part of the larger society, including the bulk of Pentecostal Churches in Nigeria and many Christians had thought that the Prophet was using a certain “occultist” power to secure miracles, I was not bothered, being at home with whatever practice that involved strong spiritual power, having started my adventure along that path very early as a teenager during my secondary school years. Still in the same pursuit, a great number of many of my secondary school mates are clergy men, religious leaders and spiritualist of sundry mien. These men, silent they may be wherever they sojourn, exact great positive influence in their social environments.
People who went to meet the Prophet at the SCOAN went there as the last regard at survival with the only alternative to stay home and face death. So, they did not usually care if the Prophet used so-called “occultist” powers to secure miracles until time, consistency and grace of God proved the man to be a fiery worker in the vineyard of Jesus Christ.
My wife and I took many people to the Church for assistance from the Prophet and they were either healed of their ailments or they received favour in their endeavors. In this regard, I will mention only two cases to illustrate how I saw the Church and my knowledge of its activities which give impetus to the lessons I wish to teach the Body of Jesus Christ regarding the death of Prophet TB Joshua.
Miriam from Edo North, precisely, Ishan land, was one of my neighbors in Okusaga Street within the high density area of Ilupeju, Lagos, and a girlfriend to my friend, Banji, who had just arrived Nigeria from U.S. Banji is from Osun State and was very close with the Managing Director of Pacific Company in Ilupeju, Mr. Adeleke, who later became the Governor of Osun State where Banji served as the Executive Chairman for the Osun State Transport Corporation before I lost contact with them.
By the time I moved to the low density area of Ilupeju Estate, precisely Olabode Close, Miriam had this nagging problem of a sick mother who defied all manner of medications to remain sick. Miriam’s financial resources were being strained as a result of the Mom’s sickness. The woman was brought to Lagos to be taken care of by her daughter. She was taken to a Doctor who recommended some drugs and a certain balm for the woman’s aching body. Within days, Miriam and everybody in the house felt reluctant to attend to the daily physiotherapy administered to their mother. They complained that after every massage session, the masseur will wake up the following morning with severe aches and pains all over the body. They suspected she was a witch, so we all agreed to take her to Prophet TB Joshua at the SCOAN for deliverance.
I offered to do that, so, very early one morning, about 04:00am, I drove them in my wife’s Mazda 626 GLE car to the SCOAN. After the registration and clearance formalities, the Church service and deliverance started. The Prophet came to Mama, not to commence healing, but to indirectly warn her of the wages of sin, the implications of her actions. However he prayed for her, and moved on to attend to other people.
After that encounter, we agreed that Mama should go back to the village, and I went to Fadeyi, Yaba, to arrange a vehicle to take her directly to her home in Ishan land. Mama left the house looking strong, accompanied by Miriam as they travelled to Edo State. Behold, we were shocked to be told by Miriam when she came back some days later that while both of them discussed through the journey buying things and eating along the way, Mama fell asleep about one hour to her matrimonial home. As the 505 Estate (Wagon) car arrived Mama’s compound, Miriam tried to wake her up from her ‘sleep’ without result. A doctor was invited who informed them that Mama was dead. They buried her.
The second story which I also want to narrate here for a reason pertains to a cousin of Eghosa. I will not mention her name for obvious reasons. She is now a very wealthy and much-respected woman in Edo State with real estate assets and property running into hundreds of Millions of Naira. Eghosa played the role of a foster mother to this lady and her siblings because their mother had left their father’s house and married another man after their father’s death. After struggles in Nigeria including a brief stint in Eghosa’s restaurant at Ezoti Street, Benin City, she took herself to Belgium in search of the golden-fleece in the form only known, understood and available to her given her meager educational background before she left Nigeria.
After some years of sojourn in Belgium, this lady got clinically tested by a Belgium suitor who wanted to tie the nuptial knots with her. He found out that his fiancé was entangled with full blown AIDS, (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). The lady telephoned us and Eghosa who was already very conversant with the SCOAN, the Prophet (who called her by her English language name, Mabel) and Evelyn, the Prophet’s wife, was advised to ask the lady to come back to Nigeria for deliverance.
