The SCOAN Live Sunday Service of February 12, 2017 was a day in which the diseased received health, the oppressed received freedom and the dead were literally brought back to life – spirit, soul and body.
Speaking on the importance of faith, Prophet T.B. Joshua delivered a thought-provoking message titled: HOW MUCH YOU NEED GOD. He said, “When we examine our daily life, we will find out how much faith we have. Faith is manifested in the small things in our daily life”. He made the message practical with these examples, “To you, you don’t need God to sit down or stand up. You claim you are a Christian – how many of you are sitting in the name of Jesus? Do you know you need God to dress up, make up, comb your hair, to even greet?”
Pointing the way out, Prophet T.B. Joshua continued, “Satan attacks you where you believe you don’t need God. Satan lashes at you in the areas you believe you don’t need God. You create avenues and opportunities for satan to enter. For you to be victorious in life, you must know how much you need God”.
In her message titled SOLDIER ON, 
Evangelist Shade called on Christians to brace up for war if they really want to triumph over the tribulations of this world. “He who desires victory must be ready to embrace war,” she said, adding that “We are not to run from confrontation”. According to her, a good Christian must confront the world with confidence because, “Victory does not begin with fear, doubt or condemnation”.
She warned people of God not to allow their situations to affect their destinies, arguing that no matter what the world throws at them, they should soldier on with their eyes fixed on the victory that would crown their efforts: “Many have changed their destiny by listening to the voice of their situation. Don’t listen to the voice of your situation.” She summed up her deep message with the following philosophical maxim: “Life is not a playground or a bonding meeting; it is warfare.”
Proclaiming victory over their challenges, people from across the globe came forward to testify how God had won their battle:
THE DANGER OF SPEAKING IN STRANGE TONGUES
After tinkering with different medical options aimed at curing her issue of barrenness, Mrs Bimpeh decided to pursue the things of the spirit. That zeal to grow in spirit led her to visit a prayer centre where she believed she was “blessed” with the gift of speaking in tongues. The gift did not materialise physically until she was visited in the dream by a gentleman and a woman. It was in that august dream that she was taught how to speak in false tongues. Mrs Bimpeh continued to speak in those tongues, expecting the Heavens to put a new song in her mouth but unknown to her, she was already doing the devil’s bidding. The tongues which she had thought would dismantle the mountain of barrenness that had been the gap between her and the fruit of the womb, soon proved to be from the pit of hell.
The more she spoke those strange tongues, the more mysterious her dreams became. She would find herself in the presence of a strange woman in her dreams, speaking demonic gibberish and sometimes seeing snakes even in the physical. Beyond the superficiality of those tongues, there were ominous signs that the devil was taking her for a ride. She noticed that after her fellow tongue-speakers touched her tummy, she would have a sudden miscarriage. When she herself spoke those strange tongues with unrivalled vigour during one pregnancy, she experienced an induced abortion. In total, she had six miscarriages. Eventually, Mrs Bimpeh began to nurse fears about the strange occurrences in her life. She wondered why and how a supposedly spirit-filled activity such as speaking in heavenly language could become her greatest undoing.
In a state of utter confusion, a friend introduced her to Emmanuel TV. Watching with rapt attention how God was working through the anointed channel, Mrs Bimpeh realised that what she actually needed was a firebrand deliverance. That moment of spiritual self-realisation became the prologue of her journey to salvation. Visiting The SCOAN, she made herself available for the Holy Spirit to locate her. During the course of the service, Prophet T.B. Joshua prayed for Mrs Bimpeh, gave her the Morning Water and declared that her past was over, adding that she would return to the church with a testimony.
Six miscarriages and six years of tears were wiped out of her past after receiving deliverance. Testifying, Mrs Bimpeh told congregants how she conceived and went on to deliver a baby girl without any complications, after nine months. Mr and Mrs Bimpeh thanked God for enabling them to cross through the Red Sea of barrenness. The Ghanaian couple advised people to hold on to faith and desist from speaking in strange tongues.
MY MYSTERIOUS LIFE
Mr Mthunzi was only nine-years-old when the devil invaded his dream and contaminated his innocent spirit. That night, while other lads were enjoying their sleep, young Mthunzi was playing victim in a dream-drama to a giant man who had come to abuse him. After he awoke from that stream of sleep, he shared the horrible experience with his father but was told to disregard the nightmare as it was just a dream. But from that very moment, the South African developed certain negative behavioural traits. He starting smoking, stealing and growing violent. Before he completed secondary school, he was arrested on two occasions by the police for his misdemeanours.
