Why people see prophets as solution to their problems —Prophet Taiwo Ojo

Prophet Taiwo Ojo is the pastor instructed by God to start Christ Apostolic Church, Covenant of Mercy (Majemu Aanu), Ibadan, Oyo State. In this interview by OLUWATOYIN MALIK and ADEWALE OSHODI, he talks about his calling, how the church took off and God’s plans for Christians who seek His face in prayer. Excerpts.

How and when did you start your ministerial work?

I joined the missionary work when I was 13 years old. At that time, I was having terrible dreams and visions. There were times I would dream I was in the wilderness and when I woke up, I would not know what I was doing. My parents tried everything they could for me, but things remained the same. At this period, my mother was taking me from one place to another. It was on one of those occasions that someone told my mother that I was a prophet whom God wanted to use. The person told my mother that the forces of darkness had seen what I wanted to become in the future, and that was why I was having those experiences. He advised my mother to take me to the church and hand me over to a man of God. That was how I was taken to the church. So, from the age of 13, I was in a church like the son of a prophet and was learning ministerial work. After a while, I was taken to another prophet where I continued working for God. I was there for several years, but there came a time that challenges arose and I left the church. I went to Abuja in the hope that I would work and make money, but I gained nothing from those efforts. While I wanted to leave the work of God fully, I felt I could do it by the side, so I decided to become a choirmaster. However, despite these, God told me He wanted to use me.

God told me that what He wanted me to do; there would be no song that I would sing that would match those things. So He said I should seek Him. In seeking the face of God, I fasted for three and a half years, meaning I would fast for a period, break and continue after some period of time. During that period, in 1989, I was with a pastor. Anytime a prophet was to be ordained, he would be given a mentally-challenged person and would be asked to pray for him. If the mentally-challenged person was healed, then the prophet would be ordained. So the thinking was that if one could pray to heal a mentally-challenged person, then when one starts one’s ministerial work, one would be able to face the forces of darkness and pray for the healing of people.

So, there was no time frame for being ordained, once one could overcome that aspect of healing a mentally-challenged person. Like I said, I fasted for three and a half years. During the period, I was asking for just one thing – power of God. I was calling on God to empower me. After three and a half years, God told me to relocate to Ibadan from Abuja, and I thought I had gained power. That was how I found myself in Ibadan through the help of a man I didn’t know, who picked me from Abuja to Ibadan at no cost, and gave me N30,000.

When I got to Ibadan, I had N31,200 and felt my challenges were over, but I didn’t know I would face more challenges in Ibadan.

I was staying at Olopometa and I was doing a programme at Olaogun, and was always walking for the two and a half years I was there. After a while, I could no longer continue and I left for Lagos. I felt there was money in Lagos, but I suffered so much there. It was then I realized that it is only where God sets one’s feet that one will prosper. God then called me one day and told me that He didn’t send me to Lagos, but that because my prayers were intense, that was why He protected me there, and that was how I returned to Ibadan.

When I got to Ibadan, I didn’t know anybody, but from where I was, I would go to the prayer mountain and return home. I am from Ogbomoso. Then God called me one day and said that I had not started the work He sent me to Ibadan to do; He said I had wasted so many years in Abuja and Lagos, and He promised that He would restore all those years I had wasted to me.

On the day I saw that vision from God, a pastor came to me and asked me to follow him somewhere. The person we went to see – his daughter – had been married for two years and did not have the fruit of the womb, so I prayed for the woman. After about three months, the man sent for me and asked where my church was, and I told him I didn’t have a church. During that period, I would go and worship in the church of a friend; I was also the person who assisted the person to establish the church. So the pastor told me that the person I prayed for had taken in, after two years of waiting, as she had been told by doctors that she could not conceive again because of complications she got from an abortion she had earlier. In appreciation of God, the father of the lady gave me where we started a church.

All the while, I was still going to the prayer mountain; I had no friend, and God had instructed that I should destroy my SIM card so that I won’t have any contact with those in Lagos to seek their assistance for anything. When I started, it wasn’t easy. I began asking God what He would do in the lives of the people. That was how He asked me to start a 72-hour programme. He said people were suffering and that He wanted to intervene. This programme is about seven years now. It got to a period that the place we were using could no longer contain us despite the fact that we didn’t have a signboard. We moved to our new site at Adelubi.