She came back and accompanied by one of her brothers, Osaro, (he, too has become a ‘big man’ in Benin, living expensively and using fleets of cars) spent some days in my house at Ilupeju Estate, Lagos. We went to the specialist Hospital in Yaba as required by the Church and got a positive test result of HIV/AIDS. After the period of the deliverance in the Church judiciously observed by her in company of my wife, she was declared fit and free to go. she got back to Belgium and the Prophet continued to get in touch with her for follow-up counseling. However, she phoned us a few months later to announce that the infection persisted. Before she left for Belgium, the Prophet had warned her to mend her ways, and we were told that the same advice constituted the greater part of the Prophet’s telephone conversation with her. Since she has no other means of livelihood, she did not heed to the Prophet’s advice.
To shorten a long story, I made inquiries and traced Dr. Agbalaka at Gwagwalada when he was in the news as he provided succor to people infected with HIV/AIDS. I also got in touch with a fraternal colleague herbalist in Benin. Traditional prescriptions secured her healings. Though she still tested positive, the signs and symptoms of HIV/AIDS had all disappeared. She improved greatly, became story again, and regained complete health. We were advised that she would test negative as time went on. We were told that the positive result was like a scar after a wound which will quietly disappear overtime as the body mutates. I did not ask her thereafter but she was always in good health. This incidence happened before Medical Sciences developed the Anti Retroviral Therapy, ART, to assist people living with HIV/AIDS.
The reason for narrating these two stories is to throw some light on the issues involved in faith healing. To start with, Christianity was founded on the two tenets of faith and miracle. These two tenets summarize the life and times of Jesus Christ on earth. In her book, “I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES” Kathryn Kuhlman, talking about the great miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ upon which Christian is founded, wrote “No other religion has ever dared to put forth this challenge, has ever dared to make its appeal to miracles, and rest its appeal on miracle”
In the same book, Ms Kuhlman, a fiery soldier of Jesus Christ and servant of God, wrote, “Any truth, no matter how valid, if emphasized to the exclusion of other truth of equal importance is practical error”. She continued, “We dare not permit ourselves to get dogmatic in our thinking, our teaching and our methods that we exclude all other truth of equal importance”.
Before I explore the impact of these eternal statements by this woman of God, let me quickly remind us that though she established no physical Church of her own as she believed in one Body of Jesus Christ on earth as against the jet-buying, large auditorium-building mercantilist General Overseers and General Superintendents of the Churches in Nigeria, Ms Kathryn Kuhlman is today recognized the world over as one of the greatest miracle workers in Christianity, following after the apostles and the disciples of old. In disregard of building the human temple of God as Jesus Christ had recommended, these self-seeking, self-serving University-building, General Overseers and General Superintendents seek to perpetuate themselves, using the holy name of Jesus Christ to advance their material purposes on earth.
Unlike the present generation of Church leaders who are more interested in leaving the legacy of their Church brand names than following after the footsteps of Jesus Christ, Ms Kathryn Kuhlman understood that the Church of Christ on earth needed to special branding like products on the shelf. She understood that the only form of advert needed for the Church of Jesus Christ on earth is doing exactly all those things which Jesus Christ did to give life to His Church.
These things, among other things, include righteousness, purity, holiness, love for God, and love for fellow man. I have always been of the opinion that it is not possible for a true follower of Jesus Christ to accumulate great material wealth for himself because there would always be some work of charity and philanthropy to do within the fold of the teeming Christian faithful, the same way the saints of the old communally took care of themselves.
Back to the Synagogue Church Of All Nations, Prophet TB Joshua was a greatly misunderstood person. Through the active years of his ministration of the gospel and miracles of Jesus Christ on earth, he was a very busy man and was most probably carried away by the problems of other people without giving enough time to himself. This lifestyle could be the major reason for his sudden death. He may have died for his love and service to humanity. I read that the Prophet had an immediate spiritual assignment of interceding for his Indian members who are bogged with an increasing wave of Covid-19 infections.
By the demand of his spiritual calling, the Prophet must have maintained an intertwined tight schedule of dry fasting, fervent prayers and intermittent night vigils to go with the fasting and prayers. Given this type of schedule, how much rest was the Prophet having at the age of 57? Many years ago in Lagos, a General Overseer of a big Church collapsed in the altar as he preached the word of God. By the time he was taken to the hospital, he was pronounce dead by the Doctors. It was said that the man of God had just arrived his home that morning from a week-long prayer trip to a mountain in Ibadan, Oyo State, and hurriedly dressed and mounted the altar during the Sunday benediction.
