Late Pastor TB Joshua proclaimed authoritatively that On March 27, 2020, it will be over… ” He was in league with Pastor Odumeje, the Liquid Metal who said it would end in April. Odumeje also threatened to go after Oga-Coro in every country of the world, in overseas. It was around that time that Pastor Joshua declared and decreed that a one week rain in China would wash away the virus.
However, as if in reply to TB and Odumeje, Bishop Mike Bamidele said no pastor could predict the end of the pandemic.
But in August 2020, Femi Fani Kayode announced that he watched videos where TB Joshua healed thousands of coronised people from 43 nations, via satellite and that ‘Even the World Health Organisation has publicly acknowledged and commended his good work.’ Based on Mt. 7:7, Pastor TB requested that all those in isolation should be connected to Emmanuel TV so that he would pray for them and they would be healed.
… during the Mass to mark the 2020 World Communication Day, he chased away those who were unmasked. May be he learnt from Jesus who, on one occasion, flogged people out of the temple
He later released an anointing sticker, tagged ‘not mine but God’s own’ and eventually asked Nigerians to accept vaccines as a way out. When churches were eventually permitted to open physically, he announced that his church would not open until he heard from God.
Pastor Lazarus Muoka assured that if churches were allowed to reopen, they would crush coronavirus within one minute. That was as Pastor Moses aka “Deadly Prophet” begged the Delta and Federal Governments to allow him into the isolation centres so that he would vanquish Coro within 72 hours. The founder of Omega Fire Ministry, Apostle Johnson Suleman also declared that pastors could reduce this nonsense.’
In response to this, Nigerian witches under the Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AFAW) offered him $1000 for any confirmed Coro patient healed by him. He had described Coro as a chemical weapon manufactured in China, and that it is a part of the one-world conspiracy of which the Pope was a part of. He had also prophesied that something worse would come in 2022 and…from China. Well, we are now in 2022 and we are watching and waiting.
The grandfather of Nigerian Pentecostalism, Pastor Adeboye of RCCG, was also a part of the Coro discourse. He said Coro had created a global compulsory holiday, which God told him earlier, though his mind went to terror attack. He declared that only those whose time had come would die of the virus, took a jibe at those who said Coro would end on 27/3/20 or that Coro itself would die, saying tongue-in-cheek, that prophets were greater than pastors.
He announced that his grandchildren, wife and himself would not attend services immediately the churches opened as the children are under 15, in obedience to NCDC guidelines. His last major Coro intervention was during the 2021 crossover service when he declared that he would assemble 1000 prayer warriors against Omicron, the terror variant of that time.
He had earlier said it would take a miracle for Coro to Totally leave the world, a position which other Coro authorities eventually adopted, by degrading it from pandemic to endemic; something that cannot be eradicated, something we just have to live with.
Fr Mbaka of ‘AMEN’ started by apologising to the many people who had been awaiting his powerful comments and ordered Oga-Coro ‘to be ceased,’ and further released healing and sunrays, which he described as one of the antidotes to Coro.
Archbishop Samson Benjamin (a.k.a. “Jehovah Sharp-Sharp’ broke the lockdown rules, when he led a protest to the Chinese Embassy in Lagos about the maltreatment of Nigerians in China. He was arrested and charged breaching COVID-19 Regulations’ and “conduct likely to cause breach of peace.”
Then, one Christopher Orji, I don’t know whether he was a pastor, prophet, an evangelist or a GO, emerged from nowhere to announce that a European nurse was cured of Coro Instantly through an ordinary phone call! In April 2020, early in the days of Coro, when it berthed in Kano and was mischievously termed mysterious deaths, Ishaq Akintola, the director of MURIC (Muslim Rights Concern), described it as a deliberate attempt at debilitating Northern population with its attendant impact on Muslim majority population in the country.
Read also: War Against Coro (WAC): The unforgettable utterances and theatricals of our pastors
It is also on record that even those who accepted the existence of Coro and readily supported government measures had occasions to disagree. The Christian Association of Nigeria, which in-house guidelines were rubbished by Okotie had a cause to say Enough is Enough when it declaring that“with the reopening of the economy, markets, airports and schools, the closure of churches anywhere in the country is no longer tenable and acceptable.
It was around the same time that the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Most Rev. Alfred Adewale Martins, wondered why people were acting as if it were only when people gather to worship that coronavirus can be spread while the virus is suspended when they cluster and huddle together in markets, motor parks and banks. He also argued that gathering to worship is the Christian heritage and practice (Acts Chapter 2) and recalled that CAN-Lagos and Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos had their own customised guidelines, evidencing their commitment to the WAC.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Bishop of Enugu, Most Rev. Callistus Onaga shocked his congregants when, during the Mass to mark the 2020 World Communication Day, he chased away those who were unmasked. May be he learnt from Jesus who, on one occasion, flogged people out of the temple (Mt. 21:12). The Pope also violated the lockdown regulations in Italy where the virus was once headquartered.
He did so, not because he did not believe in Coro; he went around the empty streets in solidarity with the people (who were present by their absence), offering prayers for those affected and afflicted and praying for an end to the crises. He also offered the extraordinary Urbi et Orbi blessings, to the city (of Rome) and to the world, reminding us that God turns everything to our own good (Rom. 8:28) and asking us: why are you afraid? Have you no faith? (Mark 4:40)?
Covid appears to be on retreat and our pastors have taken a back-bench on the matter. But their actions and utterances in the heydays of Coro lives with them.
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