His university education was a disastrous adventure as he dropped out after three years. From the university, he proceeded to the prison after he was arrested for a crime. Coming out of the prison, he reunited with his wayward gang and continued living on the spur of the moment – clubbing, drinking and smoking. While chilling out at a club one night, he was approached by a man who wanted to sleep with him. The scenario felt like the opportunity of a lifetime and he went with the man without looking back. After that night’s saga, he became a willing tool in the hands of the spirit of man. Whenever he was drunk, he would end up with different men. All efforts to get out of that evil entanglement were in many ways harder than a camel passing through the eye of a needle. He had been bottled by satan; it would take God to free him.
His relationships with women were abysmal. Anytime he wanted to woo a woman, he 
ended up with a prostitute or drug addict. Burdened by the reckless and immoral engagements he had suffused his life into, the flight of freedom became imminent. He narrated his escapades to his brother who prescribed a solution to him. Having watched Emmanuel TV, his brother knew that his case was a minor thing that would be handled perfectly at The SCOAN.
Visiting the Arena of Liberty penultimate Sunday, Mr Mthunzi received a word of prophecy from Prophet T.B. Joshua, “You find yourself in a mysterious life,” pointing to Mr Mthunzi. “I am sorry; you would like to have passion for women but your passion is for men. A very handsome man. Ladies would want you but suddenly, you found yourself having affection for men… It is the spirit of man that is tormenting you,” he added. Confirming the prophecy to be true, Mr Mthunzi was delivered as the man of God spoke freedom into his life through the prophecy in the mighty name of Jesus.
Testifying before The SCOAN congregation last Sunday, Mr Mthunzi exuded great joy as he told congregants that he was no longer stealing, drinking, smoking or sleeping with men. Instead, the evil hand working in his life had been chopped off by the power of the Holy Spirit and he is free. Advising people who have a similar problem, he urged them to hold on to Jesus as He is the only solution.
MY MARRIAGE TO A STRANGE SPIRIT BEING
When she was seven-years-old, she noticed some fetish items in her mother’s room. Those items included idols with different shapes and represented different water spirits and animals. Her mother was definitely worshipping those idols and would later pass them on to her. Rosemary was asked to make a covenant that she would inherit those idols whenever her mother died. To perfect the covenant, little Rosemary was clad in white attire, half-naked and asked to kneel beside her mother. A cow was slaughtered and its blood poured into a calabash. Rosemary was asked to dip her middle finger into the blood and place it on her tongue.
After the consummation of that covenant, Rosemary grew up to encounter a barrage of problems. The spirits of anger and perpetual unhappiness became a constant part of her. By age 25, the evil spirit that had entered her during that covenant started operating on a full scale. Instead of young and promising suitors, all the men who came to her were married. Moreover, her relationship with them would suddenly be marred by her uncontrollable fits of anger and unexplained resentment. On their part, the men would have problems with their wives as their homes would always be boiling points with different troubles.
Rosemary had a child by a married man whom she later parted ways with. Her dream life became a complete mess. She would always see a giant man sleeping with her. On several occasions, she had dreamt of herself pregnant and delivering babies in a river. She would also dream of herself swimming and flying. The more she had those dreams, the worse her physical condition became. No single man dared to approach her for marriage; only married men did. Worried, she confided in her mother about the strange things that were happening to her. Her mother took her to a fetish priest who told them that she had a spirit husband in the river. According to the priest, she would have to physically get married to the spirit husband lest her life became a total mess.
Scared of the consequences of refusing to marry her spirit husband, Rosemary convinced her mother on the urgent need to follow the directive of the fetish priest. In 2006, she was taken to the seashore, stripped half-naked and had the marriage rites carried out. As the fetish priest performed the rites, Rosemary was asked to speak her problems into the ears of a white dove which she had in her grip. After speaking into the ears of the dove, she released it. As the dove flew away, she beheld a smoke-filled light afar in the horizon. According to the fetish priest, that light was her spirit husband. She was advised to abstain from physical sexual relations starting from Fridays to Sundays because those days were reserved for her spirit husband to sleep with her. She was also instructed to wear white clothes on such days and was handed beads and a wedding ring. After that seaside ritual, she developed a love for tattoos and went ahead to imprint the images of a dove, a snake and a lion on her body.
