“This is the condemnation that light is come to the world and men loved darkness rather than light for their deeds are evil” ( John 3:19)
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
– Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Let me begin first with a commendation. I must salute the courage and the resilience of BBC for its documentary on Temitope Balogun Joshua aka T B Joshua, the late religious huckster, shaman and occultist who founded The Synagogue of All Nations at Ikotun Egbe. It is gratifying that the BBC documentary was thorough and feature real disciples with actual statements and confessions in their own words and time. Although it could have been better it is sufficient that within the purview of investigative journalism it serves its purpose.
The BBC anchors are not theologians, hence I can’t blame them for not asking some needed questions. They have done well. That their investigation or research was for a whole three years adds substance to the reality and authenticity of what they have done.
BBC has done what Nigerian journalism should have done or be doing – if it has not lost its purpose. It is part of the reason today that Nigerians don’t know how to think or discern, or even what questions to ask of a Religious Movement or a religious figure due to a compromised water- down education, a dumbing down public (mis) information dissemination by a largely- illiterate and self- serving press.
The BBC documentary will now go into history whether anyone likes it or not. Within only two days over 2 million viewers on YouTube have watched the documentary. The electronic media made T.B. Joshua and it is the same powerful media that will destroy him, that is whatever remains of his image.
It is just.
The Joshua Phenomenon
I first got a real taste of this man’s popularity in a foreign land. A Philippino woman met me at O’Hare’s Airport, Chicago and asked, “You are a Nigerian, are you from T.B.Joshua’s church?”
I was greatly embarrassed, if not annoyed by the question and even the association of myself with that religious huckster. I then corrected her that Joshua just happened to be one of several persons preaching Christianity or purporting to preach it in Nigeria. She told me how they watched Joshua’s program even in her country. Unfortunately, I had no time to thoroughly school and educate her about T.B. Joshua before her Florida – bound flight was announced and her husband dragged her away. Meanwhile she insisted and bought me a meal when she knew I’m a writer.
That incident troubled me. How and why could this man with barely a standard education have succeeded in deceiving educated people and even whites for so long and too long?
That woman and many in her nation in the Philippines would read the documentary and now see that they had believed a lie. How would they see Nigerians and Nigerian preachers again?
How could Nigerians have been deceived by this man for so long, including many of your Know- Nothings “celebrities”? That is partly why I write this.
I know T.B. Joshua and T.B. Joshua – or the spiritual entity that goes by that name – knew that I know him. I have researched him and gathered information around him now for more than 20 years and I have nothing good to say about him or his brand of religion. I have information from those who first worked with him when he was nobody. His first technician, associate prophets, collaborating journalists etc., all have volunteered information which I have in my possession. At the appropriate time I might do something with this information. Yes, I do not deny his generosity and philanthropy to some but Christianity is not about philanthropy or generosity. It is not about giving bags of rice and oil, it is more than that.
Television and Christianity
McLuhan has made a powerful thesis that “the medium is the message.” It is a revolutionary postulation, incontrovertible fact for anyone who has followed the history of Christianity. Religion especially Christianity has taken on the form or medium through which it is midwifed, packaged, propagated and expounded.
Christianity for instance got a boost with the advent of printing but also a revolution. Protestant Christianity would not have succeeded against Papal power but for the print. Luther would not have had a chance but for the invention of the printing press.
Luther himself acknowledged this fact. He would have ended up like the long list of martyrs like Huss, Savonarola, Wycliffe, Tyndale, Zwingli etc.
But printing while helping Christianity also changed the form of the religion. It made it possible for everyone to be a theologian, the tinker and mason arguing the Scriptures with an exegetes and a church divine because of the availability of the Bible in every hands and in their own language. We still have that problem today.
Then came television. Just around the time when Pentecostalism was being born ( or reborn) in 1906 a new medium too came into being able to capture both words and image on clear picture.
