BY DARE ADEJUMO
The month of June is a significant month in the annals of the Synagogue Church Of All Nations (SCOAN). It is the month of the birth and passing of its founder, Prophet TB Joshua, that great world changer.
Its fifth day makes the second year of his glorious exit from earth and on the 12th, the great man of God who cherished marking his birthdays would have been 60 years old.
Nations across the world would have been agog for an extraordinary prophet of God whose footprints of wonderful deeds touching the lives of millions across the globe remain in the sands of time. TB Joshua came to revitalize the face of Christianity and made the physiognomy of practical Christian living as given by Jesus Christ already in abeyance real to mankind once again.
There’s no hide and seek in his life. He was love personified. The humblest human being I had ever come across. Firm and stern, but even in his moment of severity, you would still find love encapsulated. You could not offend him. He was extra-sensitive with propulsive radiating wisdom, unfathomable knowledge of life, charming and a paragon of magnetically illuminating character.
He was completely acidic to vanity, envy, jealousy, human comparison, imitation, vulgarity and wanton desires.
He described them as those “foolish things” not to be entertained for a moment in one’s life.
TB Joshua was a divinely self-made man. Here was a man with little elementary education. Yet, with your degrees, prodigy of erudition and western exposures, you would be humbled by the self-discovery of your personal hollowness or quasi-emptiness when you sat to discuss or share a view with TB Joshua, a shying rustic village man. TB Joshua was an attestation of God’s omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent greatness that lies in simplicity.
I personally witnessed several cases of some other so-called men of God who, out of ignorance and envy, were once persecuting him but after receiving the touch of God in different dimensions, including mere touching of Emmanuel TV while praying, came to weep before God for forgiveness.
TB Joshua would only say to them: “I didn’t fire one single arrow back from all your arrows against me; otherwise you won’t be here today to talk. One thing we should always know is this: I did not choose myself to do God’s work. He in His wisdom just chose me and I know He is with me. God would never give anybody this kind of power He gave me, if the person would use it for selfish purposes or against his perceived enemies. No!”
TB Joshua was a puzzle, an enigma. He was the light shining in darkness that many couldn’t comprehend. He looked too simple and ordinary, having not been commissioned by the earthly papacy or religious authorities of the day, and for him to be performing miracles of diverse kinds like breathing, this was clearly indescribable, incomprehensible, a mystery and shocker to the spiritual ignoramuses and empty flamboyant oratorical, motivational preachers with big congregations.
That great English thinker and philosopher, John Locke, once said: “New opinions are always suspected and usually opposed without any other reason but because they are not already common.”
In God’s adamantine and inscrutable will, TB Joshua came to the scene when the acts of Christianity seen in Jesus Christ and His early disciples and Apostles as captured in the Bible were gradually becoming moonlight tales to this generation. Religious leaders had already metamorphosed to careerism and polarised with pervasive unhealthy cacophonous standards. It was obvious that these religious leaders no longer knew what they were doing then, even till today, in several quarters without any tangible impacts in the life of atrophied worshippers!
That was the turning point.
There was no way TB Joshua could have had it easier. He faced satanic conspiracies and persecution galore, but the man remained focused, with unmitigated perseverance, vision and mission of his divine assignments, which he tenaciously upheld victoriously till the last.
He took his persecution joyfully and that conspiracy against him at home launched to the outside world in God’s agenda and design for his mission on earth.
Hear him: “I began discovering the good life when I was only 15 years. My objectives and motives were determined at once. I wanted what God wanted and I wanted it for the reason God wanted it.”
“TB Joshua was an attestation of God’s omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent greatness that lies in simplicity
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That’s Prophet TB Joshua for you. Till the end, he carried his childhood with him, with malice to no one but love, charity and firmness to all in God’s righteousness. To him love is pure. Take good care of your heart because that is your communicating point with God and must ever remain pure to know and flow with Him. You can never love God if you don’t love your neighbours and your neighbours include your perceived enemies, those not of the same faith as you, the poor and those in need who you must give love unconditionally.
