Pastor Chris Oyakhilome: a generous donation to Idahosa University

By Nehru Odeh

Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, the charismatic founder of LoveWorld incorporated, aka Christ Embassy, is always in the eye of the storm. If he is not stirring up a controversy by virtue of his statements and worldviews, he is the butt of criticisms due to his peculiar views which are sometimes strange and controversial.

He stirred up a controversy recently when he raised an alarm that the roll out of the 5G networks is an insidious plan to infect Nigerians with the novel conoravirus, urging the public to resist it. That statement generated not a few backlash and criticisms including those from members of the clergy. He later made a U-turn when he said he was initially against it because of the health risks and the seeming silence of authorized regulators to address its advantages and disadvantages.

The highly respected clergyman, who commands a huge followership across the globe, has also never hidden his opposition to the closure of churches by the federal government as a result of the covid-19 pandemic.

However, Oyakhilome, who is of the view that the current lockdown is the handiwork of the devil, whose plans is to control the world, stop the move of God and change the order of things, has come out to say that he predicted the lockdown occasioned by the conoravirus that is currently ravaging the globe in the middle of December 2019. He made this claims in a broadcast to members of his church across the globe on Sunday 10 May 2020.

“I told you. In the middle of December, going to the third week that in 2020 the advanced work of God and the work of man would collide, that there is going to be a collision in 2020.  We have come to that crisis point. We have come to that crisis moment,” he said, urging his members to go into three days of fasting and praying, which ends today.

“What we are doing now, as beautiful as it is, is not what God wants as a church. Now the church is a congregation. His praise must go to him in his great congregation. And the great congregation must happen. But we must use everything we know in the word of God.  The weapons of our warfare are not carnal,” he said.

He then said it was the responsibility of the church to put things in order, which was the reason for declaring the three days of fasting and praying.

“Man as a being has a capacity for evil. Make no mistake about this. There are satanic forces. I can tell you that.  We are going to have a global fasting and praying.  The first thing we are fasting and praying about is to restrain the power of man to control this world with evil and violence.

“The second is, we are fasting and praying to regain our rights that God has given us and the rights that God has given us are consistent with the Bill of Rights.

“And third, we have to fast and pray against the decrees of darkness, to force us to live in the world of the Beast before its time. There are decrees of darkness to force us to live in a world, in an atmosphere, in an environment, in a government or system created by the Beast, created by the anti-Christ ahead of its time,” Oyakhilome averred.