The first news items, mostly by blogs, were fantastic: over 50 children had been rescued from suspected kidnappers in a dungeon at The Whole Bible Believers Church, a.ka. Ondo Church, situated in the Valentino area of Ekimogunland. But the stories by the mainstream media clarified issues: 77 persons had been rescued in all, including adults and children. The pastors or false prophets as news reports designated them said they were preparing the people for the rapture. A 400-level student had dropped out from school since January in order to be part of the great event. A distraught parent anxious to set sight on her daughter for the first time in nearly a week had contacted the police, and then the bubble had burst. On this last event, the stories differed: while the police claimed to have met resistance when they stormed the church, the members insisted that the police had invaded and shot teargas canisters into the church. Outrageous as it may seem, it may be unfair to dismiss the members’ claim on this score out of hand. The members also said they were on a seven-day fast, but that is not the meat of this piece.
As an ex-member of Ondo Church and indeed one of the members who literally carried pans on their heads to lay the foundation of the particular building in question, and as one who got into the movement as far back as 1990, this writer intends to relate memorable events and details from the past that will be of interest in contextualizing the stories that have been made available to the public so far. But before another sentence, it is fair to say that the notions of a dungeon or money ritualism in the saga may be unhelpful. Religious buffoonery and delusion? Yes. Hypnotism and illegal confinement? Highly probable. Let the government judge. But instead of “dungeon”, this writer would say that unless there has been some modification, what the church has is a basement. Welcome to Ondo Church, a church that purports to believe the end time message preached by the late Laodicean Age messenger, William Marrion Branham of Jeffersonville, United States, and which was led for decades by a Ghanaian minister, the late Ebenezer Ocran who, unfortunately, was murdered in cold blood in Ghana by two young men who had an eye on his Toyota Highlander. The story is well known to Ghanaians. It was Pastor Ocran who, wanting the church to exemplify true Christianity, gave the church its present name. This writer was there when he did.
Why Ondo Church?
The church used to be in the NEPA area of Ondo, from which it moved into the present location, a move which more or less coincided with the restoration of civil rule in the country. In naming churches, the four preachers associated with the movement that birthed Ondo Church wanted to use the Biblical pattern whereby the Churches of God were named after cities in the New Testament, e.g : the Church at Corinth, the Church at Rome, etc. If you read an epistle in the Bible called Ephesians, just have it in mind that it was addressing the church based in Ephesus. That Biblical pattern was what informed the names of the four churches associated with the movement, located in Ondo, Ibadan, Sango-Ota, and Akure, the last of the churches. However, instead of Ondo Church, Ibadan Church, Sango-Ota Church and Akure Church, the churches later took on individual names. Thus, Ondo Church became TWBBC.
The churches, as you may have guessed, were self-independent; there was no General Overseer. The writer, like some other people across the four churches, however left the movement in 2009 (having previously left Ondo town in the early 2000s) following the refusal of the four pastors to accept the corrections made by Apostle Amos Omoboriowo, pastor of the Bible Faith Tabernacle (BFT) located in Bajulaiye, Lagos, and the first son of the late deputy governor of Ondo State, Chief Akin Omoboriowo, who was a member of BFT until his transition into glory. That is to say: a man came to straighten out the churches and make them to drop their demonic practices, but the pastors flatly rejected him because of a message he preached, asking them to stop handling marital matters like despots.
What did Ondo Church believe?
Ondo Church, at least in the past, believed in doctrines of the rapture, one God, no woman preacher, baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and so on. It was a church that Pastor Ocran hoped, albeit falsely, would be the centre of God’s operation in Africa. Between the years 1996-2000 when this writer was fully in the church, a lot of unscriptural practices were embraced, chief among them being leadership through prophecies. Whereas prophesies, as we have come to learn, must abide strictly by the Holy Bible, they tended to have free reign in Ondo Church. However, in this writer’s experience, the Church members were extremely nice, personally disciplined and zealous people, but then zeal not anchored in the Holy Writ was bound to backfire. On a particular occasion in, I think, 1999, we were all made to swear by the Holy Bible that we would be loyal to the ministry or be subjected to all the curses in Deuteronomy 28. This was during the supposed move of the Spirit when people assumed to be demon-possessed were cast out of the church in the belief that they were not seed of God and would perish. In this writer’s recollection, about 60 people were thus cast out, either on allegations of being a seed of the devil or of being possessed in one year alone. Sister Jo was the chief prophesier who even prophesied against herself. However, though she picked people out, grabbing them by the hands and dragging them before the altar, she herself was never picked out by anyone, until a particular day when this writer’s elder brother, who had introduced him, in Ikorodu, to the end time message in 1988 and who was previously Pastor Ocran’s interpreter, came from Ilorin and saw something wrong with her. Rather than accept the rebuke, Sister Jo gave a testimony wherein she suggested that she didn’t know that anything was wrong with her, whereupon Brother A (one of the suspects arrested last week) burst, in a prophetic mode, into a popular Christian song: “Ah, eyin alailope, eese ti e o fi ku! (You unthankful people, why do you want to die?),” then said to Sister Jo: “Olorun da e lejo, o n jiyan! Tesiwaju!” (God judged you but you are doubting! Continue!)