This year, we finished the programme on a Monday, and the COVID-19 lockdown started the following day, so I went to the prayer mountain to fast for 123 days. I didn’t see the lockdown as any challenge; I only saw it as an opportunity to pray and fast. It gave me the opportunity to seek the face of God. God said people were inside their homes that needed to be reached, and I returned to the online programme fully.

How did you start the online programme?

I had been doing the online programme at 7:30a.m. daily, but not at the level it is now. God said I should pray for people, preach the Word and return people to Him. So for two years, I was not doing much, but when the lockdown came, I returned to it.

I bought a N500 data and did the programme, and we started to do it every day. God said we should use the opportunity of the lockdown to restore the power of prayer in people; He said people were always complaining that their work was not giving them the opportunity to pray and serve Him well, so the period of the lockdown should be used to do just that. So I began doing it morning and night, unlike when I was just doing in the morning. I would pray, then preach the Word of God, because what someone needs is different from what the other person needs. Some people need to be prayed for, while others just need to be preached to, in order to return them to God. So, the programme is returning the people’s spirit to the way of prayer and also lifting the burden in their lives.

However, while doing this, I began facing challenges; someone said I was out to collect people’s money, but God told me not to fear. There are 365 days in a year and ‘fear not’ appears 365 times in the Bible. So that simply tells me that each ‘fear not’ is for a day. Again, someone called me that I should be doing crusade all over; he said he had money and could sponsor such crusades, but I said no, that was not God sent me to do.

What is your take on pastors who preach about prosperity alone? Is it in line with God’s commission?

One can see God in three ways: one will see Him, one will recognise Him and one will believe in Him. There is a difference between calling, gift and the Holy Spirit. One can be called and not be filled with the Holy Spirit. Anointing is different from the Holy Spirit and gift. Holy Spirit left Saul and the evil spirit took control of him, but it was the anointing on him which didn’t run dry that prevented David from killing him. It was when Saul spoke with those who were communicating with the dead that the anointing on him dried off. In the Old Testament, any prophet who was not clean would die as soon as he entered the temple, but when Jesus came, He shed His blood for the people. He then gave us the power to pray.

Now, there are different titles, like prophet, evangelist, bishop, among others, but all their assignments are one before God, but a prophet is different. A prophet tells what will happen and it will happen. But when we can no longer pray ourselves, that is when we see the prophet as the solution, and that is when the prophet begins to see himself or equate himself to God. It was Elisha who first missed it when he asked that a leper be sent to him and everybody would know that there was a prophet in Israel, but when the leper got there, God told Elisha not to go out because he presented himself as the one who would do the work. He ought to have said that the leper would know that there was God in Israel.

So when we got to the period that we sell anointing oil, sell water, among other things, that was when we turned Christianity upside down. So, those who cannot pray themselves will buy anything from the supposed clerics. Those people also know that people only want to hear about prosperity and that is why prosperity teaching is much. All these are signs of the end of the world.

What is your advice to Nigerians in this trying period of crime, criminality and diseases?

Everybody should seek the face of God. We should return to the ways of prayer; there is nothing that cannot be solved with prayers. Let us focus on God, right from the family, to the state level and the national level. God can turn around our situation if we return to Him.

What is your advice for youths?

Our youths are no longer living holy. Our youths now thrive in sin. You will now find unmarried youths cohabiting like husbands and wives. You will even find youths in the church sleeping together. Today, you will find a lady with eight months pregnancy going for wedding in the church. It has even gotten to a stage where ladies would go to their pastors and tell them that they should pray for them so that they could be pregnant because their boyfriends say they must be pregnant before their wedding. This is not how it was done in the past.

In fact, at this time, there would be a youths’ programme in church and later in the day, the youths would move the celebration to a nightclub. Youths need to retrace their steps. Parents, pastors and elders should also show their children and wards the ways of the Lord. It is because we didn’t show them the way that we have the youths of today. So, our youths must retrace their steps. Also, the problem in Nigeria is because we ministers of God do not come together to pray for the country.

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