Brought down by depression and body pain, her yearning for freedom grew in intensity. When she could no longer bear the ravaging oddities that had taken over her life, in spite of all the rituals she had undergone, Rosemary knew that the only place to be was The SCOAN. Visiting the church, Rosemary received her deliverance as Prophet T.B. Joshua ministered prophecy and healing during The SCOAN Sunday Mass Prayer. As soon as the man of God touched her, the evil spirit in her felt the brunt of the fire of the Holy Spirit and started confessing all the destructive roles it had played in her entire life. The mermaid spirit as well as her spirit husband were cast out as she was separated from all generational covenants she had entered into. “When the man of God touched my head, I felt as if a hammer hit me to the ground,” she recounted.
Testifying last Sunday in company of her mother, daughter and other family relations, Rosemary thanked God for setting her free from the gates of hell. Rosemary’s mother also revealed how her grandmother was impregnated by a man who turned out to be a spirit from the sea. According to her, it took some rituals on the advice of a fetish priest for that pregnancy to be delivered. She corroborated the fact that Rosemary’s problems emanated from a generational covenant between their ancestry and the river spirit. Rosemary also expressed her new-found joy in upholding the things of God, adding that she was more than ever poised to develop her relationship with our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. It was a triumph of the Kingdom of God over the kingdom of darkness as congregants visibly exhibited their gratitude to God for redeeming a lost sheep through the Arena of Liberty.
FROM TEACHER´S PET TO A LIFE OF TORMENT
She was showered with scintillating gifts by her teacher but never had an inkling of the sinister motive behind those kind and unsolicited gestures. As a student, her self-esteem had soured on account of the fact that she was one in a million to be so loved by her teacher. But unknown to her, an evil process was gradually gathering momentum. Rita was sixteen-years-old at that time and did not really understand that the world was deeper than it appeared. One day, her teacher visited her at home and requested that she spent the weekend with her. Like a sheep being led to the slaughter, the unassuming young woman accepted her teacher’s request.
That night, in her teacher’s house, Rita’s innocence was raped after she had downed an unnamed alcoholic beverage that induced her to sleep. When she woke up, she discovered that something untoward had happened to her. She noticed that she was naked and was compelled by her teenage emotions to ask her teacher some questions. Her teacher’s response was like a thunderbolt. “I have done what I would have done a long time ago, after showering all those gifts on you,” said her teacher. The confused student, not satisfied with her teacher’s response, probed further. “Please, ma, what have you done?” she asked. “I have made love to you,” retorted her teacher.
Since that incident, Rita began to develop affection for women. That urge to mingle with women became unstoppable. It thwarted all attempts by male suitors to come close to her. If at all she did have male friends, they were there as a decoy, ensuring that her problem remained hidden. By the time she became fully aware of the spiritual transformation that had taken place in her life, she embarked on many quests for a solution. All the places she went to in search of solution failed abysmally to help her.
Realising that a solution was far from her, she had resorted to self-help but it just wouldn’t work. Her dream life became a direct reflection of the things she did with fellow women physically. She just could not curtail the urge. Whenever she came across women, a spirit in her would always push her to go and woo them. While all these things transpired, Rita did not put her parents in the know. For a girl who had slept with several women, including the married and unmarried, deliverance would be the ultimate solution. Rita would later meet a man whom she told her problem to. The young man eventually became her fiancé. He took serious interest in her case and advised her to come to The SCOAN for deliverance.
Prior to her coming, she had prayed and had received a revelation in which Prophet T.B. Joshua was delivering her. When she finally attended the Sunday service two weeks ago, the Holy Spirit located her during the Mass Prayer. Prophet T.B. Joshua, taking authority in the mighty name of Jesus, commanded the evil spirit out of her life. During her testimony, Rita told congregants how the whole atmosphere turned into fire while she was being delivered. After her deliverance, she has since been free from the spirit of woman.
For a woman who once drank alcohol and received numerous phone calls from fellow women daily, change has come finally, according to her fiancé. “She no longer does those things as the Spirit of God has since taken over her life,” he added.
GOD RAISED ME FROM DEATH TO PRAISE HIM FOREVER
On a fateful evening, there was no sign that evil was lurking around the corner. The family was together, relaxing when suddenly their togetherness was put asunder by uninvited invaders who left in their trail, sorrow, tears and blood. They devoured the family’s dinner and asked for cash and ATM cards. The mother of the house surrendered all she had in her possession but it was not enough to placate the hardened criminals. In the ensuing gruesome drama, the evil men increased the volume of the television set in order to stop the screaming of their victims from filtering outside the house as Praise’s mother was raped and slaughtered along with his younger sister.