Brother A was quite a firebrand and a disciplinarian. And his prophecies were red-hot! On one occasion he told this writer’s elder brother, who on relocating to Ilorin from Ondo had been rather infrequent in the church, in prophecy: “Jide, sora!Aijebee, won a wa e ti!” (Hide, be careful. Otherwise, you will vanish and never be found.”). His prophecy may have been right, because the Brother—apologies for dragging him out like this— never attended the church again following his wedding in year 2000, an occasion which, rather unfortunately, Pastor Ocran turned into a cursing spree, declaring: “Cursed are you if you divorce this woman! Cursed are you if later you say you don’t want her again!” A younger associate of my brother’s from Ilorin that we used to call Mr. Beske, not used to the ways of Ondo Church, exclaimed in amazement: “O fe try epe ti won gbe won se n beyen ni!” (Literally, “would you dare the level of curses pronounced on him there!” but really meaning: What an unbearable deluge of curses!!). How can a marriage ceremony be turned into a cursing spree?
Ondo Church ways
Worship in Ondo Church was hot. Brothers and Sisters sat in opposite directions. Getting married was difficult, in large part because of the economy. However, while other pastors in the movement often chose wives for people, Pastor Ocran never did to the best of this writer’s knowledge. He however annulled the date of this writer’s brother’s wedding, proclaiming on the pulpit: “That day shall not stand!”
Now, earlier on, prophecy had actually been used to separate the Brother from a sister he had loved, the prophesier saying that the proposed union was not of The Lord and lambasting the lady for not being properly guided!! That was in 1999.
The sister in question shed bitter tears on that day! It was at a night vigil! We were rounding off proceedings when a certain Sister Jo gave that extremely demonic prophecy. In those days, prophesies were never questioned. But something extraordinary actually happened not long after this event. This writer was locking his door in the Odosida area of Ondo when he heard a voice say in his conscience: “Go and comfort Sister Funmi.”
This writer headed straight to her shop— she was a tailor— and found her crying bitterly. However, by the time the writer left the shop on Odosida Street, having encouraged her not to despair, she had become very happy and in fact got him something to eat. She had a stove in her shop. You see, yours sincerely was friends with Sister Funmi, knowing that she was scheduled to be my sister-in-law. But it wasn’t to be. Happily, though, my brother got married to another sister in the church. He is extraordinarily happy in his marriage and Pastor Ocran’s 2020 curse is of no moment.
The nature of Ondo Church
Ondo Church was hot. Nobody would dare to commit fornication, say, and then head to the church. The prophesiers would pick him or her out! This writer recalls one occasion vividly. It was worship time and a brother had been quite expressive in his dancing steps by the altar. Indeed, the crook was actually waving a white handkerchief as he danced! As it turned out, he had been involved in sexual liaisons with the sister who was having a swell time dancing directly beside him. Brother A’s prophecy that day was fierce. Rushing up and down the pews, he bellowed at the dancer: “Idajo yi o bere n’ile Olorun! (Judgment must begin at the house of God!) This is not a jamboree!!”
Sadly, the church operated spiritual gifts without an anchor in the Word. We (that is, the whole church) were regularly lambasted through prophesies for our sins. Indeed, a prophecy once dismissed the entire congregation as “you sinners”! If you were going to the church in those days, you did so with reverence, believing that you could be thrown out of the church, and hence out of eternal life, through prophecy! On a certain day as this writer headed to the church (then in NEPA area) on foot, drained of energy after having held countless extramural classes in English Language, he chanced upon a group of boys arguing animatedly in the Ondo dialect about wedding and marriage, and about to tear one another up!
The argument went like this:
“There’s a difference between wedding and marriage!”
“Shut up! Wedding and marriage mean the same thing!”
To make matters worse, he heard the boys say that “this man approaching us is educated and he will resolve the matter.”
