By now you’ve probably watched the (British) Channel 4 TV documentary film about Nigeria’s millionaire preachers–the fake healings, buckets full of money, police escorts, mall openings and the flash, amidst grinding poverty. I watched it last night. Nigerian blogs, not surprisingly, have focused on theological debates thrown up by the documentary. (One of the preachers, Dr Fireman, when quizzed about his ostentatious show of wealth, responds: “Jesus was rich and had an accountant who followed him around.”) No one’s surprised that with low confidence in political and the state, fast money preachers promising eternal salvation, financial wealth and physical health, people follow these men. However, notably absent from the program were the really rich preachers–compiled in a list by a Forbes blogger earlier this Fall– like David Oyedepo (estimated net worth of $150m), Chris Oyakhilome ($30-50m) and TB Joshua ($10-15m) Joshua is the most interesting of the super rich preachers (there’s even a TB Joshua Watch online). Not least because of his alleged healing powers and the fact that he is politically well connected.
TB Joshua claims to heal HIV/AIDS, cancer and paralysis at his Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos.
He has found a willing audience among African elites.
In one celebrated case, Jaco van der Westhuyzen, a top rugby player from South Africa traveled to Lagos with a knee injury and claimed to be healed by TB Joshua. Two other national rugby team players with cancers followed and stopped treatment or using their medicine. But after visiting Joshua’s church in Nigeria — Ruben Kruger and Wuim Basson — they died of their cancers. Their failure to get well is usually rationalized as either their lack of faith. (In Basson’s case, Joshua even claimed to communicate with the dead Basson.) South African television has reported stories of white South Africans traveling in large groups to Joshua’s church for healing.
As for the politically connected who travel to see and hear Joshua in Nigeria, they include Ghanaian president John Atta Mills, of whom it is claimed that “Joshua had prophesied his victory in the Ghanaian polls, specifying there would be three elections and the results would be released in January.” Atta Mills has described Joshua as a mentor. A Zimbabwean newspaper reported that prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai visited Joshua’s church in September. So have other leaders of Tsvangirai’s MDC movement as well as Mugabe’s ZANU-PF. Some were hoping it would give them an edge in party political contests. The same newspaper mentioned a few other high profile guests: former presidents Frederick Chiluba (Zambia), Pascal Lissouba (Congo-Brazzaville), André Kolimba (Central African Republic), Omar Bongo (Gabon) and Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini (who came to testify about his “daughter’s healing from epilepsy”). The president of Zimbabwe’s football association Cuthbert Dube also claimed to be healed by Joshua.
Not all governing elites are as welcoming. Cameroon has banned Joshua.
But probably the most curious recent guest at Joshua’s church has been Winnie Mandela, seen in this recent video, below, with Joshua’s Emmanuel TV referring to herself as “the grandmother of Africa,” blaming everything on modernity (except Christianity of course) and suggesting Africa needs “democracy of a special type”:
Given some of our obsession with South Africans, we keep wondering why do South Africans travel to Nigeria, when they have their own miracle-making farmer at home?
Fascinating! I saw a billboard for an evangelical preacher in Abuja with huge letters reading “The Unstoppable Enlargement.” I was wondering what that was supposed to mean, exactly. Now I think it refers to his bank account.
Prophet JB Joshua is spreading the gospel of the lord to people of different origins and to far and wide places. Is that not preaching the gospel is supposed to be?
If these prophets are so mighty why don’t they fix Nigeria? Now that would be a miracle …
I found what Winnie had to say curious. ‘Democracy of a special type’ sounds ominously like the well known single party beast we saw all over Africa in the 60s and 70s in various civilian and military garb. However, I found what she had to say about the cultual identify of Nigerians, and TB Joshua’s appeal to young people, interesting and useful, if a little vague. It put her positioning on the Malema affair into useful context too.
Couldn’t but notice the tangle with the interviewer over ‘ mother of Africa’ and ‘ Grandmother of Africa’. Makes us all sound like kids here….
I personally think we should leave them to do what they have been anointed to do and not criticize .After all it is stated specifically in the holy book that greater works are we going to do than what JESUS did.I believe in what the lords anointed do.
The question is “is there an actual healing process going on in the church?”. If there is not, well the guy is a super trick worker who managed to fool billions of people all around the world in this modern and mentally advanced society. but if this man is a man of God and everything is real we are criticizing the work God himself.
I’m watching the man (TB Joshua) from Barbados in the Caribbean. The man is great. Why should Christians be poor and those who don’t know Jesus be rich? Some of the richest men mentioned in the bible who were men of God were some of the riches in the world.
Persons who would frown on the people of God being wealthy today, would have frown on leaders in the bible.