By Ola ‘Kiya, Reporting
GENERAL Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has related two fearsome instances of how God disgraced the power of the occult in Ijebu Igbo, Ogun State, while he was still a younger Christian.
Adeboye was preaching on the sub-theme: ‘Deliverance Beyond Expectations’ on Thursday night at the 71st Annual Convention of the mission ongoing at the Redemption City, Ogun State.
Going back memory lane with a reference to how young Apostle Philip demolished the powers of darkness and brought great joy to a whole city in Acts 8:5-8, the octogenarian said the late Oba Orimolusi of Ijebu Igbo, whom he affirmed was genuinely born again, shook his community for Jesus Christ.
Hear him: “Let me tell you a story and I will mention names because it’s a true story, anyway. The Late Orimolusi, the one before the present one, happens not just to be my Son-in-the-Lord, but my friend, and his Salvation was solid; I mean solid – saved, sanctified, delivered and baptized in the Holy Spirit.
“So, he told the people in his town, and this is a true story you can check to be sure I’m telling you the truth. He said: ‘Now, I’m a child of God, I’m not just an ordinary Oba, an ordinary Traditional Ruler, no more idol worshipping in my town,’ and the people laughed at him.
“And at the time he was saying that, the Egungun (masquerade) Festival was just some weeks away and they told him ‘we have been doing this before your father not to talk of you, we will celebrate our Egungun Festival.’
“He said: ‘Fine, we shall see’. I think about three weeks to the date when the festival was to be celebrated, the Chief Priest, who would lead the celebration, died and so the people said: ‘No problem, there is a successor.’
“So, another fellow became Chief Priest, but 10 days or so to the celebration, the new high priest died and the people said: ‘No problem, there is somebody who can succeed that one’ and so they told him: ‘It’s your turn’! He said I refuse. They said: ‘Why not’. He said: ‘The God of Orimolusi will kill me.”
In his second anecdote, the renowned Ifewara-born cleric said he was invited to the same community to minister about 40 years ago, narrating his raw encounter with the occult and how Jesus Christ saved many of them including the head of the occult from damnation.
According to him, “I’m a small boy and if I’m a small boy now, you can imagine how small I was some 40 years ago. You’ve heard the story!
“About 40 years ago, the same Oba Orimolusi of blessed memory invited me to Ijebu-Igbo for a Thanksgiving Service because some of his children had returned from abroad and he wanted to celebrate and I went.
“And just as the service was about to begin, a lot of his chiefs of those days came and they came in the regalia of their various cults.
“The ushers saw them coming and they said to me: ‘Sir! Are we going to allow these people into the church? I said ‘of course, bring them in the front row where it will be easy for my God to reach them quickly;’ and I changed my sermon.
“I was going to preach on: ‘Oh! That men should praise the Lord’! I changed my sermon to: “What happened on Mount Carmel’. You know what happened on Mount Carmel.
“I rounded up the sermon by saying: ‘Brethren, I came here with my wife and my son, in this particular car number so and so’, I said: ‘I give you a challenge if you can make one of my tyres go flat, I will serve your god, if you can’t do that, you must serve my God’.
“Then I made the Altar Call and the Head of the Chiefs, who incidentally happened to be the leader of all the members of the secret society, was the first to come forward.
“He came and, of course, when they saw the leader going, others followed. At the end of the Service, Orimolusi said to me: ‘EA.’ I said: ‘Kabiyesi’. Because we were close, you know. He called me EA. as my initials. You saw my Chief Assistant, the highest man next to me coming forward, and I said: ‘Kabiyesi, I saw him’.
“He said: ‘Maybe he didn’t understand what you said oo, maybe he thought you were asking for somebody who needs prayers for healing’, then he said: ‘Let’s follow him up’. I said: ‘Good’!
“So, we got to him and Kabiyesi said: ‘Do you know what you have just done’? He said ‘I do!’ Why? He said: ‘Ha! You see a small boy like this challenging all of us, who does not know there must be somebody behind him?’
“He said, ‘it is the One behind him that I surrendered to.”
Admonishing the frenzied mammoth gathering after telling the encounters, Pastor Adeboye, popularly called Daddy G.O, said when man submits to God in totality, they’d resist the devil and it will flee.
“What are the requirements for you to be a one-man army for God? A terror to the devil?
James 4:7 – Submit to God absolutely and then you resist the devil and he will flee from you! That’s what the Bible says.
“Let your submission to God be total, you must be able to say like Jesus said in John 14:30, ‘The prince of this world has come and has found nothing in me’.
“I am a Christian, a child of God, hundred per cent, nothing added. Submit like that to God, you will resist the devil, the devil will flee,” he charged.
The man of God, thereafter, decreed thus on the congregation: “I hereby decree anybody who raises any hand or foot against your God shall die,” “When you leave here, the Lord of Host will be behind you!.”
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