John Baird who invented the television had in mind to use it to teach and instruct children most of who love to see images. Unfortunately for Baird the big business and industrial gurus, the gods of capitalism saw the inherent potential of the new tool for publicity even more than the inventor. And they hijacked it to Baird’s sorrow and cry.
The entertainment industry and artists saw immediately the potential for their trade.
It was at this time that Pentecostal brand of Christianity debuted. It was here they too saw the potential for real publicity and show business. Thus the religion of the poor Man of Galilee who refused publicity and ran from those who would crown Him king became the tool to propagate a religion. Thus a religion of the monks and the cloisters became the religion of show biz, glamour and extravagant display of ostentatious behaviour and splendour.
Since television appealed to senses and imagination people must have something to keep them hooked on screen, there must be something to sell. And what else but miracles, signs and wonders?
This was the environment that made it possible for a new brand of Christianity, modern Christianity, largely counterfeit, with neither root nor theology, and a wave of fake prophets, pastorpreneurs who hawk it and spread it.
The television provides a medium for deceit, a hiding place for weak character, a refuge of lies and pre- arranged miracles as commodities to be sold and an opportunity for barely- educated truants, drop- outs to make it big through solicited donations drawn largely from an undiscerning public and an inconstant and wavering mass.
This was the environment that produced Fatai Balogun rebranded as T.B. Joshua and others before him. Joshua was particularly lucky because with Cable network technology he could pipe his nonsense and heretical teachings and antichrist gospel into people’s homes and even nations.
We must blame technology for the kind of effects that Joshua had on the gullible Nigerian population for over 20 years without being detected. But much more we must blame a system under which a person like that capable of such atrocities including incest was able to thrive ad for so long.
Nigerians Deserve Their Fate
I listened to the teary confessions of ladies that Joshua sexually molested for years and how they had to abort for him inside his den several times. How he held them captive against their will and they were prisoners to him giving him sex on demand.
Tell me what is not possible in Nigeria? And this is in Lagos, not a village or countryside but in the so- called “Centre of Excellence” full of filth and chaos. For twenty years this man perpetrated his wares and atrocities and no policeman or DSS or NIA strayed towards his direction or saw or heard anything.
The press kept mum and saw nothing. And those who braved the odds and took the risk like the journalistic hero and warrior, Kunle Olawuyi suffered for it with expulsion and de- platforming.
Another woman bravely went to court against Joshua for rape of her daughter, what came out of it? The newspapers didn’t even give it a hearing. Boy, Nigerians are a wonder. Total blackout. But for BBC would we have seen or heard these?
In a nation where everything is rigged – press, judiciary, politics, security…what is not possible?
The cultic politicians that would bring him to account are both together in the same Brotherhood with Joshua. They too had to take fetish oaths to get to power…
So who will save Nigeria? Do Nigerians even need to be saved?
I have watched the BBC documentary and knowing Joshua so well I wasn’t surprised. There is hardly anything BBC has unearthed that I don’t already have in my research file. What is surprising to me is the reaction of Nigerians.
I read many of the comments of Nigerians to the BBC and I was taken aback. Evil is real and rooted in this nation. Occultism has its foundation firmly rooted in Nigeria as I stated in my essay on Ogboni Fraternity.
Nigerians love darkness more than they love light. There is no truth here. Nigerians hate the truth – with passion.
Here is a sample:
” He brought people closer to God”
“God is the supreme judge” ( meaning that BBC should not judge)
” David fornicated and killed and he was still God’s man.”
There were some that even cursed the anchors and the disciples who spoke to BBC. They would now need to be careful because they could be attacked and who would save them or protect them? The same security agencies that didn’t save Nigerians from Joshua?
I am told that the Punch newspaper front page headline this morning is “Nothing will change our loyalty to T.B.Joshua” – worshippers. That is how you know a cult.
[ Facts and opinions do not change the attitude of a people who are involved in a cult. The loyalty to the cult leader is for life and even after death. His enemies become the enemies of all members. Even after the death of Jim Jones his disciples were still eliminating detractors and former associates who exposed them. That is how cult operates and there are now many of such rising in Nigeria.