What kind of trouble was this? Here the writer was, still uncertain about what Ondo Church promised on that day—he did not know if he would be thrown out for being a devil— and here were secondary school age boys seeking to draw him into a carnal argument! With a respectful bow, he replied in the gentlest voice he had ever used in his life, speaking in standard Yoruba: “Ah, mi o mo o!” (Ah, I don’t know!)
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The boys let this writer walk away for a second, then let out their contempt at what they assumed was his intellectual emptiness. One said in the Ondo dialect: “D’aye to yii do fi ng e m’ oyato do i nu wedding ati marriage. Oda oloda!” (How can anyone be this old and say he doesn’t know the difference between wedding and marriage! Fool of fools!). In reply to the speaker, another threw a parting shot: “We da i sokoto e i? “ (Don’t you see his trousers?”) and they all burst into raucous laughter!! Well, in those days, trousers were not skin-tight. That is not to say that my trousers were like Kim Jong-un’s. Today, though, men’s trousers look so tight that you would think they borrowed them from their children. Are men becoming mad?
Marital mess in the movement
A confession at this stage: writing about the movement, particularly Ondo Church, causes this writer some discomfort. This is because members of the church are some of the nicest people he has ever known. Still, the movement itself must be regarded for what it is today: an exercise in pure demonism. Purporting to speak for God, the pastors broke marriages at will, (mis)led by their demonic prophesiers. Let us illustrate this point with two examples. In one case, a pastor influenced a husband, a civil servant, to send his wife packing on the excuse that she was a bad cook. Years later this pastor boasted on the pulpit: “If she cooked soup, pepper would go in one direction and water in another!” This was not in Ondo Church but in one of the three other churches in the movement.
Although this may sound exotic, it is a truthful account. And it would lead us, very quickly, into another story, this time involving this writer’s late father. On one occasion in the late 80s, he helped an old friend popularly known as Baba Bolaji to secure a particular contract, but became extremely saddened afterwards, because his friend had kicked his wife of many years, Mama Bolaji, out of her marital home and married a new wife. When his eldest daughter and first born, Bolaji, queried his decision, here is the answer he gave in Yoruba: “Bolaji, se iwo na o ri pe mama yin yen ti dudu ju?” ( Bolaji, don’t you see that that mum of yours is too dark-skinned?). This event happened in Ikorodu, Lagos State. Too dark-skinned after four children?
To get back to our story, the civil servant mentioned above sent his wife packing and, later, another sister was gifted to him as a wife. But it was the same preacher who had separated this particular sister and her former husband. Said that former husband: “It was the pastor that gave me a wife and it was he who took her away from me.”
Worse still, the woman who was sent packing was not allowed to sit in her rightful position as mother of the bride at her daughter’s wedding years later. It took the angry intervention of the bride’s younger brother before the woman was grudgingly allowed to take her place. On another occasion, a sister and her husband, a famous tailor, had a public tiff because the man was having sexual relations with his female apprentices. Instead of resolving the issue, the pastor encouraged the man to send his wife packing. On yet another occasion, a newcomer in one of the churches whose marriage was about to be broken threatened one of the deacons with a knife and so saved her marriage. This was in the state where trends are set.
A personal loss
This writer does not want to give the impression that everyone in Ondo or the other churches was nice. A brother in one of the churches conducted another wedding after having got married in Ondo Church, putting his wife in extreme agony till date. Because of human errors the church did not insist on couples going to the registry, and so this man in question dumped his lawfully wedded wife and went to a registry in another part of Ondo State to conduct yet another wedding. This man, Brother J, had a fantastic relationship with this writer’s first salary as a senior reporter: N32,500. He told yours sincerely to invest in a certain e-gold, which he expounded upon as a legit endeavour. This was before he dumped his wife. This writer decided to make a N20,000 investment in this legit business, leaving him with N7,000 or less after paying tithes and offerings. Well, as we say in Yoruba, yours sincerely saw neither blood nor birth water. Brother J declared that e-gold had collapsed.
The heart of the matter
If the pastors arrested in Ondo Church claimed that they were preparing the people for the rapture, that, in this writer’s view, was precisely what they believed they were doing. But while no Christian who means to be taken seriously can dismiss the doctrine of the rapture, the Bible does make it clear that it is not an event anyone can lock themselves or other people in a basement, preparing for. Matthew 24:36-42 says: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.”
It is easy to see that anyone skipping work/school or hiding in a basement in order to be caught away in the rapture is playing a dangerous game that may well involve legal consequences. If the angels in heaven do not know the date, just how can false prophets?
and then