In those years when we attended the SCOAN, the man had no car for himself. The church had cars donated to it by people, mostly those in the Diaspora, and these cars, each having a driver, were controlled by the Admin. Each time the man of God wanted to go out, he would enter one of the cars packed by the main entrance at the side of the Church auditorium. Most times, he would enter the simplest car and the driver will drive off, with about two other cars following with his key admin officers. He had no spiritual assistants at the time.
At a time Nigerian men of God were known to adorn themselves in suites, the man was always comfortable on his trousers and simple shirts. You never would see him with his wife, Evelyn, who was not known by the members of the Church. But for my wife, I would not have known the Prophet’s wife, a young (we were all young), fair complexioned, averagely built and always simply-dressed lady. I saw her picture some days ago, recognizing her face, but observing that she is almost twice as plump as she was in those days.
In a most unusual show of courage which underscores the fact that she understands the message of eternity in heaven taught by her husband, Mrs. Evelyn T.B Joshua twitted, “Losing a loved one is never easy, whether sudden or foreseen. It is always heart-breaking. Grief can wreck havoc on our overall well-being. That is why its important to stay rooted to the Almighty. Only He can lesson our heartache and comfort us in these times. Seek refuge in him”
The first case study narrated here is a case of spiritual problem which responded well to a spiritual solution. Surprisingly after that event, the life of Miriam and her siblings changed for the better. I do not know how to place this, but this is actually what happened. She got a job in the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing then in Ikoyi, Lagos and must have either retired, or very close to retirement now.
The second case study was a physical problem which refused to respond to an only spiritual solution till I courageously, with the support of my wife and consent of the patient, swerved off to seek for empirical solution for an empirical problem. That is why my sister-in-law is still alive today.
Confused by their pastors who they give heed to more than they listen to their spouses, many Christians, especially woman, make the mistake of applying only spiritual solution to problems that need both spiritual and physical solutions. My late wife, Eghosa, was a victim of this, but this is a story for a biography with which I intend, among other things to honor her, a virtuous woman.
In one of my books, “The Flaming Sword”, written with the pseudonym, Rabbi Abram A. ben-Uriel, I presented the fact that human life responds to the physical science law of elasticity which opines that in so far as its elastic limit is not exceeded, every natural phenomenon, system or process, remain the same, retaining its original form.
Transformations take place beyond the elastic limit of every phenomenon, system, or process. Death, or transition of human beings, which is a form of transformation, take place at any point beyond the elastic limit of what the body, the spirit, and the soul of individuals, can bear. It is also important to understand that the elastic limits of individuals, like different textures of strings, defer from one individual to the other.
Was Prophet TB Joshua, in struggling to meet the spiritual and material needs of the people he loved most, lived and died for, exceed his human elastic limit? It is generally agreed that death can come anytime, anywhere, and in anyway, but we must be careful not to stretch the elastic limit of our body, spirit and soul, beyond what it can take. There is no doubt that longevity is assisted in human beings who are destined by nature and their genetics to live long when the individual human elastic string is carefully stretched forth and backwards, making sure that it is not exceeded. As individuals, we must study our health conditions and discover our various elasticity limits, making sure to stretch backwards each time it draws close to the danger point.
The family of Prophet TB Joshua and the SCOAN has not made public the cause of his death, and it is doubtful that they will ever make the autopsy report public. Yet, one thing is certain: the Prophet died a sudden death resembling cardiac arrest, possibly as a result of overstretching the elastic limit of his life beyond its normal limit.
With his position, the Prophet sure had the best doctors on earth at his beck and call. But the questions are: did he make complaint about his ill health to his doctors? Did he make himself available to his doctors? Was he saying ‘All is well’, ‘God is in control’ as my late wife use to say, believing so much on spiritual healing which he was an adept at dispensing to people? We loved him, and would have wanted him to stay longer on earth to heal the numerous wounds of the inhabitants of the earth. Sadly, we may not be able to provide answers to the three questions asked above.
Even if we do have answers to those questions, the answers will not restore Prophet TB Joshua to life. The only thing we, as the Body of Jesus Christ must do in this circumstance is to learn a lesson, though very high the cost has been to us, in the untimely death of Prophet TB Joshua. We must therefore refuse to take the biblical injunction, “the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh” to a ridiculous limit. We must re-examine our short comings as human beings before resting our case in God.
