12/01/2024
Even before the BBC expose, this how I knew the guy was a charlatan... it's lengthy but please read it through. An excerpt from my book entitled "My Times With Fake Prophets"
Chapter Seven (The Herald from the Synagogue)
Some years ago, I came across some literature that spoke about a certain Nigerian prophet. His fame concentrated around his prophetic predictions and the extraordinary miracles he was performing. I heard about people who were flying to Nigeria from all over the world to meet this famous prophet in Nigeria.
After hearing a lot about this Nigerian Prophet performing amazing miracles, I decided to listen to his teachings. I am usually drawn towards the content of one's preaching than a person's fame, charisma or miraculous displays. As I listened to his teachings I found myself unable to connect or make sense of the things he tried to assert in his teachings. At one point I even thought I was just biased or rebellious. It really seemed so strange that while a lot of pastor friends and many believers in Lusaka were praising, talking about and even trying to emulate this man. Yet I on the other hand had so much resistance in my spirit against this man and his teachings for no apparent reason.
My numerous encounters with false prophets I have taught me to respect that inner spiritual resistance against certain teachers and preachers. I now avoid forcing myself to connect with anybody whenever I encounter such inner resistance. If this man was nearby, the best thing I could have done was to get close and maybe talk to him personally. But in this case, this guy was thousands of kilometers away. And therefore, the only thing I looked forward to, was to meet a genuine Christian from Nigeria who could at least give me a local testimony about this famous prophet.
I didn't want to base my conclusion on the TV displays of fame and splendor. I know that TV telecasts are always edited to show only what the producers intend to communicate to the viewers. So for me, TV is not really a reliable source of knowing a man of God and his testimony. I hope you know this as a child of God.
Meanwhile I continued listening and watching his free to air TV channel with the hope that one day the Holy Spirit could show or reveal to me why my spirit resists this man and his teachings. One day as I watched his tv channel, they showed a number of those testimonial clips, showing this man's miracle ministry in Singapore and various countries which he had visited. As I listened, I noticed one thing at the end of each miraculous presentation. Every conclusion was followed by a presenter saying, “You have seen all these miracles! Truly this man is a true man of God.” Suddenly, it dawned on me that, those miracle telecasts were never aired to glorify Jesus, but they were aired to glorify this prophet with the aim of proving to viewers that this man was a true man of God and not a fake prophet.
I continued taking note of those miracle telecasts and before long it became clear to me, that the focal agenda of that TV channel was to prove that this guy was a true man of God and not a fake prophet. I felt so bad that this man was using Jesus' name to glorify himself and prove that he was a true man of God instead of glorifying Jesus.
Jesus said, “when the Spirit comes he shall glorify me. He shall take what is mine and make it known to you.” John 16:14. Even Jesus himself once told the Pharisees that, “I came not to seek my own glory but the glory of the one who sent me.” I remembered and contrasted with another Christian televangelist who always concluded his telecasts saying, “I cannot heal a fly, all the healing you see in this ministry is performed by God through Jesus Christ. Therefore give all the glory to God and not me. He is the one who heals I am just a vessel.” I appreciated that approach so much because he glorified God and subsequently directed people to God unlike what this Nigerian prophet was doing.
It's a pity that most modern miracle workers tend to glorify themselves more than God. In essence they steal the glory that belongs to God alone. They use God's name to defend their own images?
Miracles, signs and wonders are given to confirm God's word and not to approve men of God. They must GLORIFY GOD not the man of God.
When I looked at the way he spent a lot of time trying to defend himself, the more he actually exposed himself that he was not genuine. Watching his followers defending him like that on TV, is what actually provoked me to start questioning and imagining what the exact accusation against him were. It seemed to me that the accusation did serious damage on this man and his ministry. So he was desperately trying to fix it at all costs. I was also wondering, who really accused him of not being a true man of God? What was the accusation all about? Or why was he accused? What did he really do that lead to such image damaging accusation?
His use of miracles to validate his ministry seemed like a cover up for something really nasty that he never wanted people to see. So, he tried his best to let them focus on miracles instead of probing him and his ways. I think that strategy worked for him, because to date there are not many people who try to probe the spirit behind his miracles or even question his spirituality. Most of the people are simply silenced by the extraordinary display of miracles.
You need to know that, miracles are not a valid proof of a true man of God. Jesus said, “If I perform miracles by Beelzebab by whom do your sons perform them?” (Matthew 12:27).
What this means is that, even in the days of Jesus on earth there were Jewish exorcists who performed miracles by the power of Beelzebub the prince of demons. Even today there are still a lot of fake prophets performing valid miracles by the power of Satan. Open your eyes child of God and don't be deceived. Not all workers of miracles are doing so by the power of God. You also need to know that, even witch doctors still perform miracles to this day. That's why they still have clients.