This godly character often made TB Joshua misrepresented by low spiritual human beings whenever they saw him attend to other people who were not Christians, just as his Master, Jesus, was accused of dining with publicans and sinners, which made the religious authorities persecute Him.
The truth of humanity as once put by that foremost existentialist Italian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard is that history would always repeat itself because man would never learn from history. Many never discovered Joshua, until he had departed! What a painful loss.
You can never find TB Joshua criticizing or talking about other men of God. He moved on quietly on his own even though he lamented the pervasive discrimination and disunity in Christendom.
Several people from other churches who received healings and miracles in his church, Synagogue Church Of All Nations SCOAN wanted to come and do thanksgiving in his church but Joshua would not allow them.
“Go back to your church and do your thanksgiving and give your offering there. We are the same. God had already answered your prayers there before you came here” for you to see how selfless he was in all his dealings.
TB Joshua was more interested in the quality of your Christian life and character. He would ask you: ‘Do you hear from God? Do you listen to Him? Does He speak with you? Do you know how much you need Him? Do you have a relationship with Him? The God’s General believed that your highest achievement on earth was to hear from God.
To TB Joshua, Christianity is not a religion but a relationship with God. If you don’t have that relationship with Him you have missed it and you are worshipping in vain.
“How can you worship a God you don’t know?” He would spiritually jerk up his congregants to move away from spiritual docility, complacency and indolence.
TB Joshua was never an academic preacher. He spoke words of life that transformed lives of ardent and fervent seekers of God and salvation.
I remember a woman nurse I once encountered where she had come to treat a patient as she stood looking at EMMANUEL TV. On enquiries whether she knew of the television station, she said that she used to attend SCOAN. “I was a nurse and member of the church’s medical team. Then the church was not rich, just managing to survive. It was what happened during the man of God’s birthday that made me stop going and besides I had relocated to a farther distance. We all on our own contributed money to give TB Joshua as a present.
When we got there to present it, the man just asked us to put all the money in one sack. He asked us to choose some people among us to take the whole money to the disabled people’s home at Oko Baba. He instructed that one of us should just dip his or her hand in the sack and distribute the money to them one by one with whatever the hand could gather at once like that to the less privileged living there and nothing should be left in the sack. I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked that the man could take everything there like that, not minding that the church itself was very poor.”
This woman completely missed the beauty of life and essence of humanity the prophet symbolized. TB Joshua believed your giving is only meaningful when you give what you cherished most. He would never give in half measures. He was extraordinarily generous and at home in humility with all categories of people as a friend however commonized other people may look at them. Every human being is unique and important to TB Joshua and must be treated with dignity.
TB Joshua was never a burden to anyone but carried all human burdens that crossed his paths. He was the only man of God holding crusades abroad without asking for any donations or collecting offerings from worshippers. He would rather go there with loads of charity work for people and the country. There was a time in Cameroon when the airwave was jammed with announcements that TB Joshua would be coming to hold a crusade in Yaoundé asking for people to donate money. This was a scam because the scammers were capitalizing on Joshua’s popularity and the perceived pressure of the country’s request for his crusade programme in Cameroon. TB Joshua in holy anger countered the announcements saying: “That cannot be my TB Joshua of Synagogue Church Of All Nations SCOAN. I have no plans to go to Cameroon. God has not directed me to go there. Have you ever seen my pictures or envelopes asking for donations of money from anyone or anywhere? Please disregard this announcement. When God gives you an assignment He would also send to you what you would need through His chosen vessels.”
This is a symbolic message for you to differentiate the chalk from the cheese in the religiously distorted world. He never allowed himself for a moment to be carried away by anything.
The lofty principles and legacies of TB Joshua remain enduring and a high watershed in Christendom. The joy today is that SCOAN is in the capable hand of a down-to-earth and visionary successor, Pastor Evelyn Joshua, a woman who had gone through the spiritual mills and rigorous discipline of TB Joshua the spiritual mentor extraordinaire who strongly believed that life’s biggest decision is what you do with Jesus.
.Adejomo is a member of SCOAN
