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By Emmanuel Umohinyang
“When we lose someone we love, we must learn not to live without him, but to live with the love he left behind” – Anonymous.
Perhaps the biggest revelation as to why Nigeria has failed to develop despite the enormous potentials for greatness shown at independence has come from the founder of the Synagogue of All Nations (SCOAN), the recently deceased Prophet TB Joshua.
Although buried, his good deeds which took the world by storm will remain eternal through the nations of the world because the man in the synagogue was a global mark.
For some of us who were lucky enough to be very close to him, we generally observed in amazement how he was able to combine many rare virtues, which were the main reasons he rocked the world.
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Joshua was not your typical pastor who because of fame, money, connections and whatnot have you despised anyone, regardless of race, tribe or religion. He was a citizen of the world. There was never any doubt that his background as someone who was born from the ashes of his sleepy community of Arigidi Akoko shaped his worldview.
He saw his pastoral calling as a task that had to be done exactly as Jesus Christ did and he committed everything he had to this project until he breathed his last.
Watching him alone was evangelism in itself, for he was doing unimaginable things that were least expected of a man of his stature around the world, even at the risk of his health and safety. Even when God began to reward his efforts and expand his congregation around the world, he allowed Jesus to show it to the world as he avoided the media like a plague.
Despite this, the media never left him alone, they used the Prophet to sell their stories because the mere mention of his name was enough to sell their newspapers.
Oddly enough, many of those stories were just gibberish, concocted to tarnish his growing profile, locally and internationally, but he was never disturbed. For him, he had a job to do because he believed that God’s work was too much to put aside, to start fighting enemies who never saw anything good in what he was doing. He believed he would be distracted, on too small a challenge to hinder the project entrusted to him by the Almighty.
In fact, he was telling us that distraction is a very powerful tool of Satan in preventing the children of God from reaching their destinations. Oddly enough, some of his greatest translators were enemies in the body of Christ who are obviously jealous of his profile.
They are influential pastors who were never offended in any way by the Prophet but who regarded him as a man who should be cast out of the vineyard. They expected him to be angry, not Joshua, for he even forgave them before they asked to be forgiven because his heart held no grudge against anyone.
He saw in their hatred the lubricant to fly even higher than they expected, even as the world became his church, much to the astonishment of his enemies. Even when he had a medium to castigate his opponents, Joshua chose to devote him to preaching messages of love, forgiveness, and sacrifice.
If he had sued the media, both local and international, for damaging his reputation, he would have made his fortune on that alone.
Today, some of these media groups have turned a new leaf, without the Prophet contacting them because he allowed his Creator to fight for him.
He believed that our Creator is the ultimate fighter and has enough weapons to fight for all those who have been wrongly accused as long as he maintains his faith in him.
A reporter from one of the major newspapers recently recounted how a member of the Prophet’s church approached him to make a damaging story about the man of God.
He later went to see Joshua to balance the story only to find that the widow was in Joshua’s pay and that her children had been sent to school by the cleric.
The reporter was stunned after the prophet called the woman to come for more money, and had to challenge the woman who broke down in tears and begged for forgiveness after collecting the money.
Of course, she was immediately forgiven by Joshua who advised her not to sin any more. He’s the man in the synagogue for you.
He was a man who saw the world as a stage to perform his divine mission and maximized the privilege of touching lives like never before. Although he was well-to-do, he was never ostentatious and his hands were primarily intended for offering help, especially to the needy.
He was not one of those pastors living in luxury apartments, driving the best cars and buying planes while their people languished in poverty. Joshua was not one of those whose church established universities that cannot be funded by poor members of their church. He was in a class of his own.
A place like Lagos where he lived and died would have declared a public holiday in honor of such an enigma, but not the current state government. As the nation, from the president to the National Assembly and most states, has risen to the occasion, Lagos, a state that prides itself on being the “Center of Excellence”.
At the very least, the governor of the state was simply lost at sea, from start to finish in anything related to the death and burial of the Prophet.
Even the press release of condolences to the church and family did not come until after many states and nations had made their own.
Surprisingly, Joshua’s contributions to the growth and development of Lagos cannot be overstated. In fact, no other state in this country has benefited from his personae which drew tons of money in local and foreign currencies into state coffers.
There was no doubt that he was the main source of income for the nation and it all came through Lagos, which was his base.
It was therefore immature and illogical on the part of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State not to have been a critical part of the events before and during his burial which was honored by his colleagues in other states, including Ondo. .
The Prophet’s philanthropy was legendary – health, education, sports, empowerment, infrastructure, evangelism, and many others too numerous to mention, of which Lagos was a beneficiary.
If he had reacted, Joshua would have, in his usual style, smiled and brushed aside these, because he is not one of those men of God always in bed with the famous and the rich.
His greatest joy would be to have served his creator with all his might to the end and that the poor, the weak, the sick, the homeless and the desperate he loved so much were there for him until the end. .
He was more concerned with the stewardship he would render to his creator regarding his stay on earth. In fact, the deluge of tributes he has received across the world since his passing is legendary. His funeral took on an international dimension as friends and supporters were physically present from all parts of the world to bid farewell to these difficult times.
Indeed, a king would not have received the kind of honor bestowed upon him by the brave people of Ikotun who closed their business for a week in his honor. The takeaway from Joshua’s life and death is that we need to stay true to our beliefs, not worrying about distractions in our path, as this is the key to ultimate victory.
Farewell, the man in the synagogue.
Umohinyang, social commentator and public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja
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