In the bible the Egyptian magicians performed some of the miracles that Moses performed before Pharaoh but that did not make them true men of God, they still remained magicians. I repeat, miracles are not proof of a true man of God. Jesus himself said, “Many will say to Me in that day, Lord! Lord! Did we not prophesy in Your name, and through Your name throw out demons, and through Your name did many wonderful works? And then I will say to them I never knew you! Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity!” (Matthew 7:22-23) Don't be fooled by miracles, run to God and His Word child of God.
I made a conclusion that this famous Nigerian prophet performs miracles to glorify himself, his fame and his image and not God. That's how Satan operates. He always glorifies himself and aims at setting up his throne above God's throne. That's what led Lucifer to his down fall and lost his glorious place in the presence of God.
I remember watching one session where he was slapping the demons in the air and the demonic man on the other end would stagger without contact with him. He then asked some pastor from the audience to do the same, just to show his pride and pomp. So when this other pastor tried to slap the demon in the air the demonic guy at the other end never moved. But when this prophet did it again the demonic guy fell down. Then he made a statement that not all pastors are really pastors. I felt bad in the way he humiliated this other pastor just trying to show the masses that he was more anointed than other pastors. The Spirit reminded me about Paul's writings to the Corinthians where he said, “Of course we would not dare classify ourselves or compare ourselves with those who rate themselves so highly. How stupid they are! They make up their own standards to measure themselves by, and they judge themselves by their own standards!” (2 Corinthians 10:12)
Beloved, God's miracles are not for a show off. They are not for self-promotion or competition with others. God's miracles are meant to build up people not to humiliate them. These men perform self-glorifying, men pleasing amusement prophecies about people's phone numbers, addresses, sports and politics that have nothing to do with God's will on earth. Open your eyes child of God, Run to God and His Word for safety.
After that, I completely stopped watching that man's TV Channel and whenever his program would come on other channels I simply switch.
Beloved you cannot use miracles to defend yourself or validate your claims to be a man of God. If you are genuine, you know you are genuine. No amount of accusation will change your focus. If you are accused, it's helpful for you to address the subject of your accusation if you really have to defend yourself than using miracles and spirituality as a cover up.
Shortly after this I watched Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke on another Christian satellite TV distancing himself from this same prophet. He denounced him for not being a true man of God. Honestly, that gave me some relief. At least I knew that I was not alone regarding my convictions against this guy. It was evident that there were others like Reinhard Bonnke who had similar convictions about him.
A few months later, I met a wonderful Nigerian pastor, a genuine man of God. I worked with him while organizing a crusade in Makeni with other bible believing churches across denominations. I was the Chairperson of the organizing committee and this man of God was one of the committee members in that organizing committee.
On the sidelines of our meeting, I asked this man saying, “You being from Nigeria, you obviously know more about this famous prophet from the Lagos locality, can you tell me something about this man and his controversial ministry?” This brother told me openly and said, “Brother Arnold this man is not regarded as a man of God by many genuine believers in Nigeria. He is not even a member of the Pentecostal/ evangelical movement in Nigeria. The reason for this is that, at the foundation of his ministry he would openly go to the ocean to evoke spirits for miraculous powers. This was evident to all, he was confronted about it by fellow ministers but refused to submit to their correction and it's the reason why true Christians in Nigeria would never consider him to be a true Christian, worse still a man of God.” For me that was case closed.
From these experiences, I was then able to understand why I had so much resistance in me against this man when I knew nothing or very little about him. On top of all this, in my personal research I have personally never met any Zambian who went to see him in his church in Nigeria and came back with their problems solved. I personally know a good number of those who have visited this man for some miracles in their life but none of them has had their issues solved and dealt with.
In fact everyone I know who flew to meet this prophet in Nigeria came back with worse troubles in their lives than they had before they visited this this man.
A few years ago, a multi-storey church property in West Africa collapsed killing a number of religious tourists. It seems the god of these guys enables them to prophesy non-valuable things like soccer results but he does not seem to care about human lives. What kind of God would enable you to predict mere soccer results and election results, yet he does not enable you to predict the collapse of the church building which could save lives?
In biblical times, prophets warned men about impending disasters. Noah warned his community about the flood and saved some. Abraham warned Lot about the S***m and Gomorrah fire storm and saved some. Jeremiah warned Zedekiah about Nebuchadnezzar and pleaded that he listens to God's warning so that the impending disaster may be averted. But this guy and his god could not warn his congregants. Beloved what we are seeing nowadays is more of divination and magic which is usually performed to amuse the senses of the masses yet offers no real solutions to mankind's real problems. It has nothing to do with Jehovah God. Open up your eyes and do not be fooled child of the Most High God.
The rest, you have to make your own conclusion but if you need my advice, RUN to God and His Word for your safety and for your own true miracles.