As Praise rushed into the sitting room in a panicky move, he ran into the villains who stabbed him in his stomach and chest and slit his neck, leaving him in a pool of his own blood. Thinking he was already on the other side, the armed robbers left with the family’s possessions.
Confined to the throes of death, Praise’s consciousness was not impaired as he saw a benevolent being dressed in white come to carry him to a neighbour’s doorstep. Banging on the neighbour’s door, the being then disappeared. When the neighbour came out of the house to behold Praise in a pool of blood, he went berserk with a blend of pity and anguish. He hurriedly took the dying boy to the hospital and contacted his extended family. At the hospital, he was assumed dead until his aunt came along with the Morning Water and Good Morning Sticker, believing that God would prove Himself.
For several months, Praise underwent a series of operations. His trachea and vocal cavity had been seriously damaged and needed to be fixed urgently. He could not talk but depended solely on gesticulations and writing on paper to communicate his thoughts. According to his aunty, he had actually passed on three times in the course of the seven operations he had undergone but was miraculously brought back to life with prayers and the ministration of the Morning Water. When it became apparent that he needed better medical attention, he was referred to the United States for specialist attention.
In his usual spirit of extending love to the needy, Prophet T.B. Joshua was moved by the plight of the hapless boy. The man of God immediately provided feeding and accommodation for Praise and his aunt while consultations commenced with medical experts concerning his referral to a better hospital abroad. It would be noticed that the boy’s health had improved while he was living in The SCOAN. The challenge was that he could not talk, owing to the complicated damage done to his vocal cavity. Securing visas and international passports for Praise and his aunt to the tune of two thousand US dollars, the man of God also provided the initial medical deposit of five thousand US dollars as well as another two thousand US dollars for their welfare abroad.
Embarking on their inaugural flight, Praise and his aunt travelled to Johannesburg, South Africa where they were received by the Emmanuel TV team which accompanied them to Cape Town, where the specialist hospital is located. Making funds available for their transportation and accommodation within South Africa, Prophet T.B. Joshua also paid for all the operations and medical procedures to the tune of forty thousand US dollars. For the surgeons who carried out the operations on Praise, they had discovered that his case was very severe with damaged vocal cords, making him unable to speak. As Prophet T.B. Joshua continued to pray for him and as his aunt continued to minister the Morning Water on him, a miracle happened – the vocal cords were revived and began functioning properly. Praise started breathing and speaking and was declared perfectly fit. He no longer needed the oxygen pipe on which he had depended for months.
After the entire medical process, Praise went on to visit tourist and recreational facilities in Cape Town before his journey home to Nigeria. He returned to Nigeria a complete person. Together with his aunt, they came to share their testimony at The SCOAN. They were joined by other immediate and extended family members and acquaintances. The atmosphere was glorious as congregants joined the testifiers in singing and dancing. The choir was in their element as they kept everyone on their dancing feet. “Unchangeable, reliable, God, only You can do what no man can do,” they sang as tears of joy rolled down faces.
Speaking audibly well and thanking Prophet T.B. Joshua and the Emmanuel TV Partners for helping him find his voice again, Praise told congregants that he had received two Certificates of Bravery from the surgeons that operated on him. “I was treated like a king and enjoyed myself in South Africa. I ate all their burgers and spaghetti,” he said jokingly. Discarding the two pipes which he had used as breathing aids, he called on the rich in society to emulate Prophet T.B. Joshua by helping the sick and the poor. Cumulatively, Prophet T.B. Joshua and the Emmanuel TV Partners spent a whopping fifty thousand US dollars on Praise’s medical trip and welfare but nothing is too dear to give when you realise that what we do or fail to do to our fellow man, that we do or fail to do unto God.
Speaking on the boy’s testimony and healing, Prophet T.B. Joshua extolled the synergy between the church and the hospital in ensuring that Praise is back to his normal self: “You can see the mighty result you achieve if God’s servant and medical doctors are able to work together. God is God of nature. If God’s servant works with medical doctors, there is no limit to what they can achieve because God’s servant will be able to say whether a person will come out successfully during the operation, the treatment. Before I said to the young one (Praise), “Go”, I had seen the to and fro; I had seen that he would come out of the operation”.
Concluding, he urged children of God to exercise their faith so that their belief in God could be felt and seen by the world: “You must exercise your faith to show you believe. Faith must be practised. Faith is practical; there is no abstract faith. It is by faith you can tell people, ‘This is what God has sent me to do’. The belief in our heart can only be released by faith. If you can’t show that faith, then you don’t know the God you believe and If you don’t know the God you believe, it means it is not Jesus.”