In admonishing His followers to obey both the physical laws of nature and the spiritual laws of God, Jesus Christ told His traducers to give unto Caesar what belonged to Caesar and to God what belonged to God. It is unfortunate that many Christians, for lack of knowledge believe that faith is a solve-all tool for all human problems. But Saint Peter had taught us to add works to our faith, that is, to support our faith with physical actions.
The law of duality in life guarantees that there are always two sides to a coin as evidenced by the fixed, immovable laws of Providence long established by God as His ‘Ordinances’ at the creation of the Universe, and the pliable, moveable spiritual laws through which God still reminds mortal men of His continued presence on earth. It is in God’s exercising of this second arm of the universal law of duality that human beings experience miracles, and it does not therefore follow that greater attention should be paid to it than observing the Ordinances of God which manifest in the physical laws of science. Observance of the physical laws of science is very essential for the daily sustenance as well as maintenance of all phenomena, systems, and processes, including of course, human life.
The General Overseer of one of the biggest Churches in Nigeria is known to tell seekers of miracles during deliverance sessions conducted by him that “my faith is greater than your doubt”. This statement, unless it is meant to shore up the faith of a miracle seeker, is unbiblical, and can never be enough to secure a miracle to a doubting, faithless mind. Faith works through and only through them that seek for miracles; to secure miracles for themselves. Faith is not transferable.
Transferred faith, or any faith not deriving directly from a source that seeks for a miracle, but who later receives ‘miracle’ as a result of that transferred faith, is magic. We have seen a lot of that before. It does boomerang, for what goes up must come down. Secondly, any faith that works miracles must be grounded on true repentance and watered by righteousness. The non-viability of transferred faith was the reason why my wife’s cousin, nay my sister-in-law, failed to receive healing from her sickness.
In all the cases handled by Ms Kathryn Kuhlman as told in the book, “I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES”, people received their healing and miracles as the last resort after several years of building up and sustaining faith in the healing and soothing power of Jesus Christ when they had exhausted all other avenues available to them, when they were already at the brink of death.
After every work of faith in healing or deliverance by Jesus Christ, He will tell the recipient that his faith has healed him. This was the manner adopted by Ms Kuhlman. All miracles happen when natural forces move in alignment with the Providential law of Reciprocal Response to meet the desire of the person seeking for miracle. This desire is formed up, overtime, by the seeker’s slow and consistent built-up of faith in the healing power of Jesus Christ.
I repeat that Jesus Christ recognized this natural law, and therefore reflected it as He did always observe after His administration of miracles to people in the manner, “your faith has healed you”. For the bearer, faith does everything in securing healing and miracles. It is also an immunity booster against diseases and sicknesses for people who insist they must remain healthy. No wonder people who remain in faith of constant good health show extraordinary signs of resistance to adverse health conditions and infectious diseases.
It is unbiblical to transfer faith for any healing or deliverance even in such cases where the direct beneficiary to the miracle is consciously indisposed as in terminal sickness or death. In such cases, the faith of his friends or relatives who seek for healing or deliverance on his behalf must come into play. Love, which Jesus Christ told us is the greatest weapon on earth, exercised by the seeker’s friends or relatives, is the only thing that can move and influence faith on behalf of the seeker.
These were shown in the case of Lazarus, and the sick man respectively, wherefore the relatives of the later pulled through the roof to draw the attention of Jesus Christ. It is also unbiblical to assign to faith alone, what faith and the application of empirical solutions will settle. In this regard, Ms Kathryn Kuhlman advices again, that we must not exclude other truths of equal importance, which truth, in the circumstance under discussion, includes physical and empirical solutions for problems that have already manifested physically.
In next week’s discourse, we shall take a summary of the true teachings of Jesus Christ which is actually supposed to constitute the doctrine of a religion founded on those teachings, and examine the synchronicity of this doctrine with the immutable laws of Providence. We shall also look at how subsequent generations of Christian teachers have deviated from those teachings, deceiving their members and turning Providential laws of God on their heads. We shall also discover that these teachers have packed up errors in the practice of Christianity, making it look like the Christian practice contradicts Providential laws.
Finally, we shall also find out that this deviation from the true teachings of Jesus Christ started with the conditioning of the Christian religion by the empires who adopted the religion as the state religion, and through whose efforts Christianity blossomed and spread across the world.
ABUCHI OBIORA
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