On Pastor Adeboye’s Tale

Comfort Obi

I am proudly Nigerian. And I have a lot of pity for those who run down their country, Nigeria, especially our brothers and sisters who live outside our shores. Each time I travel out, and listen to them talk about Nigeria, and those of us who live here, I feel nothing but contempt for them. They are so ignorant of what the situation is at home that they are not sure those at home know the difference between iodine and paracetamol. About five years ago, I remember entering a shop in Dallas, Texas, to purchase a laptop for my boy, and one Nigerian asked me if people use laptops in Nigeria! So, I asked how long he’s been home. It turned out he has been in the USA, doing menial jobs for over 20 years, and has not been home for that long.
I told this story for you to understand how excited I am each time the international media recognise, and celebrate a couple of Nigerians and their capabilities. And so it was that in a recent edition of Newsweek magazine, with a cover story entitled The New Global Elite, Nigeria’s Pastor Enoch Adeboye made the list of the 50 people the magazine featured. He is the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a Pentecostal church which has grown in leaps and bounds, attracting the old, the youth, the poor, and especially, the rich. Like other Pentecostal churches, it preaches prosperity, it thrives on miracles, and it is investing in everything from education, heathcare, banking, media to property as if they are going out of business. Atimes one wonders where all the money is coming from. But when you listen to them preach and/or pray, you will be so carried away that if you are not strong, you would, on your own, freely cut off your arm to sell and, donate the proceeds to the church. So, via prosperity preaching and “miracles,” these churches are growing in leaps and bounds.
Let me confess that I don’t think much of some of them. The way they claim to have performed one miracle or the other puts me off. It comes so easy to them that you wonder why Jesus Christ did not perform more miracles than He did before he was crucified. Watching them and their every-second miracles, it is easy to forget about the real miracles of life – like sleeping and waking up! The way they flaunt their wealth, amid so much poverty, puts me off. Adeboye is one of only three Pentecostal Church Pastors in Nigeria who I have a lot of respect for, even if I don’t believe in their doctrine and/or some of their claims.
When he made the Newsweek 50 then, I was elated, and I quickly bought a copy of the magazine to read what they said about him. As I flipped through it, I was proud he got two pages when some others got only half a page, or even a quarter of a page. One full page had his photograph where he was kneeling down and praying. The other was his story. So, I got down to reading it. Good write-up, especially about his influence and his determination to plant churches at every five-minute walk. He is doing just that. In the Estate where I live, Adeboye has six churches. Others, including the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, have only one each! His influence is not in doubt. Nigerian leaders fall over themselves to get his ears. One paragraph made me so proud of him. Newsweek: “Behind Adeboye’s extraordinary success is his reputation for honesty. While other Pentecostal pastors (including some Nigerians) have been accused of financial misdeeds or taking supernatural powers, Adeboye remains above the fray.” I was almost bursting with pride when Newsweek’s Lisa Miller who wrote on Adeboye, I guess, mischievously, punctured it by telling us of a miracle Adeboye said he experienced. Newsweek: Adeboye experienced recently, a miracle on a long and dangerous stretch of highway near Lagos, he says. His car was out of gas, and the gas stations were empty. Then God spoke to him, clearly, and said to keep driving. Adeboye drove 200miles (emphasis mine) on empty! Could his gauge have been broken?, Miller asked him, I guess in a bid to give him an escape route, but Adeboye said NO, and insisted that God intervened “because of the need… in a crisis.”
Dear readers, I am not doubting God’s intervention during crisis, nor am I doubting that God works in mysterious ways. I am a living witness to God's miracles. But if Adeboye’s miracle tale is not ridiculous, I don’t know what is. And these are why.
I don’t know how many of you have seen Pastor Adeboye’s convoy of cars. He does not move alone. How come it was only his car that went red? Didn’t all the cars on his convoy fuel same time, took off same time, and headed for same destination? On which stretch of lonely, dangerous road near (emphasis mine) Lagos was this? 200 miles? And Pastor Adeboye says all the gas stations were empty? Was this during fuel crisis? He says recent. How recent? What sort of car was that? Which kind of engine? Who were his witnesses, and I am not talking about those on his convoy? Where was he coming from? Which scientist, or even an auto mechanic, checked the car engine thereafter?
It is this sort of absurd claim that, at once, confuses and captures the weak at heart, especially, the poor in the society. So, when they go to church, it is no longer to pray to God for the forgiveness of sins, good health, and a better society, it is to expect every-second-miracles. The sick no longer go to hospitals. They prefer going to the churches and are encouraged to do away with their medication. Atimes, they believe that a white handkerchief and/or olive oil would cure them. Students no longer read. They dip their biros into olive oil, believing it would make them pass their exams. Those looking for visas dip their international passports into olive oil believing it would make them get visas. And it goes on and on. As these claims come, we are gradually being driven back to ancient times. Every illness is attributed to witches and wizards, principalities and powers! Suspicions are planted. And enmity is created even among people of same parents. One day, these pastors would claim that, like Jesus Christ, they walked on a sea, the same way some of them claim to have woken up the dead!
Pastor Adeboye’s claim pains me because I had placed him above such ridiculous claims. It is even worse because it was published in an international magazine. Now, Nigerians who live outside our shores, who think we are ignorant, would have a reason to laugh. It is sad, very sad.