General Overseer of Love of Christ Chapel International Ministries, Prophet Peter Olowoporoku, speaks with Opeyemi Samuel and Segun Olabode on the rising suicidal cases and sundry national issues. Excerpts:
Your years ago, you were attacked. Tell us about it.
I am so privileged and blessed. I always run a national 40-day programme tagged Mercy rain. I usually wait on the Lord for 40 days. Then four years ago, we normally use a big hall at LTV for the 40-day programme. It was in that meeting that I was attacked. I was taken to many hospitals and it was like a death sentence for me but God said no. He stood up and raised men for me.
So God raised men for me in the place of prayers. They prayed for me and God healed me. I was about to be flown out of the country for treatment but God healed me here.
That was what made my 50th birthday a grand style last year. But this year made it 51 years of my life and 31years as a full-time pastor.
How did you start ministry?
I got into the ministry at the age of 19 crossing to 20 as a full time. I left an insurance company called African Alliance Insurance Company in Ibadan. At 18, I was already working as an insurance man but God told me “you’re my servant. You’re a bearer of my vessel.”
So I came into the ministry at 20 and since then I’ve been in full time working for the Lord from continent to continent and God has been faithful.
How has it been in the ministry for 31 years?
God has been so good. Actually, there’s a book to that effect titled Mandate of Mercy. I met Daddy Adeboye 26 years ago at the national headquarters Ebute-Meta. I went to him because I was confused, disjointed and embarrassed when I left my former ministry. I was terribly hurt.
As a young man, I went to Daddy Adeboye to explain my predicament to him but he said I shouldn’t talk about the man but focus on myself. He said of a truth, he doesn’t want to hear about my story because he didn’t even know the man so he wasn’t ready to hear anything about anybody he didn’t know.
He said I should face my life. He said that God who didn’t allow me to die there or allow him to kill me has a purpose for me. And since that day, I forgot about him and focused on my God. That was 26 years ago. And he prayed for me in his office at Ebute-Meta.
As I was about to leave his office, I heard a voice from God saying “Purity is Power. If you want to carry my power you must be pure, and live a holy life.” And I said ‘Lord, I am ready.’ That was the beginning of a journey that is beyond me.
The kind of favour I have experienced in the last 31 years can only be God. It can only be the hands of God. And if God tells me that I have finished my work on earth today, I’ll celebrate Him forever.
Have you had any regret since you’ve been in the ministry?
I have never had a day of regret neither have I had cause to ask why I am doing what I’m doing now. I have only days of plus, celebrations and happiness.
We have about 20 branches in Lagos alone, South Africa and other African countries. As I tell people, Jesus is the owner of this church, not Olowoporoku.
What is your take on current economic situation and what is the hope for the people?
God is the owner of his people. God is the owner of Nigeria and He determines what happens per time. Nigeria is a great country. We have great people here, great thinkers.
Nigeria is one of the best countries in the world. Travel out of this country and you’d want to come back. I don’t know about anybody, but if I travel outside the country and I spend five days, I’m already thinking of how to come back home.
If God wanted me to be an American, I’d have been born there. But God, in His infinite mercy and master plan, has a purpose for me to be born in Nigeria.
If God wants us to divide, He knows how to do it without shedding a blood. You might call the amalgamation a mistake but it’s in God’s agenda; it’s never a mistake.
God has a purpose that President Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo are in power. God has a purpose for it. Our job as the people is to pray for leaders. The problem is that we criticise a lot. I love constructive criticisms, not just anyhow talk.
Something that has become bad will not be good in just a night. The extent of the damage that has been done will not be corrected in a day. It will take time. But the truth is let the current government have visions and plans for the masses and the less privileged.
Let them have vision for the jobless. Because the more there are jobless people, the more there would be crimes. Pastors are now at the receiving end because we are the one taking care of these people. We have become their burden bearers.
Why is corruption rising despite the many churches springing up daily?
The problem is from the leadership. Anything you want to correct must be from the altar. That’s why if you want to give your child the best it would be from home, not from school. The little time you spend with them and talk to them is better off than the hours they spend with their teachers in school.
They came from you, they are your blood. There’s a part of them that quickly identifies with your voice. If they come to church and we’re not telling them about how to live right and shun corruption and we keep telling them to bring money that you don’t even know the source, it means we’re also compromising. And that level, people will also go haywire in looking for money by any means.
People know me here that I don’t compromise because I want to make heaven. That is my goal. What I’m after is adding value to lives and making people happy.
What advice do you have for Nigerians?
I want to tell them to be patient and put their trust in God. They should pray for the leadership and believe in God that something positive will happen very soon. Let us depend on God to work through our leaders. They can’t do anything outside of God.
It is only God that can give them wisdom, power and enablement. Even if they are the best hands, if God does not work with them they can do nothing.
What’s your take on the recent suicide cases?
Anybody who takes his/her own life would not make it to heaven. It’s not right to take your life. You don’t create life, so you don’t take it. It is a sin against the divinity.
In a worst case scenario, you can just commit everything into God’s hands rather than committing suicide. Those people you’re seeing being celebrated today have passed through some difficult situations yesterday. But they kept going on; they refused to give up. Today, we’re using their stories as testimonials.
Another reason I’d say that causes suicide is overdependence on the leadership. People are too dependent on the government for change and once they don’t see what they expect they begin to have problems. For instance, if a woman is over dependent on her husband, the day the man has problems the woman can die. I have seen a woman who had stroke the day she discovered that her husband keeps girlfriends.
Suicide rate can best stopped when men start putting their trust and reliance in God. We’ve seen people in the bible who passed through difficult challenges and survived. Abraham passed through the period of recession with Isaac, Jacob and others.
The interesting thing is that God saw them through. You cannot get to the top without passing through difficult times but God’s promise is that “though you pass through the waters, I’ll be with you.”
My advice to those who want to commit suicide or planning such is that they should stop it. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. There’s no hopeless case; there’re only hopeless people. And why should you be hopeless while the light of God is still moving around?
