TB Joshua: The man with life’s biggest decision
This month marks the second year of Prophet TB Joshua’s exit from earth. Also, this month would have made the great man of God who cherished marking his birthdays 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 sand of time. TB Joshua came to revitalise the face of Christianity.
There’s no hide and seek in his life. He was love personified. The humblest human being I have ever come across. Firm and stern, even in his moment of severity, you would still find love encapsulated. You cannot offend him. He is extra sensitive with propulsively 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 one of 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 sit 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 and 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.
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 looked too simple and ordinary, not commissioned by the earthly papacy or religious authorities of the day and for him to be performing miracles of diverse kinds. This was clearly indescribable, incomprehensible, a mystery and shock to the spiritual ignoramuses and empty flamboyant oratorical, motivational preachers with big congregations.
The 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 and His early disciples and apostles as captured in the Bible were gradually becoming moonlight tales to this generation. Some religious leaders had already metamorphosed to careerism and polarised with pervasive unhealthy cacophonous standards. It was obvious that the religious leaders knew what they were doing then even till today in several quarters without any tangible impacts in the life of atrophied worshippers!
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 said, “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.” That’s Prophet TB Joshua. Till the end, he carried his childhood with him without 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 in the same faith with you, the poor and those in need who you must give love unconditionally.
This godly character often made TB Joshua to be misrepresented whenever they saw him attend to other people who were not Christians. The truth of humanity as once put by foremost existentialist Italian philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, is that history would always repeat itself because man would never learn from history. Many never discovered Joshua not until he had departed! What a painful loss.
You can never find TB Joshua criticising 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 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 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. He spoke words of life that transformed lives of ardent and fervent seekers of God and salvation.
TB Joshua believed one’s giving is only meaningful when one gives what one cherishes most. He was extraordinarily generous and at home in humility with all categories of people as a friend however commonised other people may look at them
TB Joshua carried 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.
The lofty principles and legacies of TB Joshua remain enduring and a high watershed in Christendom. The joy today is that SCOAN leadership is in the able hand of a down-to-earth 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.
Adejumo, a journalist, sent this piece from Lagos State.
Punch