Another one is rising in the same mold by banning external preachers from their pulpits through a circular. No more preachers from outside on their pulpits, that is how cults begin.]
That is Nigerians for you. So Nigerians deserve their fate. Nigerians deserve their pastors, their politicians and leaders.
There are still more of Joshuas on the prowl overseeing several churches known as G.Os, bishops, pastors instead of shaman, occultists and sorcerers which they actually are. The Nigerian environment is conducive for occultism, evil, sexual perversions and immorality and darkness. It is not conducive to truth, honour, integrity and probity.
That is how Nigerians want it.
Anyone who can read the Bible and can think cannot be mesmerised by Joshua. You know the simple facts of his life disqualified him.
“When was he converted?” they asked him. He said he has been a Christian from childhood. Obviously he doesn’t know the meaning of Christianity. A Muslim by birth he brought into Christianity the same forceful and merciless severity and terror for which his former religion was historically characterised. Every prophet has a beginning, a beginning of study and training. Joshua had his Moses, Elisha had his Elijah and Timothy has his Paul but the one from Arigidi- Akoko said he has none. He has no spiritual father, he sat under no one for teaching or instructions. He was not baptised by anyone, never attended Sunday School under anyone…
Babalola was baptized.
Orimolade was baptized by the European Rev. W. Gane.
But the man from Akoko, the same land with Moses Orimolade said it wasn’t necessary. And you put yourself under such a man? You deserve your fate.
Nigerians suffer a lot because they are so ignorant. Even simple questions about logic they won’t ask and they fail to think. They fail to read the Bible. It is clearly stated in the Bible: –
“Whoever commits sin is of the devil…” “Whoever does not uphold righteousness or love his brothers is not from God..”
Those two Scriptures already disqualified T.B Joshua. He molested disciples both physically and sexually, he uses thugs to beat up those who had the temerity to disagree with him.
And when you point these out, they would tell you, “Dont judge, let God be the judge.”
So, you see, Nigerians deserve their pastors.
Salute to Women
In conclusion I must salute the women of Nigeria and even Christian women. They are the real heroes of this War even though they have been the real victims too. I see a discernment among women that is lacking among most Nigerian men.
It is significant that it was women who are among those who persistently called out Joshua and exposed him.
I salute these women. Through their YouTube channels, Facebook, media and even publications, these are the heroes, real heroes who are still fighting the battles that men have refused to fight.
When Bisola Johnson first escaped Joshua’s den and wrote her book and went to CAN – the weak and incompetent organ that pretends to speak for Christianity in Nigeria – she was shunned. They won’t hear her or investigate her confessions. That is Nigeria.
Today, what CAN won’t investigate is now public knowledge to the shame of CAN. I salute these women.
They are the ones leading the fight against abuses of pastors and self-styled prophets many of who are even worse than Joshua but are smarter because of their education and polish. Joshua was simply too raw, he had no real higher education and so lacked the refinement of culture that education brings.
I salute you women of courage. Keep on the fight as there are still disciples of Joshua and comrades on the prowl.
Celestial, Bisola Hephzibah -Johnson, Maureen Badejo, Funke Ashekun, etc. are the ones I have heard so far calling out pastor’s excesses and indignities on their platforms. Sure, I don’t agree with everything they say but it is significant that these women are bold and fear no jupiter and I must commend their courage against such a daunting crowd of lawless ones now on the pulpits.
A. W. Tozer says that “when it comes to the issue of religion the majority are always wrong.” Unfortunately, modern Christians don’t read such old writers and exegetes; they are too difficult for them. They prefer their simple easily digested, bite- size pieces by their motivational speakers miscalled pastors. It is one of the reasons why the texture of Christianity in this nation at this hour is so thin.
Nigerians, think.
I am recommending my book if you want to understand real Christianity.
THE GREATEST ENEMY ( Divine Artillery Publications, 2015)